“Every day I spend my time, drinking wine, feeling fine, waiting here to find the signs I can understand, yes I am. In the days between the hours, ivory towers, bloody flowers, push their heads into the air, I don’t care…
Don’t push your love too far, your wounds won’t leave a scar. Right now is where you are; in a broken dream…”

The view from the window looked out across an open meadow, across the river to the woods beyond. The water spilled down from the weir at the mill cascading across the shallows of the ford where the track from the woods crossed. Beyond the ford the track dived into the darkness of the wood but of the track on the side of the river nearest the window, she could see little.

It was six months now since he had gone, riding off along the track, his lance held high, her favour flying from its tip. Six months since he had left her and she had sworn to be true. He had laughed at the strange devices the others in his company had used to ensure that their wives remained chaste. But she had wanted to prove her faithfulness to him and the limits of her view were her proof.

The window was in the turret room of the highest tower where she had gone the day he left. She had fastened chains about her ankles and wrists and locked them to rings in the wall. She had locked the door, to the room leaving only the grill through which her constant maidservant passed to her the food and wine that sustained her in his absence. From her place by the wall she could see through the window to the ford where he had crossed as he left along the track and to where she knew he would return.

And the keys? The keys to the locks at her wrists and her ankles? The key to the lock of the door? They were already long gone; carried away by him, unknowingly, in his pack; tied with a silken ribbon in a pouch embroidered with the simple message “Semper Fidelis”.

And so she waited; her skin pale from the absence of sun; her hair lank from lack of attention; her clothes, once fine linen, richly embroidered, colourful and fresh, now faded, ragged and torn. Her limbs no longer ached or she no longer felt the aches. The shackles brought no new sores where they closed about her limbs, though their circling was mirrored in the purple bruises and callused flesh that she bore. And her room no longer held her. Only able to see the ford, she was still closer to him, she felt, than if he was there. For now there was nothing in her life but him. Somehow he was more present than ever in his absence.