3. A Fickle Thing

A Fickle Thing

Luella

I wake to screams. Rolling to my side, my injuries echo the frantic nature of the room, demanding my attention. My copper hair is matted and stuck to my cheek, dried blood flaking as I shove it out of my face. I start to cry. This part is easy.

Everything hurts after all.

“Good lady, are you alright?” a girl is asking, frantically reaching out to touch my face. Her scream must be what drew in the two guards who roll Silas over, take in the room, and look to me. I hate that I’ve upset her, but it must be done. I meet the eyes of one of the younger men, Ryle. I won’t be speaking first. That’s rule number one. I let the tears continue to leak from my eyes as his flicker across my bruised cheek, split lip, and finally down to the red mark around my neck. His fist clenches.

I look away then, allowing my face to be drawn towards the girl tending me. Let Ryle think me shamed. As if I care that they saw this body.

As if it were even my body.

“What happened?” the older guards asks.

“Look at her,” Ryle says. I don’t look at them, though. Maybe this was the hardest part. The act. Feigning despair when I feel nothing of the sort. Yet I know my role well, and I let out a whimper, flinching away from the servant girl’s hands, despite the kindness in them.

“Stones, his own wife?” the older guard mutters, disdain dripping like the blood from my hands just hours ago.

“What?” I choke out, curling my body inward. He’s done much worse, but I’m not supposed to know that. Good women don’t marry predators.

They would expect that he’d beaten me, violated me, and most importantly, that I was broken by it.

Some of that was true. He did try to beat me when he’d recognized his own sluggish movements, could recognize when someone was being poisoned. Drugged. It’s easy to recognize things you are familiar with, to notice the signs you’ve inflicted on others.

“Who are you?” he’d demanded. Or was that the last one? The details are already fading into the procession of white dresses, red veils, and dead husbands. I’ve never had an answer to satisfy that question, anyways. They don’t care, nor do I know. Who was I, now, with a face not my own? What had I looked like, before?

I shake my head once, twice. It clears my mind and then I’m falling back into the role. “What happened? Is he…?”

“Gods,” Ryle mutters. I’d put them in a predicament. On the one hand, they served Silas. I should be arrested for killing him. Wives are meant to obey, and I had not done that. On the other hand, he was dead, and a piece of filth that was worth more on the bottom of their boots than he was as their Senator. Enough of his servants and guards had young girls or boys in their familias. Ones they kept out of his sight, or wished they had. “Gods,” he says, louder this time.

I reach for my tattered dress and cover my chest with the rust and red stained fabric. I whimper again and the sound grates on my nerves. I should be laughing. Drinking even, to the demise of such a monster; however, that would not do, yet.

I sob harder when the dried blood touches me, flaking against the matching stiffness coating my fingers. This, obviously, upsets me, so I fall into the servant girl’s arms and she instantly begins to smooth my hair, trying to calm me.

“Gods,” Ryle shouts and I cry out again, shrinking into her more.

“You’re scaring her,” the servant girl, Tanya, says. I think that’s her name. I can’t remember. I need to be more careful about how hard I hit my own head.

But it has to look real.

If it isn’t realistic, if it isn’t gruesome, there will be too many questions. I won’t make that mistake again. I’d lost a good chunk of my hair that time, not from my skirmish with my husband, but from the one with the guard who didn’t believe I could have fought off a full-grown man with just a weapon and so few marks on me. He was right, of course, but really it was the principle of questioning a lady that irritated me.

And a widow at that.

“Please,” I beg. Beg . Gods, I hate this part, too. “Please, I… I didn’t... He…” I trail off, sucking in a breath.

“Ryle,” Tanya pleads. I hate when I have to be here after, when I have to deceive good people. Good women, especially, but I have to live long enough to deceive the monsters, too. Ryle looks to the older guard. I’ve seen them all around, of course, but Silas had moved fast. His pater had demanded his son produce an heir, so of course, I’d need to get on that, he’d said. As if I’d be getting on anything of his. We’d courted for just a few quads before we wed. I was exactly the type of woman he was interested in. Timid, young looking, with red hair and deep green eyes. Mostly, I was there when he needed to marry, and that was enough.

“Tanya, bring her a shift, and a basin to wash off,” Ryle grinds out. I bite back my smile. I guess I didn’t hit my head too hard; her name is Tanya.

“It’s okay, pullus ,” Tanya murmurs as she stands, stroking my arm once more. “We’re going to help you.” Little bird . The term of endearment thaws something in me, but just for a moment. Empathy is a fickle thing. It comes from a well of kindness, or a chasm of pain. Did Tanya know too well what I supposedly went through?

I say nothing to Ryle or the older guard as Tanya leaves. I cower away from the older one when he moves to throw a sheet over Silas, and after that he stays against the wall near Ryle. His jaw is tight, a twin to Ryle’s. Decent men then, although not decent enough to seek new posts. Or perhaps caged by circumstance, as so many are.

When Tanya returns, she places a basin of warm water in front of me, then hisses at the guards to turn around. They turn, properly reprimanded, and Tanya helps me wash the blood from my hands and face. It isn’t much, but I don’t need that much. Just enough to leave this domus.

My skin breaks out in goose-pebbles and Tanya yanks the shift over my head, then drapes a cloak over my shoulders. She hands me a small satchel that I would guess has a canteen and a few food items in it. Usually there is bread. Something about tears seems to call for flour. Bread, cakes, pastries. I could make my own bread, but what about soup? No one ever sends me off with soup.

“You have to run,” Tanya says. “Do you have somewhere you can go?"

I nod, forcing a blankness into my expression, fixing my eyes just above Tanya’s head. As if I would use my true domus while luring Silas.

“I have… I have somewhere,” I say after a moment of feigned hesitation.

“Good… I’m really sorry this happened, pullus, ” Tanya says. I have my answer now, in the way Tanya wraps her arms around my shoulders. The way her voice cracks over the word ‘sorry.’

Tanya’s empathy is born of pain.