The Sheriff of Nottingham - A Medieval Myth?

 

Image from "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves."

The Sheriff of Nottingham – A Medieval Myth?

We remember the Sheriff of Nottingham, the ultimate medieval ‘baddie’, enemy of Robin Hood, played with vigorous style by Alan Rickman in “Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.”

 

No records give this man’s name, only his title, yet there never was a sheriff of Nottingham. So did this un-named villain exist?

 

One clue is in the title “Sheriff”, meaning shire-reeve, the reeve (royal officer) of the shire.

 

A further clue to the genesis of this myth is the fact that there was a High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the Royal Forests, appointed by the Crown by the Normans soon after the Norman Conquest of 1066.

 

The Forest Laws were a Norman import, imposed upon Anglo-Saxon Laws and customs, and very much despised by the conquered population. The Forest Laws were a means by which the King could extend his rule, eagerly used by monarchs to do just that. They could be imposed on more than woodland or forest, and the High Sheriff, the creature of the King, was hated as an enforcer of arbitrary, sometimes brutal laws. Forest Laws were intended to reserve the red and fallow deer  and the boar for the King and the aristocracy – and no one else. Dogs, apart from guard dogs, were forbidden in forest areas, and people were forbidden to carry hunting weapons. William Rufus, the son of William the Conqueror, increased the severity of the laws in the royal forests to include death and mutilation. Such sentences seem to have rarely imposed, but such laws caused resentment.  

 

King William II Rufus died in the royal New Forest, struck by an arrow. Political assassination or an angry local, furious at the laws?

 

Another reason why the foil of Robin Hood was a sheriff was because, in history, so many sheriffs or high sheriffs were bad lots. Philip Mark, sheriff from 1209 to 1224, Henry de Faucemberg (!318 to 1319) and John de Oxenford (1334 to 1339) were all corrupt, robbing and extorting with a will. ‘Gentlemen’ gangs of younger sons of the landed gentry, trained for battle and with no lands to inherit, took readily to robbery and more. Men such as the Folvilles and the Coterels actively recruited royal and other officials to help them murder and steal. In 1335 Nicholas Coterel was even made bailiff for the High Peak District of Derbyshire, the ultimate huntsman-turned-gamekeeper!

 

Given the danger for breakers of the king’s laws, poachers in the royal forest areas were often celebrated and praised. Few who benefited protested, especially if they might receive a share of fresh, tasty meat.

 

 

Woodland, forests and hunting feature in many of my medieval stories. I have Magnus, the hero in “The Snow Bride” involved in an assassination attempt in northern woodland during a hunt, and Conrad, the hero of “Sir Conrad and the Christmas Treasure” is a steward of the forest high lands. I speak of poaching, hunting and magic done to aid both in my novel, “The Master Cook and the Maiden”. All three of these novels are available on Amazon and free to read through Kindle Unlimited. Why not give them a try?

 

"The Snow Bride"

"Sir Conrad and the Christmas Treasure." 

"The Master Cook and the Maiden." 

Lindsay  

 

 

 

 

Pace in my Romantic Fiction.

 

Pace in my romantic fiction 

 

Pace in my fiction depends on what genre I'm writing in. This determines what I focus on. When I write romance, I like to be tactile, highlighting the positive aspects of any setting. I focus on appearance, the sensual aspects, the thoughts and feelings of my characters. If there is violence in my romances, it is not dwelt on.

 

In my novels, I find that pace can be increased by showing and involving the reader in the characters's dilemmas. Each time a viewpoint is changed or a new setting is used it can 'refresh' the reader and so add to pace.

 

Pace does not need to be unrelenting, I find, or stories can seem rushed. There can be times for moments of reflection, particularly when a character learns or chooses something. I always feel that a crucial scene deserves a full showing.

 

As a reader myself, I know that romance readers are curious and love to learn. If I can make the research interesting by putting it in a character's mouth and also imperative - the character really needs to know it, the stakes are important - then so much the better. 

 

I also find that anticipation can be an important device in pacing - readers love to anticipate. You can make readers 'wait' in writing. For me, anticipation is one of the ultimate appeals of romance - I know the hero and heroine are going to have their happy ever after ending, but how?

 

I finish with an excerpt from my Christmas Sweet Romance, "Sir Conrad and the Christmas Treasure." In it I switch points of view between hero and heroine, something I love to do so the reader sees the characters through the eyes of my romantic leads, drawing my reader in and so hopefully adding to romantic pacing.

Excerpt

Sir Conrad, steward of the forest high lands, glowered at the latest miscreant to be dragged before him in the great hall of the northern sheriff’s castle. A castle that has never felt like my own, for all I am reluctant steward here.  

Despite his instructions, Sir David, his under-reeve, would bring the wretches up in fetters, even the women. Conrad tightened his already crushing grip of  his sword hilt to stop himself from punching David and rose from his chair to approach the small, slight figure before him.

“What, where and who?” he snapped at his shorter, stockier, second-in-command. The woman—girl, really—did not flinch, which surprised him.

Conrad knew he was harsh, unsmiling in his manner. Since Joan had died three winters ago, leaving him a widower, feeling angry, cheated and bereft at the age of twenty-four, he had been unable to be anything but cold to anyone. He had no interest in brief affairs. I witnessed too much tumult and heartbreak from my father and brother and their parade of mistresses to do the same. Although this girl—

          Studying her, he recognized two things at once. The first was that he truly desired her. To his own shock, Conrad wanted her badly, with a potent drive he had not felt since he was a youth. Is it the picture she makes in her chains? I would chain her to my bed, if I could. She was delicate, with a fragile profile, sweetly upcurving lips, masses of glossy blonde hair and eyes as blue and big as a summer sky. She seemed both graceful and slender and at the same time determined, standing straight, poised as a dancer, facing life head on.

That was the second thing he realized. The girl was brave. Dressed in her dirt-coloured gown, her mud-spattered, heavily-stained tunic and shedding cloak, in old leather boots that were splitting at the seams and looked too small for her, she watched him with the poise of a cat, all barely-hidden fire.

If she smiles at me I may even kiss her, and yes, I would love to keep her by my bed. But why did she seem familiar?

“David?” he asked.

His under-reeve blushed. “We found her in the lower castle.”

Sir Conrad felt himself become dangerously quiet, the background chatter of the great hall burning away in a blaze of righteous anger as memory spurred him to move. In a dazzling flash, as if he had been struck by lightning, he remembered earlier that morning.

He had been striding to the stables when yelling and the thud of  punches had erupted from a mob of youths, kicking about a clattering wooden ball. As the lads’ shoving and shouting quickened and Conrad spotted fisted hands groping for knives, a small hooded and cloaked figure skirting the edge of the group suddenly tottered. Pushed savagely from behind, the tiny, limping rag of a creature threatened to tumble headlong into the boiling mess of arms and legs.

“Hold off!” Conrad had bellowed, sprinting as he warned. In a few long steps he rammed past the fools, seized the falling figure and had carried it to safety, setting his light burden down on the top of the outer keep staircase.

The work of moments was forgotten in the fierce tongue lashing he flung at the lads. But he recognised her now.

No wonder she seemed familiar. “I rescued you,” he said aloud.

The girl pierced him with a glare, clearly disputing his version of events. Do not expect me to be grateful, her eyes said.

“….She was swept up with that group of ‘prentices…” David was explaining, oblivious to the currents between them. Exasperated at the girl, Conrad was still glad to break their battle of stares and looked back over his shoulder at his second.

“The ruffians rioting in the bailey this morning over a foolish game?”

His stocky second shuffled his booted feet and muttered something about kicking a ball about being harmless entertainment.

“That is as maybe,” Conrad growled, his quicksilver temper flaring afresh as he stalked closer to the one he had saved, his cloak snapping round his heels. “The girl could have been crushed in that mêlée, you idiot! Why is she in chains?” The iron shackles were a bitter grey against her pale, delicate wrists.

David hunched a little, clearly uncertain how to answer, and the girl spoke for the first time. “I confessed, sir.”

“To what, girl?”

She studied him with narrowed eyes, a shuttered expression falling across her pale face, then she straightened afresh, with a faint rattle of her fetters. “To whatever would bring me before you so I could ask for your help, sir. And to propose a bargain.”

Sir Conrad stared anew.

****

The steward glowered and Maggie held his darkly brilliant gaze, seeing herself reflected in his deep grey eyes. Towering above her, he looked like a scowling saint. Somewhere between her dread for her brother and her surprise that she had truly startled him, Maggie admitted that he was handsome.

Handsome and bereft. Strange words for a hardened warrior and knight but true for him. “Handsome but keeps to himself, not like his brother, more's the pity.” “It’s said he loved his wife, didn’t he, and she’s dead.” “Will his children be as striking, I wonder?” The muttered comments about the steward were all true, except for that one thing. Sir Conrad was not just handsome, but vulnerable.

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Lindsay Townsend 

Medieval Crowns and More

 Today I’m talking a bit about some lost medieval treasures that I would love to find.

Every girl and boy in England knows that King John was forced by his barons to sign the Magna Carta, limiting his powers, and that he lost the crown jewels in the Wash, the wide inlet of the North sea to the north of East Anglia, while travelling from Norfolk into Lincolnshire. Apparently John was ill and took a long route north, while sending the baggage on a short cut across the estuary of one of the rivers emptying into the Wash. The baggage train, slow and lumbering, was overwhelmed by the tide, and the jewels were lost. This seems like poor planning on the king's part, although in 2008 two geologists suggested that there might have been a local tsunami, possibly caused in turn by an underwater landslide, that made the incoming seas higher than normal.

With such a spectacular loss, conspiracies have added to the story. There is a legend that a monk called Brother Simon made off with the jewels, selling them round Europe to add riches to the Templar order. There is also a claim that the wily King John arranged for the jewels to 'disappear'. If he did, he didn't live to benefit from it - a few nights after that unfortunate crossing, he died of his illness. He was buried at Worcester, without any crowns.

What would these missing jewels have looked like? Were they even crowns? We know that King John loved collecting jewels and that he owned silver and gold plate. He also had the regalia he'd inherited from the Empress Maud. This regalia is missing from an inventory used by John's son Henry at his coronation as Henry III in 1220, so it would seem they were lost. However Roger de Wendover’s Flores Historiarum (Flowers of History), written around 1230, says that the lost treasure was ‘precious vessels, and all the other things which he cherished with special care’. Ralph of Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum says it was ‘his chapel with its relics … and diverse household effects’. None of these items sound like crowns or regalia.

There are surviving crowns from later periods, especially from the time of King Richard II. In his reign  he ordered that a treasure roll be drawn up, inventorying the crowns and jewels in his household. There are crowns (eleven of them), chaplets, brooches, circlets, small jewels, cups and ewers. The only surviving crown, sent to Bavaria for the marriage of Henry IV's daughter Blanche, is certainly very beautiful. Given the skill of goldsmiths throughout the ages, from Sutton Hoo, the Staffordshire Hoard and onwards, I imagine the jewels John lost were spectacular. If I could somehow dig down over twenty feet of silt (knowing first where to dig!), I would love to rediscover them.

People have always hidden and lost treasure, or used it in ways different to what the original owners or creators intended. In "Sir Conrad and the Christmas Treasure" - which takes place before the reign of the unfortunate King John - the heroConrad and heroine Maggie are taken to see a holy relic. It is a gold torc and quite spectacular. 

Excerpt.

Curious where he had not been greatly intrigued before, merely staying with Maggie to ensure she was safe, Conrad waited for the smoke of the priest’s spitting, damp torch to settle, and then looked for himself.

So much bright gold, was his first thought, while his brother Richard, naturally stretched out sticky fingers to paw at the pieces and Earl John intoned, “Roman, or earlier, and fit for a king.”

“This is the holy moon torc of Saint Oswald!” snapped the priest, keen to put the church’s ownership beyond doubt, “Discovered in a pond near here by my great-grandfather!”

“I have heard tell of such sacred wonders before,” said Conrad, hoping to prevent the priest and earl from saying more in anger or gold-greed that they could not take back.

Here is the torc I had in mind:

Lindsay Townsend 

Link to Sir Conrad and the Christmas Treasure here

Carols and Capering. Medieval Dance by Lindsay Townsend

Four husbands into her career, Chaucer's Wife of Bath was still young and a lively soul, 'yong and ful of ragerie,/Stibourn and strong, and joly as a pie [magpie]./How koulde I daunce to a harpe smale,/And singe, ywis, as any nightingale,/Whan I had dronke a draughte of sweete wyn!' So how would she have danced? 

 Dancing in circles has gone on for who knows how long, and the medieval carol - a circular dance and the songs that went with it - was popular with everybody but the church. The songs, involving a leader who sang the verse, music from harp, pipe and tabor or the vielle (a predecessor to the violin) and the dancers providing the chorus, could get distinctly rowdy, and clerics could impose sanctions against those who moved in an unseemly fashion or sang colourful lyrics in churchyards. The lyrics from early carols are hard to come by, but one popular carol from the thirteenth century, Angelus ad virginem, whose English version begins 'Gabriel fram Heven-king/Sent to the maide swete', has a bouncy tune ideal both for accompaniment with pipe and tabor and for the circular carol-dance. The music can be heard here, and possible steps have been suggested here. 

Many dances thought of as medieval - such as the basse danse, branle and pavane - really belong to the Renaissance, when the first collections of dance music were made, but we can trace some formal dances like the saltarello, with its triple time and extravagant hop, back to the thirteenth-century. 

If a solo dancer or tumbler took part in social dancing, there could be some seriously gymnastic capering. The sight of women dancing on their hands may have led to an emphasis on modesty in later instruction books such as Guglielmo Ebreo's fifteenth century Art of Dance, but in earlier times things were more freewheeling, as can be seen by this image. of a woman 'dancing' on knife points.

Early 14th-century picture of a jongleresse balancing on swords. British Library, MS Royal 10 E iv, f. 58. Sourced online, copyright unidentified.

 A poem from the Benediktbeuren Manuscript of c.1230 ('Obmittamus studia') has a young student longing to abandon his lessons and go down into the street to watch the maidens dancing, 'white limbs moving/Light in wantonness,' as Helen Waddell translated it. Now that would have appealed to Chaucer.

I touch on medieval carol dancing in my novel, "Sir Conrad and the Christmas Treasure," as can be read from this excerpt:

Conrad stamped his boots again, for good measure, and looked about for a mulled wine seller in the bustling press of traders gathered by the church. A cup for him and Maggie would do nicely, and he would tempt his wife to dance a carol with one of the great circling groups capering slowly

over the green. 

It had snowed again, never truly stopped, and the mud tracks and cart skids on the common were

blanketed in fresh white, sparkling in the torches that people were beginning to light. It was not yet dark, but traders had set them and small fires near to their stalls, to draw folk. A scent of roasting chestnuts and pork made his stomach growl and he bought a fistful of peeled chestnuts for Maggie, with

a tiny twist of salt.

There! He spotted her white furry mittens first, darting like geese as she expressed a point to David. Next, he saw the bundles of parchment rolled up in a battered quiver tied about her narrow waist, a different way of carrying her drawings, for sure, but one that kept her hands free. He

smiled at her and she sped forward, her hood down to show her pretty face, one mitten already off and her bare fingers reaching out to him.

Happy capering!

Lindsay 

Rites of Winter - a Medieval Christmas

Make we mery, both more and lasse,
For now ys the tyme of Chrystymas
(From a 15th century carol)

When Christianity developed in the ancient Roman world, the winter solstice was already marked at 25th December. Followers of Mithras believed in the ‘unconquered sun’ and also held a feast-day for the sun on December 25th.

The gospels did not give a date for the birth of Jesus, but ancient beliefs in the Roman Saturnalia, the solstice and sun-worship led to the church choosing December 25th as the time of his nativity.

‘Christmas’ means ‘Christ’s Mass.’ In England in the Middle Ages three masses were celebrated on December 25th - the Angel’s Mass at Midnight, the Shepherds’ Mass at dawn and the Mass of the Divine Word during the day.

Before the three masses of Christmas there was the forty days of Advent. Advent was similar to Lent, a time of spiritual reflection and preparation for the coming of Christ. Feasting and certain foods such as meat and wine were meant for be abstained from during advent (something the evil Denzils ignore in my historical romance, The Snow Bride, set at this time).

The feasting and revelling time of medieval Christmas began on Christmas Eve and lasted 12 days, ending on Twelfth Night. There was no work done during this time and everyone celebrated. Holly, ivy, mistletoe and other midwinter greens were cut and brought into cottages and castles, to decorate and to add cheer.

The most important element of the revels was the feast. Christmas feasts could be massive – Edward IV hosted one at Christmas in 1482 when he fed and entertained over two thousand people. For rich medieval people there was venison or the Yule boar, a real one, and for poorer folk a pie shaped like a boar, or a pie made from the kidney, liver, and other portions of the deer (the umbles) that the nobles did not want – to make a portion of ‘umble pie'. Carefully hoarded items were also brought out and eaten and other special Christmas foods made and devoured. Mince pies were made with shredded meat and many spices. ‘Frumenty,’ a kind of porridge with added eggs, spices and dried fruit, was served. A special strong Christmas beer was usually brewed to wash all this down, traditionally accompanied with a greeting of 'wes heil' ('be healthy'), to which the proper reply was 'drinc heil'.

There were also other entertainments apart from eating and drinking – singing, playing the lute or harp, playing chess, cards or backgammon and carol dancing. (I show carol dancing in my novel, Sir Conrad and the Christmas Treasure)

Presents and gift giving was originally not part of Christmas but of New Year. Romans gave gifts to each other at Kalends (New Year) as well as a week earlier at Saturnalia, and by the twelfth century it seems that children were already receiving gifts to celebrate the day of their protecting saint, St. Nicholas, and the practice soon began to extend to adults as well, initially as charity for the poor. As the Middle Ages wore on, the custom grew of workers on medieval estates giving gifts of produce to the estate owner during the twelve days of Christmas - and in return their lord would put on all those festivities.

Wes heil!
Lindsay Townsend

The Romance of Snow

The romance of snow is a relatively recent idea. When the river Thames froze in the 'little ice age,' between the 15th and 19th centuries, people enjoyed great frost fairs on the river. Christmas was celebrated as the birth of Christ. Winter however was largely dreaded and endured, a time of little light, dwindling food, bad roads.

Nursery rhymes show us winter before the modern age:

Little Polly Flinders
Sat among the cinders,
Warming her pretty little toes.
Her mother came and caught her,
And whipped her little daughter
For spoiling her nice new clothes.

(Little Polly might also have suffered from chilblains by sitting with her feet so close to the fire.)

Doctor Foster went to Gloucester
In a shower of rain,
He stepped in a puddle,
Right up to his middle,
And never went there again.

Roads could be very dangerous, especially in winter.

The north wind doth blow and we shall have snow,
And what will poor robin do then, poor thing?
He'll sit in a barn and keep himself warm
and hide his head under his wing, poor thing.

Before central heating, keeping warm was difficult for everyone in winter. Following on from a custom begun in Victorian times, I always feed the birds in winter.


Pease porridge hot!
Pease porridge cold!
Pease porridge in the pot
Nine days old.

Food in winter could be sparse, less than fresh and dull.

As living conditions improved, people began to enjoy winter. There is a pleasure in watching snow fall and in making snowmen, having snowball fights, going for snowy walks. I love the trees in winter, so sculptured and stark.

I also enjoy setting romance stories in winter. The dark and cold of the season can give my hero and heroine something elemental to strive against. Their warning feelings for each other contrast with the bitter weather. And perhaps they can have a snowball fight...

Please see my medieval historical romances, "The Snow Bride", "Sir Conrad and the Christmas Treasure" and "Sir Baldwin and the Christmas Ghosts"for more. All these romance novels and novellas are published by Prairire Rose Publications and available via Amazon or the PRP website.

Lindsay Townsend

Gold, Gold, Gold - plus excerpts from "Sir Conrad and the Christmas Treasure" by Lindsay Townsend

I am fascinated by gold. People in the past were also inspired by it and made many beautiful objects with the metal. One of these ancient treasures is a torc and in my latest historical romance, "Sir Conrad and the Christmas Treasure" I have a torc as a precious relic at a northern church.

I had in mind the magnificent Snettisham gold torc as my relic. Here it is.

From the British Museum

Here's an excerpt from my sweet Christmas romance, "Sir Conrad and the Christmas Treasure" where we see Sir Conrad and Maggie together.

Chapter 2

                                             

A gathering of horses, war-chargers, palfreys and spare mounts, a hasty bringing together of men, weapons and supplies, and they were off. They pounded out of the bailey, through the village and onto the track to the old Roman road. Sunrise to sunset they rode and then on through the night, sunset to sunrise. Riding in front of Conrad, his thick arms braced on her either side, Maggie felt her world shrink down to her heartbeat, the scalding ache of her thighs, the glare of snow and the relentless drum of the galloping horses.

Had she ever imagined the recovery of Michael would be an adventure? Wishing she could clasp her aching head but not daring to relinquish her grip on the horse’s mane, Maggie longed to stop.

   “You awake there?” Conrad growled, his lips close to her ear. She shook her head as if he was a bothersome fly and forced her wind-chapped lips to reply.

  “Doing well,” she said, determined her teeth would not chatter. In truth she was not so frozen. Sir Conrad had supplied her with a thick cloak and a woollen cap, cloths to wrap round her boots and rags to bind her hair. If I could only have some eastern cushions for my hips, perched on this bony nag. Who knew horses had such a spine? Glancing sidelong she caught a knowing gleam in her companion’s deep eyes, as if he expected her to complain. But I shall not.

“Yourself?” She tried a smile, the cold light of the coming dawn piercing her cheeks.

 “We make camp soon, rest the horses.”

“Naturally. The horses. And the pack mules,” she added, wondering why she was teasing him as she might have done Michael. The truth was, she had ridden with this man for hours, her back snug against his chest, her legs pressed against his long shanks. It was hard not to feel a kind of closeness to him.

Now, she felt rather than heard Conrad’s rumble of a chuckle and knew a fleeting lightness in her soul as his arms tightened briefly about her.

“You will not be outdone, will you?” He guided their mount onto an unpaved section of road that did not jolt her bones, which was overall a blessed relief.         

“Is this a contest?” she replied, catching her wind-sore mouth in a yawn before she could stop it.

He smiled against her woollen cap and Maggie closed her eyes. The great horse moved beneath her, smooth now as a sailing ship on a calm river, the beat of its hooves strangely soothing, like a lullaby. I wonder how Michael is faring, she thought as she slid slowly, inexorably into sleep.

                                                                   ****                                        

Conrad gently lowered the sleeping girl onto the rough pallet of bracken and hay that he had set before the new fire. She had done well, he decided, nodding to Davie, a silent reminder that the man guard her, before he checked on the horses and men. A palfrey had picked up a gorse or bramble tear on her flank. Conrad was conferring with a groomsman how to treat the wound when the weary peace of the camp shattered.

Lurching out of the darkness, Maggie staggered back to the fire, plucked out a burning branch and brandished it at the figure coming after her.

“Back!” she cried, stabbing the flaming brand at her would-be attacker, “You will get none of what you want from me!”

Conrad thrust the salve at the nearest groom and began striding back, to hear the farrier, Brian, say, without shame or apology,

“Come on, goldie, I can give you a sweet time—”

“What is happening here?” Conrad pushed between the pair, scenting the mead on the farrier’s breath.

“A bit of sport.” Brian swayed on his feet, squinting past the taller man as he gave the girl a wave.  Has this fool been drinking all night? Supping while on horseback?

“I do not expect to be set upon when I slip into the hazels to pass water!”

“You take on so, goldie, not fair—”

She took a deep breath that would have fit a dragon, clearly ready to light into the fellow afresh, when Sir David with his uncanny ill-luck, stepped out of the trees where he had been setting guards and said drily, “Women following soldiers are usually bed-mates.”

“I am not following anyone!” snapped Maggie, as red-faced as a dragon’s fiery breath, “I am seeking my brother and your lord is meant to be aiding me! Or do such courtesies only count for knights and ladies?”

Conrad sensed the camp about them stiffen and knew his men were leaning in to listen.

“Ladies do not bawl like market criers,” he drawled.

The bright stare cut towards him. “How else am I supposed to be heard?”

“Enough!” He made a cutting motion with his arm, tired of the whole squabble, and addressed his men. “The girl is with me, mine, and you all know it. Brian, get yourself a pail of water and dunk your head. We move on in two hours, when the sun tops that pine tree. Get on!”

He caught the girl’s arm and led her, none too gently, back to the pallet by the fire. “You stay,” he ordered, ignoring her look of utter betrayal.

He turned to leave, go back to the horses, when a narrow wiry hand grabbed his cloak. Looking back, he almost flinched at the flinty glare which stabbed him.

“You need the farrier, yes? But mark this, my lord, you also need me.”

His temper bridled at her insolence. He leaned down into her face, part of him amazed at how very blue her eyes were, in her anger. “I just saved you from a mauling or worse. Why did you not wait for me to escort you? Are you so naive?”

If she could, she would have shot poison like a snake, he guessed, though her words were pin sharp. “I did not know such courtesy was required in your own camp.”

Not even a gesture of thanks, the ungrateful little wench. Did she think they were equals? “You do not tell me how to govern,” he began afresh, but she interrupted,

“Then rule yourself first. I thought you, sir, were different.”

With the I was wrong hanging between them, she stepped aside and flounced down on the pallet with such force that a puff of hay-dust rose in the air between them. Sensing he had made a mistake, loathing that feeling, Conrad stamped back to the horse lines.

Later, too brief a time to be truly rested, they rode on, into the forest of Galtres. The girl sat before him, silent as a stone. I thought you were different. “What happened to you?” he growled, too low for her to hear. He disliked her being so stiff, that was all.

I do need my farrier. She had no right to complain. As for Brian approaching her, it is the way of the world. In a war-band, everyone expects it.

So why did these reasonable justifications seem hollow?

Here's another excerpt, where we see the golden treasure of Ormingham church.

Inside the church Conrad noted that his brother and the earl were most keen to see the treasures within its crypt. In contrast, Maggie—or Margaret—was intent on the stout door of the underground chamber, the narrow stone steps leading down to it and the huge key the priest produced from his surplice to unlock the sanctuary.

“No one has ventured here for a while, thank our holy mother,” she observed, as the priest shouldered open the thick door and Richard and Earl John jammed together in the small opening in their haste to be first into the crypt.

Would be funny, I vow, were my girl’s plight not so serious.              

“Why do you say that?” Conrad asked aloud, interested in her and her reasons rather than the costly trinkets stashed within.

Maggie smiled, her eyes less strained than he had seen them for two days, and pointed down. “Dust and cobwebs on the steps, before the holy father walked down,” she answered, “which means no thieves, either, so we can set a trap for them here.”

“Snares have no places in the house of God!” protested the priest, while Conrad could only think she said we. She is glad we work together. In that instant his joy burned as fierce as the newly-lit torches.

“By all the saints, look at this!” Richard’s loud excitement over-rode the cleric’s disgust and the earl rocked back and forth on the heels of his two-tone coloured shoes, murmuring, “My, my, such handsome works.”

Curious where he had not been greatly intrigued before, merely staying with Maggie to ensure she was safe, Conrad waited for the smoke of the priest’s spitting, damp torch to settle, and then looked for himself.

So much bright gold, was his first thought, while Richard, naturally stretched out sticky fingers to paw at the pieces and Earl John intoned, “Roman, or earlier, and fit for a king.”

“This is the holy moon torc of Saint Oswald!” snapped the priest, keen to put the church’s ownership beyond doubt, “Discovered in a pond near here by my great-grandfather!”

“I have heard tell of such sacred wonders before,” said Conrad, hoping to prevent the priest and earl from saying more in anger or gold-greed that they could not take back.

“It was a woman’s,” said Maggie softly beside him, glancing once at him to share her thought.

“Why do you say that?” asked Conrad.

She pointed. “Because of the safety chain.”

Here's a picture of the gold torc with safety chain that inspired me.

From YouTube

My sweet medieval historical romance, SIR CONRAD AND THE CHRISTMAS TREASURE, is now out. You can read it for free with Kindle Unlimited.

On Amazon. Com here
And Amazon UK here