He thought a moment, and then, reaching up, he began to fondle her rounded breasts. “I know of no admonition against such a thing,” he considered thoughtfully. His thumbs rubbed against her nipples.
It was startling. That delicious feeling that always began when he played with her breasts. She shifted atop him. “I remember saying to you that we must do something different if we were to have a son, my lord. Perhaps this will be the charm for us.” She bent and brushed his lips with hers. “You shall be my stallion and I your rider.”
Her new and brazen attitude was incredibly arousing. He had never imagined his sweet Rosamund would be so bold and forthright. She had always welcomed his advances, lying contentedly beneath him, taking her full share of their pleasure in each other but doing little else. He felt himself harden with amazing rapidity. For a moment he closed his eyes and simply enjoyed the sensation, but then he opened his eyes again and reached out to tease at her little love jewel with a fingertip, and finding her already wet with her own lust he laughed aloud. His fingers tightened about her waist, lifting her up, then lowering her so that she was impaled upon him. He groaned as her warmth surrounded him, struggling to gain a firmer control over his own desire.
He slid so easily into her sheath, and Rosamund’s tongue encircled her dry lips, moistening them. Bracing herself with her hands, she leaned back, shamelessly enjoying the full length of him. Then, her thighs tightening about him, she began to ride him, slowly at first, but as their excitement mounted she plunged faster and faster until she could not restrain the little cries of pleasure that leapt from her throat. Suddenly Owein gave a great cry, and she felt his juices thundering into her own eager body. She collapsed upon his broad chest, suddenly exhausted and close to tears. They had finally made a son! She knew it!
His arms wrapped about her. “ ’Tis a bold baggage you are, Rosamund, my bonny wife. I love you.”
“I know,” she responded. “Is it not fortunate that I love you as well, my Owein?”
He felt her tears upon his chest and smiled to himself. He did not care if she ever gave him a son. He was content just to be with her. His sweet rose. His own true lovey. She had fallen asleep atop him, and he gently rolled her onto the mattress, drawing the coverlet up over them both, still smiling as he looked down at her. She was so fair. He could understand the prince wanting to seduce her all those years ago. He had wanted to seduce her, too, if the truth be known, but his own code of chivalrous behavior would not allow him to dishonor an innocent girl. Any girl. Owein closed his eyes and drifted into sleep. Thanks to the kindness of the Queen of the Scots and her
grandmother, he had been given the fair Rosamund, and for that he would always be grateful.
By Lammastide Rosamund knew she was again with child, and this time her confinement was very different. For several months her belly was extremely sensitive to everything, but especially to the smell of roasting meat. The slightest odor would cause her to disgorge whatever was in her stomach. And then as suddenly as her sickness had begun she was fine once more. But she was growing larger with each day. She had never been quite so big with her girls, but then this, she assured everyone, was her first lad. And he would be named Hugh after her second husband, she reminded them.
“Henry will not be pleased to have that memento presented him,” Edmund Bolton chuckled as they all sat in the hall, a February storm beating at the windows. The fire in the hearth crackled loudly.
“I should hardly call my son Henry,” Rosamund said, reaching for a sugared rose petal that she had put up the previous summer.
“You must have a girl’s name, too,” Maybel said.
“ ’Tis not a lass,” Rosamund said firmly.
“ ’Twill be what God wills, Rosamund,” Maybel replied. “Choose a lass’ name just in case.”
But Rosamund could not, nor did she want to. “He is Hugh,” she told them implacably.
Then several days later Rosamund went into labor.
“It is too soon!” she cried. “Oh, God! It is too soon!” She crumbled to her knees, doubled over with the terrible pains racking her.
Owein picked up his wife and cradled her in his arms as the servants ran for the birthing chair. Her waters broke, soaking them both, but he would not leave her, instead kneeling by her side and speaking in soothing tones to her as she labored to birth the child within her. He moistened her lips with a napkin soaked with wine. He kissed her brow and mopped away the beads of perspiration that dappled it. And Rosamund wept wildly, for as she had known this child was a son, she also instinctively knew she would lose him before she even knew him. It broke her
heart, but she was not prepared when the perfectly formed little boy slid from her straining body in a rush of bloody fluid, the cord wrapped tightly about his neck, his little face and limbs blue. No sound issued forth from the baby, and Maybel, tears running down her own face, shook her head wearily.
“He is dead, poor wee bairn,” she announced. Then she said, attempting to cushion the tragedy, “But you will live, my dearest lass, and you will bear Friarsgate another heir.”
“Let me see him,” Rosamund said. “Let me see my Hugh.”
Maybel wiped the birthing blood from the infant, and after wrapping him in a white swaddling cloth, handed him to Rosamund.
The grieving mother looked down at the child in her arms. The baby was his father’s image, his miniature features mimicking Owein’s: a tiny fuzz of blond hair upon his rounded skull, the almost invisible minuscule sandy lashes upon his cheeks. Her silent tears fell upon the tiny corpse as she clutched him to her aching breasts. Maybel had cut away the cord from the child’s neck, but he was still pale blue in color. The older woman reached out now to take the baby, but Rosamund gave Maybel a fierce look. “Not yet,” she said. “Not yet.”
Finally Owein said in a quiet voice, “Give me my son, Rosamund,” and kissing the baby’s cold brow she handed him to his father. Owein studied the small scrap of humanity in the curve of his arm. “He’s perfect, and considering he was early by a month, every bit as large as his sisters were when they were born. We made a fine son, lovey. We will make another, I promise you.” Then he handed the baby to the young priest.
“I will baptize him, m’lady, before we bury him,” Father Mata said softly. “I know he is Hugh. May we add Simon, for today is St. Simon’s Day?”
She nodded, then asked sadly, “How can you bury him with the snow on the ground, good father?”
“The earth is softer by the church itself, lady,” he said.
Rosamund nodded again. “Go then,” was all she said.
The priest departed the hall with the dead infant.
“Why can I not give you a son?” Rosamund said despairingly.
“You gave me a son,” Owein replied.
“But he is dead!”
she cried.
“Our son is dead!”
He put his arms about her and let her weep until finally she could weep no more. Her eyes were almost swollen shut with the burning, stinging salt from her tears. She was exhausted with her labor, and finally collapsed with her sorrow and weariness. He picked her up after Maybel had cleaned away the evidence of the unfortunate birth, and carried her to their chamber. After tucking her into their bed, he brought her a cup of warmed, mulled wine, and supporting her shoulders, he helped her to drink it all down. He knew that Maybel had doctored the wine with poppy juice. Rosamund fell quickly into sleep.
“I will see she sleeps for several days,” Maybel told Owein when he returned to the hall. “Sleep is a great healer, though she will grieve a long time for the bairn’s loss. What a pity, Owein, for the lad was perfect.”
“Then why did he come early, and why was he born dead?” Owein said bitterly. He was angry, though Rosamund should never know it lest she blame herself. “Aye, he was beautiful. Every bit as his sisters.”
“He was born dead because the cord twisted about his wee neck and strangled him. He was dead in her womb, and who knows for how long. Why? The priest will say ’tis God’s will, though why God would will a sweet bairn to be born dead I do not know,” Maybel responded. “ ’Tis a mystery, but she has proven she can birth a son. You will make another, and next time ’twill be all right. This was an accident. Nothing more, no matter what the priest will say.”
“Aye,” he agreed, “but she will grieve hard, Maybel.” He sat down in his chair by the fire, one hand going to pat the greyhound and accepting the goblet of wine she handed him with the other.
“Of course she will grieve. She is a loving woman, a devoted mother,” Maybel retorted.
“What am I to tell our lasses?” he wondered.
“You will tell them that their brother decided to remain with the angels,” Maybel said. “Only Philippa will really understand. Banon and Bessie are too young.”
“Aye,” he said, and sipped thoughtfully at his wine, not even noticing
that she left him to his thoughts in the empty hall, the fire warming his feet. He had not felt such sadness since that time long long ago that his own mother had died and he was left alone for the first time in his life. He had remained alone until he had married his Rosamund. They would grieve Hugh’s loss together, each giving the other comfort and love in their sorrow. It would be easier for them having each other.
Rosamund slept for several days, waking for brief times to eat lightly and be consoled by her husband. Then she would drink from the cup and sleep again. After a week she could sleep no more. Her three daughters climbed into their bed, cuddling with her and chattering how their brother had decided to stay with the angels. Rosamund swallowed back her tears upon hearing that and hugged her girls tightly. After a second week she arose from her bed, discovering that the snow was melting away, and the hills were beginning to green up again. Her first foray outside took her to a small grave where her son lay buried. She stood over it for what seemed to Owein a long time, and then, turning away, she announced, “I am hungry.”
Relief poured through him. “Then let us go to the hall and eat,” he said to her.
She slipped her hand into his. “ ’Twas an accident, I know. It will not happen again, and we shall have another son, Owein.”
“Aye, we will,” he agreed, but when she was not within his hearing he instructed Maybel to see she was given the potion that would prevent her conceiving again for the present. “Whether or not we have a son is God’s will,” he said, “but I will take no chances and lose my lovey.”
“Aye, she needs to recover her strength fully,” Maybel concurred.
The rhythm of their life continued as it always had. The fields were plowed and planted with grain. The kitchen gardens were restarted. The herbs began to green up under their mulch of straw. Spring had come in full force. The orchards bloomed, and never had Rosamund seen them so beautiful, the pink and white blossoms that covered the trees emitting a faint odor of sweetness.
Henry Bolton paid them a visit from Otterly, professing sorrow for their loss and then suggesting a match between his eldest son and Philippa.
“I am not of a mind to match any of my daughters yet,” Owein told Rosamund’s uncle, “but if I were, I should seek farther afield. Fresh blood always improves and strengthens a line, Henry. Find another lass for your lad. You shall have none of mine.”
Henry Bolton rode away, shoulders drooping.
“I think he is defeated at last,” Rosamund said, watching him go. “I never thought he should give up on possessing Friarsgate, but I truly believe now that he has.”
“He is a broken man I can see,” Owein said. “His wife’s brazen behavior has destroyed him. If he were truly a brave man he would put her from his house, but he is not brave. He is a bully and a coward, and always was so.”
For a moment Rosamund almost felt sorry for Henry Bolton. He had fancied himself so superior to his two half-brothers, scorning them because of their illegitimate birth. Now he was forced to accept his wife’s infidelity and her two bastards. He dared not do otherwise else he be publicly made the fool, and that Henry Bolton could not tolerate. So he gritted his teeth and accepted what he could not change.
Now that Henry VIII reigned in England the news came more frequently, especially as the weather was warm. The peddlers were out in force, and they came to Friarsgate knowing of its prosperity.
They heard that the king and queen had been crowned on June twenty-fourth, Midsummer’s Day, at Westminster Abbey. The royal couple had come from Greenwich by barge the twenty-second and had been housed in the Tower of London as was customary. The city of London was one huge festivity. The young king was magnificent in his rich garments.
The harvest came once again, and it was more than bountiful. Friarsgate’s granaries overflowed, and the fruit was being harvested by the bushel from the apple and pear trees in the orchards. Owein was right in the middle of it all. For some reason Rosamund had never understood, he enjoyed climbing to the tops of the trees for those fruits that no one else could reach. He would pick them by hand and toss them down to those women waiting below. Nothing pleased him more than to go to the cellars in the deep of winter and return with a crisp apple or pear. The ones
at the top of the baskets, he told Rosamund, were those very same ones he had climbed up to reach. Then he would eat his fruit with a pleased grin upon his handsome face.
He was in the orchards one September afternoon when Edmund entered the hall where Rosamund was sewing a hem into Philippa’s new skirt. She looked up and smiled her greeting at him. He was suddenly beginning to look old, she thought.