The Rose and the Shield (Medieval 2)

Gunnar gritted his teeth and pretended he was made of iron. “We will know more tomorrow. For now we will consider him a stranger, because none of your villagers will admit to knowing him.”

“You think they are lying,” she stated softly, searching his face for clues.

“Mayhap,” he murmured, giving her nothing more. But as he was beginning to learn, she didn’t accept half answers.

“Mayhap? Either they are lying or they are telling the truth—how can it be both?”

He didn’t answer, preserving his suspicions and his silence, but his gaze slid to the girl in her arms. A warning.

Finally she took the hint. “Then we will talk of this later,” she answered him with quiet dignity and a stony glance from her dark eyes.

Gunnar nodded once in agreement and watched as she led Millisent gently into the great hall, where light and warmth gave an illusion of safety. And that was all Lady Rose was, Gunnar reminded himself grimly. Despite her delectable body and beautiful face, she was all illusion.

Alfred went to follow.

“Did the girl say anything?” Gunnar asked quietly, for Alfred’s ears alone.

“No, Captain, but she is afraid. She is hiding something.”

“Find out what it is, Alfred.”

When he had gone, Gunnar stood a moment in the shadows, gazing at the woman in the light. It was madness. He knew it, and still was powerless to help himself. He wanted her. The need was primitive, irrational, but it was there. Maybe it only needed to be the once, he told himself feverishly. Just one time, and he could go back to being himself. And she would be out of his blood, forever.

It was late.

Rose stood at the inner entrance to the great hall, watching over the mounded shapes of sleeping bodies. The waning light from the fire picking out the pale curve of outflung arms or legs, and tousled heads peeping above the edges of warm cloaks or blankets. Gentle breathing, with an occasional snore, broke the heavy silence. Behind the dais, Millisent and Will, Harold the miller’s two children, were safely cocooned in a curtained alcove with Eartha and her young son.

Rose had always had a soft spot for Millisent. Was it because the girl was motherless, and she saw in her something of her own childhood confusion and loneliness? Mayhap. The difference, however, was in their fathers, for whereas Millisent’s father loved and cared for her a great deal, Rose’s father had been cold and manipulative. Certainly he had never loved her, and as she grew she had learned not to long for his love or approval. Her father was skilled in turning such longings into weapons. Had she not seen enough of her mother’s suffering to know that?

The lessons had been well learned. To be loved too little was to be constantly longing for more; to love too much was a fatal wound in the heart. It was much better not to love at all.

The hall smelled of stale woodsmoke; the villagers had brought the scent of the destruction of their homes with them in their hair and on their clothes. What had happened out there in the fiery night, during those first moments of terror? Almost, Rose could hear the screams and shouts, smell the burning, see…what? Merefolk intent on doing harm? Creeping out of the darkness and back into it again? Or had the attackers and their reasons for the attack been other than she believed?

And why had no one seen anything? she asked herself in frustration.

Why had Harold the miller run away into the darkness, leaving behind him a dead stranger? That did not sound like the man Rose knew. Harold was no fugitive, and neither was he a murderer. He was a stolid, kindly man who treated fairly all who brought their grain to his mill. A man who cared deeply for his family. Rose did not accept that he would abandon his children in such circumstances, unless it was for a good reason. But what was a good enough reason? Had he been taken against his will, dragged off by the merefolk to be held for ransom? But if that was so, why take Harold and no one else? And why do it so stealthily?

Rose sighed, feeling the burden of so many lives pressing down on her. She had too many questions and not enough answers; it was impossible to make sound judgments. She must wait until the morning, as Gunnar Olafson had said, except Rose knew that a dead stranger in an English village—particularly a dead Norman stranger—was more than just another paltry worry.

She had seen by the cautious expression in Gunnar’s eyes that he understood that. Mayhap that was why he had seemed so reluctant to speak with her and answer her questions. He knew of the old ways, the old days, before King William came to stamp his mark on England. When Harold was king—and long before—murder had been a matter of wergild. Instead of declaring a blood feud, the relatives of the murdered man could be paid an agreed amount to compensate them for his death. This was the murderer’s punishment—to pay for what he had done. Now such arcane laws meant nothing—Norman justice had come to replace them. King William decreed that the dead man must be proved to be English, or else he was assumed to be Norman. And, under William’s law, a dead Norman meant that an Englishman must die.

A life for a life, that was the Norman way.

And if the dead man was Norman, it looked very much as if Harold the miller would be that Englishman.

Was that the reason Captain Olafson had looked so serious when he returned to the keep tonight? Rose knew she would have to question him again, but she was reluctant to do so. Whatever it was that had sparked between them during the meal in the great hall had seemed dead and cold by the time he returned from the village. It had been clear to her that, for whatever reason, he wished to escape her company as soon as possible. She had had to all but order him to wait! And he had been so emptied of emotion as he told her of what he had found, so icy—his men had shown more compassion and feeling than he! The one with the terrible scar upon his face, Alfred, had even helped her to make up beds and bathe cuts and burns, anointing the more serious ones with goose grease.

Alfred had told her that his mother used to do the same, the memory making him smile. “Where is your family now?” she had asked him, for he seemed too young to be a mercenary like Gunnar Olafson.

But his eyes had turned old and bleak. “The captain is my family now.”

They were a strange bunch, these mercenaries. Rose’s first impression of tough and dangerous still held, but she was beginning to realize there was a great deal more to them than blood and brutality. That did not mean she trusted them, but she was learning to read them better. Apart from their captain…

A step sounded behind her.

Rose stiffened. Constance? The old woman did not sleep as much as she used to. Eartha? Millisent, perhaps, unable to rest for worry of her father? Arno, guilty at his earlier drunkenness and seeing that all was in orde

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