Lost Lunch (Freahilda) [Fall 3011]

Tlink.

The sound of metal clinking in a coin purse drew Freahilda's attention. The market was humming this cool autumn day. Colorful cloaks, kirtles, and kaftans. Men and women moved about with carts and baskets. They all seemed tall and noble compared to the band she had come to know as her 'family'. It was times like these that Freahilda could almost forget that she had once been one of them. A lady. A lady of Rohan who had once longed to see the city of Edoras, and the green banners waving over Meduseld. A lady who had never even considered that she would step foot in the White City of Minas Tirith.

Now she had simply become a Dunlending, traveling along with her motley crew from village to village. Selling their wares. In the three years she had been along with this rag-tag bunch, Freahilda had never traveled so far from her homeland, though Talfryn was known to swipe through this area every few years before circling northward again. This year he intended to stake out the winter within the enclosed wall of the Rammas Echor. Not that Talfryn would splurge at one of the boarding houses of the First Tier. They’d camp in some off beaten track out on the Pelennor, and trek into the city day by day with the sales cart.

Talfryn had his cart set up in the market this morning and had not needed her, offering her the opportunity to roam through the market stalls and about the market street. The white walls of the city, and far above a great white tower with a spire that struck into the clouds above. It was beautiful against the blue sky; like something out of the fairy tales which she’d heard as a child seated beside her mother’s spinning wheel. Even the small houses and shops here seemed lovely and mysterious; they did not make such buildings out of stone in Rohan, and the huts north to Dunland were even worse for the wear.

She eyed the person in front of her, as they put away their coin purse after making their purchases, when she saw it happen. A coin fell to cobbled street. Freahilda's eyes widened, and she looked about her. The person began to walk to another market stall, and the young woman took a few steps forward and picked it up. It was heavy in her hand. A large coin. It must be a week's pay for someone. A month's perhaps? It was worth far more than what Talfryn sold in wares in one village. The metal shone in the sunlight, and she wrapped her fingers about the cold luck.

What did people do with all that gold? What did they buy? How much food could be purchased for that… something finer than the stringy game the boys brought to the camp, and roots she could dig on the plains. It had been long since she had enjoyed roasted chicken, and longer yet since she had tasted pork, or fresh soft bread baked in a true oven, not the flat bread she cooked over the fire. Was it enough gold for a horse? Maybe not a fine one but an old one, that could get her where she wished to be. Perhaps not quite.

Her eyes shifted over the market. All those things she would admire, but never buy. The wool. Oh the wool! Soft and luxurious the yarns seemed. Colorful and beautiful the cloths. Cloaks for sale, thick and warm. Kaftans luxurious. She could look a Lady again wearing something like that.

If she had not once known the feel of the best woolens. If her family had not once raised the finest sheep on the Westfold. If her mother had not been a spinner and a weaver of warm, soft cloth. Perhaps she would not have missed it, she mused. Still. She looked down at the shining coin. Talfryn would notice any new garment, and wonder where she had come of it. The fur wrap she had now was enough to keep her warm, mismatched skins of deer, rabbit, possum, squirrel. Whatever the boys had come up with and she had tanned and stitched together for herself. The gold would keep better in her own purse. She would tuck it away. Stitch it into her clothes to hide like she did with all the others. She shifted the skins upon her back and looked up.

Freahilda swallowed hard and her breath quickened, looking around her for a moment, she flipped the hem of her sleeve and tucked the coin into a specially placed slit that led to a small pocket she had hidden the two layers of her dress. Her work was done quickly and she straightened her sleeve again, feeling the weight of the coin resting against her wrist. Hidden for now.

Yet her mouth watered; it would be evening before they made camp back upon the plains, and with the boys gone now, fresh meat was hard to come by. She’d never been a good huntress herself; they mostly survived on roots and foraging these days, and whatever milk the goat would give. Freahilda hadn’t eaten since the night before. The thought of chicken was tantalizing, and a manner to purchase some now… just a bite. Talfryn wouldn’t need to know she’d wasted good money. And she wouldn’t waste much!

Still, she could not quite decide. She hovered outside the doorway of a tavern where the smell of roasting, seasoned chicken came strong, wondering what Talfryn would say if he found her there. She knew the old codger wouldn’t step away from his cart, yet she was always on edge, like one of the stray cats wandering the city streets. The door opened and closed before her and the woman peeked into the dark room. It seemed there were others inside… men, though it made her wonder if the customs in this city were different than the lands to the north. A scar faced man approached, and she frowned at him, sliding back against the wall near the doorway to let him pass, pressing her body against the white stonework as if she could turn invisible with her mottled furs and her unkempt blonde hair. Perhaps it worked for a moment, but as she shifted her wrist beside her, the gold coin she had chanced upon earlier slipped from the fold within her sleeve and rolled onto the stone walk. A heavy ‘clink’ as it hit the solid ground and rolled. Rolled… rolled right into the scar-faced, scowling man’s boot. Freahilda stood wide eyed, wanting to dash for it, though at the same moment fixed to the stone. The man looked fierce, quite larger and stronger than Talfryn, and it was likely his boot could kick all the stronger.

The coin gleaming and gold held out to her, and Freahilda’s eyes flicked up to mark those of the large man, trying to sense if there was some method or motive behind how easily and rapidly he held it out to her. Silently checking the position of his body, of his other hand, weighing the risk that should she reach out for it, her arm may be unwillingly grasped as leverage. She was much smaller than the other he could easily pin her, trap her, call for guards, and how would she explain where the coin had come from?

She should have scuffed it into her shoe, where it wouldn’t have broken free of her shoddy, worn dress. Now to have it offered out by a hand bandaged. A man who by his scars and build was obviously a soldier. A Calvary member, like the Eored which rode through her own lands. Nay, by his bulk, perhaps a footsoldier. Deadly at hand to hand combat. The hand with a tinge of blood upon the edge of the bandage showing he could have been a streetfighter. He may have come straight from a fight to this tavern, and indeed he looked as if he feared nothing.

His hair marked him as one not quite so old as Talfryn, yet she being only one and twenty guessed that he was at least twice her years. A lifetime of soldier’s training, and she was nothing against it, but what was the risk of loss if she should duck around him and run. And she may even then still be pursued, for though someone else held the coin it had still been dropped from the purse of someone who may be missing it and convicting her of thieving. Aye, she would be pursued nonetheless, and so the risk work the action, and Freahilda reached out the way a stray may approach to swipe a bit of fish from a platter cooling in the window. Quick and skittish, Freahilda grasped the coin and then recoiled again against the wall, pressing it against her palm, as her heart seemed to drum a thousand beats in a minute.

And then he spoke again, the man’s voice gruff and rugged; the type of voice one would use to chastise the other soldiers, and he wondered if he were a Captain among the men, or perhaps he was an off duty city guard himself, or one undercover, and this was all some ploy to find her hauled to one of the tall, white jail towers. Telling herself she had to remain confident, the coin had been hers all along, and none would say otherwise.

“I dinna mean to drop it, sir,” Freahilda finally spoke, trying to gain control of her voice, with a slight tilt to her chin that might have made her look assuming or arrogant, though she had to tilt her chin up nonetheless to see the man eye to eye. “I’ve worked three year to have my pay, and now we’ve come to the greatest city of men, I craved a good, hot meal with it before anything else.” Her accented Westron clearly of proud Rohan… a commoner for certain, though not bearing the clipped slurs of the Dunnish spoken dialect. “I expect ye understand.”

"Put that away."

The order came swift, the large man looming over him, and Freahilda kept her pert chin lifted, eyes locked with him as if he were to make some sudden motion which would require reaction, while she fumbled with the purse at her belt. She was not about to reveal the places on her person that she hid her coins lest he seek to know what else she bore… or turn her in to those wing helmed guards.

Of course, what else she had tucked into the hem of her heavy skirts had come snipped from Talfryn alone. Had she been working for him, it would have been what could be called a wage. Not that it was a fair one for the three years she’d spent with him, the simple coppers tucked away, with a few silvers. She’d certainly earned it for her labor, though the man saw no need in paying the one he deemed his wife. It was the Family Business after all. Weren’t much family about it once Einion and Aelwyn, her ‘grandsons’, had run off on them, though she didn’t blame them. She had to trap their own food now, and they didn’t have the hot headed fellows to strongarm when they needed it anymore. Not to mention the type of ‘creative borrowing’ the boys had been good with dealing when they were near civilizations such as this city which greatly eased their comforts in the camp.

Granted rations were split now between two instead of four, but Freahilda didn’t have any skill with bows or spears. She’d only learned how to set snares a few years ago, and rabbits were about the only meat she ever came by, even when they traveled through territory filled with boar and deer, she had no way to capture them.

At an impasse before the large man standing, Freahilda’s stomach at the mere thought of the meal, and she slid aside away from the wall, though not turning her back to the large man, she watched him from the side of her eye as she took a few steps to the nearest knotty table. What was she but a scavenger? If a meal was given freely, she was going to take it. She sat down hard and quick, her lips sealed tight on the matter as the thunk of the weighted hem of her dress struck the wooden leg of the bench.

Scavenging was one thing when those who were giving of their time and wares weren’t looking. Thieving was the only way to gain a thing for free, leastways when it came to men. A few women had been kind to her in passing, and it was not that all men were unkind. It was merely that men knew the worth of a coin as they were often the ones who broke their brows working for it. Freahilda was certain there wasn’t a man wide nor far who would spend their well earned coin on her without want of something more, and she would do as she had always done to get where she needed.

She was hungry, and she’d exchange her favors for a meal. The one currency she seemed to have unlimited supply of. Leastways, if Talfryn didn’t know, what was the harm? He’d be glad she’d scrounged up food for herself for free, and maybe this one’d have some cloak or extra blanket in whatever back alley room they’d use that she could snitch off him and make it more of a fair bargain.

“What’ll et be then?” she asked, her chin still raised toward Tamar as she eyed him warily, uncomfortable for his size. “Somethin’ warm, with meat. And I’ll wrap and take the bone with fer later.”

When the man turned his back to her, Freahilda eyes moved brisk toward the door, and then to the back of the tavern, checking if it might be in her best interest to make an escape. She scooted a slight, slowly, the movement would have been nearly impercievable for one not directly watching as she moved so both her feet were at the ready.

The smell was to tempting however, and her mouth was watering at the decadent smell coming from the kitchen and all around. Even if it was tavern food, it was going to be a great deal heartier than what she’d been cooking over fire for the last year. He asked her if she wanted something else aside the hunters pot and ale, and Freahilda watched him sifting through his coin purse. “I’m ‘ardly dressed fer the King’s feast,” she answered, hesitating, but he was making the offer. Perhaps. She might try to cleave onto it. “But I’ve… got a dog, if there be any scraps they’ve done with...” she lied. They’d never had a dog, but she’d boil whatever scraps she could get to feast on later. They’d a goat at one point who gave warm, sweet milk, but when she’d milk no more so they’d been forced to eat her, and that had been the last of Freahilda’s property she’d come with from the old farm, save the donkey. The donkey was still clinging to life, but he had all the grass of the plain to eat, and wasn’t troubled so much now that they were stalled outside Minas Tirith for the winter.

Luinë, he’d said, and Freahilda stared at him, wondering the meaning. What crass thing he’d called her in a foreign tongue. He was calling her a mad woman, wasn’t he? Calling her after one of those diving birds that would cackle on the lakes up in the highlands of the Gap of Rohan where she’d been a girl. Calling her after the old hags that would live alone on the heath with their blood mixed of Rohan and Dunland, taking on the old ways of the people who’d lived there long before the horselords. Luinë. She did not know how to make her tongue say the word, but she scowled at it.

She stared hard and unmoving, the look almost aggressive, as her fingers were gripping the table. The balls of her feet were rested on the floor, pressed down. She barely moved a muscle as the man looked at her, except for the slow motion of leaning forward as if she were ready to spring out from the wooden bench. She gave a solitary nod, saying she’d wait.

Walk away. He was going to walk away, and he’d be none the wiser about her or the gold tucked in her sleeve. She might even have time to snag that half loaf of bread that’d been forgotten at that table over near the window before she shot out the door, and she wouldn’t owe the large man a thing for it, but the meat. Pork sounded fair to her bones and her empty stomach, and the smell offered was unbearable. Too good to pass up. To think a real meal set before her, made in a kitchen. She’d wait. She’d wait. It would be worth it in the end. Though no muscle in the woman’s body relaxed as she waited, save to watch as a person at the table aside got up to leave. Freahilda grabbed the crust of bread that’d been left behind and stuffed it one of the pouches at her belt.