Temple Sword

Chapter 157 The Shadow of Others

1322, Month of St. John (June)
Buda, Hungary
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The woman and her husband sat quietly at the dark kitchen table, and in the corner the ten-year-old boy curled up on the thin straw, breathing softly.

He slept soundly, must have been exhausted from everything he had been through.

"It's not him," the woman whispered, shaking her head, "I don't believe it's him..."

"Why not?" the man insisted. "Exactly the same, and he is already ten years old, why can't it be him?"

"It's not him. It's uncannily similar, but it's not him."

"But why can't it be him?" asked the blacksmith in a more angry tone. "We never found his body, no one found him..."

The pale and haggard woman closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and held the man's right hand on the table with both hands.

"The hardest thing in my life was accepting that my only son was dead," she said firmly, "watching helplessly as his tiny body was swept away by the river while he screamed, mama mama ...

This has bothered me for years, and sometimes I still dream about him coming home, about him coming ashore and we just don't see him, but..."

She paused for a moment and had to wait until she recovered from the choking before continuing.

"But Matthew is dead, Joseph," she said to his husband, almost inaudibly, "and it has been three years since we buried his empty coffin. Don't you understand?

You can't bring a boy here and claim it's our Matthew.The kid just for some reason forgot who he was and where he came from..."

The blacksmith's broad chest heaved with a heavy sigh. No matter what his wife said, he believed that he had found his son outside Sekeshbai Castle through a holy miracle, because the child looked exactly like Matthew, And exactly ten years old.

Three years ago in the spring, Matthew was seven years old when the Danube flooded and washed away after the river thawed.

His mother was washing clothes on the bank when it was too late when she noticed that the little boy had ventured into the river.One moment the water was not up to his waist, and the next moment he was suddenly submerged.

The current was strong and the boy was too young to swim.They couldn't even give their poor son a real funeral because the cruel river didn't return their child to them.

After that, Lily cried for several months, neither spoke nor ate, and her beautiful and plump figure became nothing but bones and skin almost overnight.She grew weaker and sicker so often that even the slightest breeze could knock her down.

Years passed without her regaining her health and zest for life.She's not interested in anything, and walks like a ghost around their small house on the edge of town, feeding the chickens, doing chores, and going to church to pray incessantly.

Joseph vented his helpless rage in his smithy, pouring endless despair into the hot molten iron.

At first he made horseshoes, hoes, nails, and other things that could not be sold in ten busy bazaars.He hammered the white-hot metal, and no one could hear him weeping and cursing God amidst the frenzied chatter and hammering of the forge.

A man mourns differently than a woman, he is able to bury his terrible pain deep within himself and transform it over time into a sort of angry force that propels him forward.

He could bear the pain, like the point of an arrow piercing deep into his body, and after a while, he got used to the constant pain, as if it had been with him all the time.

A woman's grief is external, like a garment or a wound that never heals, and some kind of healing must be found.That's why Joseph thought that if they could have another baby, maybe the new little life could help Lily get back to life.

So, a year after Matthew was swept away by the Danube, they decided to try and fill the void in their lives.But no matter how hard they tried, Lily couldn't conceive another child.

They tried everything, and Joseph even found a witch from the forest and asked her to make the desert fertile again with various potions, but to no avail.

Finally, they also visit Margaret Island to ask for help from their brethren in the Knights Hospitaller, but they also just shake their heads after Lily undergoes a series of embarrassing examinations.

One of the older and learned old knights of the hospital said that perhaps the weakness caused by grief had made the woman barren, and if so, there was really nothing to be done.

Joseph could barely hold back his rage because he gave all their savings to the Knights Hospitaller to cure his wife, and he felt like every penny he gave was for nothing.

Sensing the blacksmith's wrath, the old hospital knight quickly added that they should pray fervently and say the Lord's Prayer 140 eight times a day, which might help them out of their troubles.

"What the worldly power cannot heal, the Lord can heal." That's what he said at the time. "The Lord's Prayer is one of the most powerful prayers, and if you say it fourteen times in every prayer, and eighteen in vespers, thirty for the living, and thirty for the dead, miracles may happen. Unfortunately, I can only help you so far.”

Joseph wanted to use his two big fists to retrieve the big money bag stuffed with silver coins that he had handed to the abbot, but he knew that would only make things worse for them.

Though he complained at his wife's door that the Knights of the Hospitallers were talking nonsense, in his workshop he said a prayer with every stroke of the hammer, and by the time he began to level the iron and begin to shape it, he was usually already Finish reading half of the daily requirement.

When he had tasted his own bile last winter when he heard the Pope ask all Christians to pray for the birth of an heir to King Charles.

Never in his life, he thought, had the king prayed for a healthy child as he had for the past year, but in the end his child died anyway.And now, he still wants to pray for the queen's pregnancy?What is the use of this devout prayer except to make everything worse?

Joseph dropped the 140-eight Lord's Prayer the next day.Since then, he went about his business in silence, just as his wife lived her life in silence, and they tacitly stopped trying.

Only in the morning and evening did they say a few words to each other, but even on these occasions they did not say much.Their love, once hotter than a furnace, has dwindled into a cold, emotionless coexistence.

Then, on the way home from the market at Seksberg, Joseph saw the sad-eyed boy, and it occurred to him that they could finally have a family, a real, healthy family, not just a handful ash.

He was sure that it was none other than his son Matthew who had bought from the slave traders.With blue eyes, walnut-brown hair, and the exact same build as Matthew, the blacksmith felt he knew exactly what was going on.

The Danube didn't swallow his son, it washed him ashore somewhere in the south, and Matthew wandered the kingdom for years, God knows what terrible adventures he had.

Maybe he'd even lost his memory because of something horrible, something Joseph had heard of before, it wasn't out of the question.

On the way home he kept trying to talk to him, trying to get a few words out of the boy's mouth, but the boy was stubborn: he lay on his side, curled up in a ball, cried softly for a while, then fell asleep.

Now, after three agonizing years, their son has miraculously appeared, sleeping in the corner of their kitchen while Lily has been in denial.

"How can you be sure he's not our Matthew?" the blacksmith went on arguing with his wife. "I know how terrible it is for you to lose him, I know because I've been through the same pain as you. But I finally feel happy! Why don't you feel the same?"

"You can't understand, Joseph," said the woman with tears welling up in her eyes, "that no man can understand the feeling that we as mothers not only love our children with all our hearts, they are blood in our bodies, The meat of the heart.

We brought them into this world at no small cost, they are part of us.When they hurt, we hurt too, we cry.

If this child, whoever he is, is my fetus, every part of me will feel him.But I'm just baffled that you uncovered my old scars!Other than that I can't feel anything!Why are you doing this? "

"He's my son." The man ended the argument.His voice was gentle but allowed no objection, "I found him with God's help and I will never let him be taken from me again.

He'll stay with us, and with time, maybe the fog in your eyes will clear, and you'll be able to start believing again that he's not going anywhere. "

Lily let go of her husband's hand and stared into his eyes for a long time.Joseph's eyes glowed in the dark kitchen, almost smoking with excitement.

"Well," she relented, "he can stay here, he's just a poor orphan who must have been tortured and abused a lot...

But he is not my son, he can be your apprentice or servant, I don't mind, he can live in your shop. "

"In my shop?" echoed the blacksmith, shocked. "There isn't much room there! Matthew has his own bed, I suppose..."

"Make room for him in your shop!" insisted Lily. "If you tidy up, there must be a nook where you can sleep and lay down.

It's warm in there, and there's a roof over your head, so don't make me let him into a pigsty!I don't want him to live in our house, he can't sleep with us.

Joseph, if you love me a little, don't let us quarrel over this. "

"Okay," the man sighed, "the first thing I do when I get up tomorrow morning is to tidy up the blacksmith shop, but before that, he will stay here, and it will be dawn in a few hours..."

"I'll get him a blanket." The woman stood up from the table, leaving her husband and the sleeping little boy behind.

Neither of them knew that Ireh had been just faking sleep the whole time, hearing their last from their first words.His heart was beating so violently that he could hardly breathe evenly.

He had to start thinking hard about which situation he was in more trouble: as a slave at Olivier's clutches, or as a ghost of a dead man in this smithy who would never be freed.

(End of this chapter)