Crossed Swords: A Tale of Maid Cordelia

Ch 3: The Cordon of Knights

Days passed, and then weeks, and Cordelia grew in strength and courage until, Farrant said to himself, she resembles the panthers who drink at the stream. On the fifth day of the sixth week of her training, Farrant approached Dame Lady Lass. "Cordelia can string the most stubborn bow better than I," he said, "and she can strip the bough of the ash or the oak, to carve from them arrows of such lightning speed that her prey sees nothing of them but hears only the wind disturbed as they pass and strike with fatal force. And when she takes aim at a wolverine or a fox, her arrow runs truer and swifter to the mark than any of mine have ever done. She has gained unerring cunning in the hunt. What else must she learn?" Dame Lady gazed upon Farrant with a knowing smile, seeing, as he did not, that he merely wished for Cordelia to be praised, rather than to be justly trained in war.

"I have watched Cordelia grow under your tutelage," she said, "and I, like you, have been pleased. But she is growing now at tremendous pace. She will come to a crossroads in her life, and she will need to decide which path she will take."

Farrant considered. "I have trained Cordelia in the hunt," he said, "but I fear I can do little more. With me she has learned all she can."

"Then it is time," Dame Lady said. "I will undertake her further training. If she will allow it – for it will have to be her choice -- she will have one goal while she is with me, and that is, to pass the rigors and trials that she needs in order to enter the Cordon of Knights. She will then bear the crown of the house of Conurgh. That is the symbol of my tribe, and if she can prove herself, I will bequeath her my name."

"To be worthy of this prize," she continued, "Cordelia will need to unhorse a rider, and thus to master the joust itself. And so the use of sword and lance are next in the list of skills she must gain. To fulfill the duties of the Crucifer of Knights – for that is the first honor in the Gamut of Knighthood -- she must also undergo trials of the spirit; and these figure as well in the tasks I have set for her. Be patient," she said to Farrant by way of consolation; "Cordelia has grown so rapidly she has developed the traits she needs, though they are still untried. She has been a willing and capable pupil, who has absorbed all that you have given her to share. Now your role in her life must change; each day you must bring Cordelia to me at the forest edge and leave her under my care."

Farrant humbly made his way back to the cottage, and his mind began to focus on the many tasks that called to him there; how would he manage them without his daughter's help? Mending the thatching on the roof, making the pottery tiles to repair the flooring, tending to the firewood, sowing corn for the harvest; all these demanded great care; and, as the sun fell lower in the west each day, it was not enough to bring his razoring and sharpening skills – which now included peddling at least some of the scissors and knives he had made himself -- to the neighboring villages that lay along the path he travelled. He would need to raise himself in the eyes of the Elders of his tribe, to bring to their attention what his child had achieved.

Wistfully – happily but with a touch of melancholy – he began to entrust Cordelia entirely to the daunting but masterful care of Dame Lady Lass. As he expected it would, her very appearance transfixed his eldest child, whose eyes glistened with anticipation every morning as she awoke, knowing that in the forest her appetite for knowledge of the fight and the hunt would soon be whetted. Dame Lady would speak in mysterious ways, yet Cordelia seemed instinctively to respond to her words. "The animals of the forest are alive in ways we do not understand," she would tell Cordelia, "and we must listen to them speak if we are to learn to master the hunt; then the joust -- which is another kind of hunt, as you will see -- will conform more gratefully to the attention you will give it." Cordelia's face would glow with pride whenever she heard such words, for she felt they showed the trust in her Dame Lady Lass must feel, and she grew in confidence and self-possession. And so on the next day of training, Dame Lady Lass led Cordelia back to the stream where they had first met. "You can see the tracks of the tundra wolf," she said. "Put your hands into them."