“But when will I come home again?” Rosamund wondered plaintively.
“After a term of service the queen may release you to visit Friarsgate. Or you may return with a husband, chosen for you by the king. You do understand that eventually you will be wed again and probably to a man that the king wishes to do honor.”
“In other words my husband shall once again be chosen for me,” she responded, feeling not just a little irritated by the fact.
“That is the way of the world, Rosamund,” he answered her.
“I had hoped this time to marry a man I loved,” she said to him.
“Perhaps you will,” he replied. “Or perhaps you will learn to love the husband chosen for you, but no matter, you will do your duty, Rosamund. I have come to see that you are that kind of girl.”
“Aye,” she said, nodding, “I am. Still, it would be fun if I could follow my family’s motto,” Rosamund told him.“Tracez Votre Chemin.”
“Make Your Own Path.” He nodded, too. “’Tis a good motto, and who knows, my pretty lass? Perhaps one day you shall make your own path. None of us knows what the morrow will bring, Rosamund. Despite our desire for sameness, life is always filled with surprises. I shall tell Edmund Bolton that we are leaving on the first day of September. Eh?”
She nodded, but he could see the reluctance in her agreement. “How many carts may I have for my things?” she asked him.
“We will take one packhorse,” he told her, and then he explained, “You will have no privacy, or very little of it at court, Rosamund. You and Maybel will sleep in a large room with the rest of the queen’s women and their servants. Your small trunk will be all the space you will have for your possessions. Everything must be portable so that it can be moved quickly from place to place. The king and queen never remain in one house for long. They travel from their palaces in London to Greenwich to Richmond to Windsor and back. And come the summer the court will go on the annual royal progress, which involves visiting the great and small noble houses. You will have even less accommodation then for yourself or for your things, if you are invited to go. With luck you will be left behind. At least then you will have a bed.”
“It doesn’t sound very comfortable,” Rosamund noted dryly.
“It isn’t.” He grinned. “Bachelor knights have it the worst, I can assure you. If we are lucky we end up sleeping in the hall by the fire. If not, ’tis the stables or a dog kennel for us.”
“At least you’re warm,” she replied. “You are not married? No,” she answered her own question, “you would not be. You are like my Hugh and cannot afford a wife.”
“Aye,” he agreed. “My eldest brother inherited from our father. My next brother serves the church. I have three sisters. One is wed and two are nuns. I was fortunate to have obtained my place in Jasper Tudor’s household. My father knew his high steward. He was my mother’s kinsman, and he felt sorry for me.”
“Did you not miss your family?” Rosamund asked Owein.
“Nay. My father was angry that my birth took my mother’s life. I don’t think he spoke more than a dozen words to me before I left his care. My sister Enit was his eldest child. She was twelve when I was born. It was she who saw to my welfare until she wed when I was four. How I missed her!
“My eldest brother had no use for me, for he desired above all things to please our father. As our sire ignored me, so did he. And no sooner had Enit wed, than my eldest brother was married. By the time I was six, his wife had already birthed the next heir, much to father’s delight; my middle brother was in his monastery and my two other sisters in their convent. Only I remained. The loose end, my brother called me. Then Jasper Tudor’s high steward came to pay his respects to my mother’s grave. He saw the problem I presented to my family. When he left, I went with him. There was a place for a page in his master’s household, he told my father. Of course my sire was only too glad to see me go.”
“How fortunate that was for you,” Rosamund noted. Why, his childhood had been even worse than hers. When she had children she would make certain they were loved and cherished.
Owein Meredith laughed. “There was no place, but my kinsman made one for me. Then he taught me my duties. He was more father to me than my own was. Without him I don’t know what would have happened to me. Because of his kindness I strove to advance myself.”
“You became a knight, of course,” Rosamund said.
“I served in Jasper Tudor’s household until his death. I was a page until I was thirteen. Then I became a squire to my master,” Owein explained to Rosamund.
“When did you become a knight?” she asked him. It was the first time he had spoken so openly and in depth about himself. She was absolutely fascinated. He was like Hugh, and yet he wasn’t. And he was handsome. Hugh, she remembered, had had a yellow streak in his white hair, which he had told her had been fair in his youth. Owein Meredith was a darker blond, but there were golden streaks in his hair, which she very much liked.
“As I told your uncles,” he responded, “I was knighted at the age of fifteen. It was after the battle of Stoke when we defeated the pretender, Lambert Simmel.”
“What was he pretending, and why was it necessary to fight him?” Rosamund inquired curiously.
Owein chuckled. “It was before you were born, Rosamund. The previous king, Edward IV, had had two sons. Their uncle took his brother’s throne upon the death of King Edward. It was said England did not need a child king. But there were two young boys. They disappeared, never to be seen again. It is said their uncle, King Richard III, murdered them, secreting their bodies in the Tower of London.”
“Did he?”Rosamund’s amber eyes were wide. What a terrible thing to have done!
“I do not know,” Owein said. “No one does. But it was after that that the heir to the other royal house, Henry Tudor, returned to England to fight King Richard, overthrow him, and take his place upon the throne. He married the Princess Elizabeth, elder sister to those two unfortunate princes, and heiress to the royal house of York. Their union ended a hundred years of warfare here in England, Rosamund, but then in 1487 a young man claimed to be son of the Duke of Clarence, who had a stronger claim on the throne than our own King Henry. He was not, of course. The real Edward Plantagenet was imprisoned in London. To prove this the king paraded him through the streets. But it was still necessary to meet and vanquish this Lambert Simmel at Stoke.”
“You fought well if you were knighted, sir,” she said.
“I did fight well,” Owein admitted modestly. “I would give my life for the House of Tudor, for they took me in and raised me, and gave me everything that I have in life,” he declared passionately.
“And what is it you do have, sir knight?” she wondered aloud.
