Rosa das Rosas & The Tales of Castle Rory
By Rory Marsden
My minstrel is called Master Kit. He plays the gittern, the rebec and the drums. He could actually play any instrument, he’s so clever. He also sings, his voice a beautiful lyric tenor. His talents don’t stop there, though. He’s a magician, adept at conjuring tricks, juggling, turning somersaults and skipping backwards! It’s said he knows the future, and he’s certainly made some highly intriguing remarks about that. There’s no way of verifying what he says of course; only time will tell. And you can’t ask him; Kit never explains anything.
I think of Master Kit as a friend, but experience has taught me that friends come and go. Kit, himself, has done exactly this, although – so far, at least – he always returns. Some would say it’s my fault, since I’m also often away from home. I can’t expect people to hang around waiting for me, and they have their own business to conduct. Different priorities from mine. Other interests. But I, too, always return home, and sometimes I’ve returned to find that certain people aren’t there any longer. They’ve left for good, even though I’d thought they were permanent members of my household. Where Kit’s concerned, this puts me on edge. I don’t want to lose him.
Some years ago, while we were travelling in England, Kit bought me a gittern. In case you’re not familiar with the instrument, I’ll explain: its body is made out of a single piece of wood, hollowed out to create a sound box. The neck of the instrument is marked out with frets made of animal gut. At the top is a carved decoration, and attached to it are tuning pegs which turn like spindles, winding animal gut strings around themselves. The strings are attached to the bottom of the gittern, where they pass over a wooden strut, called the bridge. Thus, the tuning pegs wind the strings taut, creating tension. With the string really tight, you can make a musical sound when you pluck it.
Kit uses a plectrum made of animal horn, so I do too. You hold the plectrum between the fingers of your right hand, and you use it to pluck the strings. Plucking a string makes it vibrate. Your left hand holds a pair of strings down at a particular fret, so as to make different notes. The shorter the vibrating length of the string, the higher the pitch of the note. There are four double courses of strings, and the bottom course has its two strings an octave apart. My gittern is a beautiful instrument, with inlaid decoration around the edge and an elaborately pretty cover to the sound hole. This cover is called a “rose”.
Kit gave me the gittern as a present, and I was touched. But I couldn’t play it, so I asked him to teach me. I was particularly keen to learn a song I’d heard him singing, but then he told me it hadn’t been written yet! I told you he knows the future! Kit loves to confuse me with strange statements and weird predictions. Anyway, that song was called “Gaily the Troubadour”, and I learnt to play it quite well. But Kit’s “it hasn’t been composed yet” comment rather put me off it in the end.
So, for a while I didn’t play my gittern at all. Then I walked the Camino, all the way from Hambrig in Mallrovia to Santiago das Cunchas in Smander. I took my gittern with me, playing it for pleasure in the evenings. I sing too, and have a resonant bass voice which I think is quite pleasant, if I do say so myself.
On the way home from Santiago, my party met Don Alfonso X of Castile. He’d taken over a town called Santo Domingo de la Calzada. An extraordinary man with a huge ego was Alfonso – perhaps justifiably, since he had both personality and talents to match. I met him in the summer of 1267. Back then, I was in my late thirties; Alfonso, a decade or so older, and the most powerful man in Europe. King of Castile and León, he wanted to expand his kingdom and conquer all of Iberia and most of southern France. His understanding of military strategy, the power-play between opposing rulers and the value of high-level negotiations was second to none. Still is, come to that.
But Alfonso was also fascinated by languages, law, music, astronomy and literature. Because of this, he’s known as el Sabio. “Alfonso, the Wise”. In the last eight years, I’ve come across the man or his activities several times. His conquest of Murcia, in particular, directly impinged upon my life and the lives of people I cared about. His desire to make a fortune from trade resulted in his personal involvement in Mallrovian affairs. Here’s my assessment of him: he’s compelling, ruthless and often cruel. He has enormous charisma. He tolerates no argument, even as he listens to the scholars he collects in his court, keen to learn from them and paying them well for what they do. But if you annoy him, you’re out on your ear.
When I met him in person, I, too, fell under his spell. Not that I liked the man. I can say that with complete honesty: I didn’t like him at all. So why was I attracted to him? It was because of his music.
Alfonso X has written many songs, all of them dedicated to the Virgin Mary. He calls them cantigas, and the whole collection is known as the Cantigas de Santa Maria. He has even written them down, something not many troubadours can do. Kit approves of this. In fact, Kit told me Alfonso is using something called “mensural notation”. I had to ask him to explain this, and it means that Alfonso has given not only the pitch of the notes in his melody, but the rhythm as well. Kit says this is an advanced form of notation for our time. Meaning? I asked sceptically. But got no coherent reply, of course.
Alfonso’s lyrics are all in praise of Saint Mary, or they recount miracles she performed. But – again, according to my minstrel – the scribing of the music has been done by other musicians, and gorgeous illustrations have been added. This doesn’t surprise me. Alfonso likes to create books and codices. He made one for the laws of his kingdom, and another one full of astronomical tables. Creating a book of his songs is exactly what he’d do. And, if the others are anything to go by, it will be beautifully presented and sumptuously produced.
If you’re interested in the songs themselves, I’m sorry, I don’t know many of them. In any case, Alfonso is still writing them, so it’s impossible to know how many there will be in the end. They often feature a refrain, tacked onto the various different verses.
In Santo Domingo de la Calzada, I spent an entire afternoon with Alfonso, during which he taught me one of his cantigas. He said it was his favourite, but I learnt afterwards that I was being manipulated, and the choice of this particular cantiga was part of that. It’s called Rosa das Rosas, and the refrain goes like this:
Rosa das rosas e fror das frores,
Dona das donas, sennor das sennores.
Rose of roses and flower of flowers,
Lady of lady, sovereign of sovereigns.
It’s a paean of praise to Our Lady, of course. At least, that’s what Alfonso intended when he wrote it. But, as you’ll soon see, his intention when he taught it to me was quite different. Here are the lyrics to Verses One and Two:
Rosa de beldad’ e de parecer,
E fror d’alegría, e de prazer.
Dona en mui piadosa seer.
Sennor en toller coitas e doores.
Rose of beauty and of good repute,
And flower of joy and of delight.
Lady in most pious being,
Sovereign in removing cares and pains.
Atal sennor dev’ home muit’ amar,
Que de todo mal o póde guardar;
E póde-ll’ os pecados perdõar,
Que faz no mundo per maos sabores.
Such a sovereign a man must greatly love,
Who can guard him from all evil;
And can forgive his sins,
Since she works in the world through harsh trials.
After each verse, you have the refrain: Rose of roses, flower of flowers, and so on. So when I tell you that Alfonso’s young, beautiful and unmarried daughter was actually called Rosa, you may start to get an inkling of the way the King of Castile sought to control me. Rosa was the illegitimate daughter of Alfonso X and Mayor Guillén de Guzmán, a woman from a distinguished Castilian family.
Rosa’s father offered her to me as part of a business deal. I didn’t want to marry her, but I had no choice. It was obvious that a liaison between Castile and Mallrovia would be massive for us. I could not turn down the offer. We were married the day after Alfonso taught me his Rosa das Rosas cantiga, and the song went round and round in my head for a long time afterwards. Yes, he was a clever man, and his daughter is clever too.
I can still play the song, although I don’t remember all the verses now. Those dusty, sun-drenched, vivid-hued days in Iberia seem a long time ago, but Rosa, who shares my home and my bed, is a constant reminder of it all. She has the high cheek-bones, black hair and sallow skin of her race; an imperious bearing and a haughty demeanour. But when I play her father’s song, she softens. She rocks our children on her lap and both she and I are transported back to Castile, and to long days on the road in the hot Spanish sun.
[The above is a note found at the back of Lord Rory’s journal.
It is dated November, 1275, and it was written in Hambrig, Mallrovia.
Rory was Lord of Hambrig at the time.]
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My name is R. Marsden, and I write Epic Medieval Fantasy. It’s Epic because it’s a long-running saga; Medieval because it’s set in the mid to late 13th century; Fantasy because some of the places are fictitious and there are elements of alchemy, magic and fortune-telling woven through the story. My series is called Tales of Castle Rory.
Book One is The Box of Death, and it’s where you should start, but it’s in Book Two, The Soldier of Fortune, that Lord Rory acquires his gittern. In Book Five, The Paradise Garden, he meets Alfonso X and learns to play the cantiga, Rosa das Rosas.
My gittern was built by Ugo Casalonga in Pigna, Corsica. Ugo is a lovely man, whom I met in Yorkshire in 2019, when he was exhibiting his instruments at the Medieval Music in the Dales festival. I bought the gittern from him then and there, but a few years later I went to Corsica and visited his workshop. It was a wonderful experience, and (believe it or not), I came home with a second gittern!
As well as writing my medieval saga, I’m a musician specialising in Medieval music. I perform in festivals, at parties and at re-enactment events. Do get in touch if you’d like me to play at your event.
I hope you will read and enjoy my Tales of Castle Rory. If you sign up for my newsletter, The Household News (it’s completely free!) you’ll get a free copy of my ebook prequel to the series. It’s a novella called Mansurah: Jonny’s Tale. The narrative takes place during the Seventh Crusade, and it underpins everything that happens later.
Please go to www.talesofcastlerory.co.uk for more information, to join The Household, and for links to my books.
By R. Marsden
October 2025
