Rosalba's Tale begins:
"Little Witch!" A slap always followed the
malediction. "Dost thou
stare?"
This was my
father. He did not like children whose opinions showed in their eyes. Large
dark eyes I had—my mother's eyes—and when I displeased him, he was not slow to
punish the unbroken will he saw.
I was born
at the village of Aysgarth in the house of a stark yeoman farmer, Master
Whitby. He was not pleased when my mother gave him a daughter, and then another
and another, as if by the force of her own contrary will.
Master
Whitby acknowledged me, however, as he acknowledged my sisters. I was written
down in the book at the Church of Our Lady as "Rosalba Whitby, legitimate,
born to Master Raymond Whitby and his espoused wife, Roseanne."
When I was
old enough to hear the tale, my mother very kindly let me know matters stood
otherwise. To learn I had been conceived in liberty and was not the get of that
humorless, ham-fisted tyrant fills me, to this day, with satisfaction.
Aysgarth lies on Wenslydale, north and west of the great
Keep of Middleham. Here our peasant houses grew from the ground like mushrooms.
The poorest were of turf, but the best homes, like the one in which I was born,
rose upon a costly timber frame.
Those hard
packed earthen floors! In the East Wind time, rain slanted through the central
smoke hole and pelted the fire of our hearth. I remember huddling close,
thinking how the flames were like serpents, lowering their fiery heads and
hissing whenever the drops landed. During the worst weather, the entire family,
including Master Whitby's curly-pelted white cattle, sheltered with us...
ROAN ROSE may be purchased at: http://amzn.com/149224158X
Juliet Waldron
