“Is there a song that you hold special? If so, play it and really listen to the lyrics and then write a story about where that song takes you to.

Bonus points: Use song lyrics in your story.”

Author’s note: This isn’t exactly a song I hold special: it’s more a case of taking a song where the lyrics lend themselves easily to being turned into a short story. I remember thinking for a long time that the song by The Moody Blues was called ‘Knights in White Satin’ (it was years before I saw it written down), and so in my head, the line conjured up an image totally different from what the song was actually about. For some reason, the (erroneous) title always made me think of Tennyson’s poem about ‘The Lady of Shalott’, and so that’s what I’ve gone with. However, I’m pleased that I’ve managed to take part of the actual lyrics – “Gazing at people / Some hand in hand / Just what I’m going through / They can’t understand” – and incorporate that (albeit slightly paraphrased) into my story.

Knight in White Satin

Winter

From an early age, I had learned to beware the window.

My earliest memories are of being rocked to sleep in the arms of a comforting presence. There was a pleasing softness and squishiness about her and a comforting milky smell. I would later learn that this woman’s name was Tilda and that she was my nurse. My mother had died giving birth to me, but I did not know that then, and so, until I was some four or five years of age, I thought Tilda was my mother for she certainly cared for me as if I were her own, feeding me, singing to me, brushing my hair every morning and night.

She it was who taught me to sew. I was adept with a needle long before I could wield a pen and form stumbling letters, dipping my quill in the glass ink pot and making so many blots on the parchment that Tilda was driven to scold. I still remember holding my blunt bodkin, threaded with a colourful ribbon of silk, learning to pass the needle in and out of a piece of linen; although I wonder now what purpose was served by my learning such a skill, for all knew that I would never marry – could never marry – for what man would be willing to tie himself to a girl such as I? The stone walls of my tower room were my world; I could not expect anyone else to willingly share it with me.

But I digress. I had no thought of any husband when first I learned the small neat stitches of embroidery. My child’s fingers laboured to master satin stitch and crewel stitch that I might sit with Tilda, working on the same pillow. I had not thought then that my life’s work would be a tapestry so intricate that it would occupy every moment of my waking hours from first light until dusk.

I still remember well my seventh naming day when the large tapestry frame was carried in by eight servants, another eight following them with the mirror that would become my window on the world. And thus my task was explained to me: I was to observe the outside world through its reflected pattern in the mirror, and I was to reproduce each detail faithfully. Poppies and cornflowers romped in fields of golden wheat either side of a winding river, and a road snaked its way along too, leading to many-towered Camelot. At first, my eye saw only the wonders of nature, for flowers and trees seemed beauteous indeed compared to the stone walls that surrounded me; then, as I grew older, I began to take an interest in the people who passed by on the road, and to make stories for myself about who they were and what they were doing. They flitted across the mirror like shadows in a puppet play, yet it sometimes seemed that they were more substantial than I.

Summer

Swathes of silk still shroud the forbidden window, but daylight always manages to creep through, spilling onto the flagstones in puddles of muted pinks and greens and yellows. At times, I long to pull the hangings aside and gaze out on the world below. I don’t, of course: it has been imprinted on my heart that the window is dangerous and that were I to look outside just once, for just the smallest moment, the curse laid on me at birth would take effect and I would topple to my doom.

Shadows are not so tiresome when one knows the reality is fatal.

My hands fly over the tapestry. I have learned much since those first tentative attempts with a bodkin. An old woman with a basket takes shape upon the road, her form outlined in stem stitch, whilst off to the right, the sun beats down upon fields of barley and rye. I do not include the figures the mirror showed me earlier: a young swain and his lass who disappeared hand in hand into the long grass and emerged again some time later. I have no name for the thing between them that puts a smile on his lips and a blush in her cheek, but I long for it with every one of my fourteen summers.

Winter

The candlelight flickers. It is not late – only six of the bells, but the natural light in this room faded some time ago. I can no longer see to make the feather stitches necessary to complete the corner I am working on; and besides, the absence of light outside is reflected in the mirror within. How can I weave the unseen world about me when its shadow is obscured by darkness?

Spring

My tapestry continues to grow, the mirror furnishing me with fresh subjects each day. Bold knights gallop towards Camelot; merchants returned from the sea display their wares. Did our Lord feel thus when He separated light and darkness, land and water? When He admired the handiwork of his creation, did He experience the pride that I feel now when I regard the microcosm I have made in coloured silks?

Summer

I watch the seasons change through the mirror’s eye. Winter is cold and bare; spring brings hints of life; and summer bursts with joyous fecundity. Sunlight glints off the water in my woven river – or, at least, an impression of what I think sunlight must look like in real life. I still live in a world of shadows, seeing only my mirror’s version of reality, but the curse is an effective deterrent and the window remains shrouded.

I could have ignored it for ever had it not been for the knight in white satin.

The mirror shows a sky so blue it almost hurts the eyes. The road is busy today, it seems: a farmer walks past, driving his geese to market; a procession of nuns, stiff and severe in their long, black dresses and starched, white wimples follows at a more sedate pace. Their lips move as in prayer, but the mirror shares only sights not sounds.

And then, I see him. Shining armour peeps out from beneath the white satin surcoat he wears over it. His carriage is tall and straight; he bears himself like one of royal blood. His proud horse steps down the road as if carrying a king, and the jewel-bedecked bridle glitters in the sunlight. As my eyes hungrily devour the scene in the mirror, a light breeze catches the plumes on his helmet, making them flutter, and his polished vambraces gleam. A spark of lightning ignites inside me and I move as one in a dream towards the forbidden window, knowing that I am no longer satisfied with shadows. This man is my destiny: I must gaze upon his true face.

Ignoring the curse, I pull the hangings aside.

Time slows and then stills. I am as immobile as the figures in my tapestry: a woman poised on a precipice of destruction. A single grain of sand falls through the hourglass and I feel my life unravelling.

For an endless moment, I am frozen in time. If my knight in white satin would but only raise his head, he would see my face and I his. I could die happily knowing that I have gazed on true beauty.

He does not look up.

The Fates pluck my life-thread from the tapestry they have been weaving these past fifteen years. Embracing the inevitable, I let myself topple from the window, knowing that I am moving towards my death.