Beneath Ceaseless Skies #110 Read online

  No one moved.... Oh, she had forgotten!

  “Dismissed.”

  “Blessings on you, my lady!” the woman called out.

  “Yes, thank you,” an old man said. “May God give you favor!”

  As they hurried about their tasks, the old man approached Sardamira. His face was filled with wrinkles but no smile lines. “Our lord the giant had special attention for this girl.” He didn’t lower his voice, so it must have been common knowledge.

  The girl had ceased to weep, but she stared at the floor and continued to cough.

  Sardamira’s mother had warned against “special attention” from men at the court that could lead to a loss of her virtue. At the time, it had seemed like yet another admonishment, but this girl was her age, almost as tall, with the same color hair, in a situation that Sardamira could barely imagine—she had only ever imagined unicorns and wonders.

  “Where are her parents?”

  “Dead, my lady. They resisted when the giant wished to take her.”

  As the lady of the castle, even for just a day, it fell on her to do what she could. Sardamira had no idea of what to do, only that duty required her to act.

  “Her name?”

  “Matilda.”

  “Come, Matilda. We shall talk, you and I.” She helped the girl walk toward an alcove with an arrow-slit window and stone benches. The seneschal ran and fetched them pillows. The girl sat at her side as directed. Her ribs rose and fell above the worn ruffle of her blouse as her breath rattled in her chest. Starvation attracted illness, Sardamira knew, and hunger could kill in many ways. She tried to be consoling.

  “Matilda, I want you to know that things will be better now. The evil giant is dead, and you will have a new lord, and he will be good.”

  After a few moments, the girl choked out: “No, my lady. No. I pray that God takes me now.”

  “Aldaban is dead. I saw him killed.”

  “The other lord, he is also a giant, and giants are evil.”

  “Ah, our lord Gandalaz. I have met him, and he is good and kind. You need not fear him.”

  The girl did not react.

  “I too thought that giants were evil, but I was wrong. He will be a good lord.”

  The girl did not look up.

  Sardamira needed more than words. She was reaching for the red silk cord around her neck even before she had thought clearly about what she was going to do. She took off the cross from her aunt.

  “Take this. May faith give you strength.”

  The girl looked at it, unsure.

  Sardamira leaned over and put the cord around her neck, placed the cross into the girl’s hands, and then put her own hands around them. “Let us pray....”

  The girl joined her in Latin by rote. Her hot hands trembled. At the end, in the common tongue, Sardamira added a prayer for the return of good health to Matilda, amen. Then she helped the girl back to the kitchen and ordered the bustling staff to give her a good meal, rest, and medical care. She didn’t know herself what kind of medical care could help, or she would have done so herself.

  She felt useless. She didn’t actually know that the giant was good, her gift was a worthless ugly bauble, and prayers weren’t always answered. As a real lady, would she do better?

  The seneschal led her back to Galaor and Pinela, who were admiring the beauty of the coverlet of a bed with glasses of wine in their hands.

  “Where were you?” Pinela asked.

  “At prayer.”

  “That is very noble,” Galaor said, but Pinela, whose face he could not see, sneered. Sardamira retired soon afterward, preferring solitude to their company.

  The next morning, people from all corners of the giant’s lands had gathered in front of the castle, and the staff stood on the walls and in the windows. When Galaor came out, the crowds cheered and sang, as befitted a hero who had freed them from an evil and unnatural lord. He saluted them with confidence.

  Sardamira and Pinela watched from the gate, and when the cheering had subsided, they rode out to witness the meeting between the knight and a representative of the subjects. The castle servants began to cheer again. Sardamira looked up to see if she could spot Matilda—and realized that she herself was being greeted as a hero by the servants. While the men spoke of lords and oppression and fealty, she blushed.

  She had only done her duty. But so had Galaor, though he had had a magic sword to stave off fear while she felt more unsure of herself than ever.

  Soon they were preparing to return to the hermitage, and the servants gathered in the courtyard to bid them farewell. Sardamira spotted Matilda. Her face had more color and she could stand without aid. She still wore the crucifix. It looked good on her, even elegant.

  Sardamira approached, and the girl curtsied, then boldly raised her eyes to look at Sardamira directly. Instead of insolence, it made her seem like a sister.

  “I hope your future will be happy now,” Sardamira said.

  “Thank you, my lady.”

  “This whole land will be a better place.”

  “You have been most kind.”

  “I have only done my duty. May God give you blessings.”

  “And you, my lady, many blessings forever and ever. I will pray for you.”

  “And I for you, every day.”

  She never recounted this exchange when she told the story. She could think of no way to repeat those words and not make them sound like empty formalisms, when in fact nothing she would ever say or hear would be uttered with such sincerity. She rode off with Galaor, Pinela, and the squires, but looked backwards at the castle from her saddle for as long as possible, hoping the giant Gandalaz would indeed be good.

  Her aunt and the hermit met them with tears of joy, but as soon as she could, Pinela said:

  “Sister Clementina, your niece gave away the cross that you had given her so piously, and she gave it to a mere kitchen wench!”

  “Oh, really?”

  Sardamira knew she was in trouble. “I did, but she was very ill, and so we prayed together, and I thought it would help give her faith more strength. And this morning, she was more healthy, thanks be to God, and we will continue to pray for each other. She was very ill and very sad.”

  “And now she is better?” her aunt said, looking at Pinela.

  “I suppose,” Pinela said. “I heard someone say that.”

  “Indeed! Then thanks be to God and thanks to Sardamira for doing His work on earth. Don’t worry about the crucifix, my dear. We make them to give them away, and I’m most pleased that you have been so kind and faithful with it....” Her aunt continued on for some time.

  When Sardamira could, she shot the other girl a triumphant look. Pinela drew a little cross on her chest and sneered.

  They traveled back to Gandalaz at the tents, who welcomed them with all imaginable honors and a festive dinner. Pinela showed no signs of leaving the young knight, and in fact she seemed to have a plan. It most certainly would not include Sardamira, which was just as well. It was time to go, with all the ladylike comportment she could muster.

  “I must thank you most sincerely for your hospitality,” she said to Gandalaz. “I came here only to see the battle, yet I have seen so much that I will recount it again and again wherever I go.”

  “And I must thank you,” he said, “for all that you have done for me and for my servants in my castle, my lady. I add my deepest admiration to theirs.” He bowed over her hand and kissed it. He must had heard of what she had done, and he approved. Perhaps he would be good indeed. Perhaps she had not been useless.

  As they rode off, her aunt said, “Why, you’ve met two giants, beaten one at chess, and seen the other defeated and killed. You’ve learned so much!”

  “Yes, I’ve learned more than I can say.”

  * * *

  And that was how it happened. Soon she arrived at the royal court, where she received a fine education. She married well and raised a happy family—as happy as possible, at least. For the rest of h
er life, she often told the story about meeting the giants.

  “What happened to Sir Galaor?” someone would ask.

  “He went on to do many more brave deeds,” she said. She had occasionally seen him at the court and had heard a great deal more about him. At first, he had played a prominent role in her story, but as his fame became tarnished by deeds of the carnal sort and ill-advised intrigues, she spoke more about giants and how they could be good and evil, and how people could be good and evil, too.

  “Was Gandalaz a good lord?” someone else would ask.

  “Yes,” she would answer.

  Then one day someone said, “He’s not the lord of Galtares anymore.”

  That proved to be true. Perhaps because Gandalaz was a giant and presumably evil, or because he had become quite elderly and presumably vulnerable, neighboring lords had united to wage war against him. Galtares was divided among the victors, and it seemed that most of the new lords were not good, not at all.

  “What about Matilda?” someone would always ask.

  “She is well,” Sardamira would say, but it might not have been true. She had tried, discretely, to learn the fate of Matilda, but nothing had come of that. All she could do was remember the girl in her prayers and keep her own servants well and safe.

  So it was hard to smile and tell the story again while thinking of all the souls trapped in troubles they had not caused. If Sir Galaor had not, that time at least, fought for what was right, and if she had not gone to the kitchen, she did not know what would have happened to that girl who was so much like herself.

  Copyright © 2012 Sue Burke

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  Sue Burke moved to Spain in 1999 to learn its language and culture, and eventually she discovered Amadís de Gaula by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo, published in 1508. It became Europe’s first best-selling novel and the inspiration for Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes. The stories of Amadis and other knights drove Don Quixote mad. It drove Sue to translate the novel from medieval Spanish to modern English a chapter at a time at amadisofgaul.blogspot.com. “The Giants of Galtares” is based on an incidental character in Chapters 11 and 12.

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  COVER ART

  “The Frost Valley,” by Jorge Jacinto

  Jorge Jacinto is a twenty-three year old digital artist from Portugal. His work has been featured as a workshop in ImagineFX magazine. View his concept art and commissions in his gallery at deviantArt.com.

  Beneath Ceaseless Skies

  ISSN: 1946-1076

  Published by Firkin Press,

  a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

  Copyright © 2012 Firkin Press

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