Crossed Swords: A Tale of Maid Cordelia

Ch 1: Why does the wolf moan?

The road was rough, and the ride bumpy; Cordelia had to grip the canvas arch above her. From the back of the wagon, she looked down at the red dust scattering in the wind. She felt the heavy wooden wheels crush the stones underneath into pellets of gravel. Raising her eyes a bit, she saw the green forest slip in and out of shadow, and could just make out the jagged peaks of the mountains beyond, piercing the sky.

Cordelia was her name; it meant in her language the bitter-sweetness of the heart. She was the eldest of Farrant's three children, who were with him wherever he went. He used his tools to barber when he could, and to geld bulls or horses when that was needed, if it was, in the little settlements he would pass through each week, plying his trade. He was knife-sharpener, knife-maker, barber, and surgeon: in those days people could be many things at once, and Farrant took advantage. His children, mounted on the rickety wagon seat, would stare with wide eyes as they rode by the forest of black yews, tall larches, or broad-shouldered oaks; they were nearly hypnotized by the grey craggy hills that rose in the distance, like the edges of a giant saw, so fearsome, so mysterious, so untamed. Farrant was right: the world was a dangerous place, but its wonders, its secret languages which only the dumb beasts seemed to know, called out to Pierce, Fira and Cordelia, and brought them to the edge of the splintery wagon seat as they rode by.

Cordelia, though still little, seemed the bravest of the three, for she had the temerity sometimes to stand up on the wagon seat, while her father, cracking his whip, drove Brit, the donkey who pulled the noisy cart over the dirt roads. Brit would sass Farrant with a surly bray, but at least the sharp loudness of the off-key music let villagers know he was nearby. Farrant would call out, "Knives to sharpen, knives to sell, scissors, scythes and knives to sharpen!" and slowly, one at a time, old women with their gnarled faces hidden in scarves of dirty sackcloth, or grizzled farmers with their trousers rolled up inside their boots, all muddy with the toil of the plow, would approach and hail him. "Farrant is my name," he would say, "and I will cut your hair or your children's for the price of a bowl of soup or porridge for my Cordelia here," and the peasants would stare when he would show them Cordelia, for she was a beautiful child, and they would never expect to see such fair hair and such sturdy round limbs on the child of an itinerant knife-sharpener. Whenever Farrant called her name, Cordelia would poke her head out from her bonnet, looking like a face in a shroud of faded linen, and he would display her like a trophy won at war. "You must be proud to have a child like that," the peasants would say; "where is your wife who helped you make her?" But Farrant would shake his head; "their mother is at home," he would say, "tending the garden;" or, "she has gone away," he would say, and with his eyes rolled towards the heavens he would make it seem as though the beloved woman who had mothered his children, and whom he still loved so much, had risen to her eternal reward. In truth Farrant's wife had no name, or at least he never knew it; and he did not know where she was and was ashamed when people asked about her, because there was so little he could tell.

He knew that their mother wanted her children to grow up strong and brave, and that she was devoted to them. She had taken great pains to ensure that her three girls kept to an ordinary and down-to-earth way of life, for she did not want them putting on airs, as she called it, once they were grown. Farrant refused to praise Cordelia's fragile beauty in front of others, and he made sure she worked in the fields alongside her two younger sisters. When passers-by -- often complete strangers -- chanced to offer Cordelia an appreciative glance or a smiling compliment, Farrant would become brusque; he would intervene and bade them be on their way. Yet, despite his occasional harshness, Cordelia clung to her father like grapes to the vine.

Cordelia loved the forest; it seemed to call to her. When she was thirteen, and her sisters Pierce and Fira were eleven and seven, Farrant left them alone together, so they might gather mushrooms in the forest. It was not his choice; but Cordelia begged, or rather, she demanded. "I must go to find my fortune," she said, "and to make my way in the world, for soon I will be a woman, and I cannot remain bound to my childhood ways. I know the forest and what dwells within it; it is ours by right. It stands on our land, and we must cull from it all we can. You, Father, have the hunt; I will gather the fruits of the soil."