A/n : This is (chronologically) the second in the MechKnight series. The first is “The Lady's Guardian” (my myself) and the third (currently) is “This Blessed Plot” (by the WordSmith). All the MechKnight stories can be found in the C2 on my profile. Also linked from my profile is a website devoted to MechKnight (lots of images and so forth there!) and also my blog where I talk about writing.

Astute followers of MechKnight will quickly realize this story is the “replacement” for the removed “Letters to Saint Catherine”. The reason for the removal of that story and its replacement are given in my blog, but – in brief – the technique I was using for that story just wasn't working for me. So, I have changed it up a bit. This opening chapter is very similar to the first chapter of that story, but the rest will be very different (although it will be the same plot).

A few technical notes; I will be including “Editor's notes” at the beginning of most chapters. These will be in italics and will be preceded by the words Editor's note : I will also be including editorial comments [like this] in the body of the text. These notes are part of the published story, and are not notes from me (the author). They are from the fictional editor. Notes from me will be preceded by A/n : and will be in regular type. Hopefully, it should all be obvious whether a note is from me (a real person) or Sister Mary Frances (the fictional editor).

Reviews and so forth are gratefully received!

Excerpts from

A Life Among Dragons

the memoir of Monica Hunyadi

The Mother General's Foreword

It is likely you know the name of my husband. If you do not, you should; for it is to men like him and him in especial you owe your freedom and liberty. And you may very well recognize my name; it is Monica Hunyadi. My Sisters call me Mother, the Boyars still call me Voivode, but my husband called me his. It was always more than I deserved.

My husband was Vladimir Hunyadi. As a Boyar, Voivode and Grand Master of the Order of the Dragon he fought for the Empire and the Cross all his life. He is dead now, God rest his soul, and of your charity pray for him. A wife's love tells me he does not need it, but I know love always blinded me to his faults.

He died doing what he did second best; defending the Empire and Church from enemies both within and without. Like his forefathers before him he died in Maugrim, at the controls of a machina, his blood singing a hymn of battle. He and I both knew it would end like that. I thought I was prepared for the pain and the loss but, as in so much, I was wrong. I always desperately prayed I would die before him, because he was so much stronger than I, so much more able to bear loss. But God does not always answer our prayers. Or, rather, perhaps He knows what we should have prayed.

When Vladimir was buried and all Masses said I tidied our affairs and passed our estate to my nephew's grandson, a boy on the very cusp of manhood. I had him brought to my chamber and he trembled with fear and joy as his terrifying great-aunt Monica, the Supreme Countess of the Order, senior Grand Voivode of the Veche, gave him horribly personal advice, held him to impossible standards, and put the activation-key of perhaps the most famous machina in Europe into his soft hand.

I passed what finery was not my own and I held in trust to the Veche, for the council to give to the next holder of my offices. I took my own treasures and prised the gems from their mountings, picked the golden thread from the robes, unlinked the necklaces and the bracelets. I built a bonfire of silk and velvet, soaked it in my perfumes and used it to melt the precious metals down to coin blanks. I stamped them myself with the seal of the outgoing Grand Master and then broke that signet ring forever. I pulled a muscle in my shoulder doing it, a wound that has never fully healed. That pain and the hurt in my heart will only be eased in Heaven.

And then I took the veil and walked to the convent of Our Lady of Bucharest, distributing the coins to the poor and needy en route.

I was an old woman then, my beauty having long-since faded from lustrous black and olive to gray. And I am even older now. My bones are as fragile as a hummingbird, my voice cracked and my eyesight long-failed. Of your charity, remember in your prayers Sister Mary Frances, who records these words for me and gives sight to an old blind woman.

I do not even know what she looks like, but her voice sounds like Roxana's, and so I always see my sister-in-law in my mind's eye when she speaks to me.

She laughs! Sister Mary Frances snorts with laughter, and I am laughing too; because I can hear the electro-stylus still scratching over the slate! She records everything I say, my dedicated little scribe.

God willing, child, I will see your face in Heaven.

I entered the convent as a novice; a life of peaceful poverty strange to a woman who had known nothing but war and luxury all her days. And a life of obedience unfamiliar and long-forgotten to a woman who had grown comfortable with command.

My husband's memoirs were well-known then, published over a decade before when a lesser man would have retired. They are tales which gloss-over my failures and focus too much on my beauty and brilliance for my taste. For the sake of my humility, I never allowed myself to read them more than once. Besides, I have something better. Words are thin, insipid things and I remember what his lips tasted like, what his hands felt like, what his voice sounded like when he told me he loved me. And I remember the scent of high-explosive, the taste of laser-ionization in the air, the vibrations of Maugrim and Corvin and all the rest of the machinae, the sound of my husband's voice roaring over the vox-casters and shaking the ancient stained glass of Saint Peter's as he faced down the entire Praetorian Guard. And won.

Yes, Sister, he really did that. Are you my scribe or my audience?

But as insipid and inadequate as words are, they are all that will endure. My husband's memoirs were never complete, and when he died some stories became ones only I knew. Almost everyone who fought in those wars was dead by the time I took the veil; Jane, Shikibu, Carmen, Roxana and Virgiliu and Veronika, even young Cleopatra and Carlo. I outlived them all, it seems.

And so Mother General Tereza required me, under obedience, to take electro-stylus and slate and write my own memoir, the story of my life. I did not wish to. The wound of my grief was fresh and still raw. Dwelling on my previous life was painful. I thought at the time she was ordering me to do so as an exercise in humility. When she deleted the first draft, pronouncing it “inadequate”, I was even more convinced.

But now I realize her motives were manifold. Of course she ordered me to write in order to inculcate this willful noblewoman with an understanding of the necessity of obedience. But she also had me write my memoir because without it all the moments only I held would be lost like tears in the rain.

It is certainly the case histories have been written about those days, some of them more detailed and accurate than anything my husband or I could ever hope to have written. We did little research, and memory is a tricky thing. Even when we at our most honest, we are far from impartial. And false humility is as bad as none.

But a memoir has something a history does not; the human touch of a life remembered rather than a life retold. And Mother Tereza, God rest her soul, wanted that from me. She wanted my story, in my own words, to be told to the world.

Of course, she did not tell me that. Nor did she order the manuscript published when I handed it to her – she read it and passed it to my confessor, who locked it in his safe. There it languished for years until God and my fellow Sisters made me the Mother General of the Order, and once again I held a seat on the Veche. Men trembled at my commands thousands of miles from Bucharest, Boyars and machinae marching to their deaths and those of others because of my words.

God forgive me for what I have done and what I have failed to do. Blessed Mother, pray for me at the foot of the Throne. My husband was taken from me and your Son never gave me tactical advice; I cannot be certain my conduct of any war has ever been pleasing to you.

I will know soon enough. I do not have long for this world. My health has been slowly failing for years, but it has taken a turn for the worse this Winter. An infection has settled in my chest and neither medicine nor prayer will dislodge it. The hurts I suffered behind the control board of a machina have come back to haunt me with a vengeance. My flesh bruises so easily and takes so long to heal, and I am always cold. I know I will die soon.

Sister Mary Frances! Sister! She is crying; and still writing! Novice, compose yourself! I have lived a good, long life. I have run the race to the finish, I have kept the faith. If I am destined for Hell I deserve it, so why grieve? If Heaven is my destiny, then why are you sad? Do not think so selfishly! You think of only yourself when you weep for the loss of a friend.

Oh yes, child, yes, a thousand times yes you are my friend! And I will miss you too, and if I am close enough to the Throne for God to hear my voice I will pray for your without ceasing.

Now I am crying, Sister, and I cannot even see to wipe my tears away. No, no, continue writing. I am tired and I do not have much more to say. It will not be long before all tears are wiped away for me, anyway.

So when I became Mother General my memoir became mine to do with as I wish. I did not publish it, I did not destroy it. I did not even think about it.

But my life is coming to an end now and I realize if I do not have the memoir published perhaps no-one will. I was ordered to write it for a reason; so events only I now remember would endure. In fact, it sorts ill to say only I remember them; for through my mind has failed slower than my body there is no doubt my intellect and memory have decayed. I am certain there are things in my memoir which no human alive still remembers.

I will know them again in Heaven, and you, you who read these words, will know them here if you wish. I have ordered the memoir unsealed and named Sister Mary Frances my editor and publicist. I have directed her to publish whatever from the memoir she sees fit. She will choose what is made public and what remains private. I trust her in this regard for she is far more prudent than I. The memoir was never intended for public consumption, but time and my vocation have deadened my ego enough that I do not dread it being read. Even so, I do not insist everything sees the light of day.

In any case, by the time it is published I think I will be far beyond such things.

I only remind you, Sister, and do not command, that my motive for having the memoir published is to reveal what is hidden, the parts of mine and my husband's story which are not yet known. Much of what I wrote duplicates his work, but there are tales which only I told. Repetition is only necessary if you deem it to be so.

I have had these words recorded by her hand to act as an introduction to the memoir. She is diligent and devoted, and I urge my successor to permit her the latitude to continue this work.

May God bless you, whoever you are, and may you gain special graces through the intercession of His Most Immaculate Mother, Our Lady of Bucharest. Of your charity, pray for the souls of myself and my husband, and all those who appear in the memoir you are about to read.

I think we are finished here, Sister. I am tired and will retire. Say the Office with me, and then please send Father Nicolai to me. I wish him to hear my confession. Sister, we are done here; you can stop writing.

Transcriber's note : The above text was recorded in my own hand at the urging of the Mother General on the eve of her death. When I came to her cell the next morning to say the Morning Office with her and take her to Mass, I found she had died in her sleep. Her successor as Mother General of the congregation permitted me to continue the work Mother Monica had entrusted to me, and so I present excerpts from her memoir as she requested.

I have made the minimal editorial changes and corrections possible, attempting to confine my comments to editor's notes outside the body of the text. I have tried to keep to the letter and spirit of Mother's instructions in deciding what to publish, but I know my skills are woefully inadequate to make such choices. A copy of her complete, unedited memoir has been sent to the Vatican and the original still resides in the library of the congregation's mother-house. The excerpts I am choosing to include in this published collection are ones which I believe reflect her life, her devotion to Our Lady, her Son and His Church, and her love for her husband, but most importantly cover events which his memoirs do not. Her main desire in making her memoir public was to leave the world a record of events long past, and I have tried to be sympathetic to that.

Her memoir is personal, touching, and offers an insight into her which I never thought to be blessed with. I knew her during the Winter of her life, but reading her memoir showed me her Spring and Summer spent with Vladimir Hunyadi. When you read her memoir you will see she was not perfect, but she continually strove to be the very best woman, wife and Catholic she could.

Reflect on who she was, and of your charity pray for her soul. And pray for me also, because I know the work I have done for her is inadequate and she would be disappointed, although she would never have told me so.

In the love of Christ and His Blessed Mother,

Sister Mary Frances Lepadatu, OD