Knight of the Rose
By Greg Patrick
“Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the
sea”-Dylan Thomas
A lone horseman reined-in at the
threshold of forest’s dark sanctuary. A chill wind sang
through the canopies of oaks as he raised
his forearm. A gyrfalcon pale-feathered as
moonbeams rose gracefully to the
beacon of a lit window in yonder castle afar. Bound to its
talons was a message for eyes of
the green of fathomless Celtic sea. The falcon was emblazoned
against the rising full moon on whose
tides he sailed for this shore.
The raptor’s feathers falling like
ghost tears for the slain chieftains on whom the grass
had grown. Its shrill cry like a land
bereaved of heirs sang, seeming to herald his homecoming to
a green Ithaka. Moonbeams
tinged green as they filtered through the swaying banners of leaves
lit his face like a highwayman’s mask as
he sighed a name like the title of the song, his breath
steaming in the cold.
He had fallen asleep sheltered amid
ancient standing stones, his sleep haunted by strange
dreams. It had been many ages since
the hills and enemies had trembled under the great
charioteer warriors. The legends banished from
the songs of the clans, but they existed in dream
and in songs in the depths of forest like
forbidden love songs to one beyond their station.
Wreaths of mist crowned the kings in
ghostly coronation as he whispered bardic songs in his
sleep.
He awoke to the rising light as he
rode through the monoliths of ancient clans long
passed, architects of dreams and mystery
in a storied land. He had paused, eyes closed like the
last faithful scribe at the deathbed of a
Highking. The last loyal retainer in a dark empty
throne room recording his echoing words.
In
the misty dawn a herd of red deer scattered as a horse and rider broke cover
from the
sentinel-like trees. Sensing they were not
his quarry they paused and looked on curiously as he
rode towards the distant castle. Landscape
seemed dreamscape like the radiance of dawn
fluttering at a dreamer’s opening eyes. Fields
adorned with flowers like a gown of a princess
who awaited to be reunited with a
returned prince in homecoming.
It was as if roses piled in
memory of one lost at the sea were cast up instead hailing the
seafarer’s unexpected return. The hooves
fell in synchrony with his heart and the wind roared in
his ears. Like a cold shadow cast suddenly
by gathering clouds he remembered when last he rode
these fields they were red-ashed in
aftermath of battle and the besieged castle was like an
Atlantean bastion all but falling under
stormswept waves of flame.
He had marched at the vanguard of a
rebel band to the shrill of bagpipes in renegade
intervention when his chieftain had taken
oath of fealty to a lord across the sea. He would not
disavow his love’s clan when the enemy
marched on their walls.
In
exile he had looked back across the wake with Orphean valediction to the
diminishing
shore before setting his eyes grimly to
the Shaharazadian allure of the dark horizon on a voyage
to Eastern lands and crusade, vowing to
return. The last sight of his homeland was the distant
trees of the fall like red banners.
“When the leaves are green again,
I shall return for thee…”
The ocean-bound wind swept from the
trees to his hair and closed his eyes, his lips
moving in soundless prayer. Now the horse
of an exotic breed from lands of oasisless mirages
and dunes, tossed red petals from its mane
like sparks and blood particles as his warhorse had
done when he last strode these realms.
And his laughter was a soloist song
privy to his own daydreams that beckoned him forth.
He halted the stallion, its flanks
heaving. He caressed the harp he bore at his side, feeling the
Aeolian-stirred song of her laughter in
memory. So distant the memory as to seem the time of
legends, as distant as the voids between
the stars by which the nomad and mariner found their
path.
Flurries of crimson petals like a druidic
bonfire’s immolation swirled around him. Lips
spoke her name like a wound reopening when
it had pulsed in the cold. The words that came to
him were like disembodied voices of the
spirits of glen and stream. The blood chant of his heart
throbbed to the beat of words unsung, but
all great words begin forbidden. They echo in
catacombal secrecy before they are sung
gentiley before court and empress.
He
wore the garb of a humble itinerant minstrel, but the ravens had seen the
chainmail
and scabbard before he donned it and cowled
his face. They knew death rode with him and they
hovered over him like a dark retinue. He
fell in with a band of entertainers seeking a lordly
patron as they thronged the road and
hastened against the threat of rain to the castle holding court
for a betrothal. He passed into the
cold shadow of the Norman keep’s gate, squaring his
shoulders as it closed behind.
Gaelic
was forbidden in the castle court now. Troubadours and minstrels sang by
lute in
the stead of the Hibernian bards, but when
his “name” was called he strode to the harp of the hall
like returned Odysseus to the bow only his
hand could truly string as the suitors looked on
haughtily.
He strummed at first non-committedly
then as their eyes met as she sat engarlanded like a
floral enhaloment and gowned in white
ermine and gossamer. A bard’s vision of beauty behind
startingly green eyes and
natural crown of red. The merriment of the table that had drowned out
the other minstrels. The jests and mirth
fell silent as if by incantation as the harpsong
cast its apparitional spell with the
moonbeams.
His very words that
incantation under the enchantment of the muse. He told their story in
the props and trappings of the Norman
lord’s own land, to the castles of the
Loire valley. In turn the song was
cathartic as a letter written on eve of battle and at others the
song was aloof as a soloist or pilgrim
lighting a shrine candle for his own dream.
It was like Orion’s song in the
eternal wilds of the stars haunting the earthbound.
He played as maleficiently as he
had amid the pavilion fires of the crusader armies
so far from tuliped fields of Christendom
before they were to cross sword with scimitar.
It
was written that “moonlight was sculpture” but harpsong is like the art of
a tapestry-
maker. A storyboard of scenes of battle
and chase seemed to be woven before spellbound eyes in
phantasmal procession. The fire that
silhouetted him like a rebel angel playing in the flames
sighed like charmed serpents as
flames were granted form and face to enact scenes before
they faded back into the embers.
It was said that “all memories
happen to music”. His eyes sang their duet to hers
face mirrored in voluminous depth
of green. As if the smile alone like notes read by a
Stradivarius-player transported them with
the raw wild beauty of the song to the shore of a loch
with the twilight-reddened waves lapping
at her feet as she stood like a poem written against the
sunset.
As he doffed his helm and a sash
of green bound his arm before battle on the morrow.
Under cover of darkness, vines flowing
like a green tapestry from the castle walls were scaled
hand over hand.
A waiting horse’s tether held by
a kern was passed to a gauntleted wolf-pelt sleeved
hand. In answer to a serenade, she
appeared at the window like a PreRaphealite masterpiece
subject framed. The very essence of a
Celtic bard’s inspiration. Her hand held to his forehead a
gesture approaching veneration, she was
raised to the saddle by a knight clad in black night-
attack armour. A sentry cried out and
a Gaelic battle cry answered in defiance.
Fire arrows meant to illuminate the
grounds like flares, streaked around. The horse reared
terrified but he held his saddle. When the
hooves fell again, he drew an exotic weapon from
Eastern lands, a horse archer’s bow and
answered the attack. Men fell from the battlements as the
iron-shod hooves smote the cobbles in
flight. A cauldrenous mist seemed to gather as if the
ghosts haunting ruins and standing stones
thronged the warrior poet to hear his songs. Mist
seemed to shroud the protectively as if
they passed into legend.
A dual citizen of Ireland and the states, Greg Patrick is an Irish/Armenian traveller poet and the son of a Navy enlisted man. He is also a former Humanitarian aid worker who worked with great horses for years and loves the wilds of Connemara and Galway in the rain where he's written many stories. Greg spent his youth in the South Pacific and Europe and currently resides in Galway, Ireland and sometimes the states.
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