Lady Lily

“You might as well staple a bouquet to my shield, I might get less jokes about out coat of arms then,” Richard told his father. It was an old complaint of his and his father responded with an old lecture.

“That wreath of flowers pattern on your shield should be worn with pride. It is on that wreath that this family’s fortunes were reestablished and you are able to enjoy the privileges that you do. If it weren’t for that bouquet, as you call it, you and I would both be peasants.”

Richard had just returned from a tournament, a joust in other words. As an old and well established family they were expected to participate. For family honor he was expected to do well. He didn’t do badly, but that hadn’t stopped him from being tormented horribly by his peers for his girly shield. It was just as well that there hadn’t been a war in years. He could only imagine boldly riding into war only to have the enemy laughing its self to death because of his coat of arms.

It was all because of his ancestress, way back during the plague, an Isabelle Lily by name. She had been the only one to survive to carry on the family name after the plague had struck. There had been riots in the streets, the sort that happen when people are worried and unhappy. For a very long time it had been thought by Isabelle’s descendants that everything had been lost in those riots. There was evidence that the estate they had lived in had been burned down. It had taken many years for the truth to emerge. Even then it had only come out when Richard’s grandfather had found the journal with the rose on its cover.

Isabelle walked away from the burning ruins of what had been her home. She had gathered everything of value, and the remaining loyal servants, and they traveled with her. They had had plenty of warning that the mob was coming, enough time to get everything into carts and sneak out through the side gate. Several months ago Isabelle would have cried at the loss of her home but the time for crying was over. Several months ago Isabelle had been the pampered and spoiled middle daughter of a nobleman, and then she might have cried a great deal. The rest of the family was dead now though, taken down by the sickness that swept the land and decimated all households. Isabelle had been spared though she had no idea why.

The servants would follow her and do as she said through loyalty to her family. Many of them hardly knew their new mistress but they had served the Lily family for generations and would therefore continue to serve it. They had all been given the opportunity to leave her and go find somewhere else to live on their own. The ones who traveled with her now were the ones who had no wish to be independent.

The carts of goods she had saved from her estate were separated into different carts according to what they were. The family armor, arms and crest was all in one cart. Another cart had all of the jewels and gold, though they were disguised as wine casks just in case someone might feel the need to rob them. The cart behind that one held the house hold goods such as the furniture and the deed to the land the estate had been built on, including the acreage around it. The final cart held the family records, the diaries of those who had come before her, and the books that had been purchased for the family library. She hadn’t been able to grab all of the books but she had grabbed the most important looking ones as well as her favorites.

The youngest member of the party, a girl of about Isabelle’s age put a comforting arm around her mistress, something that she would never have dared do in the past. Isabelle found comfort in it. The girl was the daughter of Isabelle’s nursemaid, and the closest that Isabelle had to family now.

“Where are we going to go now?” the girl whispered. Isabelle could tell that she was scared but trying to hide it.

“I hear that a lot of merchants are looking for orphaned nobility to marry into their families to give them noble titles, surely you’ve heard the rumors Mary. I suppose that I could find one of them to take us in.”

“Would you really marry so far under yourself?” asked Mary. She was clearly shocked; everyone had expected Isabelle to marry one of the younger princes before the death of her parents. There had been no arrangements made to that end however and now that the country had descended into chaos it seemed very doubtful that the arrangements would ever happen.

“We need a home and I don’t know anything about how to rebuild our ravaged and depopulated lands. I don’t believe I have a choice. I dislike the thought of giving a noble name to some wine seller’s son though.”

Everyone fell into a gloomy silence with that. The few guards that had remained with her, and had survived the sickness, were the only ones who seemed unaffected. Isabelle was unsure if they had even heard the discussion. The guards had always seemed in a separate world from her while at home. They protected and didn’t speak, in particular not to the young ladies of the household. Isabelle’s father had always been very strict about young men speaking to her and her sisters while he had been alive; he had intended them for good marriages.

It was hammered home the first night how young and unready Isabelle was. She was really too inexperienced to face the world that she had suddenly been thrown into. It all started when they stopped at an inn for the night. It wasn’t the sort of accommodations Isabelle was used to but she knew better then to complain and the owner of the inn and his wife seemed kind enough.

Isabelle ordered that the luggage should be brought into the inn for the night and stored in her room. It was a pain to unload it all but she didn’t trust it outside all night. She saw as the inn keeper’s eyes widen at the obvious show of nobility and he became much more respectful. She was amused by his manner and both she and Mary laughed about it.

The guards were posted to a room next to hers and the servants to a room on the other side of the building. Mary was sharing Isabelle’s room since her maid servant was no longer with them. They had both been asleep for a long time when they were awakened by the door opening. There was no light in the room to see by but Isabelle could hear the innkeeper’s voice. She thought for an instant about getting up and screeching at him for to leave her room immediately, but she stopped herself. Who knew what he would do to her if she raised the alarm. Her guards were surely asleep and would take some time to make it to the room, during that time all sorts of things might happen.

Mary didn’t come to such a logical decision and when she woke up with a strange man prowling around the room, she instantly shouted the alarm. It was just as well that Isabelle’s fears had been unfounded. Rather then attack the man froze in fear and then stood, unsure of what to do. It allowed plenty of time for the guards to come from the other room and grab hold of him. Of course that left the question of what to do with him and his wife. His wife had been standing watch outside of the door when the guards had come to investigate Mary’s scream.

The captain of her guard had suggested killing the both of them and simply forgetting they ever existed. They had tried to rob a noble woman which was enough reason to execute them both. Isabelle considered it, it would give her a feeling of security, however she had a kinder disposition and the idea was unpleasant for her. In the end it was dismissed but that didn’t solve their problem about what to do with their prisoners.

“We’ll take them with us, under guard of course, until we can think of something better to do with them. The sickness has killed enough workers without us killing off more of them. I would say to just leave at let them alone but I think I have use for this inn so they can’t have it any longer,” Isabelle announced. She could tell by the look on the guard captain’s face that he didn’t approve of her softness but there was nothing she could do about what he thought of her. She could only hope that his lifetime experience working for her family would make him listen to her orders.

She took out a rose printed journal, one that had never been used for anything before, and wrote the days events down. Then she wrote some very careful directions to the inn and a description of what it looked like and the surrounding area.

Richard’s grandfather had been very proud of the stories of the family’s noble heritage. At the time there had been no proof of it however, it was all legends and hearsay. That was true until that lucky day that he had been going through the family genealogy books and had found that one of the very old ones had another, thin book, hidden in its cover. It looked like a journal of some sort, older then the book it had been hidden in. He had opened it carefully and it had started an elaborate treasure hunt.

Richard’s grandfather had first found the families gold, back when he was a young man. Richard suspected it was because that was what his grandfather had been interested in. The money had been buried in the cellar of an old inn. From the stories it was taken care of two young people who said that running the inn there was an old family tradition. They knew they were guarding something but they had no idea what it was. The youths had money, and the story they had been told as children was that the money was to support them and keep the inn unchanged until what they were hiding was found. They had always been told that the same woman who had given them the item to be hidden had changed the inn’s sign. It was an unusual one, a white carnation, carefully painted and retouched over the years.

To be continued...