‘I...I don’t understand.’
‘I’m illegitimate,’ he said bluntly. ‘A bastard. How looks your dream now? Shattered, I’ll warrant.’
‘How little faith you have in dreams. Nothing can damage a dream. Oliver, I care not for your birth.’
He stared and an expression – pain? regret? – washed over his face. It was gone so swiftly she thought she must have imagined it. ‘Farewell,’ he repeated, in the soft voice he’d used when he’d kissed her.
‘Farewell.’
He clapped his heels into Lance’s sides and the horse leaped away.
Rosamund took one or two faltering steps and found herself on the sands staring after them. And then they were gone and all she could hear was the cry of the gulls, and the slow beat of sea against sand. A line of hoof prints led away from her.
A wave ran up the beach and frothed about her feet. The tide was coming in – the tracks wouldn’t last long. As the next wave seethed its way towards her, a blob of blue caught her eyes. Her May Day circlet. The next wave moved inexorably towards it and neatly, tidily, picked it up and carried it away. The sea would take it into the deep ocean where the dragons lived. Eyes smarting, Rosamund watched it go and the thought that she had managed to keep at the back of her mind for most of the day, finally broke free.
I am going to marry Alfwold.
She stood motionless at the water’s edge as the shadows lengthened. Her eyes strained out to sea and the tide crept up the shore, until at last she stood thigh-high in the cold water. The pink robe was drenched, heavy with salt, and she didn’t care. As the lowering sun dipped behind the cliffs, the rocks made weird, spiky shadows. When at length a dusky shadow fell over her, she shook herself. She felt as though she had been asleep for a thousand years and had awoken in a foreign land.
The sea had filled the bay, the hoof prints had been washed away. Slowly, she waded up the sloping shore. She shivered and headed for home.
Chapter Two
‘Move, you lazy wench!’ It was barely dawn, and in the mill Rosamund’s father Osric was already at work. He was in a dark mood. He had locked the gears into position and was watching with careful, if bleary, eyes as the mill wheels began to turn. The mill was made entirely of wood. It had two floors and Osric was on the lower level, ensuring that the mechanism ran smoothly.
Rosamund was on the higher level, the ‘stone floor’, frantically sieving grain. The grain belonged to widow Eva. Eva’s strength was waning and as a result the grain had been poorly winnowed. It was full of chaff and grit. If it wasn’t sifted properly, both her father’s grindstone and Eva’s flour could be spoiled.
Set in the middle of the boarded floor on this upper level were the two pairs of grindstones. They were almost worth their weight in gold. Rosamund sent some grain pouring down the shoe and watched as one of the top stones – the runner – began to rotate over the stationary bedstone. She and her father would only be working with one pair of millstones today. The other pair was ground out and awaiting Alfwold’s return.
At the top of the mill, a raised platform was used for both storage and sleeping. The sacks of milled flour were hoisted up at the end of each day. They were safe high up, well out of the way of thieves, be they rodent or man. The miller slept next to the grain sacks alongside his wife and daughter.
Aeffe, Rosamund’s stepmother, was yet to come down. Aeffe was rarely up when the mill began the daily grind and, of the three members of the family, she was the only one who could sleep through the clattering it made.
‘Rosamund!’
Osric’s voice was almost drowned out by the rising chatter of wooden cogs and turning wheels, but Rosamund had learned to jump at his slightest whisper. She dropped the sieve, cursing softly as a fistful of grains rattled like hail onto the wooden boards. She hoped her father hadn’t heard, surely the wooden cogs made more noise than a few specks of grain... If he hadn’t barked like that, she wouldn’t have spilt it.
Today her hair was bound into a thick braid. Flicking it over her shoulder, she poked her head through the trapdoor.
‘Father?’
He was staring morosely into an empty meal bin. His shoulders were hunched, he was angry again. Lord, was he going to be moody all day? A couple of loose grains tumbled through the trapdoor and Rosamund grimaced as they fell onto his bald head and bounced into the empty meal bin.
A pair of bloodshot brown eyes turned up to her. ‘Wastrel!’ Thin lips twisted. ‘Do we have so much grain that you must toss it about?’
‘I’m sorry, Father, it won’t go to waste. I’ll sweep it up. Did you want me to balance the grindstone?’