Lady Gwendolyne Avenged

LADY GWENDOLYNE’S REVENGE

Lady Gwendolyne FitzAllan stumbled across the open courtyard at the top of the citadel trembling as much from fear as from the cold. She was led, almost dragged, towards the seated Count Alexander, Lord of the Marches. A slight, pale young woman, usually described as “delicate”, blond hair flowing around her shoulders and an expression of abject fear across her face, her hands clasped in front of her, knuckles white with tension.

The Count’s rugged, powerful features were marked by pain, pain both from the fatal malady steadily eating away at his body, and from his knowledge of betrayal by her brother. Lines had been etched deep into his face and his mouth was drawn down in a perpetual grimace. His sickness was a progressive wasting disease that medicaments, cautery, bleeding, purging and similar nostrums, including prayer, had failed to ameliorate. He saw this as a signal failure on his part—he, who had conquered hostile barbarian tribes, could not control his own body.

Betrayal was another matter. Lord Edward FitzAllan had been his companion, his confidante and his supporter. Then, for reasons that the Count had never been able to discover, even with the aid of skilled torturers, FitzAllan had betrayed his intentions to the king, an effeminate fool for whom the Count had only contempt.

“Well, my dear Lady Gwendolyne, as your brother is now beyond my reach, you must pay the price for his betrayal. If the principal is not available, a member of his family must become a substitute, and you shall be that substitute.” His words were ground out, harsh and unforgiving. This was not a man to show mercy, and it was known throughout the land that the Count had a predilection for revenge. His father had been butchered in a revolt twenty years ago, and the Count’s desire for revenge boiled in his soul unendingly.

In fact, the Count remembered fondly how he had taken revenge on those rebels. Each member of the rebel faction, men, women and children, including more than one babe in arms, had been impaled alive on wooden stakes and their bodies left to rot along the road into the citadel. They were both a stark reminder of the penalties for rebellion, and a feast for the carrion eaters.

It was said that the Count had not always embodied this steely savagery. Only after the death of his young wife, whom he dearly loved, twenty five years earlier, did this become apparent; a result of a hopelessly botched delivery of their longed for son. The lady had gone howling into the void in indescribable pain; the child was stillborn—and the unfortunate but incompetent midwife was punished in ways so barbaric that people still shuddered at its remembrance. Her own unborn child, close to delivery, was ripped from her womb and thrown, showing signs of life, to the dogs. The woman was then slowly disembowelled, being revived with icy water each time she fainted from the pain. Her remains were flung over the battlements into the chasm below and her family was proscribed.

The Count continued. “Lady Gwendolyne, it is my decision that you shall be confined to the nunnery at Abbotsford and consecrate your soul to the order. There you shall live out the rest of your life in a daily ritual of contemplation and flagellation.”

The lady gasped and fell to her knees, clasping her hands in supplication. “Please, my lord, please, not Abbotsford. Their rule is strict to the point of savagery and many who enter the order fail to survive. The abbess has been in conflict with my family over land rights for several years, and she would take any opportunity to humiliate, punish and harm me.” Her tears fell like rain, but failed to evoke even the slightest compassion from the Count.

“Indeed, Lady Gwendolyne, I am aware of the stringency of the abbess’ rule, and I heartily approve.”

“My lord,” she sobbed, “I have done you no wrong. I have been faithful and devout, and have never spoken against you. Please, my lord, have mercy. If you believe it is necessary, I should go into exile for the rest of my life. But, oh God, please, not Abbotsford.” Lady Gwendolyne’s horror of this sinister place was evident as she trembled, wringing her hands, her face contorted in terror and her tears continuing to flow.

For the Count, any sign of mercy was a weakness that needed to be eliminated, and his fierce, brutal gaze crushed any hope that she may have had left. “Your behaviour is really quite irrelevant, my dear. You are in the unfortunate position of being the closest living relative to your treacherous brother to whom I have access. As such, you must pay the penalty that would otherwise attach to him. You may count yourself lucky; my first instinct was to kill you, slowly and painfully with my own hands. I was persuaded otherwise by trusted advisers who feared that you would become a martyr to the rebel cause.” The Count was sufficiently astute to recognise the truth of this advice and accepted that banishment to the nunnery would have to suffice.

“Lucky, my lord?” Lady Gwendolyne’s voice and staring eyes displayed her bitterness and hatred of the words she had just heard. “I cannot count incarceration in that hell-born place as luck.”

“Well, my lady,” the Count displayed an indifference bordering on hostility, “that is my decision, and there is no alternative. Guards, remove this woman.”

Before they could move, however, a complete change came over Lady Gwendolyne. She broke free from the guards holding her; their grip had been light as she was a lady of the court, small and seemingly quite fragile. She ran to the battlements, and leapt up onto the edge of the wall, a plunge of at least a thousand feet behind her.

Lady Gwendolyne’s wild, staring eyes seemed to almost leave her head. Foam flecked the corners of her mouth, and a stream of drool ran down her chin. “Alexander the bastard, born out of wedlock, may your pain increase until it is as that of your late wife,” she screamed and the Count’s face turned black with anger. As if this were not enough, Lady Gwendolyne seized her shift and ripped it to pieces, exposing her body to the elements and the eyes of those on the tower. Worse was to come. Her slim fingers, tipped with long, elegant nails now seemed to have turned into talons. She tore at her skin and then more deeply into her tender flesh.

Blood poured down Lady Gwendolyne’s arms and body, and she pointed one dripping hand at the Count and screamed in a harsh, piercing voice, “I curse you into the depths of hell, Alexander the bastard. I curse your family into the fires of damnation. I curse your ancestors whose dust will be consumed by the flames. As my soul is gathered to God, so he will hear my curse and visit damnation upon you.”

A loud gasp went up from those around the Count. The legend of the dying man’s curse was held deeply by these devout people who had an entrenched belief in its efficacy.

The Count merely scowled and shouted at those near to Lady Gwendolyne, “Take her and take her alive. She must not die. Yet.”

Too late. With a final eldritch scream, Lady Gwendolyne FitzAllan plunged from the tower, her arms outstretched almost as if attempting to fly. Her scream was echoed by the howl of the wind that suddenly blew across the tower in freezing gusts.

The Count’s confessor, an elderly priest, rotund and sanguine whose sensitive, mobile face belied a sombre and devout nature, spoke urgently to the Count. “Her curse is a fearful warning, my lord. A curse from one with the sure knowledge of their approaching death is powerful and almost always effective. Doubly so, coming from a woman.”

“Utter nonsense, father,” growled the Count. “An old wives tale born of fear and superstition. I will hear no more of that rubbish.”

As the wind slowly abated, a guard suddenly shouted, “My lord, look—to the south!” There rising from below came an enormous black bird that circled slowly around the tower.

“A dreadful omen, my lord,” cried the priest, now trembling with fear. “The dying man’s curse now the visitation by the black bird bodes evil for you and for our land.”

“Were you not a man of the cloth,” the Count’s patience was now clearly wearing thin, “I should have you punished severely for causing panic among my people. As it is, be silent until I give you permission to speak.”

“But, my lord, the bird!” The allusion to the bird as an evil omen only caused the Count to become even less sympathetic to the priest’s concerns.

“Would you bandy words with me, master priest?” The Count’s deep sarcasm carried a menace far greater than the mere words. “I see I must deal with this in my own way.”

As the bird circled low over the battlements, the Count called to one of his guard, “You, fellow, bring me your bow and your truest arrow.” Taking the weapons, the Count nocked the arrow and in one smooth, unhurried motion, loosed the arrow at the circling bird. Demonstrating his almost legendary skill as an archer, the Count’s arrow took the bird in mid-air. It plummeted into the chasm with a scream eerily reminiscent of Lady Gwendolyne’s departure.

“Let this be an end to this nonsense about omens and curses,” the Count shouted and left the battlements for his chambers, oblivious to, or deliberately ignoring murmurings of concern and dissent.

Count Alexander, Lord of the Marches retired to bed early that night. When he did not wake at his usual time next morning, his manservant knocked timidly on his door and entered. And fell in a dead faint. In the middle of the bed, in a tangle of bedclothes smeared with blood lay the corpse of the Count. His body was covered in a mixture of vomit and faeces, but most startling was that his penis was still fully erect. However, it was covered in deep scratches for the whole of its length. From the evidence of his broken finger nails, these had been self-inflicted. The Count’s eyes were wide and staring, and his face contorted in an expression of terror never before reported in any of the Count’s lands. So much so that his face had to be covered with a cloth before anyone would undertake to move his remains.

No one knew, few wanted to know, what horror had been visited on this hard, unyielding yet fearless man. But the belief in curses and omens grew large and remained across the marches for centuries.