Rosamund (25 page)

“Yes, madame, we must have the cooper make a tub in which we may both bathe together. In fact, I like the idea very much!”

She washed his face, gazing into his eyes and feeling her heart melt within her. Was it possible that she was going to love this man? She
certainly liked him a great deal, and their lovemaking was wonderful. Of course she had no basis of comparison, but he gave her such incredible pleasure that surely meant something. Didn’t it? Rosamund slicked the flannel across his chest. She washed his long arms and his big back, his neck and his ears. “You must do your own legs and feet,” she said, “for I fear if I do”—she blushed—“we may spill water upon the floor in our enthusiasm for each other.” She handed him the washrag.

“I agree,” he said, and took it from her.

She waited patiently until he had finished, and when he stood up she wrapped him in a warmed towel. “You must dry yourself, my lord, else the water get too cold for me,” she told him. Then she plopped herself into the tub and began to quickly wash, for the water was indeed cooling. When she was finished and arose, Owein wrapped her in a second warmed towel that he had taken from the rack before the fire. Rosamund yawned as he dried her off.

“We will sleep a while now,” he said. “We have been home scarce a week, and you are not used to such traveling, lovey.” He picked her up and tucked her into their bed, climbing in beside her.

“Aye, my lord, I am tired,” she admitted, and nestled within the curve of his arm she was quickly asleep.

It was late afternoon when they awoke, and it was to a discreet rapping upon their bedchamber door.

Maybel’s head popped around the open door. “Ah, good, you’re awake,” she said, apparently not in the least surprised to find the master of the house with his wife. “Will you be coming down to the hall for the meal, or shall I bring it upstairs?”

“I will come down,” Owein said, “but my lady must remain abed and rest. Bring her a tray of something nourishing.”

“I’ll send a lass up,” Maybel said, “and I’ll send the lads to empty the tub and put it away.” Then she was gone, closing the door behind her as she went.

“I am rested now,” Rosamund protested.

“Nay, lovey, you are not.” He opened the trunk at the foot of the bed and drew forth a delicate linen chemise, which he handed her. “Put this
on, Rosamund. You should not be
au natural
beneath your coverlet when the lads come to remove the tub.” He was dressing as he spoke.

Meekly she obeyed him, realizing as she did that he had begun to look after her as a husband should. It was comforting. “Give me my brush,” she said, and when he had handed it to her she began to brush her long hair. Then she fixed it into a single plait, which she tied with a blue ribbon that she found in the pocket of her chemise. “Am I respectable enough to receive the lads now?” she teased him.

“Except for that well-satisfied look in your eyes and your pretty bruised mouth, aye,” he said. “I think I shall remain until the lads have gone.”

“Are you jealous then, my lord?” she flirted with him.

“I am jealous of every minute of your life that we have not shared, Rosamund,” he told her.

“Oh!”
She was quite overwhelmed by him. He was so romantic, and she would have certainly never expected it when she first met him.

“You are not the man I thought you were,” she told him.

“Are you disappointed, then?” he asked.

“Nay! You are wonderful, Owein Meredith!” Rosamund said.

“I never thought I should be a fool over a woman,” Owein admitted to her, “but I fear I am one where you are concerned, lovey. I love you quite shamelessly, and I want you to love me back one day.”

“I will,” she promised him. “I think I am already falling in love with you, husband. How could I not love a man who has been so gentle and kind with me? A man who respects my small position as the lady of Friarsgate. You are unique among men, and much like Hugh Cabot might have been had he been a younger man.”

“High praise indeed,” Owein responded with a smile. “I know how very much you cared for Sir Hugh. I know how much you respected him. Would you be offended if I said I think I feel his spirit in this house, and I believe he approves of me?”

“Nay, and I feel it, too, and I think he does approve of you,” she said.

It was a new world in which Rosamund now found herself. She was actually a married woman, even as other married women. The days became
weeks and the weeks months. The harvest was now all gathered. The grain had been threshed and was stored in her stone granaries. The apples and the pears had been picked. The manor folks were surprised when Sir Owein climbed to the top of each tree in the orchards, harvesting the fruits from the very tops of the trees. In past these fruits had been left to rot or fall to the ground for the wild beasts.

“It is not right to waste,” he explained to them quietly.

The flocks and the herds had been culled. Some of the beasts were slaughtered for the winter meat supply, but most were taken to market to be sold. The proceeds were then used to purchase those things that the manor could not produce itself, like salt, wine, spices, and thread. The remaining coins were placed into a leather bag and hidden behind a stone in the master and mistress’ bedchamber fireplace.

On Martinsmas Rosamund was certain that she was with child; a fact that Maybel and the manor midwife both confirmed. The bairn, both agreed, would be born in mid-spring, probably in the month of May.

“I should like to call a lad Hugh,” Rosamund ventured after she had told her pleased husband.

He nodded. “Aye! ’Tis a good name, but what if we have a lass, lovey?”

“Do you think it could be?” Rosamund was surprised that he would even suggest such a possibility. Most men wanted sons, and they were not shy about saying so. A daughter later, perhaps, but sons first.

“Anything is possible, lovey,” he answered her. “I will be content with a healthy bairn, lad or lass—and a wife who survives the rigors of childbirth.”

Rosamund laughed then. “For a woman to give birth is a natural event, Owein. And I am older than the Venerable Margaret when she birthed our good King Henry. The women in my family do not die in childbed.”

“And if the good lord favors us with a daughter what shall we call her?” he asked once more.

Rosamund thought a moment, and then she said, “I do not know. Every girl in England born in the next few months will be named Margaret after the Queen of the Scots. I shall, of course, use Margaret as one of our daughter’s names, but she must have her own name first.”

“There is plenty of time for you to consider it,” Maybel noted wisely. “The bairn will not come before the spring, and it is just now but the beginning of winter. Besides you may well have a son.”

They celebrated the Twelve Days of Christmas in the traditional manner, a large Yule log being found in the forest nearby and brought into the house. There was roast goose, and at the manor court Rosamund forgave the miscreants before her their offenses and passed out gifts to all of her tenants. In addition they would be allowed to hunt rabbits twice monthly during the winter, on a Saturday, but for the Lenten season when they would be allowed to take fish from the Friarsgate streams on those same days. Rosamund Bolton was a good mistress all agreed.

January passed in relative quiet. The ewes, of course, began to birth their lambs as usual during the February storms, causing a frenzy among the shepherds to find the newborns before they and their mothers froze to death.

“Sheep are not the most intelligent of beasties,” Rosamund observed. Then she told her husband, “You will have to go to Carlisle in the spring to treat with the cloth merchants from the Low Countries, my lord, as I will be unable in my condition to do so.” Her hand instinctively smoothed over her rounded belly as she spoke, calming the child within her who was a most active creature.

“We may go together if the bairn is already born,” Owein said. “It is not until the end of May, or early June that they come, for the seas are not hospitable before that.”

“You must go,” she insisted. “I am not a high-born court lady who will dry up her milk and put her infant to suck at the breast of some farm woman. I am a country lass, and we nurse our own bairns, husband. But that my mother was frail I should have sucked at her teats. Thank God for my Maybel! But Maybel agrees with me that a bairn belongs at its mam’s breast first.”

“I have no experience with bairns or their mothers,” he told her. “I must accept your judgment in the matter.” He wrapped his arms about her, a more difficult task these days, and kissed her softly. “I shall envy the bairn, lovey,” he admitted in meaningful tones.

“My lord!”
Rosamund could still blush, and she did.

He chuckled. “You cannot blame me, lovey. I never thought to know the joys of connubial bliss with any woman, yet the fates have given me you. I never believed I should father bairns of my own blood, and yet here you are ripening before my very eyes with our child. It is all wonderful and very new to me, wife.”

They were seated companionably in their hall, the winter snow beating upon the few windows, a fire blazing merrily in their hearth. Two cairn terriers, a greyhound, and a smooth-coated black and tan terrier lay sprawled by their chairs. A fat tabby washed its paws by the fire, preparatory to a long winter’s nap.

“I wonder if Meg is as happy,” Rosamund said.

“She is a queen,” he replied. “Queens have little time for happiness, I fear; their other duties get in the way. But knowing Margaret Tudor as I do, I suspect she is not unhappy. She has beautiful garments to wear, jewelry to flaunt, and if the stories are to be believed, a lusty husband to keep her content in their bed. All she must do to continue to merit these pleasures is to produce an heir for Scotland. Given her mother’s success in such endeavors I think she will do well.”

Rosamund laughed. “You are cynical, my lord. ’Tis a side of you I had not expected you possessed.”

“I prefer to believe I am a realist,” he said, chuckling. “I grew up in the Tudor household, lovey. I know them well. I think it would disturb the mighty to discover how well their loyal retainers know them.”

March arrived, and the snow on the hills began to melt away as the winds began to come more from the south and the west. The land grew green again, and was dotted with the ewes and their new lambs who gamboled carelessly through the grass. The sky above was bright and blue one minute, only to be filled with rain clouds the next. But it was spring. Easter came and went. The time drew near for Rosamund to deliver her first child. She was elated and irritable by turns.

“I am bigger than a ewe sheep with twins,” she grumbled. “I cannot find my feet, and when I do they are swollen like sausages.”

“If our Blessed Mother could bear her son with fortitude,” Father Mata remarked innocently, “then so can you, my lady.”

Rosamund glared at the young priest. “Only a man would say something that foolish, good father. Until you have carried new life within you and had your belly and breasts stretched beyond reason, you cannot know what our Blessed Mother, or any other woman goes through in matters such as this.”

Owein burst out laughing at the discomfitted look on Father Mata’s young face. “You cannot know,” he said, “being a man of God and not a husband. Women, I have discovered, are extremely irritable at this time in their lives.”

“Rosamund, give over,” Maybel gently scolded. “He could not know now, could he?”

“Then he shouldn’t mouth churchly platitudes,” she grumbled. She arose from the board, and a sudden look of dismay crossed her face.

Maybel saw it and quickly asked, “The bairn?”

“I have no pain,” Rosamund said slowly, “but water has gushed forth from me, yet it isn’t pee.” She looked extremely perplexed.

“Some start with the pains and others with the water,” Maybel said calmly. “The bairn has decided to come, and it is its time, lass. You must walk the hall while we set the birthing chair up by the fire.” The older woman turned to Owein. “You and Edmund know what to do, my lord. As for you, my fine priest, a few prayers will help us all along.”

Rosamund began to walk about the little hall. I am having my child now, she thought, suddenly excited. By morning I shall hold my son in my arms. A new generation for Friarsgate. Come, my wee Hughie, and be born. Aye! Hugh for Hugh Cabot. Edward for my lost brother, and Guy for my father whom I barely remember. Hugh Edward Guy Meredith, the next lord of Friarsgate. And suddenly the first pain struck her, and she stopped dead in her tracks.
“Ohhhhh!”
The wave washed over her, and then was as quickly gone.

“Keep walking,” Maybel instructed her.

The birthing chair was set up by the hearth upon a bed of straw. A large cauldron of water bubbled over the fire. A small table was piled with
linen cloths. Another table held a brass ewer and a small flask of oil. The cradle was brought along with the swaddling clothes.

“Now get out, all of you,” Maybel instructed.

“Owein must remain!” Rosamund cried as her uncle Edmund, the priest, and the servants exited the hall.

“Birthing is woman’s work, lass,” Maybel said.

“I’ll stay,” Owein said quietly, and Maybel nodded.

Rosamund walked about the hall until her legs grew weak and she could no longer stand. Owein caught her before she fell, and carried her to the birthing chair. He seated her, and she clutched the sturdy wooden arms of the chair as her pains grew closer and closer. It finally seemed as if there was no respite from her agony at all.