The Rose and the Shield (Medieval 2)

“Sir Arno has already offered you payment for one month’s work,” she said in a brittle voice. “Five marks, with food and lodging. I thought the deal was struck. Are you going to go back on your word now, Captain?”

He stared down at her—yes, down. Rose tried not to show her unease. “I am not negotiating with you, my lady. I am telling you what I want. There was no deal struck.”

He sounded cool and controlled, and completely inflexible. Rose narrowed her eyes, just as determined. “I do not like your answer, Captain. You have been offered a fair price. I will not be bullied into making you another.”

The big, dark-haired man in the wolf-pelt cloak tapped him on the shoulder with a hand gloved in a black leather gauntlet. Without taking his eyes from hers, the mercenary captain listened to what his man murmured into his ear. Judging by the frown that creased his brow, he didn’t appear to like it. Rose glared back, while her heart was threatening to batter its way out from inside her chest. Slowly his frown smoothed away and the emotion leached from his eyes, leaving them once more cold and dead.

He nodded sharply, once, and the other man stepped back.

“Very well. Six marks.”

Rose would not have allowed even that concession, but before she could intervene Arno quickly said, “Done!” and then avoided her eyes. “It is a good bargain, lady,” he added in a falsely jovial voice.

Rose bit her lip. Maybe it was a reasonable bargain in the circumstances. One they could afford, anyway, if the harvest was a good one. But that did not explain Arno’s unusual forbearance—was he so desperate to have the mercenaries there? Was he more worried than he had allowed her to see? It seemed the only possibility.

The mercenary said nothing to her, treating the matter as concluded. Arrogant, Rose told herself, as he looked again to Arno. The sort of man who could take orders only from another man. But what could one expect from a Viking savage?

“How many men-at-arms do you keep here?” he was asking. “I saw one, maybe two. Are there others elsewhere?”

His questions were peremptory. Sir Arno shifted uneasily, not prepared to answer him. That was because he felt the answer reflected badly on him, thought Rose, but the mercenary had a right to know.

She swallowed her own indignation and, her cheeks burning but her voice strong, gave him his reply. “We have three men who belong to the keep and are able-bodied, but they are presently working in the fields.”

“You set your soldiers to work in the fields, lady?” Astonishment shone clear in his eyes, before he quenched it.

“There are crops to be grown, Captain, or we will all starve. Soldiers have to eat, too. I myself helped during sowing time. Somerford Manor supports us all, so we must all work.”

He nodded indifferently, conceding the point. “Where are the rest of your garrison, lady? Shearing the sheep?”

Rose felt her back stiffen in response to his cool sarcasm, but refused to rise to it. Instead she told him the bald truth. “The rest of our garrison went off to Lord Fitzmorton.”

As she had expected, he wanted more—the lift of his eyebrow told her so.

“Lord Fitzmorton and Lord Wolfson are both powerful men, but they are always squabbling over who is the more powerful. At Christmas they clashed, and some of their men were killed. They were then both short of fighting men and sought to replace them. They do not care where they recruit…they turned their eyes in the direction of Somerford, and I could not pay as well as they. This is not the only manor to suffer—others also lost soldiers from their garrisons.

“However,” she went on briskly, “we do have twenty villeins who perform two days’ duty once a week.” Honesty made her add, not so briskly, “Although most of them are either very old or very young, and one is crippled.”

His mouth, already firm, tightened. “And why do you depend upon old and crippled villeins to guard Somerford Manor?” he asked in a deceptively calm voice. “Have your able-bodied villeins also gone to Fitzmorton?”

Rose was starting to feel like a child making feeble excuses to her guardian for some misdemeanor. Ridiculous, she told herself. You are lady here, and he is nothing but a hired soldier. A peasant in chain mail. A Viking savage with neither manners nor courtesy. Her voice lifted, growing in haughtiness as it always did when she was nervous, but in the circumstances this seemed no bad thing.

“Our able-bodied villeins are dead, Captain. Before I came to Somerford there was an English uprising against the king. My husband, Edric, stood with Lord Radulf against it, and many of our men went to fight. Lord Radulf won the day, but very few of Somerford Manor’s men returned. He presented Edric with a gold goblet in remembrance of his loyalty and sacrifice.” She remained emotionless for the mercenary’s benefit, pretending indifference she didn’t feel—death was always a waste. “Sir Arno has begun training some of the younger boys, though it will be some years yet before they are ready to fight. I have suggested to Sir Arno that the women might take up guard duty, until their sons are grown. Many of them are widows of the villeins who died in the uprising, and they are more than willing to take over their dead husbands’ duties.”

Eartha, the cook at Somerford Keep, had been particularly keen to don armor and stand guard, even to fight. Why could women not fight as well as men if the need was there? she had declared, and Rose had agreed there was no reason. Arno had thought differently.

“Sir Arno finds the idea of women garrisoning Somerford…” Unacceptable? Repugnant? Threatening? Rose wondered just how to put into words the expression on Arno’s face at the time. In any case, she didn’t have to find the right words because the mercenary cut her short.

“A garrison of women.” He said it straight-faced, but with a twist to his voic

e that was almost a smile. His men laughed. “There are better things to do with women than kill them.”

“Captain!” Rose’s anger was near boiling point; in a moment she would say something to put them all in danger.

“Better to send the boys to fight.”

Rose felt her anger fly out of her head. Briefly she struggled with his meaning, but there was really only one conclusion she could draw. Despite herself her reply was strained. “I don’t care what you do where you come from, Captain, but at Somerford we do not send our children out to die.”

The blue eyes narrowed, and then he shrugged as if such histrionics were of no interest to him. “You’d rather send out your women?” he asked with cool curiosity.