The Rose and the Shield (Medieval 2)

She had spent a number of hours teaching Millisent the finer points of cleaning clothing. This, as she had explained to the girl with a smile, mainly involved hard work, but a paste of wood ash was useful when it came to whitening linen.

They were presently in the kitchen, engaged in the tedious business of making candles. Using a wooden board cut into regular holes, Rose had carefully fixed twisted linen threads through these holes. The threads were in fact wicks, and they would be dipped into a bowl of mutton fat again and again, until the candles had grown to the required thickness.

Millisent, at her side, watched closely and helped where she could. The girl had washed and changed into a plain, homespun gown supplied by the more buxom Eartha. The long sleeves hung over her hands and had to be folded up, while the hem swept the floor—it made her look younger and even more vulnerable.

While the servant women chattered around her, Rose dipped her candles once more into the congealing mutton fat, and knew with a sense of helpless dismay that she should be using this time to consider the measures needed to protect her people against their attackers. She should be deciding what to do about the dead stranger. She should be contemplating Harold the miller and his strange disappearance. And, apart from her current troubles, there would soon be crops to harvest—if they were not to starve.

Rose wiped a hand across her brow—it was very hot in the kitchen—and, catching Millisent’s eye, smiled comfortingly. The girl was pale and worried, and it would do no good to add to her fears until they knew the truth. Will was playing in the corner with Eartha’s child, the two of them giggling as if this were an ordinary day. Rose could not remember being so carefree when she was a child; she had too soon been burdened with adult cares. Serious and solemn, that was little Rose. Her mother had seemed always to be weeping and when she had deigned to notice Rose, she had tended to hug her too tightly, as if to make up for her previous neglect. Her love for Rose’s father had been a terrible affliction to both her and her daughter.

Rose had never wanted love. She was no romantic. Few Norman girls dreamed of finding that sort of romantic love with their husbands—that was not what marriage was for—but Rose was even less romantic than most. Thankfully Edric had been kind and gentle; she had been grateful for that. There had been no passion between them, none of the aching intensity Rose had heard sung about in the sweet ballads. Such excess of emotion disturbed and frightened her, threatened her ordered existence. And yet, contrarily, most nights she did dream of it. Of him, her ghostly warrior.

And last night she had dreamed he wore his copper hair in narrow braids, like Gunnar Olafson.

Fear rose up in her, a thick black wave she could almost taste. The kitchen was too hot, too noisy. The intensity of her feelings—feelings she had always believed she could control—overset her outer calm, causing her hands to shake. Suddenly Rose had to escape. There must be somewhere quiet where she could think this thing through—reason with her mind instead of allowing her emotions to overcome good sense.

Rose turned to Millisent and said in a false, bright voice. “Here, now ’tis your turn.” And she thrust the candleboard she had been working on into the girl’s surprised hands.

“But lady—” Millisent blinked.

“Ask Eartha if you need help.”

“Aye, I’ll help you, Millisent.” Eartha smiled kindly, glancing up from the table where she was rolling pastry for a fish pie. “There be nothing to it.”

“There, you see?”

Millisent still looked as if she might object, but Rose gave her no choice. With another wooden smile, she turned and left them to it.

The stairs leading up from the kitchen were dim and deserted, and the air was cool and still. Rose stood a moment, taking deep breaths, grateful for the respite. Slowly her panic subsided, and order was restored to her erratically hammering pulses. She was able to consider her situation with some measure of tranquillity.

The dream had been only that—a dream. A fantasy fashioned by her overwrought mind. Her ghostly warrior was not Gunnar Olafson. He could never be Gunnar Olafson. It disturbed her that she could imagine, even for a moment, that he was. Her dream man had no face—he wasn’t real—and thus it was safe to love him and to long for him. But Gunnar Olafson was very real indeed—an earthy, sensual warrior—and he was anything but safe.

Probably, Rose told herself, he was the sort of man who kissed every woman he came across. And she had not fought him, she had been more than willing, even encouraging. For a moment last night, as they stood locked together, she had believed herself capable of rattling the mercenary’s control. She dismissed such imaginings now. Probably he had meant to seduce her from the beginning, and had gone about it in his cold, methodical manner. And she had been ripe for seduction.

Was Constance right; did she need a lover?

A vision came rushing over her—her bed filled with hard, powerful flesh and blazing blue eyes. Once again she felt swamped, breathless and shaking.

She had had enough of quiet.

Now she needed clamor!

With a gasp, Rose hurried up the stairs, trying to outrun her own thoughts, and burst into the great hall.

In contrast to the stairwell, it was awash with people and movement. The outside noise left no room for her own wayward thoughts. And at least the mercenaries weren’t there, so she was spared the embarrassment of coming face-to-face with Gunnar Olafson. For now.

He was out hunting. Arno had told her so, and at first she had thought he meant for meat for the table—they were sorely in need of such with all the extra mouths to feed. Then she realized that of course Arno had meant “hunting” for whoever had attacked the village. She had an image of the mercenary troop pursuing the merefolk like a savage wolf pack chasing deer, and shivered.

Arno hadn’t gone hunting, he had remained in the keep. “To protect you and your

people,” he had told Rose, shooting her a wary, sideways glance. As if, she thought, he had not drunk so deep last night that he could not lift his own sword. Perhaps he did not remember, or hoped she had not noticed it or was too polite to mention it? He had failed her last night, and today he was trying to make amends, but the fact remained.

Again her comparison of the behavior of the two men—Arno and Gunnar Olafson—made her uneasy. Surely it should have been Arno who remained sober and this morning took charge of the hunt, and the mercenary who stayed at home recovering from his drunken excess?

“God curse them, halffishes that they be. Aye, tails for legs!”

The imprecation brought Rose’s head around. Faded blue eyes turned red from smoke and lack of sleep, set in a mass of wrinkles. The ancient creature was clasping a wooden cup full of milk in her crooked hands, and over the brim her gaze was fixed defiantly on Rose. As Rose was well aware, it was the general belief among her people that the merefolk were in fact halffish—grotesque creatures of skin and scale, designed for their watery home rather than dry land.

Rose bent down and tried a soothing tone. “Did you see the merefolk burning your house, grandmother?”