The Lady of the castle threw open the wooden shudders, breathing deeply of the chill spring air.  The stark grays of early dawn cloaked the countryside.  As always, she peered toward the thin band of rust and orange creeping onto the eastern horizon, toward the old seaport road, still choked here and there by muddy drifts of snow.  The road her lord would take, if he were ever to come back to her.
     Perhaps today, just perhaps, if the Virgin Mother willed...
     She shook her head.  No.  A thousand days now and no word of him.  No sign that he even still walked the earth.  Her thoughts swept to a far-off desert land she would never see, where her husband fought the infidels that held the Holy Land.  Three long, bitter years he had battled and suffered for Christianity.  Blessed Virgin, had he not endured enough?  When would his crusade end?
     Her eyes flashed toward a rise beyond the outer wall and the two stark, lonely markers there.  Her lord would have his share of sorrows here as well, but at least he would grieve at his own hearth, in her arms.
     A rider crested the farthest hilltop.  His galloping stallion kicked up a halo of mud and ice, back-lit by the rising sun.  Her heart fluttered when she saw that the rider was armored, then frowned deeply when she saw his standard was unfamiliar to her.
     She turned and barked orders to the mousy handmaiden that never strayed far from her open door.  The heavily-freckled girl clumsily gathered her skirts and dashed off to convey her Lady’s wishes.  Within minutes, she saw the guards below push open the gates for the visitor.  Once inside the courtyard, the rider reigned in his horse hard, the beast frothing with near-exhaustion.  Dismounting, he strode into the castle’s keep, Bearing in his arms a burden wrapped in garishly-colored outlander’s cloth.
     The door to the Lady’s chambers swung open and the knight stood there, dour and stoic as the stone that framed him.  His chainmail armor was blackened in spots and rusted in others, and many links were broken and missing.  In his hands, nestled in its bed of foreign cloth, lay a battered longsword in a leather sheath and a heavily dented shield, whose fading coat of arms matched that of the banner hanging in the castle’s great hall.
     Sweet, Blessed Virgin.  No.
     The rider silently strode up and knelt before her, bowing his head low.  He lay the sword and shield at her feet.  She barely heard his empty words for a fallen comrade-in-arms, of honor and courage unmatched.  All she could do was stare numbly at the knight’s gifts.
     Finally, she mustered the strength to speak.  Quiet as murder, she bade him go.  His stream of flowery, well-rehearsed words guttered to a stop.  He bowed low, backing out of the room and closing the door behind him.
     The Lady of the castle stood, unmoving, unthinking, for many long minutes.  Tears, which she thought would be so overpowering in this moment, would not come.  A dull numbness spread through her limbs.
     Below her, the exposed pommel of the sword glinted in the sunlight slanting through the shutters.  The shimmering called to her, somehow.  Take me, it said silently.  My master and my friend bade me to do this one last task and I must not fail him.
     She slumped to her knees, banging them uncaringly on the straw-strewn floor.  She reached for the sword.  Slowly she unsheathed the heavy blade, her hands gliding down its silvery length as she lay it across her lap.  Its incessant gleaming seemed almost alive, piercing behind her eyes and  into her soul.  The reflected light grew ever brighter, as it had on the day she had first seen the sword...

     The afternoon was sunny and fey, a perfect autumn day for the last tournament of the year.  She was sitting in her father’s pavilion with her sisters and cousins and their handmaidens, giggling and sighing at the steel-plated warriors with their monstrous weapons, crashing and smashing and yelling and swearing and nearly killing themselves for land and some silly code of honor no one obeyed anyway.
     She was following one nearby match very closely, a young knight barely out of squirehood against a grizzled veteran who barked a maniacal laugh every time he countered his opponent’s blows.  Finally, there was a terrible banging of metal on metal and something drew a high, gleaming arc through the air.  It twirled right at her, the flash of sunlight off the metal nearly blinding her.  The sword buried itself halfway to the hilt in the ground not two paces from where she sat.  All the ladies around her gasped and fanned themselves intensely, but she could only stare, fascinated, at the silvery length of steel.  The defeated young knight strode up, angrily wrenching the helmet from his head and dashing it to the ground in disgust.  As he reached to the sword’s hilt to pull the weapon free, he looked up and met her stare.  His eyes were bluer than the sky.  He smiled at her, the sun dancing in his auburn hair.
     In that moment, she knew her destiny.

     She could hear the pommel of the young knight’s sword pounding on the gates to her father’s keep, intermixed with yells of defiance.  Her father, a Duke in the King’s court, would have nothing of a lowly bachelor knight marrying his daughter.  Her father had thrown the young knight bodily out of the keep himself and had ordered the gates bolted and locked.
     Her father refused to listen to her weeping pleas and pulled his arm savagely away as she grasped at him, begging.  He explained slowly, as one would to an addled three-year old, that their family would be much better served if she reserved her virtue for a noble better placed in the court.  Someone important with whom her family could form an alliance.  The young knight, unlanded and from a minor clan, was simply too common to mix with her family’s blood.
     She screamed things at her father no lord’s daughter should ever dream of uttering.  She ran to her room, crying uncontrollably.  And all the time she could hear her lover’s sword banging at the keep’s door, his strident voice calling for her.

     She walked the town marketplace, looking for linens with her handmaidens.  She tried hard to push the thoughts of the young knight out of her mind, knowing her father would never allow their union.
     Suddenly voices rose from the opposite side of the square and the sea of peasants and merchants gathered in the street parted like water before a ship.  A man on a horse, yelling at the top of his lungs, rode like a madman straight toward her.
     The rider, the young knight, shouted her name.
     She would forever remember that moment, his steed thundering toward her, the word sheath on his belt slapping rhythmically against the horse’s haunch.  Her handmaidens screamed and scrambled for cover, but she only stood, laughing with joy.  In that short heartbeat of time, she did not care about her family or her duty or her father’s lands, or anything else.  The entire world was reduced to his impish smile as he rushed toward her, to rescue her like from silly romantic folktale.
     He stopped only to gather her up onto his horse.  The stunned crowd could only stare and mill about, unsure of what to do.  Once she was firmly nestled across him on the saddle, one powerful arm wrapped around her waist, he lashed the reigns and spurred the horse toward the out gates.  They were far away, giggling with relief and happiness, before her father or any of his vassals could think of pursuing them.
     They were married the next day in a small country chapel overgrown with heather and roses.

     She discovered her husband in the courtyard of their castle, the exposed blade of his sword reflecting the moonlight.  He knelt before his favored weapon, one hand on its guard, praying to the cross of its silhouette.  She quickly sidled back to just within the keep’s barbican, watching him from the shadows.
     Their argument earlier in the day had waxed hot and bitter.  Their son was far too young for the arts of war her husband insisted the lad start learning.  He was little more than a baby!  But the boy’s father would hear of no dissent, even from her.  Like she was some docile cow, who could only stupidly obey her herder of a husband!  Finally, after an hour of vicious insults, they had both stalked off to be alone.
     She regretted her anger now.  Her husband was only doing what he thought best for their son, she knew.  This cruel world would devour any male of noble birth who was not learned in the ways of battle.  She just could not stand the thought of her beautiful little boy being hurt in the rough training required of a page.
     Her husband provided well for his family.  Their first few years had been a long trial of hardship, but then her husband had distinguished himself on the side of the King in the insurrection against the crown several years before.  He was rewarded this castle and a small barony for his valiant service.  Compared to her father, who now lived in destitution and stripped of all noble rank for having the monumental misfortune of backing the rebels.
     Now her husband kneeled and prayed quietly, whispering for the Almighty to forgive him for raising his voice in hatred to his wife.  He petitioned God to intercede for him, to make her forgive and understand that he would never do anything to deliberately hurt her or their son.
     She almost went to him then, but hesitated at disturbing the privacy of his prayers.  He finished and stood, sheathing the sword.  She melted as well as she could into the deep shadows of the barbican as he walked past into the castle, unseeing.  His frown curved deeply.
     As soon as practical, she would go to him and apologize.  Perhaps when he lay down for the night.  And then she would remind him, in the most pleasurable way she knew how, of why he was her husband.

     The armorer clucked his fat tongue as he surveyed his work.  Her husband twisted this way and that, making sure his epaulets and brocade were properly arrayed.  At his complaint of chafing on the elbow, the armorer rushed to stuff fresh straw between the armor joints there.
     She stood close by, frowning.  Her back ached.  The child growing in her insisted on squirming every few heartbeats, it seemed.  Her husband was sure it was going to be another boy and be a fine runner, judging from the baby’s powerful kicks.  She believed it would be a girl, and all the squirming and kicking just showed what a talented dancer she would be at court.
     He husband would not be here for the birth.  He, like so many nobles of the kingdom, were preparing themselves to sail in a few days’ time to join the main armies bound for the Holy Land.  He husband wanted to leave with a flourish, so he planned that his final ride through his fief would be in full armor and regalia, surrounded by his attendants in their finest clothes.
     He smiled as his sword was brought to him by an eager squire, freshly oiled and polished.  He ran his finger along its length, pleased with its finish and edge.  He thanked the boy as he slid it into its scabbard and patted it like an old friend.
     Finally, he was ready.  He bade all his servants to leave the room while he said his farewells to his wife.
     She could scarcely believe it had come to this.  Even if everything went well in the Holy Land, he would still be gone for years.  How can she endure alone for all that time?  How had she ever lived without him?
     He spoke of his duty to his Eminence and to God Almighty.  To him, it was a grand adventure, a silly game.  He smiled and laughed, trying to change her tears to a grin.
     She smiled, shakily, for him.  Their embrace was awkward, with his armor between them, but fierce nonetheless.
     She watched from their bedroom window as he rode toward the sea.  At the crest of the farthest hillock he waved to her.  She returned the gesture with a leaden heart.

     A new vision struck her, one impossible for her to have seen.  Her husband lay dying from a terrible gash in his side, surrounded by the fly-choked corpses from a battle long-since concluded.  The sun was setting, its prominence in the sky soon to be usurped by the cold desert moon.  Her husband felt utterly alone as precious blood and heat slowly drained away through his wound.
     He still clenched his sword in hand, the one thing he would not let go of even in the long hours he drifted in and out of wakefulness.  The weapon was a gift from his father, and in memory of that great man it had never left his side.  He slowly hefted the blade into view and, half-jesting, thanked it for a lifetime of flawless service.  The sword, of course, did nothing to reply, but in that moment her husband knew, somehow, that it listened, even beamed with pride at his praise.  Perhaps when you use something often enough, if you come to love it after a fashion, you impart to it a tiny portion of your soul and it will quiver with the breath of life.  Her husband chuckled in delight at this revelation, coughing blood.  With his last breath, he asked the weapon to find its way back to his family, to serve his son as well as it had him.  And to tell his wife, in whatever way it could, how much he loved her.
     Anything, the sword said silently.  Anything for you.

     The strange cascade of visions stopped and the Lady stared down at the sword in her hands.  It gleamed back at her, content at having done its duty.
     She smiled briefly in gratitude, for the weapon’s visions opened the floodgates of her heart, dammed up with years of frustrations and pain.  Tears came rushing to her.  Convulsing sobs possessed her like a demon, as streams of moisture crashed onto the exposed blade.  She wept hard for a long time.
     Finally she held the crossbar of the blade up, level with her eyes.  She did not wonder at the miracle of its sentience, only accepted it into her hands like an old friend.  She had known from the moment the knight had presented her with his gifts what decision she was destined to make this day.  She asked the blade if it would perform, in the name of her husband, one last service for her.
     The sword glinted eagerly.

     The rider was still within the castle.  He had sworn at the foot of his friend’s grave, dug in the sand of that distant, alien land, that he would look after his fallen comrade’s family, who now had no lord to protect them.   He intended to keep that vow, no matter what.
     He spent the morning in the great hall, talking to the castle’s residents and learning of the tragedies that had befallen the lord’s family in his absence.  Their second-born, a daughter, had died at birth.  She had entered the world feet-first, and suffocated in the birth canal before she could draw her first breath.  Their son had been ravaged by a fever that no leech or poultice could cure.  He was months in the dying, his body wasting away until at last he shuddered his final breath in his mother’s arms on Christmas Morning.
     The rider shook his head, praying for the Trinity’s mercy for his friend’s wife.  To endure such losses...
     The Lady’s shrill scream thrust an icy dagger into his soul.  The rider bounded up the spiraling steps and pounded hard at the bolted door to the Lady’s chambers.  Her freckled handmaiden was beside the portal, weeping with worry.  Finally, he flung himself through the door and into the chamber with a sickening crack of tortured wood.
     The Lady of the castle lay on her side on the cold floor stones, looking up past him, past all earthly concerns, the sword buried in her chest, just left of center.  The balance of its length jutted out her back.  Blood pooled under her in an unceasing torrent.
     The rider shook his head in disbelief.  By the Trinity, what had happened?  The sword was at such an angle and had been thrust with such force that it seemed impossible that the Lady could have performed such a horrible act herself, even by falling on it.  But what other explanation could there be?
     A stray cloud cut off the sunlight pouring in through the window.  For a brief moment the sword seemed to wrap the shadows about itself, as if in mourning for dear friends.
 
 
 
 

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Background graphics by  Jang Hee Yun.