Ready!
I remembered how he’d said it. Words barked out with the air around any command given by an officer to the men under him. With the same practiced movements taught only to soldiers, a stiff, inhuman stoicism radiating from them with their snapping movements and utter, complete discipline. Their hands gripped their muskets, wood polished to a perfect sheen, iron barrels hard and grey, like the men who held them. Men I’d known, not their names or their smiling faces, but their military personality. The same military personality my lover has, a soldier’s mind, filled with discipline, intelligence, and honor. It was a mind that gave him a sense of right and wrong, a strong sense of justice, a man committed to his nation and that’s why I love him. On that evening, after months of silence and enduring his brooding for long hours in his office during the day and off meeting his people at night, I can’t say I was surprised to find the letter on our bed, telling me he was ready to do what needed to be done to secure the survival of the nation.
I remember putting my hand to my mouth, the thoughts that rushed into my head, visions of him charging into battle heroically enough but cut down by a volley of musket fire or worse yet, cleaved through with a saber. I remember weeping like a girl, like the girl I used to be before I earned my place on the King’s Hands for my work with the rapier and dagger, the quickness I’d honed, the unending stamina I’d built up every hour of my training, the way the blades became as much a part of me as my own soul when they were in hand. The blades rested at my hips, pommels, intricate hilts and blades polished to a mirror shine and sharp as razors. It was three months now since I’d found that letter, cried like a child and in all the stress… in all the stress, had lost our baby.
He doesn’t know, most likely, didn’t expect me to tell him I was pregnant as much as he expected his plot to depose the king and usher in a new rule of an elected president would fail in its last and most crucial moments. Frederic af Munsaven, Lion of Galt, Hero of Breakback Pass and the man who’d held the Burundian army at Vastak bridge for three days before reinforcements came. Above all else, he was my lover, my soon-to-be-husband, the father of my child, he was my lover and now he’s down there, tied to a wooden pole with his closest co-conspirators arrayed before the crowd like a circus before its audience. My chest squeezed in on itself hard and I broke my parade rest to stifle a soft sob, my shoulders quaking and no matter how revolted I was, imagining how I must look, swollen eyes, wet cheeks and trembling like a child, the sobs still came, regardless. No one said anything to me. But I knew how they must have felt to see the Iron Lady of the King’s Hands sob like a little girl. Those who I’d beaten in the fencing ring to earn my place probably reveled in it, some probably pitied me while the rest probably didn’t give two shits for the grievances and sadness of a traitor’s wife.
Aim!
And they did. I did my best to watch, I didn’t want to throw my eyes away at the last moment when I’d hear the cracks echo through the parade square, even if everything was a blur of sour, salty tears. I watched them raise their muskets the same way they’d raise them against the enemy in the field, all stone-faced and disciplined, the whole affair seeming almost choreographed beforehand. It seemed years were passing, time slowed to a labored crawl and I could feel a heavy throbbing in my head, waiting, watching, wondering what was going through Frederic’s head as he stood, tied up. I say stood, but it was more of a sorry lean. Three months in the dark cells of the King will do that to a man, and some say there are prisoners down in the dungeons with stays so long they’ve gone blind and worse things besides. Three months, Frederic was beaten, tortured by the King’s Eyes. They made as far of a cry from my Frederic as they could. Where he was once cleanly-shaven, immaculately clothed and barrel-chested, looking all the gentleman and officer in the King’s Royal Horse Guard as he ought to was now dirty, his white skin tainted a sickly pale with no lack of dirt and grime, his body gaunt and thin, a wiry beard covering his jaw under the blindfold they’d tied around his and the others’ eyes. A courtesy too late and received more like a mockery the more I looked at it.
It made me sick, but I was the Iron Lady of the King’s Hands, it wouldn’t do for me to sob and vomit in such a short span of time. Again, anyways, as I had after reading the letter. A maiden, I’d seemed then, a fresh-faced maiden so unlike the steely woman my love had amused himself with picking apart until he found her heart. My heart, and my love. The same love that led me to swallow shame and wipe my eyes like a little girl who lost her favorite doll. Or a woman about to lose the man she loved. Years and years seemed to pass and the officer was having a time of it, it seemed. I wanted to go down there and tell him to get on with it, as I looked at Frederic, I wanted either to cradle him in my arms and tell him that all would alright or to hand him my parrying dagger and cut him down with the last shreds of dignity he had intact. The sight before me brought the slaughter of pigs to mind.
Fire!
And they did. Plumes of smoke exploded out at first with a quick ferocity before dancing up into the wind, belying the spectacle below it. The men at their poles sagged, slumped, their legs failing them and their heads bobbing up and down like the elderly fighting sleep during a play in the upper-city’s theaters. It took all I had not to scream, the pounding in my head only getting worse until it seemed my skull would crack apart with it. My once-proud and strong lover sagging, letting out groans that were so unlike the man I’d loved, they were giving him an ugly death, the father of my child, the first man I’d ever given myself to under that starry sky and a year later my one love, sagging from his pole only kept from falling by the ropes that bound his wrists.
Strings of bloody spit hung from his mouth and he groaned and cried, and from where I stood, I could swear I heard my name being called. I started sobbing again and I willed with every ounce of my being to not run down there and throw myself among them, my swords flashing in the air until I too lay dead with my love. The sight made me sick and thin, burning, acidic vomit crept up my throat before I swallowed it down with a grimace. I went to take a step to leave the audience but my foot was rooted down as I struggled to lift it. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to run away. The same will and hatred of running away from my problems was what earned me a place on the King’s Hands and it was what planted me down where I stood, strong as an oak. Finally, Frederic stopped his groaning. He’d died, that was the end of it, I was a widow now. Alone.
It would be a year after that where I would retire from the King’s Hands on the first anniversary of the failed coup. I’d handed in my papers, stating my intention of retirement. The whole affair a year before in the parade square hung numb in my memories now. I didn’t feel bitter, I didn’t feel sad, angry, or any number of emotions. Just nothing. I’d have to attend the ceremony, where I gave my sword and dagger to the Master-at-Arms of the royal palace, bow to the King and Queen and say my goodbyes. A teary affair, I understand, from what I’d heard about the last person who’d retired from his place as First of the King’s Hands. I was less for ceremony than I was for doing things that got you ceremonies. I didn’t want them, I just did things that warranted them because I was tired of not doing so for years.
I stood, dressed in my officer’s uniform of bright blue with a gold and white trim around the cuffs, epaulettes on my shoulders and a skirt bearing much the same design to the coat I wore under the shining silver breastplate, the crossed rapiers under the King’s family sigil. A sigil I’d hated for a long while but not anymore. A sigil I’d wanted to spit on, to piss on, to shit on, to douse in his majesty’s blood and before bathing in it as the Kingdom burned under me for what they took. I’d remind them why I was named the Iron Lady and not one ruler after that would think to rule in such a manner as to warrant a coup in fear of her. What was the saying? Hell hath no fury and other such detestable, pithy shit mewed by men as they mocked their courtly fair maidens. I had half a mind to spit and clean my fingernails with the tip of my parrying dagger like I’d seen the men do. I didn’t like acting like the ladies at court so I might as well act like the men on campaign for all the looks and rumors spread about me as First of the King’s Hands and a woman, as if to be those two things together was an affront to God and his church.
Rumors. I had a bigger cock than theirs, that I fancied ladies more than I did men and other such drivel. Many times had I had dandies and dashing officers try to ‘teach me what it was to be a true lady.’ It usually ended with them curled on the floor, clutching their fruits and me stalking away to practice my fencing. Frederic was the only one who paid no mind to the rumors and didn’t act like it was a service done to pity me being a woman strayed so far from the beaten path. Breasts and a womb or no, I won my place on the King’s Hands and was appointed as First. I’d wondered what had me riled up today, all this time feeling numb and anger chooses today to show itself to me again.
As the royal herald belted out that the fat piece of shit we called a King and his pinch-faced wife we accepted as our Queen entered the room, I went through the motions and bowed my head as they stepped past me, not a glance at the common folk and courtiers gathered in the hall today. The trumpets quieted down and the two sat, no doubt almost killing their chairs with one’s weight and the other’s looks. Master-at-Arms made his crisp and practiced march to the front of the dais, ready to receive my sword and dagger. He called me up to him and I made my own crisp march up. As I looked past his shoulder to the King and Queen behind him, his words that were no doubt hallowed and an honor to hear for any members of the King’s Hands, I felt an urge. An urge, deep and as natural as the urge to breathe.
Just like the urge to breathe, I held it back like a swimmer. But it fought, a small thing at first, then a clawing, a screaming. A flame in me, burning me, making me almost insane. I remembered how long it seemed for the firing squad to shoot my Frederic, it felt like every instant was a century. I wondered how long it would take for the guards to raise their muskets and shoot. If they needed a command before they did it or if they held enough free will to do it themselves. I was lost in my thoughts, envisioning what it would be like, the moments within, the hot blood running down the blade and onto my hands, royal blood. The King’s scared gaze looking up at my own as I whispered in his ear a reminder of why he died, ‘For Frederic’ I’d whisper. I swallowed, and the whole world slowed, mouths moved without words. I remember the quickness I’d trained, the skill I’d bored into myself, deep as the bone. I almost didn’t notice myself shove the Master-at-Arms away or hear my blades leave their sheaths.