It was a long journey in the cold, bouncing over the frigid ruts, waiting out snowstorms that, fortunately, were more wind and wet than accumulation. At last, we arrived at Middleham.
I was kept busy righting the cottage we'd been awarded, one that had lain empty for many months. The things we'd bought in London were what we started housekeeping with—two cook pots, metal forks and tongs, blankets and linen, stools of differing heights and a bedstead. With these, and what remained in the house—an ancient monster of a cupboard with many shelves and countless mouse-droppings, a battered table and a high backed bench by the hearth—I set up housekeeping.
In spite of the minor disrepair of broken shutters, the cottage was sturdy. There were slates upon the floor and a well-built central stone chimney that a sweep cleared for us. The house had size, with a room before and behind the chimney and a loft above for storage and winter sleeping.
At first, we rattled within like two peas in a dry husk. There was plenty of joking that I must need breed quickly, and fill the place up. It was odd to find myself at chores that for years had been the province of mere house servants. I swept, carried ashes, and hauled both wood and water.
Hugh was also out of practice at domestic tasks, and I heard him cursing like a madman as he worked on the broken shutters, but he did the heaviest lifting and was always helpful. The bedstead and trunk were rope hauled into the dark, warm loft. Hugh lifted me up while I strung hanks of Sweet Annie, rosemary and lavender from the rafters to sweeten the air. Out of doors it snowed and wind howled. The towers of Middleham castle appeared and disappeared in flurries of slashing white. I was home again, but not in the way I had so long imagined. Sometimes it was bitter to stand in the shadow of the great keep and find myself a simple tenant living in the sparse northern village of a lord who was not presently at home.
"Do not grieve." Hugh caught me at it one day. He patted me on the back.
My first instinct was to pull away.
"Oh, Rosie!" He gathered me patiently against the heat of his big chest. "You should not. That is no life for the likes of you and me—running like a dog when they call. We can make something of our own now. I tell you, lass," he rubbed my shoulders and settled me warmly against his gut, "for years I imagined I had a good life, but what does a young fool know? This is contentment, to be well-settled, to know where I'll rest my head at night, and who will rest beside me."
He was happy, I could tell, hoping for no more wars, no more hardship, for a time of comfort and warmth. I tried—yes, I did—to be his good wife.
* * *
Mother Ash lived a street away. Of course, she was older than ever, a genuine crone now, all bent, her face twisted from a seizure. Still, she hobbled here and there, and her hands did not shake too badly. She was still the midwife of the village, although her practice was small. She simply did not have the strength to travel about these days.
"You have been missed," she said, taking up our conversation as if it had been in progress, irritated from the moment I entered. "I didn't teach you for all those years to have you go gallivanting off to France, playing lady's maid, you know! The Blessed Mother knows there are plenty of gently-bred ladies for that fol-de-rol. I've had to start all over again with a girl who is not so satisfactory. My time on this earth is not unlimited, Rosalba Whitby!"
Useless, I could see, to defend myself by speaking of Anne. Ash spoke with the imperiousness of the old and she was right. Our lives run through so quickly. We must make a mark while we can.
"Well, here I am again, Mother Ash, for the rest of my earthy stay."
"Which you regret. Mmm…." She made a new considering sound I'd never heard before, deep in the back of her throat. "You have done well for a poor ignorant girl from the dales." Her brown eyes snapped with sly humor. "Let us hope you have not forgotten everything, and that you do not become interested only in breeding with that big bull husband of yours."
Fire reflected upon the rafters of her house, hung as always with bunches of simples, of scented lavender and rosemary and strings of dried fruit. A gray cat, as of old, slept under the fire bench, chin resting on a tidily tucked tail.
Stung, I defended myself. "I was given in marriage to Hugh Fletcher by the will of Lady Anne and Duke Richard of Gloucester. It is no love match."
"The best kind!" Ash leaned to cheerfully smack my hand with hers. The flesh was dry, like fine leather. A wry, toothless smile cracked her sunken cheeks. "Good! You will not turn housewife. Now, you can be the one to go out in the snow and catch all the new lambs."
The idea of suddenly practicing midwifery, when I hardly had done anything in that way at all, was truly alarming. It must have showed in my face for she said, “Come, come. It's not so hard. It's only that folks think it is. I'll teach you some good birthing charms and if the signs are bad, you can send for me. Surely you remember something o' what I taught?"
Her gaze was so severe that I did not dare say a word, except to humbly ask if we could begin to practice the charms right away.
Busy with my new home, busy with learning and new duties, I hardly had time to think for the first months, which was just as well. Hugh settled in quickly and gained the respect, if not the love, of his new cohorts in arms.
There was some jealousy at first, some sense that he had been promoted over others because of our marriage. It did not take too many Sundays, however, for the rest to see the kind of archer he was, or too many watches for them to learn that he knew his job. After a duty tour in which he and his company let blood a bandit gang who had been terrorizing the area, voices lifted in a cheerful greeting when he entered the Bear.
"They found an honest man and a good soldier for you, Roan Rose." This, delivered with an approving nod, was what I heard that spring, as the natural reticence of Yorkshire began to thaw. The comments jarred, of course, but no one knew what I truly felt—nor would they! That the remainder of the Earl of Warwick's household believed I had married well was a balm.
It was sad to learn how many of the older folk had died, many who had followed their Lord of Warwick into his bloody folly. Among them, gone into darkness, was my dear True Thomas. I wept sorely when I heard this long delayed news.
There was worse. I sent greetings to Aysgarth, to my mother, as soon as I was come into the country again, but she could not reply. She had died, and that, only a few months past, in the early winter. Bled to death from the womb, I learned, while walking to tend a sick child on the dales. She had lived forty-three years.
My youngest sister Lily was still in Aysgarth. She would be fourteen now, but, somehow, that was a tie broken. I would go see her in the spring, I thought. It was a decision I would later regret, but there seemed to be far more urgent matters. This was the true beginning of my practice of curing and midwifery. There were calls at midnight to travel through the snow with someone to tend a good wife's labor, or to try to help a child win free of fever or choking catarrh, or to hold an aged hand while life sighed away.
I had never shifted a child myself, so there were those who their doubts about me. It was rough going at first, facing down their suspicions with only my common sense and the word of Mother Ash or those ancient charms to spin their faith upon. White-faced men with broken limbs at least lay still, so I put on authority and used a strength that my teacher no longer had to set matters straight. Some, as in any winter, died: the old, infants, a woman three weeks from childbed. Years later, I could fall into bed and sleep dreamless after days and nights of watching and nursing the dying, but it was not during that anxious, always aching, first year.
* * *
"You have a son?" I was surprised, but should have seen it coming. As we approached April, Hugh had grown almost diffident. He no longer lorded over me, the wise man, the old soldier primed for husbandry who'd scooped up a young woman with good dower. Bane of my life, but I've always had a quick sense about people—not that I ever pay the least bit of attention to that wise self which senses how things really are.
Fire glimmered over his strong features while he studied my reaction. He was square-headed, nothing like the long narrow head of Old Whitby. Had he shared that characteristic as well as his fairness, I would have bolted, leaving Hugh Fletcher, the noble Duke of Gloucester, and my dear Lady Anne as far behind as I possibly could.
"How old is the boy?" My heart sank. I could see us saddled with a rambunctious, neglected boy.
"Sixteen," said Hugh. He smiled as if this would cheer me up. "Thought I was going to bring you a jumping kid to rear, didn't you?"
"That is what second wives get to do—raise the first wife's children and listen to her husband sing the praises of a woman they have doubtless worked—or bred—to death."
"Ah," he replied, shaking his head, "so dour and wise and put upon, my Rosie." He lifted his mug and took a long swallow, probably in order to continue dealing with me.
"Well, why haven't you told me?"
"When? While I was saving your freckled skin and tenderly courting you, or while you were busy pouring bile and scorn all over my head?" He jutted his chin and his eyes held a dangerous light. "While you were pining over my Lord of Gloucester, who plucked the cherry and left the tree for another to tend?"
"That is not to the—"
"No, it's not. The business before us is that I have a son. After all these years I can make a home for him and I intend to do so. Is that so hard for you?"
"I never said—" and sputtered to a halt. It was, after all, neither his fault nor the boy's. "To care for your son is fatherly and just," I amended, schooling myself. Exactly as he'd said, I'd made everything hard for him, and all he'd wanted was to marry me—not only freckled, but unchaste, to boot….
"A better answer! We can use some help around here. We will not be able to do all we must upon the land allotted not to mention the service we owe the Duke, without help."
"That is what cottagers are for."
"Or a man's sons, has he any. My boy Jackie is well-grown and strong. He'll be a big help."
There was a pause in which I, too, took a deep draught of the bitter brown. When I lowered the mug, there he sat, still staring.
"I shall make a drinker of thee yet, Lass."
"Indeed you shall," I replied, trying not to sound spiteful. "Have you any other secrets to share with your wife, Master Fletcher?"
"Not at present."
"Which means there are more?"
Hugh shrugged, his ruddy face a genial blank. I distrusted him most in that style.
“So tell me how you came by this son.”
Hugh studied my face for a long moment before he began.
"Jackie was born in Sandal Magna when I was sixteen. My father was a good man and beyond patient. When my Aldy got big by me, he let us wed and put us to work in his house. He had plenty and understood the way things are without a sermon every hour. Aldy was fourteen when she gave me Jackie. She had another at the breast when the Bitch of Anjou came." My husband’s face turned to stone. Whatever the horror of that day had been, I knew it would never be told.
"My Jackie and I were about all of my family to live through it, only else my brother Rafe and his Margery who’d been lucky to visiting her folks when it happened. It broke my heart to leave Jackie, two-years-old and lost his mother, but there wasn't much else could be done. Rafe and Marge have raised Jackie all these years alongside their kids and have done what they could. Now that I am settled, I can do better by him—and them."
The tale was familiar. Soldiers from abroad returned home to reclaim their families, boys and girls who barely knew their own sires. Sometimes the trouble caused by these reunions ended only when the father marched off to more battles.
"Have you seen him very often?"
"Well, a time or two a year—sometimes not at all—as and when I could manage. When I was in Germany—well, it's no regular life I've led."
"A great lad of sixteen," I chose my words carefully. "Has he not fixed upon some trade?"
"He can shoot, like me," Hugh said proudly. "Jackie can split the eye of a running hare." Then, he added, "but it appears he'll never make a soldier."
"Why?"
"He hasn't the heart for it. He's farmed with Rafe and he’s spent a year as a 'prentice to a smith, but he hasn't the patience. Has an eye, as I said, but can't be bothered." He shook his head and considered the remains of our supper. Suddenly, beside the bread and cheese, he slammed his knife into the table, which did not bode well.
"Will he be upset that his father has taken a wife? Will he work for us?"
"He knows how to work, that's for certain if Rafe and Marge raised him. That Marge! I can see her now, a stick in her hand and a young 'un bare-assed over her knee. As for you," he said, brightening, "the pup may be jealous of what the old dog has—but, as for my takin' a wife, well, it's none o’ his business."
"It is natural to dislike change and the reason for it."
"Ah! You would know all about that, wouldn't you?" He reached out and before I could protest, had pulled me onto his knee. “Such an old, wise Lass! Now, don't start thy fretting! Not at bedtime, anyhow." A hand moved to my breast; his lips brushed my cheek.
I didn't want to argue, but I noted that, my husband, who was no one's fool, had turned the conversation.
* * *
I was cooking, leaning red-faced from a stool into the fire, when Hugh came in. The door remained open, and behind came two more, a girl and a boy, a pair of baby-faced Saxons, fair as flax.
"Mistress Rose," Hugh spoke cheerfully. "Here is my boy, Jackie—and his wife, Bett."
As promised, there stood my new-made son, as well as the something more my husband had been unwilling to discuss. Wise for once, I didn't say a word.
They were both half-grown pups, everything soft and awkward. The boy had a round face and held his cap in a raw, overlarge hand. The girl was doughy faced and big-bellied, weary circles round her eyes.
The son retells the father's story!
They gazed at me the way humbler folks did, slack-jawed. Hugh must have given them a great talking to about his high-and-mighty wife.
"I am glad you have come, and—and—I hope we shall learn to be family."
"Yes! We shall help each other get on." Hugh clapped the boy on the shoulder. At his touch, the round, scantily whiskered face grew sullen. I had a sharp premonition of how things were going to be.