The Lonely Eagle

(Spring, 2009)

Daniela stood in the ankle deep water at the river's edge and bent to soak another tunic. It was not an easy task, as the swelling of her stomach made even the simplest act of bending awkward at best. But then no one had ever told her that being pregnant made life easier…

 After making sure the eagle-emblazoned cloth was good and soaked in the cool water, she straightened up with a grunt. No, this was not as simple as it used to be at all she thought, and waded back up onto the riverbank. Once there she handed it to the woman who sat there hunched over a wooden washboard, then picked up another tunic from one of the several baskets they had laid out nearby.

 "Do you want to switch Daniela?" the other woman asked, "I can soak if you want to scrub."

 "No Adelheid, I am fine," Daniela said as she headed down to the water again, "baby just does not like washing. I think it must be a boy after all."

 "No, it's a girl then!" chuckled a third woman as she too worked on soaking and scrubbing her own clothing in the water, "she is probably not looking forward to doing this for the rest of her life."

 "Well Ilaria, we will not be washing soldier's laundry forever," said Adelheid. "not once Daniela and I open up our inn. The Thirsty Eagle will be the finest rooming house in Rhodok!"

 "Then we will be washing our guest's laundry!" Daniela laughed.

 "Oh do not go on like that," said Ilaria. "I am proud of you girls for what you are doing, following your dreams like this, and talking your men into giving up the army life. I was so happy when my Vitus gave it up to take on fletching full time. Now he is home all day and my kids have a father around to raise them, instead him tramping around the countryside playing soldier."

 Daniela nodded at the much older and rounder woman. She would be so happy to have a place of her own, and have Benoit out of the army and doing something safe. Every time he went out on a patrol she had to wonder if this would be the time he did not come back. With that thought she glanced up at the nearby bridge that led to town. He and the other men had marched across it at dawn to begin another sweep of the border. She hoped they would be back by sundown, as they usually were.

 "And how are our innkeepers today?" a new voice broke Daniela from her reverie. She turned to see that two more women were walking to the riverside, each with baskets of clothing in their arms. The speaker was young, soft in all the right places and firm in all the others. Daniela had to bite down the pang of jealousy she felt whenever she saw her. She was far from unattractive herself, but Chiara had the looks of a goddess.

 "Pour us a mug of ale barkeep," said the leaner and harder woman beside Chiara. "carting this laundry around is thirsty work, especially first thing in the morning."

 "First thing in the morning Eilonwy?" Adelheid laughed as the other women came up to the river and began their own washing. "It will be midday soon!"

 "Midday for you maybe," said Eilonwy with a yawn. "but not for me. I was working all night."

 None of the other women answered that. They all knew what Eilonwy did for a living. It was not something any woman was proud of, Daniela thought, but not everyone was a fortunate in their lives as others. She hoped she would never be put in that position herself someday.

 "Still ripe as a melon I see Daniela," Chiara said as she stooped in the river alongside her and nodded at Daniela's swelling midsection. Then she bent to soak a dress of fine velvet and linen in her hands. "You should have kept taking the silphium, now you are stuck with a baby while that man of yours stomps around the countryside doing who knows what."

 Daniela felt the other woman's words stick into her like a dagger. Before she could reply Adelheid spoke.

 "Oh come now Chiara," her friend protested. "she did not marry some animal who goes whoring around. Benoit is a good man. So are all of our men, yours included."

 "Men make a good show," said Chiara. "but as soon as the cat is away, the mice will play. They are all like that. The worst thing any woman can do is count on a man."

 "Well now, as long as Vitus comes home with enough coin for me and the little ones I could care less if he spent the rest on Eilonwy!" Ilaria declared, bringing all of the women to laughter.

 "If they were all doing that, then I would not be standing here in my bloomers doing laundry!" said Eilonwy, "I would be sitting pretty all decked out with jewels and velvet dresses, like the high-born lady that Chiara waits on."

 "I am just saying you have to keep your options open," Chiara explained as the other women laughed once more, "me, I am not tied down to anyone. No matter what happens, I can move right on to the next, best thing. A girl has to watch out for herself first."

 "Miss heart of stone, our Chiara," said Ilaria. "I do not see you moving on from your Didier."

 "He has his uses," Chiara said with a little smile, glancing down at the silver necklace she wore.

 "There are probably better things out there than just a common crossbowman like him though," Daniela pointed out, trying to get the younger woman to admit that she cared for him.

 "I am sure there are, but I am not looking now," Chiara said with a faraway look on her face, "he certainly knows how to make a woman happy."

 The sound of hooves on wooden planks brought the attention of the women from their talk to the bridge nearby. There they saw a short line of riders, all in splendid mail and carrying long lances. At their head was a white-haired man wearing a fine surcoat of black decorated with a ivory eagle. He sat straight as an arrow in his saddle, looking the very epitome of knightly strength.

 "Good morning ladies!" he called down with a smile and a wave, "how goes the washing?"

 Daniela froze. He was actually speaking to them, the Lord himself!

 "It would go a lot better if you and your men would come down and lend a hand my Lord Severous!" Ilaria shouted back up, while Daniela and the other women looked on in shock.

 But Lord Severous only laughed, "don't tempt me, I just might with ladies as fair as yourselves!" He joked as he trotted off the bridge and away to the town beyond, "but then my armour would rust and I would never get it off!"

 "Now there goes a right fine man," Daniela declared, still amazed that such an important man would even speak to them, "I wonder what has him in such fine spirits today?"

 "Been seeing one of his mistresses he has," said Chiara. "he has bastards all over the province."

 "And so what if he does?" said Adelheid, "he does right and takes good care of them, and that is what matters. "

 "He's been like this since his wife died, back when most of you were too little to remember," Ilaria explained. "I have never seen a man love a woman so much as he did her. When she died it broke his heart, everyone could see it. I swear it was nearly a decade before anyone saw him smile again."

 "I wonder why he does not marry again," Daniela remarked, "he is not young anymore, but there must be plenty of high-born ladies who would line up to have him."

 "Oh there are," Chiara said, "I hear them talking when I am working in the castle. But he will not have any of them.

 "I think he is lonely," Eilonwy remarked, "he wants only his old Lady, so no woman he meets is ever good enough. But a man needs a woman in his life, so he keeps looking and hoping he will find that one who is special enough to be her equal. But they never are. No one can compete with a ghost."

 "I never took you for such a romantic Eilonwy," said Chiara.

 "Oh I see it all the time," the other woman answered. "most of the men who come to me are just lonely. They need a woman. Not to poke, just to be with for a while, so their lives do not feel so empty. You can see it in their eyes. They are just too full of their pride and machismo to ever admit it, even to themselves."

 "You said you were going to name your inn the Thirsty Eagle, after Lord Severous," Eilonwy turned to Adelheid and Daniela, "I think you should call it the Lonely Eagle."

 The women turned back to their washing, and Daniela thought about what Eilonwy had said. What would she do if Benoit died? Could she just go on to the next best thing, as Chiara would say? She did not think so. There was only one Benoit in the world. No other man had his smile, had his touch. There was no other man she could argue with half the night and still love when it was all over.

 Ilaria packed up her family's clothing in her basket, preparing to return to town. Before she left she turned to Chiara.

 "You should marry that man of yours girl," she said. "he is your eagle. Do not end up like our Lordship. You will never find another like him."

 "Me, marry a common soldier like Didier? Not hardly!" Chiara rolled her eyes, "besides, he probably has a different woman in every village between here and Swadia. He would not waste his time marrying me."

 "The way he dotes on you?" Daniela found herself saying, "are you an idiot?"

 "Aye" Ilaria agreed, "if my husband looked at me the way Didier looks at you, well, I would have a lot more than three kids!"

 "Pfft, Didier is hardly so smitten with me," Chiara insisted, "I am just another girl to him."

 "What about that silver necklace he gave you?" Daniela argued.

 "Oh, he took that off a dead Swadian noble is all," Chiara said, "to him it was just a pretty piece of loot.

 "Loot, he told you that, and you believed him?" Daniela retorted, "he didn't take that off some dead knight. He saved all of his pay for half a year. He even spent all of his free time in the evenings when he wasn't with you in the smithy riveting mail rings. Just to make enough money to buy it for you. Because he wanted to impress you! He just told you it was loot because he is too proud to admit what he went through to get it."

 Chiara's eyes widened as she looked down at the necklace that draped her neck and fell plunging toward her breasts. She did not say a word, just traced the fine silver links with her fingers, then allowed them to linger over the glittering ruby pendant shaped in a rose that hung from its end.

 Daniela turned to continue her work, wondering how anyone could be so stupid as to not see what was so plainly in front of them. Ilaria left, and soon Eilonwy did as well. That left her there with Adelheid, who quickly turned the conversation back to their future inn. Chiara on the other hand was uncharacteristically silent as she finished washing both her lady's clothes and her own.

 Then they heard the sound of many heavy feet approaching on the road, accompanied by the jingling of mail, creak of leather, and clattering of plates. They all knew what that meant and looked up with a start. Soldiers were marching on the road into town.

 It only took a few moments for Daniela to see the top of the eagle standard that they carried come into view. She instantly recognized that as Lord Severous' eagle. That meant it was their men. But why were they returning so early? She wondered, as a sinking feeling descended into the pit of her stomach.

 "Oh no, what is wrong?" Adelheid said what Daniela was thinking and began walking up from the river to the bridge. Daniela pulled herself from the water with the help of a silent and now stone-faced Chiara and followed.

 The men were already coming across when they reached the end of the wooden span. They were dirty and disheveled. Many sported torn mail and bloody bandages. Some only walked with the help of their comrades. Many were still and being carried on makeshift stretchers. All of them had a hollow, exhausted look in their eyes.

 "Benoit!" Daniela heard herself call out as the soldiers began marching by. She was vaguely aware of the other two women likewise calling for their men. The world felt like it was spinning beneath her. Her heart raced, and that emptiness in her belly dropped away into a yawning abyss.

 "Daniela!" Benoit's voice came like a burst of sunlight on a cloudy day, "is that you?"

 Then there he was. All ragged and dirty, his helmet gone and face splashed in dried blood, he was the most beautiful sight Daniela had ever seen. Before she knew it she was running as fast her pregnant body could move and falling into his arms. He said something about the blood not being his, but she barely heard him. She shook with joy and relief, and for a few moments nothing else mattered in the world except that the man she loved was alive.

 "Didier!" she heard Chiara still calling, "Didier, where are you?"

 Daniela looked around. Adelheid was beside her with her own husband. But she did not see Chiara's man anywhere. She looked up at Benoit, and the dark look on his face told her everything before he even spoke.

 "He… fell…" his voice came with a ragged cracking, "it was Swadian knights. They ambushed us on the road. There was no time for the pikemen to deploy. They were in among us before we knew what was happening."

 "No!" Daniela heard Chiara cry, and felt the younger woman shoving past her. Two more men were now bringing Didier past. He was laid out on a rough stretcher cut from branches, a terrible red hole piercing the mail of his breast. His body was still, and his skin that pasty white that only a corpse can possess.

 Chiara fell upon his body, causing the men who carried him to drop their sad cargo in surprise. She wrapped her arms around his smashed frame and wept, rocking him back and forth as she cried.

 Daniela felt her heart sink once more. Here she had been feeling overjoyed at her own man's survival, when another's lay dead and gone. She put her hand on Chiara's shoulder, no longer feeling jealous of the younger woman at all. She tried to comfort her, but the words felt hollow to even her own ears. She knew that Didier was Chiara's eagle, just as Lord Severous' wife had been his. Neither would ever find another to take their place. Perhaps the saddest thing was now Chiara knew it herself.