Reflections

The more modern architecture of the city's cathedral, beautiful and gothic, is a deceptive mask of just how old it is. Throughout its history, the building has had additions, remodelings, and has even needed to be largely rebuilt after two separate instances. A fire, roughly two hundred years ago, had claimed the southern transept. Even earlier, the whole entire western front entrance and the bell tower on top of it had collapsed under the violent scourge of the Great Heathen Campaign.

That was many centuries ago and, even then, the structure was old.

Back in the near-millennium when it was first built, Cafton Cathedral initially served as a monastery for a religious order of nuns dedicated to the life of St. Cecilia, a prioress who had lived all the way back when the faith was still relatively new to this land. I remember not how she had come to be venerated and canonized, only that she had a hard life and was given the unfortunate honor of a martyrdom.

All of the saints had lives of that sort in some way or form. Nearly every one I have ever heard tale of was a culmination of pious struggle and miracles of varying power, punctuated by purpose bestowed from on high which so culminated in a fate most terrible.

In this day's reflections, I find myself most of all pondering the nature of these holy lives and their struggles.

How might it be that one overcomes such trials as insurmountable as those faced by the likes of such bastions of greatness?

As much as I so wish that I could pray about it, I still find myself unable to stomach the idea. I've not spoken to God since uttering my vow to Larkin those few days past. I cannot hope to bring myself to.

And so I simply kneel at the front of the nave, looking up at one of the cathedral's most beautiful, stained glass depictions of the venerated prioress…

“I've not seen that look from you before, my lady.”

Just as with my conversation with Lord Edmund, I had not at all expected to be approached here. Another unusual deviance from my typical day?

I follow the distinct and familiarly haggard voice to the approaching, gaunt presence of the elderly Bishop Henry coming to check on me. Though far from my regular minister, I've known him practically all of my life from visiting Cafton while coming with father to attend his liege's court.

“I've just been thinking, your excellency…”

“I can see that,” he says, pressing his lips together as he comes to carefully kneel himself down beside me with a quiet grunt. “You are pondering the life of the prioress?”

Well, he is not entirely off the mark.

“I only wonder how such people as the saints could still find trust in the will of God throughout the span of so many tragedies…”

The bishop digests my inquiry for a moment, taking in the topic with thoughtful consideration.

“If you can so believe it, my lady, God did not necessarily choose his saints for their piety. We understand this because of the particular examples of such holy individuals who only became champions of our Lord after living lives of great sin. Court officials guilty of corruption and greed, men and women who have sold their lives and bodies to lust, soldiers who had committed sins of undue brutality…”

He scoffs.

“Though I may not count them all on more than a hand, there are at least more than one case of a saint being martyred by one who would directly go on to carry that legacy themselves as some of the holiest of saints the church has knowledge of.”

He looks up at the stained glass depiction of the beautiful nun.

“God calls upon his chosen not for their piety, but because he has prepared them for what he asks of them to do and knows that they are so capable of accomplishing it.”

T'is my turn to scoff.

“With his help,” I say a little bitterly. “I too could make it through the greatest trials if I could speak with him directly. He answers me not.”

The bishop chuckles.

“As he so does for the majority of his flock if you wish for an eloquent phrase or two. I'm afraid a conversation with him is not quite the same as what you and I are having now,” he teases. “But God does not call upon us to hold still and sit around as he works through our bodies, for the miracles he performs through us are not fairytale magic.”

He smiles.

“Every saint has gone out to directly seek our Lord's will through their own hand and their own effort, not simply raising the dead on a word.”

I frown, looking off in consideration.

The bishop lifts his chin to the depiction of the prioress.

“Do you recall the story of how St. Cecilia came to be venerated?”

I shake my head shamefully for not even knowing the story of the dedicated saint for this cathedral but, thankfully, it seems to me that he is ultimately unbothered by it.

“The holy prioress came to these lands originally as a missionary within the imperial age. The tribal kingdoms who had called these surrounding lands home were not yet of our faith and in most cases were outright hostile even after the old Empire had officially considered them pacified. There were many occasions in which battle with them was entirely unavoidable.”

The bishop looks at me, his eyes passionate despite his deeply worn features.

“Through the grace of our Lord, before one such great battle was to commence, she came to perform multiple miracles in her service to these people and, with the works of her dedication and teaching, had come to save every one of their souls. They returned to their homes and, through the bond St. Cecilia had established with them, came to establish a peaceful integration with the Imperials.”

I study the bishop as he looks back at the glass.

“But the legion garrisoned in the old town here had not appreciated this. Though united in one society, the tribes were not yet imperialized and their old faith, once a convenient excuse to alienate them, was no longer of any factor. She had been instrumental in their pacification herself and so that made her the most apparent target for the soldiers' wrath.”

I look back to the depiction, my eyes looking back upon hers once more.

“As the faith was still not yet fully accepted within the Empire, she was entirely at their mercy when they came for her. The chroniclers state that she sang in preparation for final judgment all the way until they hacked her throat…and then so continued until her payer was all but finished.”

I frown, for it was an awful story even if I had known already that she were a martyr. How might this parable even help me?

“...Why are you telling me this?” I ask and he grimaces in pain as he pivots his body to face me.

“Because we—and I do so mean all of us—are not called by God to simply do what we can, my lady…”

His eyes find mine, looking intently into me.

“We are called to do what we must.”

…I sit in silence, quietly pondering his words as he struggles to rise to his feet and I am forced to come to his assistance.

“Your excellency…?”

“Yes, my child?” He answers, straightening himself.

“...Do you know of any saints who have performed miracles in recycling time?”

That question—of all it is that I have said so far—is what finally earns me a look of utter bafflement, as though I had spoken madness.

“No. From where have you might possibly gotten that question?”

I shake my head.

“Never mind it,” I say in embarrassed frustration.

Though I am hardly so faithful as to be a saint, I was at least hoping that I might have had something more to go off of with this ordeal of mine…

Though I know not quite how to respond after his lecture, I quietly thank Bishop Henry and see him off to check upon the other parishioners of the cathedral's refuge before coming to kneel back down in my original place.

So again do my eyes come to land upon the nun in the glass, studying her form as it has been depicted, praying so diligently even through the trauma of the multiple, bleeding gashes stricken within her neck…

…

God will not wait for me...for I must do it on my own.

But how do I even go about it? What can a lady do?

I ponder further on the events of the daily cycle but the words of Lord Edmund find me once again.

…The attack is risky. He knows it is risky. He said so himself that the men-at-arms are in much more danger than the men on the wall. Perhaps he could be convinced that it is futile?

He may not know that the prince will escape and that the charge is futile, but I so happen to…

I slowly come to place my hands together.

…I think that I just, perhaps, might be able to turn this into something to work with…

—

When next arrives the morrow, I carry through my day in the very same manner of how I had just: A purposeful rise and prompt assistance from Maud, a hasty retrieval at the front door, and a pleasant but structured chat with the man I so dearly love. By the time I have finished with my daily morning routine beyond that, I am making much the same great timing as previously in navigating my still newly christened shortcut.

I quicken my way to the western gate and, just as I had anticipated, find the duke mounted among his knights and the slowly growing formation of men-at-arms.

Thinking it perhaps may be presumptuous to approach him on my own, I decide to simply find my way to the spot that I had claimed last time in the hope that I might recreate our interaction. I stand as I had, trying my best to look about with confidence and anticipation as I wait for his advance even as I feel my nerves growing to get the better of me…

I begin to panic as the moment of my first trial fast approaches. Should I have rehearsed? Oh God, perhaps I should have considered this on the way over. What dare I even say? How do I approach this? Is there even a particular way that I ought?

“Excuse me,” calls a voice and I flinch with a start.

Here we go…

I turn to the voice and, instantly, my intentions become weights upon my mind as I find myself giving in to the pressure of the sight before me.

T'was different when my intent here had not included the duke but now that my eyes find the man of the stark-blackened armor, so adorned in gilded trimming and sitting atop a destrier so large it might serve to pull a wagon with the affers…I see now why he so has them.

He is the picture of intimidating.

If here I feel this way whilst I stand not even against him, I should never dare to imagine what he might look like to the men he so faces this battle, in full gallop and lance couched…

“M-My Lord S-Sir Edmund!”

Get it together, Ellie.

“Good afternoon!” I say.

There's a moment, like a tick, in which he seems to develop a puzzlement about him but it thankfully departs as quickly as it had come.

“Good afternoon, young lady Ellie,” he says, voice gruff and worn with his years. “You're not here this early to see us off, are you?”

I nod unsteadily, more nervous even than when I had first spoken to him yesterday.

“I am. My betrothed and my brother's household knights.”

This is the part where he should smile in soft reassurance; where he might make idle smalltalk of my father and how he might have been proud of my brother and I.

…But that comes not this time.

Instead, he reaches over the lowered rim of his bevor and rubs the gray of his goatee in apparent consideration before coming to speak.

“Is something the matter, Lady Eleanor?”

I freeze.

“N-no, I…! Erm…”

He raises a brow, clearly beholden now that something is plaguing my mind.

I sigh, deciding that speaking now must be my only course of action.

“Is...is this the right course, my lord?” I ask. “P-perhaps there might be a…a better way?”

I struggle pathetically through the words.

“The-the wall is safer…Would there not be less casualties among the men if…if they all simply manned the walls?”

The duke shares a pitying glance with one of his other knights.

“Perhaps they could remain hidden within the battlements!”

“Lady Ellie…” He says, “I know you harbor a great concern for the men of your household and…Sir Laurence—is it who you are engaged to?”

I lower my gaze and nod, ashamed and embarrassed at the duke's consolement. I feel not even as though I am a consideration to this man.

“I understand your concern for their safety—Larry's a lucky man to have so caring of a woman as you—but you might consider that your best service to him and his wellbeing at this moment would just be to simply stand by his side to see him off.”

I frown bitterly for I know that to not be true at all.

I should not simply do nothing while my beloved is to go and die alone in a field!

“But my—!”

But the duke has already turned his attention elsewhere before I am able to respond, effortlessly cutting off my words with his commanding authority.

“—Sir John, please see that Lady Ellie has an easy time finding Larry and then find your place.”

And, with only but that simple utterance to the knight beside him. He makes to depart.

I try calling to him, demanding of him, “Wait! My Lord Edmund!”

But I am only blocked by the approach of the knight, his words firm in their declination of the duke's behalf.

“Lady Ellie, I must please ask that you refrain from that, for your liege has much to consider at the moment.”

I cannot believe this is happening. I was not merely denied, I was passed-off to another!

Ignored entirely!

He had not even attended me for but a moment longer than was required to be rid of me!

Is that truly all of the consideration that I am worth?

The question of it plagues me all the way through my wait and eventual visit with Larkin when Sir John finally departs from me.

I think to ask my love of it before my moment to bestow the favour upon him. To which he simply laughs it off to my dismay.

“My love,” he chuckles, “take this not as it were an insult but you've hardly the commanding presence to warrant a man so busy as Lord Duke Edmund to spare his attention entirely for you. I worry you might not have the capability of holding your housekeeper's attention in that way.”

I frown bitterly in direct dispute of my beloved's own impish grin, entirely unable to refrain myself from slapping the rerebrace of his arm. A hearty giggle from my churl-of-a-beloved, and the sting so clinging to my fingers as I try to shake it free, my only reward.

“Whatever it was that you wish to speak with him about, I shall have a word with him about when t'is all over with today,” he offers, taking the sore hand and placing upon it a kiss.

I try my best to ignore the promise uttered with so little regard for the possibility that I know to be inevitable: that he could be stricken from his destrier and then slain. But it matters not how many times I've dutifully arrived at his side in the end, I yet still find myself struggling to avoid the tears that come with it. I can only escape the topic of it and, by drawing the embroidered, silken ribbon from my sleeve, I find my salvation.

As always, I take his sword arm, I wrap the token of my favour once, twice, and then lovingly fasten it upon his arm, and speak of my love for him, that he might find the courage to stand before his hour of death and then go to it unflinchingly and without regret.

And it hurts all the same as it ever.

But, after the men are called upon and I am forced to once more relinquish him to the field of which he shall lie within, I am already considering the next day and how I shall hope to proceed.

My impish beloved may have so maddeningly worded it but he was not exactly wrong…I have never had the kind of voice my father had. Even my brother—when he could be bothered to not ignore and hide from his responsibilities—had a presence which commanded respect.

But that was something I have lacked and only my noble status has ever allowed me to retain some manner of influence over the servants of my household.

I'd been considering the teasing words of Bishop Henry and, in this moment, they again seem to refrain within the fore of my mind…

‘I'm afraid a conversation with him is not quite the same as what you and I are having now.’

I slowly bring my hand up to gently clutch at my mother's cross, hesitant before finally mustering the resolve.

…Is this your bidding, O Lord?—I pray.

What is it that I would so do?

…I wait but frustratingly have nothing further enter my mind than the words of my beloved I had already heard mocking me ever since his departure.

‘I worry you might not have the capability of holding your housekeeper's attention in that way.’

…God may not answer me, but I wonder if, perhaps, I might yet have an idea.