There’s more to the story

If you go to chapter view, this and its predecessor bits will appear all together. In case you’re reading this and thinking … “Huh? What the !@#$ has this got to do with anything?” Have a lovely day.

There was merriment that day. So much of it that it swelled over into a week. The cows and sheep were skittish from the loud sounds thundering down over the hills below the castle walls.

Helen did her best to calm the beasts. After the evening meal that first night and the next as well, she sat beside Maggie, holding her hand, telling her now familiar descriptions of what she had found on her brief but exquisite visit to the place now shaking up the world in such entitled revelry and madness.

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It was well after sunset on the third day, just as Maggie was getting up to start banking the hearth fire for the night, when a rapid tapping was heard at the cottage door. The sisters looked at each other with tight faces; the hair at the nape of Helen’s neck felt bristly. Slowly she went to the table and picked up a pan left out for the morning’s cooking; then she quietly moved toward the door as the rapping began anew.

“Who goes there?” she said in a loud firm tone she was grateful to hear come from her alarmed body.

“Oh Helen, please Helen, open the door! It is Izzy, you remember me don’t you? From the castle? Oh, of course you rem …”

Helen opened the door with one arm as the one attached to the pan swung down and behind her.

“Oh, Milady! Oh, I am so sorry to have made you wait! It was only the hour that … oh, come in, please! Welcome to our home, humble and plain though it be.”

Izzy entered the cottage, quickly taking hold of the door as she seemed to listen intently for a few moments. Then she quickly and firmly closed it, turned around to lean against it, and breathed a very deep and shuddering sigh with her eyes closed. When she opened them, she found Helen and, noting the paleness of her face and the pan in her hand, looked crestfallen.

“Oh dear, lovely Helen, I’ve frightened you haven’t I? Oh no! I’m so dreadfully sorry! It’s only me! Things within the castle walls have been so horrid and strange that I’ve lost all awareness of proper hours. I barely know night from day! Oh Helen, do forgive me please!” At this she threw herself on Helen, hugging her neck and resting her head on her shoulder. Helen put her free arm, rather hesitantly, around Izzy’s shoulders. As she did, she felt the pan being pulled from her other hand by her ever quiet and thoughtful sister. With her newly freed hand she stroked Izzy’s hair lightly for a moment before carefully guiding the trembling young woman close to the hearth, sitting her down on one of the benches there and taking a seat beside her. She could hear Maggie filling the kettle with water from the bucket.

“Now, Mil …”

“Izzy, please, Helen.”

Helen took a deep breath, as though by entering her the air might somehow crowd out a lifetime of training and custom. “Yes, well now … Izzy, you seem most distressed. Once you feel able, please tell us what has brought you here and how we might best be of service to you.”