The Ballad of Rosamunde

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 selling of religious relics, she had been both beauteous and bold.

And she had been lost forever, thanks to the faithlessness of the man to whom she had surrendered everything.

Padraig mourned that truth every day and night of his life.