Conquering Knight, Captive Lady. Anne O'Brien
at some decaying mortar between the stonework. ‘I think we should look at the rest before we go in.’ She followed Sir Thomas’s distant figure down into the bailey.
It did not take long. Rosamund’s sense of disgust deepened with every step. Other than the gatehouse and the keep, both of stone and substantial enough, the rest of the fortification was still the original timber palisade with an outer earth bank and ditch. The buildings in the outer bailey were timber and thatch—stables, kitchens, store rooms, as well as shelters for the scattering of cows and sheep that roamed and mired up the surface. She stepped cautiously around the animals. Should they not be fenced in somewhere? Chickens sat broodily along one roof ridge. In the corner beside the keep, easily recognisable by the rank smell, a midden spread its foul contents underfoot. Her nose wrinkling, Rosamund quickly put distance between herself and the offending heap. Who could have allowed the midden to be positioned there, so close to the habitation?
‘It could be worse,’ the Dowager gulped, as if repeating the words would make them so. ‘You’ve a secure water supply from the well.’
‘So I have.’ Rosamund suddenly smiled wryly at her mother, struck by the sheer awfulness of it all. ‘Stop being so cheerful!’ But this is where she must stay. ‘Let’s go in. You notice that our commander and my invisible steward—if I have one—are both keeping a low profile. I think it bodes ill.’
It did. The sight and the stench reduced the de Longspey women to a silence.
‘Oh, dear!’ Lady Petronilla managed at last.
The Hall showed evidence of hard and crowded living, being the nightly refuge of Sir Thomas’s men-at-arms. Dark in the most sun-filled of days, rank with smoke from the open fire that did not find the intended outlets in the thickness of the wall and with the rancid reek of animal fat feeding the rush lights, it was a scene from a church wall-painting of Hell, to frighten the sinful into a better life on earth.
‘These rushes have not been changed since last winter.’ In awe of such filth, Rosamund tried not to disturb them too much as she walked in, flinching from the fleas and vermin that would infest them. Any sweet scent had long gone, replaced by the stench from putrid scraps of food and worse from the savaging hounds that drew back snarling as she approached. Over all, the whole place reeked of unwashed humanity.
The furniture was minimal, splattered and scarred. A few benches and stools stood by the hearth. The single standing table on the dais had seen better days. There were no tapestries to decorate the walls. Indeed, it would have been a shame to hang them where their beauty would have been spoiled. The stonework ran with wet and soot from the fire.
‘So what about the private chambers?’ Rosamund started up the stairs to the next floor. ‘For where shall we sleep tonight?’
‘Not in here!’ Lady Petronilla lifted the hem of her skirts from the outrage.
The solar, intended as a comfortable refuge for the women of the household, contained nothing but evidence of soldiers sleeping there—a discarded boot and assorted pieces of raiment, jugs of ale, remnants of ruined food. Equally, the adjoining private chamber intended to heighten the authority of the lord and his lady had been taken over, Rosamund presumed, as the haunt of Thomas de Byton, and he had done nothing to remove his presence from it.
‘By the Virgin!’ Rosamund kicked over a pile of questionable material beside what should have been an impressive oak bedstead, then retreated from platters of food with their layers of fuzzy mould. The smell that hit them at the door heralded the existence of the garderobe, built into the thickness of the wall to empty into the ditch below. It was altogether an appalling place.
Rosamund decided not to investigate further. ‘I doubt this has ever been cleaned out since the stone keep was first constructed. It’s hard to believe that Ralph de Morgan would want it.’ She veiled her thoughts with dark lashes from her percipient mother, not liking their direction, unable to dispel the sharp bitterness that settled beneath her breast-bone. ‘As a dower it does not recommend me highly to a husband, does it? And yet Ralph de Morgan would take me, to acquire this. Simply because it controls the crossing of the Wye. The cow byres in Salisbury are better kept than this! Yet it was thought to be a suitable dower for me.’ She heard her voice rise, and strove without success to control the bleak vision of her future here. ‘Perhaps at my advanced age Ralph is the best I can hope for. I clearly have no great value in de Longspey eyes, except to entice a border lord into their clutches.’
‘Foolish girl! How could you think that you have no value! Believe me, Rose, this place will look far better after a good scrub!’ Petronilla managed a semblance of a smile as Edith called on the Virgin to give them succour. Only too well aware of the probable live occupants of the mattress, they made a discreet exit from the chamber. The fleas and bugs might be invisible, but the mice and rats were not. Nor the enormous spiders that had spun cobwebs over every corner.
‘I can think it well enough. Consider this. Earl William and Gilbert thought to attract a husband for me by using this … this midden as a dower. What value does that give me? What worth have I?’ But Rosamund squared her shoulders against the hurt. She would not let it crush her spirits. She could at least pretend that the pain of humiliation in her chest did not exist. ‘Perhaps the storerooms will give me hope.’
They did not. A cursory inspection suggested that Rosamund de Longspey owned nothing but a serious quantity of barrels of ale. A sad fact confirmed by the mid-day meal, served by an ill-washed kitchen boy in the squalor of the Great Hall. The array of dishes comprised, apart from the ale, nothing more than a thick mutton broth, a platter of boiled onions and coarse flat-bread, burnt at the sides.
They did their best with it in a horrified silence that at least gave Rosamund time to marshal her thoughts. She dipped her spoon into the fat that pooled glossily on the surface, pushing aside the gristle before pushing aside the bowl itself. She had three choices as she saw it. To accept defeat, retreat to Salisbury and Ralph’s noxious embrace. The shudder that ran over her flesh at the thought had nothing to do with the ferocious draught that had frozen her feet into splinters of ice. She could not do that. Why, oh, why had the Wild Hawk not agreed to take her? The shiver that rippled over her skin had even less to do with the cold, but a remembered awareness in her belly as his eyes had travelled over her body. It had lingered, a knot of heat, even when he had rejected her with nothing but the briefest of salutes to her fingers. Now to have his hands awaken her body …
Well, he hadn’t wanted her. And as she could not possibly take Ralph, so she must turn her back on marriage.
The second possibility—she let her affectionate gaze rest on the Countess who was in the act of pushing the platter of onions toward Sir Thomas with a gracious and entirely false smile. She could take up residence at Lower Broadheath with her mother and grow old in extreme and graceful boredom.
Or … she inhaled slowly as her eyes travelled round the stained walls of her Great Hall … she could remain here and claim her inheritance as Lady of Clifford.
‘If you wed Ralph de Morgan, you would not have to live here, Rose.’ Petronilla’s advice was tentative, but accurate.
‘Would you give yourself into Ralph de Morgan’s sweaty hands?’
‘No.’ The Countess sighed.
Rosamund had stiffened her shoulders. Despite the impossible horror of it all, she would remain here at Clifford, but there were changes to be made. Immediate and wideranging, and very much to her own liking. She would make this place her own. Was she not the undisputable Lady of Clifford? She remembered smiling serenely at the Countess and a suspicious Sir Thomas.
Now Rosamund scowled.
‘Changes to my own liking?’ she announced, coming to an abrupt halt in her pacing, her recollections overlaid by a bitter truth and a slick layer of dread. ‘What could I have been thinking? Any authority I thought was mine has just been denied me at the point of a sword.’
Just when she had made her decision to stay, to make the best of it, what did she find? That ruffian taking possession of her castle, her dowry,