On the first floor of the castle, Prudence continued sticking to the shadows. Guards patrolled the castle halls, and some were stationed at corners. All Prudence had to do was avoid them.
She saw a guard coming from her left. She ducked into a nearby room, hoping no one was in it.
It was a kitchen, and a cook was in there, trembling. Prudence put a pointer finger to her lips, indicating the cook should be quiet. The cook was about to scream, and Prudence dashed to her side, clapping a hand over her mouth.
She waited a few minutes, and when she was sure the guard must have passed, she slammed a fist into the back of the cook’s head. She stole the woman’s outfit—hoping it would convince the guards she was a cook—and then continued on her way.
She took a deep breath as she walked down the hallways in the outfit.
She was tense. Tenser than she had felt in a long time. Her heart was pounding; blood was in her ears—she prayed that she would not get caught. It was bold of her to attempt to walk down the halls without even trying to conceal herself. She was relying on the guards not knowing the cook well enough to recognize that Prudence was not her.
She walked right past a guard, waved to him with a smile, and the guard waved back with a smile of his own. A bead of sweat rolled down her forehead, but she had a feeling she would be able to get out of the castle alive from there.
She took one or two wrong turns, and then managed to find her way outside to the castle steps. The two guards out there looked at her curiously.
“Are you a new cook?” One of them asked.
Prudence did her best to pretend that she wasn’t nervous. She somehow managed to keep her voice steady instead of shaky as she introduced herself. “Yes, I was just hired on today. Nice to meet you two.”
They continued eying her curiously. “Well, I suppose you must be heading out to grab some extra ingredients, right?”
“Right.” Prudence grinned—hoping it wasn’t too big of a grin to make her suspicious—and then strolled down the flight of stairs.
“Wait!” One of the knights said.
Prudence paused, sweating buckets. “Yes?”
“Be careful out there! There have been a lot of thieves running about the city lately!” The guards warned her cheerfully.
Prudence bowed slightly and replied, “Of course!”
When her back was turned, she scowled. Aru savages. Of course there are thieves everywhere.
She hurried down the rest of the steps and then passed through an open portcullis. She stroked her chin. I should lie in wait for him around here, but where?
She wondered if it would be smarter to wait inside the city or outside of it for Thierry. It was highly possible that he might be leaving with a contingent of knights, and if that were the case, it would probably be best to wait inside the castle walls so she could disappear into a crowd. For now, she went into the castle city, searching for a clothes shop to buy herself a less conspicuous outfit. While she did so, the cogs in her brain turned—trying to come up with a plan to kill Thierry.
She had no arrows and no weapons. She would have to be clever.
She grinned to herself. Perhaps she could appeal to Thierry’s better nature. Even though the man was a horrible person, he still wanted to appear to be a considerate and honorable man to others. Prudence knew how to use that to her advantage, because she had had firsthand experience of it when they first met.
She purchased a cloak and a knife, and while she cut her hair short with the knife, her mind turned to her son and first husband as it usually did when she had time to think. With glassy eyes, she thought of her husband’s happy face when she first showed them their child.
__
When Prudence showed Earl their child the morning after she had sacrificed her flesh, he was elated. He knew, immediately, that the child could not be their blood child, but he assumed that Prudence had adopted one. Prudence hid her skeletal arm beneath a long-sleeved shirt, and passed the eyeless child to Earl, who showed no sign of disgust and being handed such a child. Indeed; his eyes were glassy with joy. “He’s beautiful… is he from the orphanage?”
Prudence took a moment to decide whether she would tell him the truth or not. She ended up saying, “He’s from the orphanage.”
Earl wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “This is perfect. Look at me and my lovely family!”
They took turns tending to the child when it cried in the night, made sure that one of them could be home for the child at all times, and always made time to play with their child. Earl in particular played energetically with their son—he tossed the boy up in the air, eliciting giggles, and caught him effortlessly. Prudence preferred to play blocks with him. Their son would place a block, and then she would place one on top of it. Where needed, she would guide his hand.
A day passed, and the pair realized something very important; they had not yet named their beautiful son.
“It should be something grand—something fit for such a miracle.” Earl said, bouncing the baby on a knee.
Prudence giggled, pinching the baby’s cheeks. “Yes, it must be something absolutely precious, too!”
“His hair is as yellow as a sunflower!” Earl said, rustling his son’s hair.
Prudence gasped. “I’ve got it! Let’s name him Helvius!”
“Perfect!” Earl announced, sweeping the boy into his arms and holding him aloft. “Look at this handsome boy! I feel as if he will grow up to be a king!”
Prudence nodded in agreement. “I think so, too!”
But Prudence couldn't hide her skeletal arm forever. Indeed. Earl found out about it three days after the birth of their son. He was shocked and disturbed.
"Prudence... what is this--what happened?" Earl asked, looking at her bony arm.
"I..." Prudence swallowed. "I sacrificed it... so we could have a son."
Earl didn't know what to say. He seemed to look everywhere but Prudence's eyes. "This was witchcraft, wasn't it?"
Prudence nodded with glassy eyes. "I'm sorry. I'll go, if you want."
Earl immediately shook his head. "I don't want that! I just think... perhaps we could have had one of our own, if we kept trying."
"But what about Helvius? Don't you love him?" Prudence asked worriedly.
There was a long pause. Finally, Earl said without hesitation, "Of course. I don't know where we'd be without him."
__
Prudence came back to reality once she was done cutting her hair. She was in an alleyway, hidden from most eyes, and once she had cut her hair, she donned the cloak she had bought, the hood hiding her face. Next, she ducked into several different alleyways, looking for ne’er-do-wells, and she found one in the third alleyway that she checked. The alleyway was filthy—shreds of clothing, food, and patches of old blood lay scattered about in it. She knew this was the man she was looking for.
She approached him fearlessly. “Hello, there.”
The man looked at her with a grin. “Are you sure you should be in this alleyway alone, beautiful? It’s quite dangerous.” He said with a wink.
Prudence rolled her eyes, dragging the man toward her by the wrist and placing a knife against his neck. “Please. I could never be afraid of a man like you. I’ve faced men with double the honor and skill than you. I have a job for you, though. I’ll pay you twenty-gold-pieces if you and a couple of your fellows pretend to assault me in the streets.”
The man grimaced, clearly annoyed that a woman had him over a barrel. He cleared his throat. “Deal.”
Prudence smiled. “Thank you.”
Prudence lay in wait in the city—standing to the side of the main road leading to the castle—waiting diligently for Thierry and his contingent of soldiers to pass. By her side were the thieves she had hired to pretend to assault her.
An hour passed and then another. Soon, the sun began sinking in the sky, and a blood red sunset swathed everyone under it in a red light.
“If he doesn’t show up tonight, we can try again tomorrow,” Prudence said firmly.
“Who is this guy to you, anyway?” The man who she had held at knifepoint—or Alan, as he said his name was--asked. “Why are you so desperate to kill him?”
Prudence sank into shadows when she saw a knight surveying the area. He probably knew she had escaped the dungeon and was looking for her. To the thief she said, “He’s my old husband.”
Alan snorted. “Women are crazy. The guy breaks your heart and now you gotta kill him? Let me guess; he slept some other woman and you haven’t been able to forgive him since?”
Prudence turned to the man—her eyes were red due to the sunset, but they were also red with fury. “You think this is about some woman? I could forgive him for that. I would still hate him, but I could forgive him. What he did to me was worse. He took the only son I will ever have from me. You wouldn’t understand; you’re nothing but a thief. You couldn’t understand a woman’s feelings about her son.”
The man was disturbed by the snarl on her face—she looked like a furious mother bear who had lost her cub. He cleared his throat. “Well. I suppose that is quite a bit more terrible than the man sleeping with a different woman. I know how much children mean to women.”
She glowered, feeling as if the word “child” was being defiled just be being uttered by a man who could never understand how precious they were. “Yes. A wretch like you could never understand.”
Alan rolled his eyes. “Whatever, crazy lady.”
At the edge of her hearing, Prudence heard the marching of men on horses. Her witch’s hearing was astute—far greater than that of an ordinary human’s. She could sense that it was a contingent of at least ten. “It’s almost time. Are your cronies ready?”
Alan nodded. “They’re ready.”
Prudence crouched. The woman’s face was pensive as the sound of tramping horses became louder and louder in her ears.
A white horse marched into view from where she stood in the alleyway. She smirked; Thierry rode atop it. Prudence turned to Alan. “Alright, now.”
Alan and four of his cronies began pawing at her—tearing at her clothes. She squealed at the top of her lungs, “Help me! Please—somebody help me!”
Thierry looked to his right to see the struggle. He turned to his men, “I’ll be right back—there’s a woman in trouble.”
Thierry dismounted and dashed toward Prudence.
Prudence forced tears down her cheeks—a trick she learned long ago when she was first married and wanted to win an argument against Earl. “Please! Help me!”
Thierry shoved one of Alan’s men—tearing the man away from Prudence. Thierry unsheathed his sword—pointing it at the remaining men. “I suggest the rest of you run before—”
Prudence swept Thierry’s legs out from under him with a kick, and when he was on his back, she held a knife to his throat. With her free hand, she slammed a fist into Thierry, knocking him out.
The other soldiers had seen what happened to Thierry, and were spurring their horses toward him. Alan and his men swept Thierry up, hauling the man toward the entrance of the city. The soldiers tramped after them, but Alan and his men knew the city backward and froward, and knew how to disappear and hide from sight. Alan and his thieves knew of underground passageways that the soldiers didn’t, and hid in one that lay in a narrow alleyway, Prudence following after them.
When Prudence heard the horses thundering past above, she knew she was most likely in the clear. She turned to Alan and his men. “I’ll take it from here. You can go.”
Prudence gave the man the gold he was due, and Alan nodded. “Good luck, crazy lady!”
The men lifted the fake piece of grass concealing the passageway, emerging into the night air. Prudence stayed where she was, intending to wait for Thierry to wake up.
After about thirty minutes, Thierry’s eyes fluttered open. When they did, he must have remembered what had happened, because—faster than lightning—his hand zipped to his sheath, intending to whip out his sword, but his fingers met air. Prudence had taken his blade.
Thierry glared at her. “Well. I’m at your mercy. Kill me, if you think it will make you whole.”
Prudence’s hand tightened around Thierry’s blade—something about killing the man with his own sword sounded satisfying—but she made no move to use it against him. Instead, she said, “You will have your wish, but first, I must know why you killed my boy.”
Thierry hauled himself into a sitting position, meeting her eyes unflinchingly. “I already told you. You were there. You saw what he did. You think I didn’t love that boy as much as you did? It killed me to do what I did. I think about it everyday—I have thought of ending my own life several times—but I recognized if I stayed alive, maybe I could still do this world some good. You, on the other hand, have become a shell whose only purpose is to kill me. You could have done some good with your life, even with the death of our son—but now you are a literal walking corpse! Nothing that is left of you is human!”
Prudence’s knuckles turned white on the hilt of the blade. She put it to Thierry’s throat. “Our son? He is not yours. If he were yours, you wouldn’t have butchered him like a coward!”
“I did what had to be done! You saw with your own eyes what he was capable of!” Thierry retorted.
At that, Prudence swallowed a lump in her throat. She had seen what he was capable of, and what he was capable of was destruction beyond her ken.
Prudence leaned against one of the walls in the extremely narrow pathway. She muttered with a tear rolling down her cheek, “I know what he was capable of, yes. But I am his mother. His life was worth more to me than anyone else’s in this world. Why didn’t it mean more to you?”
“Damn you, Prudence! If I could have traded my life and my fate for his, I would have! But there was no way of doing so! You don’t know what I know! You never gave me a chance to explain!” Thierry exclaimed.
“If your reasons for killing him are so justified, then tell me what they were! Because right now, all I see before me is a sniveling coward who killed his own son because he was afraid to be a father!” Prudence spat.
Thierry looked into her eyes defiantly, searching them as if trying to determine whether she would believe his story. “I will tell you… but you must listen without interruption. If I’m to die here, I want you to at least know the truth.”
Prudence was quiet. She kept her blade where it was—pressed to his throat—but after a moment, she withdrew it. She crossed her arms.
It felt like an eternity passed between them before she finally said lowly, “Fine. I will hear your story. But rest assured, when it is over, I will kill you and take my revenge.”
Thierry closed his eyes—eyelids wrinkled with regret—and nodded.
Comments (2)
See all