In despair, she let her hands fall to her side, brushing against his discarded lute causing the forgotten instrument's strumming to break the silence. She smiled at the reassuring sound, remembering his words that music would always continue.
"Music alone shall live," he had said once, smiling at her, as they played together. Music had been a source of love for them both and a source of an almost eternal lightness of spirit -- a fading lightness that was almost unbearable to her now.
"Never to die," she now muttered, adding bitterly: "All mirth and joy perish under a dark night sky."
Suppressing a sob, she refused to be overwhelmed by the darkness. She looked away from the sleeping form of her companion, taking in the dusty glade and the shadows of the serried ranks of conifers that surrounded the clearing. The fire had now burned down to the final flickering embers, but occasionally flamed up to crackle in a coaxing and reassuring way. Despite this, the clustering forest shadowed this last human light and soaked up the lights from the distant castle in the valley below or the port in the far distance.
A thousand unanswered and unanswerable questions swarmed around her head. If only they had started out a day earlier, if only his horse had not stumbled and thrown him onto that fated rocky patch in the rough forest path. Why could they not have completed the journey in a more stately way, using the carriage offered to him at the border? The world seemed to be made of such wishes and unaccomplished designs in her mind at that moment.
Gazing in her mind, along that wretched winding stone-pocked forest pathway, downwards past the sleeping town, along the jetty and out into the black of the waters, she saw that the star-studded sky was reflected on the surface of the bay. She gazed up into the blackness above the clearing and started to make out familiar shapes in the stars above them. There, clawing at trespassing stars in the heavens, was the gamekeeper constellation a guardian for them both.
She needed a guardian here and now in the forest. He had been lying ill and delirious for days. They had been prevented from continuing their journey to the safety of the castle by his accident and by the fact that one of their horses was lame. The other had galloped away in the confusion after she had forgotten to tether it, when she jumped down to stem the bleeding from his head.
"It wasn't the fall that counted, it was the landing," she reflected bitterly, and here she was, landed in the middle of nowhere with only her own resources to draw upon. She could have walked away to seek assistance, but she dared not leave him to the forest creatures or to a passing brigand. A guardian would have protected them both and enabled her to seek out assistance from a woodcutter or other inhabitant of this lonely stretch of countryside. It would have kept hope alive in her heart, as all lightness was extracted and seemingly absorbed by her wooded surrounds.
The thought of the horse galloping riderless into the courtyard had served as a guardian in her mind for the first two nights here. She had imagined the commotion that would ensue when they realised to whom it belonged and she dreamt of the rescue party saddling up in haste and riding up the ridge towards them. She had thought of the welcome that would be theirs when they finally reached home, of the sick bed in which he could recover properly nursed, of the banquet that would celebrate his recovery and, of course, the music, drowning out the silence of these dark nights and restoring her peace of mind.
In the meantime hunting for firewood to keep them warm during the cold nights had been a priority. She had to slip through the undergrowth, the bracken and bushes in this search. Her torn robe trailed in the mud, across the bracken and over the mulchy forest floor. It being early spring, a season of growth and renewal, there was little deadwood lying around for her use.
She had stumbled, shuddering through the dirt earlier that afternoon only to find the tracks of wolves, leading away from the torn carcass of their absconded animal. All ideas of feasting died in the ravenous depredations of those lupine vermin. The realisation that she was alone now had steeled her for a while, but all merriment was dulled in the hollow and bitter echoing laughter of fate.
She lay dozing, half-listening to the sounds of the forest, fearful that the wolves would return, smelling the dried blood on his garments around his unconscious form. She raised her head and hastened over to him, when she thought she heard him cry out. She knelt over him anxiously, not wanting him to know she was observing him, but wanting him to absorb her care. He settled back into silence and her eyes searched the sky, wondering what nightmares had disturbed him.
She had noticed before, as he had lain there that, whenever he stirred towards consciousness, perspiration gathered on his brow, even though the night was as cool as ever. A single tear coursed down her cheek, as she listened to his ragged breathing. With great deliberation, she leaned over him to grip his hand tightly, seeking to reassure him that she was still there, to fight with him for the fragility of life.
Willing her emotions to die down, not wishing them to carry across into the turmoil of his dreams, she sought to calm his breathing. She wanted him to drift into undisturbed and somehow miraculously healing slumbers. She gathered a blanket around his shoulders to keep out the chill and crawled over to the fire at the centre of the clearing. She bathed a handkerchief in a billycan of warm water. Then turning back to him, knelt by his side and ran the warm scented cloth over his forehead to wipe away the sweat that had gathered there.
His eyes seemed to flicker open at that moment and she gasped hopefully, excitedly. Could he see her in the shadows, kneeling affectionately at his side? The hesitant smile on her lips and the fading perfume that she had put on when they started their journey, hovered in the air. She was astonished that it had not yet been overpowered by the coniferous scent of the pinewoods and by the sweat and grime built up by her exertions since the accident. She leant forward slowly and imperceptibly, remembering that he had always seemed to enjoy inhaling her fragrance so much, while observing the languorous gestures with which she had teased him.
Even now, as she let one hand run through her hair, the image that he would have seen was one of almost absent-minded beauty. The lovely features pursed in a worried thin lipped smile did not betray that beauty, but it was a vision of loveliness. On this occasion at least, he could not avail himself of it. The flicker of his eyes had merely been a trick of the light or an unconscious reflex action -- animating his otherwise unresponsive flesh.
Watching quietly, she saw him slowly settle into a deeper slumber again. Perhaps, his spirit was still with her or perhaps it was fading into their shared imagination and blissful remembrance. She realised that a change -- something almost fundamental -- was at hand there at that moment. She could, however, only really guess at its significance, hoping against hope.
For a while she had known a perfect love, a love so beautiful that it was almost painful to recollect each instance of his devotion to her and her admiration for him. Perhaps this restless sleep was an augury of future recovery not separation, she thought, but then sighed at the seeming futility of this forlorn hope.
She turned her eyes towards him and felt that aura of impending loss again. Like a prelude to a shower of tears, a grey cloud of gloom settled around her confused and morbid thoughts. She stifled a sob, sure now that this halfway house between life and a lasting sleep, between light and darkness, could not last as they had once dreamed. She knew that, as with other ephemeral things, it would eventually be superseded.
She looked into a misty future finding him all too soon gone, leaving her with a consuming fear in place of the overwhelming passion. A pit of emptiness, a void filled her stomach at the realisation that this could soon all be over. She shook her head, trying to shake off the gnawing doubts that she had been drawn to in these fruitless imaginings. She would not put it down to a moment of lucidity that the possibility of a future together with him was fading, even as through the last three days his breathing had faded and a disturbing pallor had crept over his features.
As he lay in fretful semi consciousness, there seemed to be an infinite darkness creeping up within her. It was a crepuscular shadow above and beyond the dark undergrowth of the forest that surrounded them. Perhaps it was the natural sadness that dwelled within her. In vain she tried to crush it with the pleasures and delights of each moment of his company and here, now, it had returned, before the end finally came.
"We were a strange couple," she thought, relegating him unconsciously to her past. Becoming aware of her unconscious faux-pas, she gasped at the horror of this phrasing. She let anger sweep over her at the realisation of what she had done in her mind, digging a grave while his body was still warm. Her hitherto controlled staccato sobbing gave way to a flood of tears at this point. All the calmness that had surrounded her and kept her going as time paced on dissolved in a sea of misery.
Later, much later, through tear glazed eyes she looked up again at the skies. She wanted to feel that the twinkling denizens above were seeking to comfort her, reminding her of their endurance, an endurance denied to her. She sighed, exhausted, and her eyelids began to close of their own accord forcing her to push idle intelligences away from her. Weakened by the accumulations of feelings and the stress of her vigil, she lay down to a fitful sleep at his side.
Her eyes were closed and her breath was steady when the embers of their fire, finally faded to white ash. It was only then that he exhaled a final rattling breath, unheard by his exhausted companion. There in the pink misty dawn, warning of raindrops and tears, hope died and he was released from his aching injuries.
She woke, shivering, shortly afterwards in the first light of a cold morning to the chirruping of birds. She reached over instinctively and felt, as she had almost known she would, his icy hand. She would have cried out in despair and uncontrolled chagrin, but she held onto a thought echoing in her head. It was a thought provoked by the ignorant chattering of the birds and the recollection of his smile, of his playing. It was the realisation that, in the end, music alone would live on, never to die.
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