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.
