> [ORP] What's in it for Aggnes?

Open to anyone in Carlisle, that being where the action now is

It was a very Official letter, sealed with official red tape. She wasn’t used to getting letters addressed to her, though naturally she read those addressed to the Prioress every day, and no longer even bothered to hide the fact. Like all the others in the last few years, the wax bore the imprint of a red rose. Lancashire. Probably another invitation to some meaningless ceremony her daughter had got involved in. She never bothered to attend – never put yourself in the limelight, it made people look at you, and notice what you were doing.

She broke the seal, started skimming, then returned to the start, reading carefully for once. “We regret to inform you.....” She would have dismissed the story it told as nonsense, were it not for that official seal.

The young messenger coughed nervously. “My sympathies, madam, and my apologies for bringing this terrible news to you. I am instructed that I should do anything in my power to assist you. If there is anything I can do to lessen your grief..?” He jumped back as she looked up at him, hard green eyes pinning him to the wall for inspection, or so it felt.

“You can tell me who was stupid enough to let my idiot daughter into an army, much less put her in charge of it.”

“Madam!” He was shocked, clearly. “Lady Marya was deeply respected and greatly loved.”

“A deeply respected and greatly loved idiot. I should know, I’m her mother. Too soft to hurt a fly, much less kill an enemy. She had no business being in that army, and you know it as well as I do.”

“I, I....” He had been expecting a grieving widow and mother, obviously, a gentle, sheltered soul, not this hard-faced harridan with greying red hair. Good – keep him off-balance.

“So who did it, and what did they stand to get out of it?” And why did I miss it? Not that she could ask that. She’d assumed her daughter would be as useless as a source of income as she had been at everything else, but maybe she had been wrong. Why was it, she wondered wearily, that she could see the future, but not those parts of it that might do her some good?

“Get out....? Madam, Lady Marya was trusted, trusted with the safety of the county, trusted with the county treasury, trusted not to “get anything out of it”.” He used the phrase with distaste, she noticed.

“Doesn’t surprise me, she always was a sucker. So who was making something out of her?”

“No-one! No-one would do such a thing! Who would want to hurt...?”

“Someone killed her, remember? Don’t give me that nonsense. I take it she died penniless?”

“Well....” He seemed to be trying not to admit unpleasant truths. “There’s a small house... a bakery... the title deeds to various empty properties....”

“Useless. I suppose I’d better come and tidy up her affairs, she’s sure to have left them in a mess, but from the sound of that I’ll need money to cover my expenses.”

“Why, yes, madam, of course, the State provides for all its dependents...” He was back on more certain ground now: for a moment.

“Glad to hear it. I’ll take that.” He wasn’t quite sure how come he was no longer holding the purse that was supposed to cover meals for two and the hire of a litter for a week, but he wasn’t given time to work it out. “That’s your horse outside? I’ll be needing that.”

“But..... but....”

She was no longer listening. His earlier words replayed in her head, driving out everything else. “....trusted with the county treasury...”. Maybe it was time to come out from the shadows, with that to win.

A scant hour later, she was at the gates, mounted, with a chorus of the priory nuns gathered to sing the traditional farewell. The Prioress, at least, was displaying genuine grief: but then she was a weak, whimpering woman, easily manipulated, a useful puppet and a shield for the last few years, but of no further use to her now. Aggnes had even seen her weeping over a dead mouse, once. Almost as bad as her daughter, with her poetry, lambs, and puppies. The grief, though, wasn’t quite what convention might have expected.

“But what shall I do? How shall I manage without you? The accounts! The trade! All those horrible numbers!”

In fact, Aggnes suspected the Priory would do just as well without her as it had with her: the Prioress’ incompetence would balance out the fact that its profits were no longer being drained into her own funds.

“Jah will provide, or so you always tell me. And if not...” she shrugged. “I should care?”

She put spurs to the horse. Carlisle was a long way, and there was no time to lose.
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Vice Chancellor of Foreign Affairs, Royal Embassy, Keeper of the Privy Seal. Wiki entry

She stopped for the night on a node, where there had once been a mine. The remains of a small village, too, abandoned for several years now, but the houses were still capable of giving shelter. And it wasn't as if she was trespassing: she still owned this one.

It had been a terrible day, when the mine collapsed. The cheap wood substituted for that intended for pit props had proved to be one economy too many. Effective maintenance, sadly, had to be paid for. Half the village had been down there when the tunnels fell in, including her husband and their three sons. Four adult men, all capable of earning a good day's wage, gone, wasted. Still, at least there'd been no need to pay out for a burial.

Most of the surviving villagers had left, or sunk into despair. Some, like her, had turned to the Church, though most had stayed local. A few - only a few, but still too many - had started enquiring into exactly who had supplied that poor-quality wood and charged full rate for it, and she'd felt it best not to stay around, just in case they found out.

The priory had taken in a grieving widow and her daughter - they'd probably hoped to get some useful work out of the girl, at least. But Marya, innocent, honest, and stupid, had kept answering their questions, and she couldn't have that. It would have been hard to hide another terminal case of silence, but she'd managed to solve the problem of Marya without upsetting the nuns - send her away. A very long way away, where no-one had to listen to her obscenely cheerful off-tune singing.

Before she slept for the nigt, she pulled out one of the stones in the wall, and put a few extra items behind it. No point in taking all her valuables into a war zone, after all, she didn't want them getting stolen. Also, if they were seen too soon, someone might wonder where she'd got cups and plates identical to those used by the priory at Mass. Identical, that is, except for being made of rather better-quality gold...

Tomorrow, Carlisle. She wasn't sure if she was looking forward to it or not.
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Vice Chancellor of Foreign Affairs, Royal Embassy, Keeper of the Privy Seal. Wiki entry

She awoke from uneasy dreams of horns blowing while oddly-dressed men in red and white liveries carried out a ritual that looked like a formalised kick-the-bladder game. Another prophecy, she expected, and probably as accurate as it was useless. It would be symbolic of something, not literal, and the symbolism would only make sense after the event.

Another hard day’s riding, and a long one. She was making the most of the daylight, this close to solstice. The horse would need a few days to recover, once she got there, but that wasn’t a problem. So, she suspected, would she – she wasn’t as young as she was, and it had been a long time since she’d ridden this sort of distance. Still, the roads were empty, or near enough. Tracks where armies had passed, but no travellers now, and the few towns she passed through were deserted.

There it was, in the distance: the great walls of Carlisle, with those huge hinged iron gates: "yetts", they called them: and the castle beyond. The armies camped outside made it clear that this was a city under siege. What she hadn’t expected was the guards on the road further out: in particular, the guards with black banners, not the gay blues and reds of England. They didn’t look as if they were there to ask for papers. Well, that was easy enough to handle. She turned the horse off the road, headed across the fields towards the army camps. After all, she didn’t even want to enter the city, and wasn’t hampered by a wagon, so there was no need to go anywhere near the gates and the road leading to them.

There was, however, one thing she’d overlooked about armies. Parades. In particular, parading around to the sound of excessively loud “musical” instruments. What sounded like a hundred of those horns, pipes, whatever they were she’d dreamt of, started blaring from behind a stand of trees, and her horse reared in shock. Her tired legs failed her, and she fell, hard. The horse bolted.

She sat under the trees, getting her breath back, and trying not to swear. Her ankle... no, not broken. She found a fallen branch that would do as a walking stick – surprising that there was anything left that the armies hadn’t used for firewood, but maybe in this summer heat, they weren’t using fires. At least her money and food had been on her, not on the now lost horse. She limped towards the camps – as she’d hoped, no-one took much notice of her. Banners flying... she didn’t recognise many, but one individual tent made her draw breath, and detour. The Witchfinder General! What was he doing here? Their last meeting had been... tactful was probably the best word for it. Tactful and inconclusive, and she’d prefer things to remain that way. Onward – that had to be the army banner she was after. Blue, with a flying pig. And there, underneath it, a wagon, painted with the roses of Lancashire, and yellow buttercups. Her goal was in sight!



OOC: OK, now you know what you're dealing with, this goes open. The one limit I'm putting on the plot is that Aggnes is NOT going to get control of that grant until it's back in Lancashire, at the earliest. Daffid has the keys to the strongbox inside the wagon, and he's not going to let her have them. No, no-one else gets it either (not permamently). This reflects in-game insofar as it possibly can.
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Vice Chancellor of Foreign Affairs, Royal Embassy, Keeper of the Privy Seal. Wiki entry

Aelfgar had found his enforced furlough frustrating. It had turned out the Scottish brigands were not just uncouth but also unclean. If only they could be bothered to clean their weapons before hitting people with them.... But then if they couldn't even invent trousers, what chance hygiene? He had heard some of them did not even take a bath once in a lifetime.

Still he must focus on the task in hand. He turned back to the papers on his field desk. Reports and more reports… The siege works around Carlisle, fighting at Dumfries and Kirkcudbright… rumours of yet more Scots rising out of the heather… Marya’s funeral.

Aelfgar sat down heavily. It would have to be arranged. What of her relatives? He supposed he ought to despatch some Ravens. Though the last time that mother of hers, nearly shot Windwalker with an arrow. Aelfgar shudders at the thought and checks his purse is still safe on his belt. Which triggers another train of thought…Of course there would be a saving on the coffin now she was a head shorter… then the personal effects, plus disbursements…

The Raven in the corner of the tent had been watching Aelfgar intently and when it saw him musing, acted immediately. With a raucous cry it flapped across to land on his shoulder, scattering papers all over the ground. Aelfgar was about to protest, when he caught a glint in Windwalker's eye he did not like.

"She is here isn't she?" Turning slowly (for it is always unwise to move suddenly when a Raven is staring you in the eye), he calls for his squire.

"Squire! My black cloak and hat! And the Witchfinder General's tome too."

There didn't seem to be anyone guarding the wagon. Of course, she'd have to go through all the paperwork before she could claim it (and the rest of her daughter's estate), but she wanted to take a look first, see how much money she was gambling for. A raven flew onto a near-by tree, the remains of whatever it had scavenged from the battlefield in its beak, and she threw a stone at it. She didn't want any birds of ill-omen hanging around at this critical moment, thank you very much.

She pulled herself painfully up one of the wheels for a look, trying to keep her weight of her bad ankle. Quite a lot of stone, assorted blankets, as you might expect if someone had been sleeping in it - and was that a chest, underneath some of them? She couldn't quite see, and as she tried to pull herself surther up, a low growl started from under some of those blankets: which then fell off the very large dog that had been hidden underneath them. She alsmot fell, too - then noticed the chain holding it to the wagon. Well, she wouldn't be getting inside, then - not yet. The dog was probably her property - she'd heard rumours of a cute little puppy, but that was no puppy, nor was it cute. It would have to be restrained, or killed, somehow. Or.... ah, that would do. She noticed the water bowl - empty. Marya had been dead a few days now, no-one else would have been approaching the wagon to feed it. Yes, all she had to do was wait, and she was in no rush. The army could besiege the city, she could besiege the dog. Cut the supply lines, and wait.
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Vice Chancellor of Foreign Affairs, Royal Embassy, Keeper of the Privy Seal. Wiki entry

The Raven watched the human that could still move clamber onto the wagon then fall back down. He noted the limp. Only a matter of time....then he could return the favour of that over sized gastrolith.

Wrapped in his cloak and his face lost in the shadow of the wide brimmed hat, Aelfgar gives a smug smile of satisfaction. He reaches for the leather bound tome, with its clasps of silver and the law that never failed him. Then with a swirl he exited the tent, stalking across the campsite. It would not be difficult to predict where the demon would go. Marya's wagon would be like a candle flame for a moth.

He considered what tact he should adopt and concluded with a devious smile. Ahead he could see the wagon and what was this figure skulking nearby?

She left the wagon strictly alone for over a week. She didn't want to draw attention to it - someone might feed the dog. She dealt with the paperwork, in so far as she could, watched in amusement as the Castle changed ownership every few days, and helped some bemused Scots out with their administration: even without pocketing any spare change from the county offices, they paid quite well. And she sat in the shallows of the Lake, and fished, or sat in the taverns, and listened, and made arrangements. A quiet, peaceful time for her to watch what was going on here, her ankle to heal, and the dog to die. There was the market, too, of course - it had been declared that Cumberland had no laws at all, so what she was doing wasn't even illegal. Not that she could do much - it took more capital than she had to buy up all the cheap goods and reprice them, she had to bude her time, adn spot opportunities. Still, it was good practice, and paid the hostel fee. She ignored her dreams.

Eventually, a morning came when her ankle no longer hurt when she stood on it. Time to move on. She'd convinced the bureaucracy that she was the owner of the wagon, but not of its contents - not without producing a mandate, and a key. Both of which seemed to have been buried with her daughter... Still, maybe if she headed for Lancashire, things would be different there.

Now to put it into practice. She clambered up ont the wagon once more. No barks. No growls. A rather unpleasant smell. She prodded the heap of blankets with a stick, and, getting no response, lifted them off, and nodded at what she saw underneath. Easy enough for human fingers to undo the chain, though the dog's teeth clearly hadn't been up to the job. She pushed the body over the side and on to the ground, found the horse and harnessed it up. She took her time: better to get these things right, and looking rushed made any watchers suspicious. Not that there was any reason for any0ne to be watching her.
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Vice Chancellor of Foreign Affairs, Royal Embassy, Keeper of the Privy Seal. Wiki entry

He'd sniffed this one before, and she smelt baaad. He had a rather important pouch to deliver to someone - but not her! The nice human who gave him ale had left the city, north, he thought - and sadly, keys and locks did need a human. Only one answer. He headed towards the south gate, and home. He just had to hope the guards didn't have mint sauce in mind.
Baa-sheep at the Boar'n'Ass, Chief Foot-warmer of Lancashire, Senior LHG Mascot, Marya's brain (once).

Daffid , oh Daffid you are alive , we all are missing you , come , please come with me.

We are in the middle of war , please Daffid come with me , and let Lady Marya rest in peace.

It couldn't be....? it was! The Nice Human. The one who sat under the table with him, and bought him ale. Maybe he should give Nice Human the key... but he wasn't all that bright. Could he be trusted to get it back home safely, or would it get lost? That was probably something to decide over an ale...

He trotted up to him.

"Baaa?"

Daffid ... What is wrong ? want you come with me ?

We can come home to lancashire.

NO , no ale this time , and the road not safe , please come with me.

That was what he wanted! Home! It looked almost as if the Nice Human had developed a brain... and that would make a pleasant change from his previous Stupid Human. He might even stay with this one.

The previous "baa" had been muffled due to trying to bleat while holding a pouch containing a grant mandate and a key. He drops it at Nice Human's feet. "Baaaa???"

Hugs daffid, please come with me, i will bring you to home , but not to Lady Marya castle , she is gone
And i think her mother is not a good person.

If you want to go home , you can live with me.

The Witchfinder General watches his suspect with a cool regard. He takes a note she has murdered a hound - no doubt through some foul black art. Then purloined a wagon. He signals to his men and they close in. As the wagon starts to move he steps from the shade of the tree to seize the lead horse by its bridle.

"Now what have we here? A shadow from Marya's past?"