The Widow of Windscar Hall

But hark—a figure treads where ivy strangles light,
A woman veiled in grief, a spectre of the night.
Her name, a whisper lost to frost and bitter air,
Her face, a parchment etched with lines of grim despair.
Ten winters long she’s wandered through these crumbling rooms,
A soul entombed within a labyrinth of glooms.

The hearths lie cold, their ashes long since turned to dust,
Yet in her heart, a flame still flickers—love, or lust
For answers buried deep beneath the flagstones gray?
Each night, she lights a taper’s frail, defiant ray
And scans the walls where portraits gaze with hollow eyes,
Their lips sealed tight on truths disguised in painted lies.

One eve, as autumn’s gale screamed through the fractured pane,
A groan arose—a sound not born of wind’s refrain.
The eastern tower, long since barred by rusted chain,
Surrendered to the storm, its secrets to profane.
Through splintered wood she pressed, her breath a shallow mist,
And crossed the threshold where no soul had dared exist.

There, in a chamber frozen ’neath the moon’s pale leer,
A trunk of oak awaited, bound in iron sheer.
Her trembling hands undid the clasp, time’s grip undone,
Revealing lace now yellowed, locks of hair outspun,
A miniature of youth—her own face, yet unbowed,
And ’neath these relics, letters, writ in hand unbowed.

*“My Isobel, while summer crowns our land in green,*
*I ride to war, where honor’s blade cuts sharp and keen.*
*Should fate decree my blood be spilled on foreign sod,*
*Seek not my grave, but guard this hall—our trust, our god.*
*Yet mark this oath: if e’er I fail to return,*
*The eastern tower holds what jealous years adjourn.”*

The parchment slipped like leaves from autumn’s withered grasp,
Her throat constricted round a decades-oldened gasp.
For there, beneath the vow, a second script emerged—
A later hand, its ink by tears and anguish urged:
*“Forgive, my love, the lie that chain’d thee to this curse,*
*I fell not by the sword, but by a brother’s purse.*

*“Betrayed at dusk, where northern crags meet roiling foam,*
*My flesh now feeds the crows, my bones no hallowed home.*
*Fly swift from Windscar’s thrall—its wealth is drenched in blood,*
*My kin’s dark greed hath poisoned even sacred mud.*
*O break thy mournful vigil, seek the world’s embrace,*
*Lest thou become like me, a ghost in this damned place.”*

The dates—two springs had passed between these stark disclosures,
Two springs where hope had fed her heart with false exposures.
She’d lingered, prayed, and worn her sorrow like a gown,
While in some distant field, his corpse moldered down.
Now truth’s keen edge sliced through the web of her delusion,
Revealing prison bars in every grand illusion.

“O cruel deceit!” she wailed unto the mocking walls,
“What god would spin such threads to bind a soul that falls?
Ten years I’ve kept the vigil, ten years bled to bone,
Each moment chiselled from my flesh to guard this stone.
And all the while, my Edmund’s voice from ’neath the earth
Did plead in vain for me to claim life’s fleeting worth.”

Through labyrinthine halls she fled, the letters clenched
Against her breast, where once his living heart had drenched
Her world in warmth. The castle seemed to twist and leer,
Each familiar tapestry now a phantom’s sneer.
Out to the precipice she ran, where cliffs descend
To meet the sea’s black maw—a means to make an end.

Yet as the salt winds whipped the tears from off her cheek,
A figure materialized—pale, spectral, weak.
His form, a shimmering echo of the man she’d mourned,
His eyes, twin pools where all life’s tragedy was borne.
“Stay, Isobel,” he breathed, his voice the sigh of reeds,
“Though I am naught but shadow, born of guilt’s foul seeds.”

“Why haunt me now?” she cried, “When knowledge comes too late?
Why let me waste in darkness, victim of blind fate?”
The wraith stretched forth a hand of mist and moonbeam spun:
“My spirit bound to earth by chains of deeds undone.
Thy love, a beacon in death’s vast, unfeeling night,
Hath kept me tethered here, denied eternal flight.”

“Then take me hence!” she pleaded, “Let this pain be through!
What light remains is but a ember—false and blue.”
The phantom shook his head, a mournful, slow arc traced
In silvered air. “The choice was thine, and now embraced.
This keep is thy creation—stone by stone, each grief
Laid mortar for the prison of thy bleak belief.”

As dawn’s first blush ignited scarlet ’cross the waves,
The spectre faded, lost to time’s voracious graves.
Alone again, she watched the gulls carve spirals high,
Their freedom mocking her earth-rooted, leaden sigh.
With slow deliberation, she retraced her trail
Through corridors now luminous with morning’s veil.

Back to the trunk she crept, her movements trance-like, grim,
Withdrawing silken cords from ’neath the portrait’s rim.
In the great hall where once their vows had sweetly soared,
She wove the noose that severed soul from cruel discord.
The stool kicked clear—a crash that echoed through the years,
A punctuation mark to all her silent fears.

Yet as her breath constricted and her sight grew dim,
A final vision graced the world’s receding rim:
Not Edmund’s ghost, but living hands that pried apart
The trunk’s false bottom, where a map lay—ancient art
To buried gold. The brother’s greed, the fatal plot—
All truths she might have grasped had sorrow tied her not.

Too late, the understanding flashed—a searing brand—
The castle’s curse was never wrought by fate’s stern hand,
But human vice, which she, in loyal love, became
An accomplice to, her life fuel for its flame.
Her neck snapped clean, the final thought that could abide—
*How different might have been the tale, had she not died.*

Now travelers swear the western tower softly gleams
On moonless nights, two shadows waltzing in moonbeams.
One bound by greed’s eternal, unrelenting shame,
The other, love that fed the pyre whence both came.
And in the cliffs below, where salt and sorrow blend,
The sea still sings this elegy to the betrayed friend.