The Rose and the Shield (Medieval 2)

“Both!”

Rose gave the old woman a suspicious glance; Constance was showing uncustomary restraint.

“Mayhap you should go and show their captain his sleeping quarters. See to his bath,” Constance went on, and now her voice trembled with the effort to keep it disinterested. “Do you think we have a tub big enough for him?”

“I doubt it,” Rose replied dryly. “Have you had your fun now? I take it you saw him? Captain Olafson?”

All pretense vanished. Constance’s eyes gleamed like pale jewels. “Indeed I did, lady! A Viking god.”

Rose shook her head, wondering as she did so whether she was trying to convince Constance or herself. “The man may be a god, but he is also a savage. An unfeeling monster. He has no heart and no soul. If you think he is the new husband you are always seeking for me, old woman, then you are very, very wrong.”

Constance had listened to the tremble in her lady’s voice with growing trepidation. Something had upset her badly. She had not seen Rose so shaken since the day Edric had had to order the lopping off of one of his serf’s hands for stealing, and that was after he had let him off with a reprimand two times.

“But he is so fine-looking!” she wailed, laying aside the once-fine linen chemise. “How can a man who looks like that be so black inside?”

“I don’t know,” Rose said grimly, “but believe me ’tis so. His soul is like a raven’s wing, and as putrid as a midden. Content yourself with looking at his face, Constance, for that is the only pretty thing about this man.”

Constance sighed and remained silent as Rose sat down.

“Six marks,” her lady muttered darkly. “And food and lodging! Well, let us pray they are worth it. But I fear they will be nothing to me…us but trouble.” Impatiently she reached up and removed the metal circlet that held her veil in place on her head, putting both aside. Her strong, dark hair was plaited into submission in one long, thick rope that tumbled down her back, while glossy raven tendrils curled about her flushed face. “I wish now I had never asked Arno to find me these mercenaries!”

“Where did he find them?”

“I know not—some knightly friend, he said. I left all such arrangements to him. Oh, I should have dealt with it myself!”

“You are in a fine temper,” Constance said dryly.

“I am weary,” Rose replied, and knew it was so. The Lady of Somerford must be hard, she must be tough. She must sit at the manor court and make judgment upon those who transgressed, who did not pay their rent or neglected their duties to the manor; she must order men to fight and mayhap die; she must rule in cases of stealing or assault or even murder. She must make the decision between life and death, and do that every day.

But Rose had been born with a gentle heart, and in such circumstances as these to have a gentle heart was the worst of all possible afflictions. And yet it was her gentle heart that had endeared her, a Norman lady, to her English people.

After Edric died, when it would have been so easy to give in and let Arno take over Somerford, when Rose teetered on the verge of saying aye, Constance had opened her eyes. Sir Arno did not love and care for the people as Rose did. He meant well, he was loyal, and he might be versed in the practical side of being lord of the manor, but he had no compassion for the English people. Would he set aside eggs for the smith’s sick child, or remember old Edward’s aching bones in the winter and order extra wood to be gathered for his fire?

Of course not! Arno would be more likely to consider a sick child a waste of eggs, and old Edward better off frozen.

Mayhap Arno was right and she was wrong, but Rose could not think so, and she could not live with her conscience if she allowed him to enforce such a regime here at Somerford. So she had gathered her courage about her and ignored the voice in her head—sounding remarkably like her father’s—that told her she could not do it. She resisted the temptation to allow Arno to take the reins, and thereafter insisted all decisions that had formerly been made by Edric were now to be made by her and her alone. Somerford Manor was now hers, and as long as she was able she would hold it and its people safe.

“We are all weary,” Constance answered, “but there will be time enough to sleep after death. If you want rid of this black-hearted mercenary, go to Lady Lily. She has always supported you. She likes you; she will listen.”

“Lady Lily has troubles of her own, Constance. She is unwell with this second child she carries, and the first still so young.”

“Radulf is a lusty husband.”

Rose frowned. “Then she should have told him nay.”

Constance smiled at her lady’s naivete. “Is that what you did with Edric? And I’ll be bound he meekly went and left you to your sleep. Oh, lady, you do not understand. If you were wed to a young, virile man whom you desired, you would not be able to say him nay, either!”

Rose shifted irritably. How dare Constance speak as though Rose were an ignorant virgin? As if she understood nothing of the relationship between a man and a woman? “’Tis none of your concern, old woman.”

“No. Right now this mending is my concern, so I will say no more, my lady.”

That deserved a reprimand, and Rose opened her mouth to give it.

The shriek was so loud it made both women start.

Younger and spryer, Rose was first to the window. She leaned out just as the shriek came again. It tore through the bailey, which had just begun to resume some normality after the arrival of the mercenaries.

Constance, close behind her, clutched her arm. “What is it, lady? Is someone being killed?”