Fires of Winter by Roberta Gellis

knowing that was what Papa would have said.
    â€œLady, lady,” Tom cried. “We could not even hold a keep against that army. Ulle is only a manor house. It is not meant to be defended against an army. Will you ask us to throw away our lives?”
    The bailiff was loyal and I was sure he was not lying to me. I knew he had defended Ulle against raiders and fought bravely under Papa’s orders. If he said defense was useless, it probably was. Ulle would be taken, but I would not give it away. Papa would blame me for that. It would have to be taken by force, and I would not yield nor sign any writing nor give oath or pledge of any kind ceding my right. If the king had me killed, I would have done my best and would be free to join Mama and my brothers—and Papa too if what my heart said was true. But I did not really think the king would kill me, and as long as I lived I would have a right to Ulle. Papa would expect me to try to hold the land and, if I could not, get it back in some way sooner or later.
    â€œNo,” I said, “I do not want you to throw away your lives. I want you to do nothing and say nothing. Move everything that can be moved into the caves. Sail the boats under the cliffs where they cannot be taken. Make no resistance to the king. If he takes Ulle, I do not think he will harm me. If he takes me away and sets a new master into Ulle, cheat him as much as is safe. Watch for my father and my brother so that they do not fall into any trap when they return.”
    I remember how Tom’s eyes lighted at my words and the fervor in his voice when he said, “We will be watching for them, lady.” But there was no answering light in my heart. I was only saying the words I knew Papa would have expected me to say and acting as he would have wished me to act. There was no hope or expectation in me.
    As the king’s army drew closer and it became clear that Stephen would not, as some had hoped, pass east along the easier route south of the tarn and ignore Ulle, I called the manor folk together and told them they must leave and take with them into hiding all the valuables of the household. I bade them take not only the strongbox of money and jewelry, the two pieces of fine plate, and the few glass and silver goblets but all the stored food and stock, even the linens and feather beds and extra clothing. When Stephen took Ulle, he would find bare bones, and old bones at that, with all the marrow gone.
    I had wanted to stay alone; the people wanted me to flee with them, but I explained that I must stay to maintain my father’s claim to Ulle—I was wrong about all this, but I was ignorant because Papa had never explained such matters to me, thinking women unable to understand, and the manor folk knew less than I did. But they would not hear of my staying alone, and they arranged among themselves that all the young men and women should go, leaving behind only a few old womenservants and the men of my father’s retinue who had been ordered to protect Ulle in his absence.
    I had no notion they meant to fight. Papa had only bade them guard Ulle to salve their pride—had he feared an attack he would never have gone, and Donald would have stayed too, to fight for his own land. The men-at-arms Papa left behind were all too old or too crippled to go with him. But they gave me no warning of their intention, and when Stephen’s army was sighted, one column winding down the pass from Darkgate and another creeping along the track by the tarn, the captain asked me to go inside the main hall with the four women who had remained and bar the door. I went without words, for he had already promised not to open the gates but to make the king’s men force them. I believed he wished to bargain for my safety—or, perhaps, for his own.
    So I went inside and sat down on Papa’s chair to wait, and the women drew stools close around me. The windows had already been shuttered, and the hall