Lord Randall thundered into the courtyard on a coal-black steed. He made a fine figure, with keen blue eyes and wind-swept auburn hair; his lordly bearing was a token of a noble ancestry and an honorable heart. He drew the reins and his horse slowed, tossing its handsome head. At its heels came a pair of panting dogs with grins on their long faces, their tails awag with eagerness at their homecoming.

Randall dismounted. He looked up at the high window of the manor house and saw a flash of white: his mother's veil as she turned away from the window. He handed over the reins to his page and bade his dogs to stay, then made his way across the cobbled yard.

Lady Joan met him at the door, her face alight with joy. She extended her arms to him. "Lord Randall, my handsome one," she said.

He leaned in to her embrace and kissed her upon her cheek. "Mother."

"Where hast thou been all this long day? I have missed thee. The weather grows too cold to go walking, and my ladies are dull." Lady Joan kept hold of his arm and turned back into the house, looking up at him with indulgent interest.

"I have been a-hunting, Mother, and I am weary," he replied. They walked down the hall arm-in-arm. "We've ridden over the hills and fields all the long day."

"Thine eyes betray thy weariness, my love." She patted his arm. For a moment, they walked in silence down the hall; then she asked,"Did thy hounds take any foxes?"

"Aye—two foxes, Mother. They have grown into fine hunters; they do me proud."

"Well done," she said as they entered the great hall. She led her son to a bench near the hearth, where it was warm and the glow of the fire shed plentiful light. She coaxed him down to sit beside her and beckoned to a servant girl standing by. At her bidding, the girl drew near and poured wine for them both.

"But hast thou been out hunting all the day, Randall?" Lady Joan asked, taking up her wine. "Thy chamberlain told me thou didst leave at dawn."

Accepting his goblet from the servant, Lord Randall settled himself on the bench and stretched his long legs out before him. "Most of the day, Mother. The weather was cool, as thou sayest, but fine. Mayhap I shall take thee with me next time; the exercise is heartening."

Lady Joan looked at him with patient curiosity; it was a motherly look. "Mayhap," she said. She knew he had not spent the entire day out in the fields with his hounds; she knew he did not wish to reveal to her where he had truly been, but she would bide her time.

Her son smiled at her, seeking to provide a distraction for her anxious mind, although his own was anxious indeed; a cold sweat had sprung up upon his brow. "Thou dost not ride enough to take the air, my lady mother. And yet thou complainst that thy ladies are dull. They may not keep thee good company, but thy palfrey will, I assure thee."

"Good company," echoed the lady. She took a sip of her wine and then smoothed her skirt with fastidious care. "And didst thou have good company today, my son?"

Lord Randall was loath to lie as a rule, for he was an honorable man, but he had grown used to dissembling of late. What other choice had he? His mother disapproved of where his heart lay, and he could do nothing else but love as he loved. He dabbed at his brow with the sleeve of his coat and said, "Aye, I did, as I told thee: my horse."

"And thy hounds."

"And my good hounds," he affirmed.

"Art thou well, Randall?" Lady Joan tilted her head, frowning. "Thy brow is damp with sweat."

"I am well, Mother. The chamber is warm." Lord Randall took a sip of his wine.

"Shall we walk, then?" She set her wine aside. "The halls are cooler without the fire to heat them."

"No. I am bone-weary. I would lie down and sleep."

"If thou wouldst sleep, then thou mayest," Lady Joan said, her patience wearing thin, "but wilt thou hide where thou hast been from thine own dear mother, my son? Dost thou not know it is a sin against God to be untruthful to thy mother?"

On the young lord's pallid cheeks, two burning points of color appeared. He knew then that she must have the truth, but so be it; she could not undo what had been done. "I have been to my sweetheart's, Mother."

Lady Joan clenched her fist over her breast. "Thou dost break thy simple mother's heart," she cried. "I begged it of thee to turn away from that creature's wiles and toward a pious woman of thy station!"

"I know it, Mother, but I cannot suppress the yearnings of my soul."

With a short, impatient sound, the lady rose to her feet. "The yearnings of thy soul. My son, many a flower groweth in the field, fair enough to satisfy the yearnings of thy soul and thine eye."

"Fair Eda is the only flower," said Lord Randall, looking up at his mother. He reached for her hand, but she stepped back from him. He pressed on. "No woman in the world will ever be so fair as she, and none other would I have."

"A soft and rosy petal doth obscure the sharpest thorn."

Lord Randall lay his head against the high back of his chair and closed his heavy eyelids. Wearily he had come into his house, but wearier still was he now. "Mother."

"Randall, I cannot bear it!" But there was something about the set of his fevered face that gave her pause; it seemed her precious son was in some pain. Mayhap the shame of his disobedience had struck him sore.

"Mother," he said, "If it please thee, call the servants for to make my bed. I feel myself sickly, and I fain would lie down."

Looking at him with pity in her heart, Lady Joan said, "I shall call them, Randall. But wilt thou not leave that peasant girl behind?"

"Nay, Mother; I say thee nay. Thou dost call her a peasant, but is she not a woman as thou art, equally deserving of love and of honor, and with equal claim to virtue? For I say to thee, as her face is the rose, her heart is the lily, as pure as thine."

Lady Joan scoffed. "Randall."

He persisted, aching to make the matter plain; his mother had not understood before, but he must make her understand now. "What care I for noble blood, or for houses, or for gold? Were I to leave Fair Eda behind, my heart would rot in my very chest."

There was a silence, and then Lord Randall felt his mother's hand coming to rest upon his brow. Her hand was a comfort, being so cool against his heated skin. She muttered, "Well may it be rotting now, my son, for thou art sickly pale, and I fear it be some evil this creature has set upon thee."

"I am taken not with evil, Mother, but I am sick to the heart with thy quarrelsome ways—aye, and with yearning for my true love." Randall quivered, for his stomach had begun to ail him, too. "I beg thee: make my bed. I must lie myself down."

There was a stir as Lady Joan called upon the servants to make Lord Randall's bed. Docile for the nonce, she helped him upon her own arm to his chamber, murmuring her concern. "We will call upon the doctor to attend thee, my son. It is a fever that has taken you."

"It is nothing, Mother—merely a chill. A rest will cure me."

"If it be naught but a chill, how came it upon thee so suddenly? Lie there, my handsome one, and take some wine." She held the cup up to his parched lips.

Lord Randall sipped, but the taste was bitter, and he could bear no more than a drop. The pain in his stomach had turned to cramps so fearsome that he could not bear to sit upright; he lay on his side, curled up like a child, and Lady Joan smoothed the auburn curls back from his sweaty brow as she had many a time in his youth. The rhythmic, soothing touch lulled Randall into a fitful slumber, but his sickness kept him from true rest.

Some time later, there came a disturbance in the hall. Lady Joan went out and conferred in a low voice with the servant there. When she heard the news he bore, her heart grew still and then turned cold in her breast.

She stepped back into the sweltering room, where the hearth-fire burned as hot as the fires of hell. Randall languished on his pillow, white of brow and red of cheek. She crept toward him on silent feet and smoothed his hair back again.

"My son, art thou awake?" she whispered.

Surfacing from the half-sleep that had taken him, Randall responded, "Aye, Mother; I perish of the pain, but I cannot find true rest."

Lady Joan stroked his hair again. "Didst thou eat thy supper at Fair Eda's, my son?"

"Aye, I did," said he. "I and her mother and her sister, too."

"And what did she feed thee?"

"Why, eels and eel-broth, Mother."

When Lord Randall opened his eyes, he saw his mother's face, distant and still; in it was the gray, trembling calm that came before a rainstorm, and the young lord was unsettled to see it.

Then, she said, "Thy hounds have died, Randall."

The tragic tidings dealt Randall a vital blow. He struggled to sit up, but the pain of his sickness crippled him, and he shrank back against the bolsters with a groan. His mother held up a dish to his lips, and he vomited, seized with a greater pain than any he had felt in his life—but the torment paled when set against the grief of losing his dogs, his most faithful companions. "Both of them, Mother?" he gasped.

"Both of them." Her voice was thick with tears; she had ever had a fondness of animals, and she was near as grieved as he was to hear of the wretched hounds. "Tell me now, my son: did they eat thy leavings?"

"Yes—always. What else would they have?" His poor hounds! Had they breathed their last curled up in the straw of the stables with no kind hand to comfort them? Why had his page not called for him?

He must see their poor bodies; he must bury them himself in the sweet meadow where they so loved to run.

Lady Joan wilted into the seat at her son's bedside, her face as white as the linen of her veil. Her clear blue eyes, which had been her gift to her son, were hazy with tears. She felt her very heart splitting in her breast. "I fear thou hast been poisoned, my son."

"Poisoned!" he cried.

"Thou and thy hounds. They took sick; they were weary and they suffered, and then they died. I have called for the doctor to attend thee."

His mind and heart rebelling at his mother's suspicion, Lord Randall shook his head. Poison! It was naught but her concern for him, for although he was a man full-grown, he was in her eyes still the babe she had nursed. And he had no doubt that her maternal compassion was edged with bitterness; her fear and dislike of his true love made her suspicious.

For who could have poisoned him? Had it been the eels, which were all he had taken to eat that long day, there could be no answer but his own true love, sweet Eda, who had boiled them herself.

A mournful hour passed. Lady Joan's quiet crying formed a backdrop to Lord Randall's uneasy rest. The doctor did not come, and the young lord's pain grew worse and worse, until he knew in his soul that he would die.

"Mother," he whispered, too weak to open his eyes. "For the sake of my soul, do thou call me a priest."

"My dearest one, lie still and rest," she said. Panic fluttered in her chest, beating its wings like a wounded bird, but she tried to keep the shrillness from her voice. Through her tears, she forced a smile and laid her hand against his cheek. "Rest."

"My lands and my house I leave to my brother," Lord Randall said. "God grant him a long life and good fortune."

"Lord Randall, calm thyself. The doctor comes."

"To my sister I leave a dowry. Wilt thou see it done? I would have her wedded well."

"Randall!" Lady Joan's heartbroken sob pierced her son's heart like a knife. "God in Heaven, hearken, we beseech thee!"

"And to thee, Mother—to thee I leave a dead son to bury, and my sorrow. I would I had the time to repent to thee the sins of a wayward son."

Though the world had grown foggy, Lord Randall saw his dear mother cross herself. She fell against his breast, clutching at his jerkin. The snowy, bright linen of her veil, which had greeted him each morning when he woke until he became a man, was now the only thing he could see as the edges of the world crept away.

It was right that his mother's veil might be the last thing he saw before death claimed him, and so he closed his eyes.

"And my sweetheart..." he whispered.

"What dost thou leave thy sweetheart, my son? Thy sweetheart, who hath killed thee?"

"A rope from Hell to hang her, for thou speakest true: it's she hath killed me."

The candles burned low, and Lady Joan wept over the corpse of her eldest son.

Thus did handsome Lord Randall die.

...

A day passed, and with it, Lord Randall's wake.

A second day passed, and with it, Lord Randall's funeral.

A third day passed, and with it the came the trial of Fair Eda, his sweetheart. She sat before a council of three learned men, who questioned her in the matter of Lord Randall's death and were unmoved by her tears. At the end of the ordeal, they found her guilty of murder and sentenced her to be hanged and then burned, a fitting fate for a murderess.

Eda passed a cold night in the gaol on the eve of her execution with rats as her only company. She had no appetite for the porridge she had been given her and left it to the vermin. Her eyes were sore with weeping; she had never known such grief.

"Where hast thou gone, my sweetheart?" she whispered into the darkness. "Why didst thou go and leave me here behind?"

She listened, but she heard no reply to ease the ache and the emptiness in her heart.

Then came the sound of a footstep. Eda looked up and saw a figure coming toward her through the gloom. She scrambled to her feet in fright, but then, in the slanting light of the crescent moon that filtered in through the narrow window, she saw her mother's face.

"Little Eda?" The old woman turned her face toward the sound of Eda's gasp, her milky eyes agleam in the night.

"Mother!" Eda fell against the bars of the cell, reaching through to take her blind mother's arm. "How didst thou come hither all alone?"

Eda's mother reached her free hand out into the empty air, and another's smooth, white hand came out of the shadows to grasp it. Katherin, Eda's younger sister and near her twin, stepped forward to stand at their mother's side. "She did not come alone. The guards have permitted us a moment with thee, Sister."

"Katherin, my sweet." Eda reached her other hand out, and Katherin stepped forward to take it, completing the circle. Although she felt that she had wept all the tears that her heart could make, the faces of her only family swam before Eda's eyes in the gloom.

"They say thou art sentenced to hang." Eda's mother spoke in a tremulous whisper.

"Is't to be on the morrow?" asked Katherin.

Their mother hissed, "Do not speak it! Get thee on thy knees and pray, and so shall I, for God in His mercy cannot suffer this to pass."

Eda clutched at her mother's arm. "Mother, be still. 'Tis cold, and the ground be wet; thou wilt catch a chill or some ill humor. Get thee home again. My heart brims with joy to see thee, but thou must not linger here in this forsaken place."

"Thou durst not ask me to leave thee to hang!" cried the old woman, her voice catching with a sob. "Thou art innocent!"

With a gentle smile, Eda touched her mother's cheek. "I am innocent, Mother, but I did plead my case, and thus has God seen fit to lay my path before me. Be thou thankful if thou might, for in His mercy, He spares thee the sight of thy elder daughter's ignominy. I've brought thee shame."

The old woman leaned against the bars, tears streaming down her cheeks. "I am thy mother, and I must protect thee. I shall beg my lady to take me in thy place—"

"Mother, hush. If I be innocent of this crime, thou art innocent of any. Long hast thou comforted thy Katherin and thy Eda in our times of sorrow. Would that I could be thy comfort now, but Katherin must stand by thee alone." Eda pressed Katherin's hand. "Sister, love our mother well."

"As I have always," Katherin said.

"And do thou say a prayer for me," said Eda. "I pray for calm...but I fear the dawn."

"Hast thou reason to fear?" Katherin asked. "Hast thou not confessed thy sins? Then thou must be content, Sister; for thou wilt leave the world behind. Think not on we wretched sinners. Go thou with thy true love into God's glory and leave the wretched behind."

Eda felt the sting behind Katherin's words. Being so alike in feature and so different in temperament, they had never been bosom friends; even now, when Katherin spoke words of comfort, they rang sharp in the ear.

"We shall pray for thee," their mother said. "And thou, my sweet, when thou art among the saints and the martyrs, then thou shalt pray for us in turn."

"If I be in heaven, so I shall," Eda whispered. She had indeed confessed her sins, but the mantle of her sentence weighed heavily on her breast, and she feared God's judgment.

Eda kissed her mother's hand, and then her sister's, too, and she sent them away with her love and her blessing. Alone again in the gaol but for the guards who watched her, she sat on the cold earthen floor again and wept.

She wept for what she had lost, and for what she would lose.

When dawn broke over the land, Fair Eda's wrists were bound before her and she was taken in a cart to the gibbet. As she rolled through the crowd, she saw the faces of the people she had known since she was born: the miller, who ground her grain; the thatcher, who had roofed her cottage; the weaver, who had purchased wool from her family. This world she had known and so loved, this world which had nurtured her, had turned against her now in her hour of darkest grief and accused her of killing her own true love. The same people who had soothed her scraped knees and danced with her on holy days now hurled clods of dirt, and rotten vegetables, and cruel words; they spat on her and cursed her name.

After a small eternity of such torture, Eda's cart jolted to a stop. She was escorted by her guards up the steps to the platform, where an executioner awaited. He extended a hand to Eda, who looked at him in confusion as she took it clumsily with her bound hands. Only then did she realize he was helping her up onto the stool that stood beneath the noose.

"I thank thee, sir," she said, and she stepped up. The stool wobbled beneath her feet, and her knees trembled; she nearly fell, but the executioner reached out and grasped her elbow, holding her steady until she gained her balance.

Eda looked down into the crowd. From up here, strangely, the world seemed far away. She saw all before her as if through someone else's eyes.

'Twas not Fair Eda who had lost her true love; 'twas not Fair Eda who had been sentenced to hang for his murder, which had struck her more cruelly than any who had loved him. These were the sorrows of some other girl, and Eda pitied her.

Her mother was already there, with young Katherin at her side. The old peasant woman's tears sparkled as they ran down her lined cheeks. She stretched out her hand and turned her unseeing face to any person who brushed past her, grasping at coats and skirts and pleading, "Mercy! Mercy! Have mercy upon my child!"

But Lady Joan had no mercy to spare. She stood at the front of the crowd, flanked by guards in livery and her younger son, and gazed up at the beautiful girl above her. Her face was calm, her demeanor stoic, but in her heart and shining in her clear blue eyes was a hatred so cold that one might believe she wished to kick the stool herself.

Nor had any other soul in the countryside any mercy for wicked Eda. Their lord had been well-loved, and all assembled in the crowd to witness the punishment of his murderer were hungry for the murderess's blood.

Eda's eyes were red-rimmed from three days and three nights of bitter grief, but she no longer wept. The executioner lifted the noose and pushed it over Eda's head. As he tightened it, he spoke. "Dost thou forgive me?"

Closing her eyes, Eda summoned the strength to put truth into the traditional words. When she felt ready, she opened her eyes again and looked into his face. He wore no expression—not hatred, not sorrow, not grief. It was comforting to Eda when matched against the loathing in every other face. "I forgive thee, sir," she said.

He then raised his voice. "And hast thou any last words?"

Then Fair Eda raised her voice, for she would have the world hear her final words and, God willing, remember them. "I go gladly to my death, for a world without my true love is a world I cannot bear."

The jeers of the crowd rose above her voice before she was finished speaking. She looked at Lady Joan, but saw no compassion there; in the lady's eyes, there was only hate. So Eda turned her eyes upon her own blind mother and her younger sister, who stood near the front of the crowd.

In her mother's face, Eda saw a grief that echoed her own: the sorrow of a woman who had lost what she best loved.

And in her sister's face, Eda saw something else.

The stool clattered across the floorboards of the gallows with a hollow sound. Fair Eda's younger sister watched, and her lips curved into a smile.