by M. C. Frank
He followed her on foot, his horse waiting patiently for him to come back in the middle of the cobblestone square, its tether thrown hastily on the ground when he had dismounted it.
They reached the manor and Rosa hurried ahead to stand before the door. She wasn't about to let him walk inside the courtyard carrying her buckets. His brow furrowed as he halted before her, whether from annoyance or because that was how he generally looked, Rosa had no idea. Around them, a light sprinkle of snow had begun to fall.
“Thank you, sir,” Rosa said, wondering how long he was going to stand there. “You are most kind,” she added, before thinking, as she tried to do these days, that she should talk like a scullery maid and not as the daughter of the Sheriff of Nottingham.
“Your name,” he said abruptly.
“Mary, my lord,” Rosa gave a name different than the one she was currently using, narrowing her eyes in annoyance at his rudeness.
“Mary,” he repeated and nodded, as though he was somehow satisfied by her answer. “You should dress warmer,” he added, “Mary.”
The next minute, he was gone.
By midnight, the snow had already risen to two inches above the ground. Rosa was bid by her mistress to go out on an errand, and she bundled herself up as tightly as she could, taking a deep breath as she opened the back door. Immediately the cold assaulted her, and she staggered for a minute. The next, she was grabbed from behind and dragged across the snow to the stables.
Master James threw her down on the foul-smelling hay, and placed his palm over her mouth and nose. In a minute, she went limp in his arms and he started to tear at her clothes hungrily.
She was nearly naked in the cold when she came to. He had released her lips and was in the corner taking off his breeches. She acted without thinking.
It took all her strength to silently drag an old, abandoned wooden beam across the floor towards him, as he had his back to her. He turned at the last minute and saw her, but by then she was close enough to lift it to his head. He fell with a thud and she just stood there as the moments ticked by, immobilized by shock.
Then he started to stir.
She gathered her clothes with trembling hands and dashed out the door, in the face of the blizzard.
Dressed in tatters as she was and shaking from the shock, it was no wonder she hadn't walked far when she stumbled in the cold snow. She forced herself to get up and crawl for a few more steps, although she had no idea where she was going, so thick was the white curtain of ice twirling madly all around her. Hopefully, that would prevent her pursuer from finding her anytime soon, although fear kept pushing her on.
She didn't know how much later it was when she finally gave up.
She lay back on the snow and thought of Robin. The cold had frozen her aching body and her feverish mind. All that remained was he.
She closed her eyes and felt truly peaceful for the first time since she had left the forest. In her mind it was a warm summer's day and Robin was placing a hand lightly on her waist, instructing her how to use the bow. She tried to move her lips, to call his name one last time, but they were too heavy to lift and she gave up the effort. It would have been nice, she thought, to go to sleep with his name on her mouth, but anyway it didn't matter. It was always in her heart.
The snow kept falling on her, covering her like a blanket and she finally felt warm.
She woke up to sunlight and voices. She tried to look around, but all she could ascertain before falling back weakly, was that she was in a room with a wide window, lying on a luxurious bed.
Her mind, tired from the fever, couldn't process the information well enough to reach a conclusion about her whereabouts, and days of drifting in and out of consciousness had passed before she finally awoke with a clear mind, free of the haze of illness. It was then that, little by little she found out what had happened to her from the two maidservants who rushed in and out of her room to feed and tend to her.
Her tired, disoriented steps had brought her, it seemed, but a few yards from the outer gates of the castle, where she had finally collapsed, losing consciousness.
She had been seen by two of the guards of the great castle and they, unsure of what to do had called on their master, the lord of the property, who had ridden out in the snow to see the half-buried woman they had discovered. He himself had dismounted and brushed the snow away from her still body, or so it was rumoured around the castle; he who most days did not even venture out of his rooms.
He decided to take her in and the guards had carried her to the castle. The maids were given orders to nurse her with the utmost care and, when it seemed she would not wake, even a physician called in from town. That was the whole story of her rescue.
Then the servants had looked severely down at her and told her that it was already five days she had been abed and that soon enough, now that she was well, she would have to take herself elsewhere.
But Rosa knew her chances of survival would be very slim if she ventured out in this weather. The lord of the castle, who loomed tall and frightening in the stories his servants spun about him, did not frighten her, although she hadn't even seen him yet. His name, she learned, was Sir Gavin de Holacombe, and his descent Norman. She had not heard of him before.
The next day, she got up on shaky feet and picked up her dress, which one of the younger maids had taken pity on and washed and mended. She dressed herself in it, although it hung even more lose on her narrow frame now. She braided her hair and, taking a deep breath, she ventured out of her room.
She had to climb down five flights of stairs before she could reach the kitchens. Even she who had lived her entire life in the castle of Nottingham, couldn't fathom the size of this small village built in this huge castle. By the time she reached her destination, she had to sit down for a minute on the cold stone to catch her breath.
Then she went into the kitchen, a large room buzzing with activity, holding her head high.
None of the servants there seemed especially happy to see her, but she insisted she wouldn't leave until she was given some work to do, and then one of the maids, the same wide-faced, pleasant girl who had washed her dress, took her hand and told her she was welcome to help her peel onions.
So for the next few hours she peeled onions and fetched water and skinned a goose, because his lordship was accustomed to dining finely every night.
Rosa felt a small trepidation when she heard talk of dining and guests, since she feared that people who had seen her in her father's homestead and might know her could be invited, or worse, her father himself. Or even Sir Hugh. If she played her cards right, however, she would be buried in the kitchens, or even gone, by the time everyone arrived.
By the time they started preparing the late afternoon meal for the lord of the castle, Rosa was beginning to feel faint. Her legs could barely support her, and her head was beginning to feel fuzzy, still weak from the fever and the lack of nutrition. However, she pressed on, hating to let anyone notice her weakness, and prayed that her strength would hold up until the master of the house was served and she could climb back upstairs and collapse on her bed.
It occurred to her then, that according to the structure in which every castle was customarily built, the higher the room was, the more important the guest. So, she was really puzzled as to why she had been taken to a room at the top floor.
She kept to her work, however, trying not to think of the danger of recognition.
Then, upstairs, right above her head, shouts erupted.
A deep, booming voice was shouting and cursing, the sound coming nearer and nearer. Rosa looked around in alarm, but not one of the women stirred.
The maid who worked beside her shrugged.
“The master has a temper,” she said simply. “He frequently shouts and throws things about. You get used to it.”
Rosa smiled, because the man really sounded more like a small boy throwing a tantrum whenever he felt like it.
“He has known great sorrow and pain
,” the maid continued rather sharply, as though she had heard Rosa's thoughts. “They say,” she continued in a lower voice, “that he had even more lands than these, being at one time a great friend to the king himself, but that Prince John rid him of his vast fortune, as well as his previous wife, if you know what I mean. I myself never met her, however, if she ever existed. Our master even fought alongside the King in the Holy Lands, so they say, but came back when he was seriously wounded to find almost everything he had in the world taken from him. He has been planning his revenge, that’s what they say in the village. He is not a man to be thought of lightly,” she added darkly.
Rosa wondered what that last part meant. As for the rest of his story, she feared she had heard it before, a common enough occurrence even amongst the noblemen these last years. She wondered what kind of revenge the man was planning.
And then, suddenly, she knew she was going to find out sooner rather than later, since the shouts kept coming closer and it seemed the master of the castle was headed for the kitchen.
Everyone's face was transformed by fear, as the servants and maids and cooks rushed from one place to another, trying to look busy, straightening their aprons, tying their caps around their loosened hair. Rosa sighed. It seemed like her bed was drifting further and further away.
Then the man himself boomed in, a flurry of manservants following close at his heels, sweating with excuses. He did not listen to any one of them, he just kept shouting. And then he stopped short.
He had just entered the area of the kitchens, and for a moment Rosa thought it was the fact that the various smells and mouth-watering vapours accosted him all of a sudden, that made him pause. But it turned out it was not that.
His steely eyes were fixed on a very specific spot in the room and immediately his lips clamped shut in an expression of disgust and pain, all in one.
That specific spot was her.
And then she recognized him. It was the tall, lean, sour gentleman who had lifted her buckets and carried them filled to the brim with water, that fateful day she had run away. It was that same man who had stood at the well, his long hair now wafting loose out of his ponytail, and his grey eyes sending sparks in every direction.
“There you are,” he said, after a minute of breath-holding silence, and he seemed to try to calm himself as he spoke. “Mary,” he continued, “Mary is the name you go by, I think. Come here.”
His tone was commanding and Rosa swallowed down an urge to spit back a scathing answer. She wasn't Rosa now, however, she was Mary, the destitute, found-nearly-dead-in-a-ditch beggarmaid, and she couldn't afford to disobey him.
She went and stood before him, holding her head down, as she had practiced to do all these months she had worked as a scullery-maid.
Without any other word, the man grabbed her arm so roughly it hurt, and marched her out. He practically dragged her up the stairs in a spacious room with a roaring fire and animal pelts strewn about to give the illusion of warmth. It was, however, freezing.
Rosa was too angry to give a thought to her aching limbs. She stood in the middle of the room as soon as he released her, shivering in the cold, and refused to come near the fire. He simply studied her, seething in anger as well, at what she knew not, and the moments passed.
He was the one to give in first and speak.
“Come closer to the fire,” he ordered sternly, “you are cold.”
She did not move, although she clasped her hands together to stop them from shaking.
He laughed, a mirthless sound, full of sarcasm. He was laughing at her.
“You are clearly freezing, why won’t you move?”
“I will not be ordered about,” she murmured to herself not intending for him to hear, but he did, nonetheless.
“You say so,” he answered, moving closer until he was standing right in front of her and she would have to raise her head if she wanted to look him in the eye. “You say so, and yet, you go about doing things in my castle,” he intoned the word ‘my’ slightly, “as though you were one of my servants. The ones whom I happen to ‘order about’.”
Then, infuriatingly, he placed an elegant hand underneath her chin and tipped up her face so that her eyes met his straight-on. She was surprised at the pain she saw there, and inhaled sharply.
He let go of her and turned his back, his expression one of disgust.
“Do not pretend you know how to bend your head submissively,” he said, “it does not become you. And besides, you have not the slightest idea how to go about acting the lowly servant.”
He cannot know, she thought in panic.
He turned abruptly, as though to catch her expression unguarded and what he saw made him move swiftly to her side and take her arm. This time she didn't resist as he led her to a large chair and put a cloak about her shoulders. Her head swam and she had felt the blood draining from her body in that one moment. Immediately, as she sat, she felt the warmth of the fire spread to her limbs, and with it, her self-control.
The man -Sir Gavin- knelt next to her and examined her face.
“You have naught to fear from me, my lady,” he whispered, but then he stood again, the usual expression of anger and sarcasm coming back like mask on his face. When he spoke again, his voice was hard and cold and she thought she had imagined his previous words.
“Your name, first,” he said, “if you please, and I warn you, I may not forgive a lie a second time.”
“What mean you, good sir?” she simpered innocently. “Your lordship knows my name.”
To her surprise, he laughed. It sounded much more genuine than before, too.
“You can no more pretend that you are a servant, than I can pretend to be happy,” he said. Then, more kindly, “tell me, please, I mean you no harm. I simply have an immense dislike for concealed truth. Besides, your secret is already out.”
“What secret, my lord?” she asked, dropping the pretence. Suddenly, she felt bone-weary.
“Do you think that it was by mere chance that you saw me every single day at that well? Do you think I get out every day, and go to the village square, and stand beside the well staring at the fat women who come to fill their buckets with…”
“You are right, it did seem quite strange,” Rosa interrupted quietly.
“Of course I’m right. Now, your name.”
“My name is Rosa Fitzwalter, and I am the…”
“The daughter of the Sheriff of Nottingham, yes, I know. The lost one. The traitorous one. Or the dead one, I should say.”
Rosa flinched.
“You knew all along?”
“I did.”
She briefly considered jumping up and running, but one look in his face told her he already anticipated her every move.
“That would be a really bad idea, my dear,” he said.
“How did you recognize me?”
“My friend, Hugh DeHavenger, he- ”
An exclamation of frustration erupted from her lips.
“Yes, quite,” he said coolly. “He had pointed you out to me on several occasions, asking for my opinion and advice on the matter of wooing you. I doubt however that you remember me.”
“I do not. I do wish you had given him some sound advice,” she muttered.
“Oh, I did, actually. I told him there were a million more deserving girls in England than that thin, wild-looking child he had chosen,” he said drily.
“Thank you,” Rosa replied.
“Well, I did my best as you see to discourage him,” he said. “But not from any thought of charity towards you. I simply did not see you as a fit companion for him, lady Rosa.”
Lady Rosa.
Suddenly their light-hearted banter was at an end. Rosa knew what was coming next. He would bind her, or not. He would knock her unconscious, or maybe he would feel sorry for her and treat her with some respect, although she doubted it. But whatever happened, she was sure he would lead her to her father. And he to the dungeons. And there, she could not bear to go again.
She got up from her chair with deceptive calm.
Her eye had caught something on the wall. A long, decorative sword was hanging by two leather hinges. With a swift move, and before Sir Gavin had had any time to react, she was standing next to the sword and getting it out of its leather straps.
She swung it out at him.
Immediately when he saw what she was doing, he was running to her. But now, the sword stood between them and he stopped short at the other end of its lethal tip.
He looked at her and for the first time she saw some emotion in his cold eyes. Fear. Not fear for himself, but fear for her. Fear that she had gone out of her mind, and that he would have no idea how to handle her.
“I have not gone mad yet,” she said. “But I will if you send me to him. So take it.”
She turned the sword towards him, handle first, and her arm was trembling from its great weight.
“Take it,” she repeated. “And use it on me now, if there is any mercy in your heart. Kill me and send me to him dead.”
He took it abruptly and flung it from him towards the other side of the room, where it landed gracelessly on the marble floor with a loud clang. Then he saw she had spent herself with the effort, and took hold of her arm to support her.
She collapsed against him and he knelt with her, holding her, he himself trembling harder than she, shaken from a sudden emotion.
“I won't go back to the dungeon,” she whispered, all pretence of strength leaving her abruptly. “I won't go back there, you can't make me.” She lifted her eyes to his, and he feared that his heart would stop at the look of pleading he saw in them. “Please,” she added and then her head drooped against his shoulder, lifeless.
When she woke, deep into the night, there was girl, not older than twelve years old, on a pallet next to her bed, who informed her with a wide smile that she would be her own personal maid, if you please my lady, the lord sir said if you will have me, I am to be in your service.
