Chapter 1

Settling on her golden hair a hood spread with pearls and tying round her waist the widow’s girdle, the Countess of the White Moor entered the chapel where she prayed each day for the soul of her husband, killed by an Irish giant in single combat.
That day she saw, on the cushion of her praying-stool, a white rose. At the site of it she turned pale and her eyes grew dim; she threw her head back and wrung her hands. For she knew that when a Countess of White Moor must die she finds a white rose on her stool.
Knowing that the time had come for her to leave this world, where she had been within such a short space of time a wife, a mother, and a widow, she went to her room, where slept her son George, guarded by waiting women. He was three years old; his long eyelashes threw a pretty shade on his cheeks, and his mouth was like a flower. Seeing how small he was and how young, she began to cry.
“My little boy,” she said in a faint voice, “my dear little boy, you will never have known me, and I shall never again see myself in your sweet eyes. Yet I fed you with my own milk, so as to be really your mother, and I have refused to marry the greatest knights for your sake.”
She kissed the locket in which there was a portrait of herself and a lock of her hair, and put it around her sons neck. Then a mothers tear fell on her sons cheek, and he began to move in his cradle and rub his eyes with his little fists. But the Countess turned her head away and fled from the room. Her own eyes were soon to close forever; how could they bear to look into those two adorable eyes where the light of understanding had just begun to dawn?
She had a horse saddled and rode to the castle of Clarides, followed by her squire, Freeheart.
The Duchess of the Clarides kissed the Countess of White Moor: “What good chance has brought you here, my dear?”
“It is an evil chance that has brought me here; listen, dearest. We were married within a few years of each other, and we became widows of a similar misfortune. In these times of chivalry the best die soonest, and only monks live long. When you became a mother I had already been one for two years. Your daughter Bee is as beautiful as day, and nothing can be said against my son George. I like you and you like me. For I must tell you I have found a white rose on the cushion of my stool. I am going to die. I leave my son to you.”
The Duchess was aware of the news that a white rose brings to the ladies of the House of the White Moor.
She began to cry, and promised in her tears to bring up Bee and George as sister and brother, and not to give anything to one without giving half to the other. Then the two ladies put their arms around each other, and went to the cradle where little Bee slept under light blue curtains, as blue as the sky. Without opening her eyes she mover her little arms, and as she opened her fingers five small pink beams appeared to come out of each sleeve.
“He will defend her,” said the mother of George. “And she will love him,” the mother of Bee answered. “She will love him,” a small, clear voice repeated.
The Duchess recognised it as that of a spirit that had long lived under the hearthstone.

On her return to her manor the Lady of the White Moor divided her jewels among her maids, and, having anointed herself with odorous essences and put on her most beautiful clothes to honour that body which will rise again on the Day of Judgement, she laid herself down on the bed and went to sleep forever.

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