Her uncle came to greet them as they arrived at the house. Father Mata was with him, and he greeted the Hepburn of Claven’s Carn, as well. He was Logan’s kinsman, and they were friends. Rosamund slid down from her horse as Edmund helped Maybel dismount. Philippa and Lucy were already heading inside.

“I am sorry, niece, for your misfortune,” Edmund said.

“Thank you,” she said. “Will you see that the laird and his men are fed, Edmund? They intend to travel back to Claven’s Carn today. I am tired and would retire to my own rooms.” She turned to Logan. “Thank you, my lord,” she said to him, and then she was gone.

“Well,” Tom said with some humor, “at least she didn’t hit you this time. You have just the slightest bruise on your chin, dear boy.” They walked together into the house.

“What is this?” Edmund asked his wife as they followed the two men.

“Don’t ask me, old man,” Maybel said. “I was abed long before they dragged her in from the rain and her own folly. Tom will know every detail, and you will obtain it from him. Ah, I thank our Lord Jesu and his Blessed Mother that I am once again safe at home! Annie watched over you all?”

“Annie did a fine job,” Edmund assured Maybel.

They entered the house.

“You look troubled, husband,” Maybel said. “What is it?”

“A message came from the king while Rosamund was away. It arrived on the very day of your departure. Because it had the royal seal, I opened it. Inside was the terse message: ‘The lady of Friarsgate is commanded to attend on his majesty, King Henry, at Greenwich.’ Because she had gone off to wed, and I knew she would not be back quickly, I sent a reply back to the king saying Rosamund was not at Friarsgate but the message would be given to her upon her return. I sent it with the royal messenger who brought the king’s missive. I have heard naught since.”

“You must tell her at once,” Maybel said.

“Tomorrow,” Edmund decided. “I can tell she is weary and heartsore. Let her have a peaceful night before we burden her again, wife.”

“Aye, you are right, old man,” Maybel agreed


The Hepburn of Claven’s Carn and his men stayed long enough to eat a good meal while their horses were rested and fed. They departed in early afternoon, Tom seeing them off.

Rosamund watched from an upper window. She saw Logan turn once as they rode from her courtyard, but she knew he had not seen her, for she was shrouded in shadow. Why had he turned back? she wondered to herself. Then, shrugging, she put herself to bed and slept until first light the following morning. When she woke she did not at first realize she was home. Then a small ripple of contentment slipped over her, and she knew exactly where she was. Rosamund arose and dressed herself. Leaving her chambers, she walked slowly down the stairs. Even the servants were only just beginning to stir. Unbarring the front door of the house, she walked outside into the dawn.

About her the air was sweet and fresh with the new grass in her meadows. She could hear the faint lowing of the cattle and the baaing of the sheep. The birds sang brightly as they did only in the fullness of spring. Above her the sky was clear and bright blue. She looked east and watched as the stain of gold on the horizon deepened and the bright crimson ball of the sun began to creep upwards. The horizon exploded with color: gold, lavender, scarlet, and orange. It was so unbelievably beautiful that she began to weep. She was home at Friarsgate. Safe at Friarsgate. But Patrick Leslie, the Earl of Glenkirk, was lost to her forever. I do not know if I can go on without him, Rosamund thought to herself, wiping the tears from her face. He should be with me now, seeing the sunrise, smelling the sweetness, knowing my love.

But it would not be that way between them ever again. “How can I bear it?” she whispered aloud. “How can I live my life without you, Patrick?” But she would. She would live her life without the Earl of Glenkirk because she had no other choice. She had responsibilities. She had Friarsgate. She had Philippa, Banon, and Bessie to consider. She might grieve in the privacy of her own chambers, but she must live her life for Friarsgate and for her daughters now. Turning away from the sunrise, Rosamund walked back into her house, where she found Edmund awaiting her in the hall.

“It will be a good day,” she told him. “Have you eaten yet?”

“Nay,” he answered her.

“Then, let us break our fast together,” she said.

“Do you not wish to go to mass first?” he asked.

“Not today,” she replied. “Sit, uncle.”

He accepted her offer, saying, “A message came for you while you were gone. I answered it for you.” He handed her the packet.

Rosamund opened it, scanning the contents. Then she said, “I have no time to attend the king right now.”

“I do not think, niece, that it was an invitation. It seems more a command to me.”

“I will go in a few months,” Rosamund responded. “If another royal messenger arrives, I shall say I am too ill to travel.”

“You cannot ignore the king’s command,” he counseled her.

“I know,” Rosamund replied. “I will go after the harvest and return before the wintertime. I have no desire to be away from Friarsgate again, Edmund.”

“I wonder what King Henry wants of a simple countrywoman?” Edmund said.

“I wonder, too,” she said. He did not want her out of lust, she knew. There were more than enough women at court willing, nay eager, to satisfy his desires. Why had he sent for her? And then she knew. Lord Howard had probably put two and two together, especially after Tom said she was his cousin, and had been at court as a girl. Well, Henry Tudor would have to wait until she was ready and strong enough to travel. Rosamund did not think she was able to do battle with her king at this moment in time.


***

A month passed, and it was June. Word filtered up from the south that King Henry had departed for France with a great army sixteen thousand strong. With them went horses and much ordnance for the battles to come. The king was boyishly eager for the encounter. His advisers were nervous. Henry Tudor had no heir. What if he were killed? Would England be plunged once again into civil war?

At Friarsgate the summer passed peacefully. Tom spent much of his time at Otterly overseeing the construction of his new house. He came from time to time with amusing reports of its progress. New Otterly would be ready for habitation by late autumn, and his servants were up from London and already in residence in the half-built house. They brought with them several cartloads of furnishings. Lord Cambridge arrived bursting with all sorts of information. On the king’s orders, the goldsmiths of London had fashioned a magnificent harness and trappings for King Henry’s warhorse. The monies expended would have purchased at least twenty brass field ordnances. Another thousand pounds was given over to the purchase of solid gold buttons, aglets, branches, and elegant chains so that when his armor and crusader’s tunic was laid aside, the royal doublet would glitter like a sunburst. Emperor Maximilian had sent his fellow monarch a solid silver crossbow in a silver gild case. The royal arms and weapons were equally magnificent.

“I am devastated I was not there to see it,” Tom lamented.

“Hal was always one for his appearance. He will surely spend his father’s treasury,” Rosamund noted.

“There is more, dear girl. Brew houses were constructed in Portsmith so that beer could be made for the armies and the navies. They brewed a hundred tons of beer a day. I do not know how many brewers, millers, and coopers were there, making their barrels as fast as they could. The beer was put in its barrels in deep trenches covered with boards and atop the boards’ turf. But despite this royal generosity, the soldiers complained the Portsmouth beer was too sour and demanded the barley malt beer of London. But it, too, proved sour. I suspect the damp of the coast is responsible. At any rate, the fleet sailed, the ships holes filled with men, horses, and sour beer. And all arrived safely in France.”

“Then Hal has his amusement and will not notice that I did not answer his summons,” Rosamund said.

“You will have to go eventually,” Tom told her. “I will travel with you, dear girl. I dare not trust you to the king’s care, now, do I?” He chuckled dryly.

Word began drifting into the north. The king had arrived safely at his possession of Calais. He had been warmly welcomed by the cheering citizenry. But suddenly England found itself practically the sole supporter of the Holy League. Henry Tudor’s father-in-law claimed he believed himself near death and was reluctant to leave Spain. He was, he said, “too old and too crazy to endure war.” But Ferdinand, had the truth been known, was a skinflint who did not choose to expend monies in a war someone else could fight for him. Venice sent no troops, and in that city it was said the pope himself had become neutral, for the papal offensive that had been planned to come through Provence or Dauphine never materialized. The Holy Roman Emperor sent few troops, but those sent were paid by the English. His daughter, Margaret of Savoy, however, continued to defy France loudly, daring the French to do their worst, for she, she claimed, would be protected beneath English arrows.

In late July the English departed Calais and moved into the French territories. A successful skirmish near St. Omer left them eager for more. On August first the English arrived before the walls of Therouanne. After ten days of siege, a herald arrived bringing a message from Henry Tudor’s brother-in-law, France’s old ally, King James of Scotland. The English were to leave Therouanne. They were to depart the territories of France. They were, in fact, to return home. James Stewart was warning the young English king that war would shortly break out between them if he did not cease his hostilities in France.

Henry’s reply was a strong and clear one. “It becometh ill a Scot to summon a King of England. Tell him there shall never Scot cause me to return my face.” Henry continued by pretending outrage that James had threatened his ally by marriage. He grew more publicly indignant as his audience grew. “Recommend me to your master,” he told the herald as he sent him off, “and tell him if he be so hardy to invade my realm or cause to enter one foot of my ground, I shall make him as weary of his part as ever was a man that began any such business.”

The Tudor king knew his wife, acting as his regent, and his captains at home would handle any situation with Scotland should it arise. The King of England was free to pursue his war on the continent.

On the sixteenth of August, near the town of Guinegate, the English and the French in almost equal numbers met. Surprising the French, who were not expecting them so soon, the English charged. The charge sent one group of French soldiery careening into another. Panic ensued. The French turned and galloped off in a retreat, leaving behind their standards and weapons, and most oddly, many of their spurs. The English followed, gaining a great victory that became known as the Battle of the Spurs. Afterwards the English took Therouanne, and Henry, with his army in tow, went on to Lille, where he paid a social call on Margaret of Savoy. He was royally feted and charmed everyone, playing any instrument offered him, proving his prowess with his silver crossbow and dancing in his stockinged feet until dawn lit the skies about Lille.

Well rested, the English king moved on to capture the great walled city of Tournai with its double-thick walls and ninety-nine towers. And after that, he captured five more walled towns, seven in total. By autumn, when England’s king left for home, he was no longer considered an untried boy king by his contemporaries. He had become Great Harry, and the news of his victories spread back to England and as far to the east as the sultan’s capital of Istanbul. Henry VIII was now considered a man to be reckoned with by the world about him.

At Friarsgate, before all of this was known, Rosamund received a message from her old friend, the Queen of Scotland. Margaret saw what was coming. She knew her husband’s plans and how her arrogant, clever brother had driven him into a corner from which he had but one way of emerging: by means of war. There could be no escape from what was happening around them.

“Gather your harvest in, and keep close to Friarsgate,” she wrote. “I do not believe either of the armies will come your way, but beware of those on both sides of the border, especially the deserters. God keep you, dear friend, and those you love safe from this storm that is upon us. I am again with child. When it is possible I will write to you again.” The letter was signed simply, “Meg.” Not “Margaret R,” but “Meg.”