Rosamund (3 page)

On the last day of April Rosamund’s seventh birthday was celebrated by her husband, her uncle Edmund, and Maybel. She delighted them all by her enthusiasm over her gifts. From Maybel an embroidered girdle of green silk decorated with gold thread. Her uncle Edmund presented Rosamund with a leather-bound ledger of blank pages to do her sums, along with a small sharpened goose quill with which to write. Hugh, however, gave his wife a pair of doeskin gloves trimmed with rabbit fur that he had made himself, and a sheer lawn veil for her head that he had bought from the first peddler of the spring.

The crops were planted, and the fields were already green when Henry Bolton arrived at Friarsgate for the first time since he had left the previous autumn. He came with a long face to tell them that his good wife, the lady Agnes, had been delivered of a puny daughter on the feast of St. Julia. The child was with a wet nurse, for Agnes Bolton had died of childbed fever shortly after her daughter’s birth. He and Hugh sat together in the hall that evening.

“Rosamund appears in good health,” Henry Bolton said. His niece had greeted him dutifully, and then after the meal politely requested permission from her husband to retire.

“She is a sturdy child,” Hugh replied.

“She seems to favor you,” Henry noted.

“I am like a grandfather to her,” Hugh murmured.

“You do not spoil her, I hope. You used the rod on her?” Henry peered closely at the older man.

“It has not been necessary . . . to date,” Hugh said. “She is a good child, and obedient. If she should prove otherwise, I will remedy the situation, I assure you, Henry Bolton.”

“Good! Good!” Henry responded. Then he sighed. “And you, Hugh? You are in good health, too?” Damn Agnes, he thought, as he asked it. If this old man who was Rosamund’s husband should die before he had another son, he would surely lose Friarsgate.

“My health would appear to be excellent, Henry,” Hugh said blandly, knowing exactly what was on his companion’s mind and struggling not to laugh aloud.

“I must marry again,” Henry burst out.

“Aye,” Hugh agreed. “ ’Twould be wise.”

“Agnes’ brother says Otterly must be returned to him,” Henry told Hugh.

“Nay, it is yours. It was a gift to Agnes when she wed you. It was hers to do with as she pleased. Tell Robert that I have said so, for I was the one who drew up the papers transferring the manor to her. Look among her things, Henry. You will find those papers. Robert Lindsay has the same papers. He knows Otterly belongs to you. He only seeks to see if he can steal it back. I will testify for you before any manor court. If you tell your brother-in-law that, he will not pursue the issue further.”

“Thank you,” Henry Bolton said, grateful.

“So after your year’s mourning is completed you will seek another wife,” Hugh said cheerfully. “She was a good woman, my cousin Agnes. It will be difficult to find another as fine.”

“I’ve the new one already picked. I cannot mourn Agnes for a year’s time. You will not live forever, Hugh. You know I mean for my next son to marry with my niece. The lad should at least be out of leading reins when it is done,” Henry Bolton said bluntly.

“Indeed,” Hugh replied, not knowing whether to be angry at his
companion’s callousness or amused by it. So poor Agnes would not be mourned decently.

“She’s the daughter of a freedman with a small holding that borders Otterly. There are two siblings and little chance of Mavis finding a husband as good as me, so her father has given her a third of his lands, the ones matching mine, for a dowry. We’ll marry after Lamastide. She’s young and should prove a good breeder.”

“Yet she is only one of three,” Hugh noted astutely.

“Her brother has fathered half a dozen sons already, and their father has several more on his mistress. Mavis’ mam was a cold woman, but she is not,” Henry said, chuckling. “I’ve already been up her skirts, and she was more than eager for it.”

“She was a virgin, of course,” Hugh said. “You would be certain, Henry, that your firstborn is indeed your blood.”

“Aye, she was a virgin,” Henry responded. “I put my finger inside her to make certain before I first used her. Her father encouraged it.”

“You will bring your bride to meet Rosamund, I hope, before you get her with child,” Hugh remarked.

“Aye, I will,” Henry agreed. Then he said, “Friarsgate thrives?”

Hugh nodded. “It does. We had a goodly lambing in late winter, and many cattle born, too. The fields are doing well, and the orchards are heavy with fruit. It will be a good year, Henry. A prosperous year.”

“And the Scots?”

“They keep to their side of the border,” Hugh replied.

“Good! Good! I have been told that they avoid Friarsgate because the land about us is steep and difficult to run stolen animals over, but with the Scots one cannot be too certain, Hugh. Keep a sharp eye out,” Henry advised pompously.

“I will, Henry. I certainly will,” Hugh agreed.

The following morning Henry Bolton departed. Rosamund came to bid her uncle farewell. He looked her over carefully a final time. Aye, she was a healthy little bitch, he thought. She had surely grown taller since he had last seen her. Her auburn hair shone with golden lights. The amber eyes looked him in the face briefly before lowering modestly as she curtsied to him.

“Well, girl, I do not know when I shall come again,” Henry said to her. “Next time I shall bring your new aunt, eh?”

“You are always welcome at Friarsgate, uncle,” Rosamund replied. Then she handed him a small wrapped bit of wool tied with a thread.

“What’s this?” he demanded of her.

“It is a cake of soap, scented with heather, that I have made for your bride, uncle,” Rosamund told him.

Henry Bolton was surprised. He was not so insensitive that he did not realize he was not his niece’s favorite person. A gift for Mavis was a surprising gesture on the child’s part. “I shall take it to her, and you have my thanks, Rosamund. I cannot fault your manners, and it pleases me that you learn womanly skills.”

“The mistress of Friarsgate should know many things, uncle. I am young, but I am capable of learning them,” Rosamund responded. Then she curtsied to him again, and moved to stand by her husband.

“Rosamund made soap to keep us clean the winter long,” Hugh quickly said before Henry Bolton could consider his niece’s words. Discretion, he thought. We must teach Rosamund not to display her tactics so openly. Then he smiled at Henry. “Godspeed,” he said.

“Aye, uncle, God speed you and protect you,” Rosamund echoed. Then she stood watching as he rode away from Friarsgate, slipping her hand into Hugh’s as she did. “If he but knew,” she said softly.

“But he will not, until it is too late,” Hugh answered her.

Rosamund nodded in agreement. “Nay, he will not,” she replied.

D
uring the few years that followed Rosamund grew from a charming little girl into a gangling young girl, who sometimes seemed to be all legs and flying hair. They saw Henry Bolton but once in all that time. He brought his new wife, Mavis, a buxom girl of sixteen with careful eyes, to meet his niece. Mavis thanked the heiress to Friarsgate for the soap as she openly admired Rosamund’s house and lands.

“Henry says our son will be your husband one day,” she boldly told the younger girl. “This is a fine inheritance for him.”

“Are you with child?” Rosamund inquired with apparent innocence.

Mavis giggled. “I ought to be considering how active a bed partner your uncle is, but you would not know of such things being a child yet.”

“Perhaps you will have a daughter,” Rosamund said. “My poor aunt Agnes did, you know.” She smiled sweetly.

“God and his Blessed Mother forbid it!” Mavis cried, crossing herself. “Your uncle wants sons. I will light as many candles as I must to gain my husband’s wishes. You are a wicked girl to suggest I have daughters. Perhaps you put the evil eye on your uncle’s first wife and caused her death.”

“Do not be silly,” Rosamund responded. “I never saw my aunt again from the day she departed Friarsgate. Besides, I liked her.” This Mavis had fewer brains than a milk cow, Rosamund decided. “Tell me, if you know, what has happened to my cousin, Julia?”

“When she is weaned from the farmer’s wife’s teat, she will go to St. Margaret’s Convent, where she will be raised to become a nun,” Mavis
said. “I don’t want to raise another woman’s daughter. Besides, the convent will take a smaller dower portion than any man would. Your aunt Agnes was no great beauty. Henry says the bairn favors her.”

“It is comforting to know my cousin is safe,” Rosamund remarked dryly. How sad that her poor little cousin should be disposed of so easily and so callously. She knew that Henry Bolton would have done the same to her had it not been for Friarsgate.

Rosamund was relieved when Mavis and her uncle departed. In the next three years the news came with monotonous regularity that Mavis delivered first one son, then a second, and finally a third. Her fourth child was a daughter, and after that they heard no more of Mavis Bolton’s fecundity. Her uncle did not visit. She was left to wonder about her cousins. They were probably, she decided, blond, blue-eyed blobs very much like their mother. The eldest of them, called Henry after his father, was supposed to be her future husband.
As if I could wed with a four-year-old,
Rosamund thought.
Why, I am practically twelve!

She could now read anything they put before her. She wrote with a beautiful hand as she transcribed the figures into her account books. She knew how to purchase supplies, the few they did not grow or make themselves at Friarsgate. She had learned exactly what they needed to survive comfortably. She was beginning to bargain for her holding when she, Hugh, and Edmund went to the cattle and sheep markets in the nearby town. She had a keen eye for horseflesh, and had even begun to breed animals for later sale.

Rosamund also took an interest in her great flocks of sheep. Unlike many farms that sold their raw wool to brokers, Friarsgate kept theirs. After the animals were sheared, the wool was washed, dried, combed, and carded twice in order to make the wool extra fine, and hence more valuable in the marketplaces of York and London. Next the wool was dyed. There was a lovely golden brown, a fine red, and a green, but Friarsgate wool was known for an exquisite blue color that no one else seemed capable of duplicating. It was unique to Rosamund’s estate, and highly prized. As mistress of Friarsgate the formula for Friarsgate Blue was entrusted to Rosamund by her uncle Edmund. It was his gift to her upon her
tenth birthday, when he told her that she was old enough to know. But it was important that the secret remain with her alone, until she felt it could be passed on to the next heir, or heiress, to Friarsgate.

Rosamund nodded somberly, understanding the importance of what Edmund was imparting to her. “I may share my knowledge with no one?” she asked quietly.

“No one,” Edmund repeated.

“How do we get our colors so clear and bright, uncle?” she asked him. “I have seen other wools, and they are not at all as fine as ours are. How is it done? Is it the formula for the dyes?”

Edmund chuckled. “We set the colors with sheep urine, lass,” he told her, grinning. “That is the secret of the blue color, too. It is darker in the dye vat, but once we move it into the pee, it turns that fabled color so highly prized.”

Rosamund laughed, too. It was so simple, and an absolutely delicious secret. She wished briefly that she might share the secret with Hugh, but she knew she would not.

Once the wool was dyed it was distributed among the cottages to be spun on the looms kept in a separate room in each weaver’s home. This kept the wool from being impregnated by smoke, or food odors, or heat, which might turn the delicate colors. The long strands of the wool were woven into an extra-fine cloth that was highly prized and greatly sought after. The shorter bits were turned to a fine felt.

Rosamund learned all of the processes, and she was very proud of her knowledge. Hugh and Edmund were proud of her, too. The child who they both treasured was growing into a young woman whose passion for knowledge could not be quenched. It disturbed them that they had nothing more to teach her.

The winter before her thirteenth birthday Hugh Cabot fell ill with an ague. He was slow to recover. It was that spring that Henry Bolton chose to pay a visit to Friarsgate. It was the first he had made in several years. He was accompanied by his eldest son, five-year-old Henry. The oddly coincidental timing of his visit made Rosamund suspicious that she had a spy among her servants.

“Find out,” she curtly instructed her uncle Edmund.

Henry Bolton eyed his niece critically. She was tall, and no longer had a childish look about her. “How old are you now, girl?” he demanded, noting how her blue wool gown with its long tight sleeves clung to newly budding breasts. She was ripening, he considered nervously.

“You are most welcome to Friarsgate,
uncle,
” Rosamund swept him a rather elegant curtsy. “I shall be thirteen in a few weeks.” She waved her hand gracefully. “Come into the hall for some refreshment.” Then, turning, she led the way, her blue skirts swinging behind her as she walked. “And how is my aunt?” she inquired politely. “Doll, bring wine for my uncle and cider for his little lad,” she ordered a serving woman.

“I am to be your husband, girl!” the little boy announced loudly. He was small, Rosamund thought, for a child of five. He had his mother’s blond hair and bovine look. There was nothing, she thought, that was Bolton about him, but perhaps the set of his jaw, reminded her strongly of her uncle Henry.

“My name is Rosamund. I am your cousin, and I already have a husband,” she told him, looking down at him.

“Who lies dying,” the boy said boldly. “You and Friarsgate are to be mine,
girl.
” He stood, legs apart, glaring at her.

“He has no manners, uncle,” Rosamund remarked, ignoring the boy now. “Do you not beat him? Obviously not.” She sat down by the hall fire, indicating that her uncle should do the same.

Taken aback by his niece’s attitude, Henry Bolton sat heavily. “He is high-spirited, that is all,” he excused his son. “He will grow into a fine man one day. You shall see.”

“Perhaps I shall,” Rosamund replied. “Now, uncle, what brings you to Friarsgate? It has been many years since we have seen you.”

“Can I not pay you a visit, Rosamund, after all this time, and bring young Henry to meet his future wife?” the older man protested.

“You do nothing, uncle, without a reason. That I learned quite young. You have not been here in several years because you trusted Hugh to manage everything for you. Now you have learned that my husband is
ill, and so you have come, posthaste, bringing this ill-mannered brat of yours with you, to see for yourself the truth of the situation,” she said harshly.

“I think it is you who needs a beating, Rosamund,” Henry Bolton snarled. “How do you dare to speak to me like that? I am your guardian!”

“You relinquished your guardianship when you gave me to my husband,
uncle,
” she snapped back.

“And when he is dead you will be in my keeping once again,” Henry Bolton threatened. “You had best mend your ways, niece. Now, I have brought the betrothal papers with me, and you will sign them. They shall be dated at the appropriate time,
but you will sign them today.
I will have no one stealing you and Friarsgate out from beneath my nose after I have been so patient.”

“I shall sign nothing without my husband’s permission,” Rosamund said. “If you try to force me I shall complain to the church. They will not approve of your high-handed tactics, uncle. I am no longer a frightened and malleable child who can be coerced by threats. Ah, here is our wine. Drink up, uncle. You are looking positively apoplectic.” She tilted her own goblet to her lips and drank delicately.

For a moment all was red before Henry Bolton’s eyes. Taking his niece’s advice he gulped down his wine, trying to calm his thoughts and the pounding pulses in his temples. The girl who sat so self-assuredly before him was more than pretty. And had not the old Countess of Richmond given birth to King Henry VII at thirteen? His niece was no longer a child. She was practically a woman, and a strong-willed woman at that. How in the hell had this all happened in just six years? Henry Bolton’s chest felt suddenly tight. He struggled to master himself. The amber-eyed bitch sitting across from him viewed him gravely.

“Are you all right, uncle?” she asked him solicitously.

“I want to see Hugh,” he demanded of her.

“Of course, but you will have to wait until he is awake. While his mind is perfectly clear, my husband is no longer strong. He sleeps much. I will have him told of your arrival when he awakens, uncle.” Rosamund arose. “Remain here, and warm yourself by the fire,” she advised. “I will have
more wine brought.” She smoothed her blue skirts down with her long fingers. “I must leave you.”

“Where are you going?” Henry Bolton almost croaked.

“I have my work, uncle.” She turned away.

“What work?”
he demanded of her.

“It is spring, uncle, and there is much to be done in the spring. I must tot up the monthly accounts and arrange a schedule for the plowing, and see how much seed I will need to distribute for the planting. We have had more lambs born this winter than we could have possibly anticipated. A new meadow must be cleared and planted to contain the increased flock. I am not some fine lady who can remain by the fire to entertain you.”

“Why are you doing these things?” he challenged her.

“Because I am mistress of Friarsgate, uncle,” she answered him. “Surely you didn’t expect I should grow up only to weave at my loom, or make conserves and soap.”

“Those are women’s pursuits, dammit!” Henry Bolton shouted. “Of course those are the very things that you should be doing. You should leave the stewarding of Friarsgate to the men!” His face was growing very crimson once again.

“Fiddlesticks!” Rosamund answered him pertly. “But if it will soothe your mind, uncle, I can also do all those things as well. Friarsgate, however, is mine. It is my responsibility to care for its welfare, and the welfare of my people, as any good chatelaine would do. I dislike being useless and idle.”

“I want to speak with Hugh!” Henry Bolton practically yelled.

“And so you shall, uncle,
in due time.
” Then she turned about and left the hall. Behind her she could hear Henry Bolton sputtering his protests, and then she heard his son.

“I don’t like her, father. I want another wife.”

“Shut your mouth!”
Henry Bolton shouted savagely at his heir.

Rosamund grinned as she hurried off to seek her husband, who was indeed resting in his chamber. Catching hold of a passing serving wench she instructed the girl, “Find Edmund Bolton, but send him to the lord’s chamber and not to the hall where my uncle waits.”

The servant nodded her understanding and dashed away.

Hugh Cabot was sitting up in his bed when she entered his room. He had grown thinner and was very frail, but his bright blue eyes still danced with an interest in everyone and everything. “I hear we have a visitor,” he said with a small smile.

Rosamund laughed. “I vow, my lord, that you know everything before I do.” She went and sat on the edge of her husband’s bed. “What we have, Hugh, is a spy among our people. I have told Edmund to find out who it is. Aye, we have not one visitor, but two. He has brought me my
next husband.
”

“And do you favor the lad, Rosamund?” Hugh teased her, a wicked smile lighting his narrow lips.

“He’s an arrogant, snot-nosed little brat from what I have observed. And I will wager he’s wearing his first pair of breeches, Hugh. He struts like a small barnyard cock, and ’tis not much bigger,” she told him.

He laughed. Then he coughed, waving the cup she offered him away. “Nay, lass, I don’t need it.”

“What you mean is you don’t like it,” she scolded him gently, “but the herbs do soothe your cough, Hugh.”

“And taste like swamp water,” he grumbled good-naturedly, but he drank down several swallows of the brew to please her.