Read Online The Ballad of Rosamunde by Claire Delacroix - Free Book Online

by Claire Delacroix

    *

    Part
One

    Galway, Ireland - April 1422

    The hour was late and the tavern was
crowded. Padraig sat near the hearth, watching the firelight play
over the faces of the men gathered there. The ale launched a warm
hum within him, the closest he was ever like to be to the heat of
the Mediterranean sun again.
    He should have gone south, as Rosamunde had
bidden him to do. He should have sold her ship and its contents, as
she had instructed him. Galway was as far as he had managed to sail
from Kinfairlie - and he had only come this far because his crew
had compelled him to leave the site of disaster.
    Where Rosamunde had been lost forever.
    Instead he had returned here, to the site of
his upbringing, to his mother’s grave and the tavern run by his
sister and her husband. It had an allure for him, with the bustling
port and the cobbled streets, the high gates and the memories, but
he would trade it in a heartbeat for a voyage over the seas with
Rosamunde.
    Perhaps Galway would have to do.
    Padraig enjoyed music, always had, and song
was the only solace he found in the absence of Rosamunde’s company.
He found his foot tapping and his cares lifting as a local man sang
of adventure.
    “A song!” cried Declan, the keeper, when one
rollicking tune came to an end. “Who else has a song?”
    “Padraig!” shouted his sister. She was a
pretty woman, albeit one who tolerated no nonsense. Padraig
suspected there were those more afraid of her than her husband.
Much like their mother in that. “Sing the sad one you began the
other night,” she entreated.
    “There are others of better voice,” Padraig
protested.
    The company roared a protest in unison, and
so he acquiesced. Padraig sipped his ale, then pushed to his feet
to sing the ballad of his own composition.
     
    “ Rosamunde was a pirate queen
    With hair red gold and eyes of green.
    A trade in relics did she pursue,
    Plus perfume and silks of every hue.
    Her ship’s hoard was a rich treasury,
    Of prizes gathered on every sea.
    But the fairest gem in all the hold
    Was Rosamunde, beauteous and bold.
    Her blade was quick, her foresight sharp,
    She conquered hearts in every port.”

    “Ah!” sighed the older man across the table
from Padraig. “There be a woman worth the loss of one’s heart.”
    The company nodded approval and leaned
closer for the next verse. Even his sister stopped serving, leaning
against the largest keg in the tavern, smiling as she watched
Padraig.

    “ Trade in relics, both false and true
    Her family trade she did pursue.
    No man cheated her and told of it,
    For Rosamunde allowed no debt.
    She vanquished foes on every sea
    But lost her heart to a man esteemed.
    Surrender was not her nature true
    But bow to his desires, she did do.
    She left the sea to become his bride,
    But in her lover’s home, Rosamunde died.
    The man she loved was not her worth…”

    Padraig faltered. His compatriots in the
tavern waited expectantly, but he could not think of a suitable
rhyme. He remembered the sight of Ravensmuir’s cliffs and caverns
collapsing to rubble, the dust rising, his men holding him captive
so that he couldn’t dive into the disaster in search of Rosamunde.
He put down his tankard with dissatisfaction, singing the last line
again softly. It made no difference. He had composed a hundred
rhymes, if not a thousand, but this particular tale caught in his
throat like none other.
    “ Her absence was to all a dearth, ”
his sister suggested.
    Her husband snorted. “You’ve no music in
your veins, woman, that much is for certain.”
    “ The son she bore him died at birth, ”
the old man across the table suggested.
    Padraig shook his head and frowned. “There
was no child.”
    “There could be,” the old man insisted.
“’Tis only a tale, after all.” The others laughed.
    But this was not only a tale. It was the
truth. Rosamunde had existed, she had been a pirate queen, she had
sailed far and wide in the buying and