The Woman by the Fire
The fire crackled and the pot of lentil stew bubbled away on the hook above it. Mathilde put down her stitching and reached over with a long-handled spoon to give the stew a stir. Almost done. She took up her needlework again, one ear on the firepot and the other pricked toward the front door of her little house built up against the castle wall.
At first she wasn’t sure if the sound she heard were the fire or horse hooves–she had been fooled so many times before in these long nights of waiting. But when it grew to a rumble, and she heard Gletscher’s neigh ring up the street leading to the castle gates, she dropped her stitching, grabbed her cane, and hobbled as quickly as she could to the door.
She opened it in hopes of merely getting a look at Leopold as he rode past–to see if he had all his limbs intact, if he were well, had been eating. His powerful frame was slumped a bit in the saddle as he came, and her heart squeezed in his chest. But then he turned his head and saw the light spilling out her door, and he straightened and raised his fist. His guard came to an icy, skidding stop in the road. Mathilde’s heart pounded. When Leopold climbed down off Gletscher and strode toward her, she gasped and dropped to one knee in the snow.
“My Lord,” she stammered. Leopold bent and drew her back up gently by her elbows, holding her steady, and she looked up into the sparkling brown eyes of her former nursling to find him ruddy and hearty, even if a new scar ran a purple line down his cheek and into his beard.
“My dear Mathilde out here with no coat.” And before she could say anything he had swung his ermine-lined cloak from his shoulders and settled it around hers. “There, that’s better. How have you fared these many months, Oma? Are you well? The hip not bothering you too much in the cold, I hope? Ah, come now….”
Because tears were streaming down Mathilde’s cheeks. All she could do for a moment was hold tight to Leopold’s arms and shake her head. “Thank God,” she rasped when her voice would come out again. “Thank God. I prayed every day that God would send you back to us hale and whole.”
Leopold raised a gloved hand and used the edge of the fur cloak to wipe her tears. “And so He did. Go back inside by the fire, Oma. I will come to you soon, and you can make me a cup of your root tea and catch me up on all the gossip of Kiefersheim. Yes?”
Mathilde nodded and smiled, squeezing Leopold’s arms. Then, clutching the ermine in one hand and her cane in the other, she watched him mount up and ride with his entourage on to the castle. She watched until the last horse tail swished through the gate and the snow came down again on the empty street, and then she went back into her little house and shut the door.
The Rookery 