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Authors: The Knight of Rosecliffe

BOOK: Rexanne Becnel
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Josselyn appeared from a shadow and, at her knowing smile, Rhonwen ducked her head against Jasper’s shoulder, happy, embarrassed, and overflowing with emotion.
“Is there no privacy in this place?” Jasper grumbled.
“There will be time enough for privacy later,” Josselyn informed him.
“We are to be wed,” Rhonwen revealed. She pressed a kiss to Jasper’s neck, smiling as she did.
“We know,” Isolde and Josselyn chorused.
As they made their way across the bailey, they were joined by others: two maids, Osborn, and two of the knights. Gavin and Gwen. With an entourage of well-wishers they ascended the steps to the great hall, where Rand awaited them, grinning his pleasure. Rhonwen swept the bailey with her gaze, noting the stout, encircling walls, the lit gate tower, and neatly organized yard.
From the outside Rosecliffe appeared a cold and menacing fortress. Yet within it was a home, warm and welcoming and safe.
Unaccountably Newlin’s words echoed in her mind.
The end of the world as you know it.
Yes, her old world, her old life, was done. But the new one would be better. Love would make it so.
 
 
When you come home your men among,
You shall have revell, daunces and song.
 
—
anonymous medieval verse
Rosecliffe Castle
June 1146
The chapel bells rang Sext, pealing across the countryside, summoning the people of both castle and village. Gavin and Gwen together yanked on the knotted bell cord, throwing their meager weights to the task, and flying off their feet amid great good humor.
“Come, come, children.” Josselyn clapped her hands at them. “Enough giggling. A baptism is a solemn event.” But her wide smile gave the lie to her words. She was so pleased to be named godmother to Rhonwen and Jasper’s new son that nothing could ruin her mood. Not even her own noisy offspring.
The priest waited in the bailey beside a stone font that had been carried out from the chapel. It was a glorious day, and Rhonwen had insisted the baptism be performed in God’s greatest church, serenaded by the fresh breeze and freewheeling birds, with the bright sky arcing over all.
Rhonwen held the baby in her arms, with Jasper’s arms circling about them both. She looked down into the dark unblinking gaze of her precious son, then up into the gleaming eyes of his proud father. Though people crowded the courtyard, eager for the ceremony and the feasting to follow, for Rhonwen there was only Jasper and her sweet little Guy.
“I love you,” Jasper whispered, smiling down at her.
She nodded, unable to speak, for unexpected emotion had caught in her throat. “I love you too,” she finally managed. “And I love this wondrous child you have given me.”
“That you have given me,” he amended.
On impulse she offered the child to him and when he gladly took his son into his arms, quick tears stung her eyes. How could she have lived her whole life, never suspecting the happiness to be had merely from the sight of a beloved babe held so lovingly in the arms of his beloved father?
The priest began the ceremony. Guy suffered oil upon his brow well enough. He even smiled when Father Christopher lifted the ewer of holy water to his head and poured.
“I baptize thee in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” the priest intoned.
Then the bells began again to ring, and Guy jerked in his father’s grasp. His tiny face screwed up in a frown. At the first furious wail, Jasper gave Rhonwen a worried look.
“Just hold him close and comfort him,” she said.
When he did that, however, the baby began to root greedily against his chest. Jasper’s eyebrows arched, the priest coughed, and Josselyn and Rand began to laugh.
“He needs your sort of comfort,” Jasper said. Then he gave her a crooked grin and added in a lower voice. “And so do I.”
As she took Guy into her arms, Rhonwen smiled into her husband’s face. “Comfort, you say. Hmm. I believe … yes. I believe I can manage that.”
A hot light leaped in Jasper’s eyes, and she felt an answering heat. Nearly three months they’d restrained themselves, but tonight would see an end to it.
“I love you.” He mouthed the words and the bells of Rosecliffe seemed to peal the message across the land. He loved her. She loved him.
Was ever a woman so blessed?
Barnard Castle, Northumbria
June 1146
The bells of St. Joseph’s Abbey, not a league distant from Barnard Castle, rang. Prime and Terce, Vespers and Compline. Every three hours the monks of the abbey pulled and leaped, marking the passage of the hours and days and seasons of the year.
Those bells proscribed Rhys’s life at Barnard Castle, as surely as did the unchanging rhythm of his arduous days. Two years and a month he’d been under Friar Guilliame’s tutelage. It felt more like ten years since he’d been gone from Wales, and yet sometimes he felt as if he’d been ripped from his homeland but last week.
The pealing of the bells for Sext ended, and at once the three lads who labored beside him put down the horse brushes they’d wielded for the past several hours. Time to wash up and prepare for serving the good friar and the rest of the castle retainers.
Edward, a skinny fourteen-year-old, dashed off first. Of late he’d taken to mooning over Lady Barnard’s silly little daughter, and he took great pains with his appearance. Philip and Kevin, twelve and nine, hooted with laughter at Edward’s haste.
But Rhys frowned. He understood how a woman could overwhelm a man’s senses, making him behave the fool. A woman could turn a smart man into a half-wit. She could make a hardened one soft.
Hadn’t Rhonwen done as much to him?
His jaw clenched in anger to remember how much he’d loved her—and how much he’d lost because of her. Barnard Castle was not a prison. He worked among the other squires, though he was of an age to be knighted. Not that he desired that self-congratulatory Norman title. But he was a man stuck among mere lads. He learned Latin and French and etiquette
among them. He served his English master at table, and sometimes helped him with his dress and other personal matters. All in all, better than the dungeon at Rosecliffe, though it had taken him a long time to admit as much, even to himself.
At first he’d fought every effort to conform to a life among the English. But he’d been beaten into submission enough times to know that rebellion did him no good. So he watched and listened and learned, and he took advantage of all they taught him. No doubt the FitzHugh brothers thought to indoctrinate him to their English way of life. The more fools they, for Rhys would never abandon his loyalty to the land of his birth.
For now, however, Rhys was content to let them believe they’d succeeded. But he was a Welshman. The blood of dragons ran in his veins. Neither manners nor dress nor close-cropped hair could alter that.
He’d learned to ride like an expert and to wield a sword with cool-headed determination, using his mind as much as the strength of his arm. He tilted better than most of the knights at Barnard, and his archery skills were second to none. He answered to Friar Guilliame and Lady Barnard as he must, and plotted revenge against Jasper and Rand FitzHugh the rest of the time.
Now he was the last to leave the stables, pouring a bucket of fresh water into a water trough, then hooking the empty bucket on its hook. He patted the massive bay destrier on its heavily muscled rump, then stepped out of the stall and closed it. Outside the stables he saw the castle folk making their way to the hall for their midday dinner.
One of the dairy maids sent him a shy smile. He nodded, but he steeled himself not to smile in return. It was a woman who’d brought him to this: exile in a foreign land among a foreign people.
He’d vowed long ago that he would never give a woman that sort of power over him again.
Rosecliffe Village
June 1146
From behind her, Isolde heard the chapel bells ring Vespers. Though the sun yet showed in the summer sky, the hour grew late. Soon enough the castle gate would be lowered. If she was not home before then, her mother would raise a great hue and cry.
But Isolde was restless. Ever since Guy’s baptism earlier in the day, she’d been possessed of a strange and yearning feeling, as if some great change were about to occur. So she’d gone into the village with her friend Edythe. Now she should be hurrying home, but instead she’d paused at the unfinished edge of the town wall, where the cliffs began their sharp drop to the sea.
She leaned against a pile of rough-hewn masonry blocks and stared past the wall that separated the town from the wild fields and hills, until a cramp in her stomach brought a grimace to her face. All morning her stomach had felt odd. Now it was beginning to hurt down low. She pressed her palms against the crampy area. Had she eaten something that had spoiled?
A raven glided over the top of the wall, startling her. She turned to go home, then gasped when she spied a figure in the shadows of the wall. “Newlin!” she exclaimed, her hand at her throat.
He smiled and his ancient face creased in odd folds and wrinkles. “You do not contemplate another adventure in the forest.” A statement, not a question.
Isolde smoothed a loose tendril of hair from her eyes. “Of course not,” she answered with as much dignity as she could muster.
“That is good,” the old bard responded. “Your mother is calling for you,” he added.
She let out an exasperated sigh. “Why does she persist in treating me like I’m still a baby?” She lifted her chin and
squared her shoulders. “I’m eleven—almost twelve years old now—practically old enough to wed. I’m well able to see to my own welfare while I’m in town. Besides, ever since my father sent that villainous ogre Rhys ap Owain away, there’s been nothing to fear.”
Unfortunately her bravado was undermined by another sharp pang in her belly and she bent over in pain. When it eased she looked sheepishly at Newlin. “I think I may have eaten something that was spoiled.”
He smiled and began to rock forward and back, just a tiny movement, but it was mesmerizing. “You are no longer a child,” he said. “Go to your mother. She will assist you. She will be pleased to know her eldest child is become a woman this day.”
“A woman?” Isolde echoed. She pressed her hands to her cramping stomach as understanding dawned. “A woman,” she repeated, and her frown became a smile. She’d been waiting for this day for a long time, but now that it had come she was a little afraid. She wanted her mother.
“Yes, I had better be going,” she said, giving him a hasty wave. Then she started at a fast trot up the hill toward the castle gate.
Newlin watched her until she reached the bridge. Then he closed his eyes and rubbed his fingers over the lids. It was growing harder and harder to focus his wayward eyes on a single object. His thoughts, too, seemed often to veer in two directions at once.
So too were they all torn. A young woman, English in many ways, but Welsh in her heart where she did not yet see. And across the miles, far from the lands of his birth, an angry young man clung to his Welsh ways even as he soaked up the sensibilities of the English.
Meanwhile another babe was born and christened, half-Welsh, half-English.
Then he opened his eyes and smiled and turned for the
domen
. Life changed. It struggled and twisted and reinvented itself constantly. But it always went on.
 
 
When stones shall grow, and trees shall no’,
When noon comes black as beetle’s back,
When winter’s heat shall cold defeat,
We’ll see them all, ere Cymru falls.
 
—
anonymous child’s verse
 
 
In my previous novel,
The Bride of Rosecliffe,
an excerpt appeared under the title,
Mistress of the Wildwood
. That book has since been retitled
The Knight of Rosecliffe.
I hope you enjoy Jasper and Rhonwen’s story.
St. Martin’s Paperbacks titles by Rexanne Becnel
 
 
HEART OF THE STORM
THE MAIDEN BRIDE
DANGEROUS TO LOVE
THE BRIDE OF ROSECLIFFE
THE KNIGHT OF ROSECLIFFE
“Rexanne Becnel combines heartfelt emotions with a romance that touches readers with the magic and joy of falling in love … A star of the genre!”
—
Romantic Times
 
“Ms. Becnel creates the most intriguing characters and infuses them with fiery personalities and quick minds!”
—
The Literary Times
 
Dangerous to Love
 
“Rexanne Becnel writes stories dripping with rich, passionate characters and a sensual wallop that will have you reeling!”
—
The Belles & Beaux of Romance
 
The Maiden Bride
 
“Becnel spins an absorbing, sexually charged tale of revenge and redemption in twelfth-century England.”
—
Publishers Weekly
 
“A masterfully told story by skillful and inventive author Rexanne Becnel. She has imbued her medieval romance with just the right amount of drama and sweet poignancy to capture a reader’s heart and mind.”
—
Romantic Times
 
“THE MAIDEN BRIDE pulled me into the medieval period with the force of a whirlpool, and held me prisoner until the end.”
—
Rendezvous
“Ms. Becnel spins a fascinating story of customs, marriage, and love in twelfth-century England. Her characters are intense and vibrant, their lives complex.”
—
The Time Machine
 
Heart of the Storm
 
“Great characters, a riveting plot and loads of sensuality … a fabulous book. I couldn’t put it down!”
—Joan Johnston, author of
Maverick Heart
 
“Well-written and enjoyable.”
—
Publishers Weekly
 
“Tempestuous and seductive, this winner from Rexanne Becnel will enthrall from the first page to the last.”
—Deborah Martin, author of
Stormswept
 
Where Magic Dwells
 
“A passionate, compelling story filled with engaging characters.”
—
Library Journal
 
“Rich settings always bring Becnel’s medieval novels to life.”
—
Publishers Weekly
 
“Enthralling … Another irresistible medieval romance from one of the best.”
—
The Medieval Chronicle
 
A Dove at Midnight
 
“A non-stop read. Rexanne Becnel understands the Medieval mind-set, and beguiling characters’ passions and adventures will hold you enthralled. Once more, Ms. Becnel demonstrates that she is a master of her craft.”
—
Romantic Times

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