#47

Griselda felt that eerie fall with her nape and wrists. It may have crept through the door crack. No, perhaps it had oozed out stickily from the noblewoman’s genitals along with the amniotic fluid.

It was a strange chill. The cause was unknown. Ominous without knowing anything. Instinctively, she tried to turn her head to look out the window, but the closed window naturally revealed no changes. The entrance door was also shut.

Griselda knew it wasn’t locked, but that isolation feeling stripping her insides strand by strand. She shrank her young body. As if what was visible now wasn’t what she had been seeing, the entire birthing room felt empty, unfamiliar, and strange. Among them, the most peculiar was the midwife.

Since when had it been?

Hee, ugh… Hnnnggg….

The midwife, not thinking of delivering the baby, was staring fixedly at the noblewoman’s lower body while letting out bizarre moans. How her bony shoulders trembled like a wind-blown branch. Ahhh!

Griselda heard the noblewoman’s final scream. The baby seemed to have finally come out completely. But the midwife did not touch the mass spilled onto the bedding.

“De… mon!”

Instead, the midwife suddenly stood up and cried out while stepping back.

“It’s a demon!”

Until then, Griselda, who had been standing far away holding Giovinetta, saw the noblewoman rising. The noblewoman waved her trembling arms and looked down at herself.

And the face that followed was not at all the face of a woman who had seen her child. It was clearly a face stricken with unbearable terror. Her eyelids, still dark from the bruises inflicted by the duke, soon contorted like a ghost’s.

Huh, ugh, ughhh… She shed thick tears from her blue eyes, dropping them in spasms.

“No…”

The noblewoman, crawling to the head of the bed, trembled and denied.

“That, that… is not my child… not my bloodline… not born of my flesh.”

“It’s a demon! A demon!”

The midwife screamed.

“Be quiet. Please, be quiet!”

“Demon!”

The noblewoman pleaded, almost begging while constantly checking outside, but the midwife, who had already retreated to the wall, did not stop shouting convulsively. Finally, the noblewoman also began to cry out frantically.

“It’s not me…! I said it’s not! Please listen. I, I! Prayed! To give birth to a ‘son’! And then! That thing wedged into my lower body!”

“You gave birth to a demon!”

“No. It’s not what I nurtured in my womb! It pried me open with its hands! It was clearly as big as a house! Then it shrank to a tiny size! It seated itself inside me on its own! Look! There’s no umbilical cord, is there?”

“Your Ladyship gave birth to a demon!”

“No, no!”

“Demon!”

“Why won’t you listen to the truth!”

“Demon!”

“Shut up!”

The noblewoman shouted as if wanting to clamp the distant midwife’s mouth. Her pale face, drenched in cold sweat and tears, was now even more miserably contorted.

That expression was certainly not anger. Eyes wide open to the whites, and just fear. Fear. It was the fear that only one who was experiencing, eyes open, the hell unfolding, unfolding could show.

But the midwife, already stripped of one layer of sanity, did not stop. No, she simply could not stop.

“It’s a demon!”

“Shut… your mouth!”

“Demon, demon!”

“Please shut up!”

“Your Ladyship is cursed!”

“I said shut up!”

“Curse! Curse…!”

“You… you bitch!”

The noblewoman stood up with a terrifying momentum. Although her entire body must have been like mush, she leapt well from the bed as if unable to endure it any longer.

At first, Griselda did not know well what was happening. Her heart sank once at the thunderous sound ringing so loudly her eyes rolled, and she witnessed one red death in an instant.

It all started and ended in the time it took for one lightning strike. Flash! The white light squeezing through the window crack tore through the birthing room. And thud! That dull sound. It was the sound of the noblewoman rushing at the midwife and striking her head as if to kill her.

Clack! The wooden box, successfully completing the murder in the noblewoman’s hand, rolled on the floor, and thump! The old midwife collapsed on the spot without even properly screaming.

She must have died right there, that old woman. Without committing a single sin.

Griselda froze on the spot. As if a greasy large needle had pierced the back of her neck and come out under her chin, her tongue was tied. What on earth… She could hardly make sense of the situation.

The noblewoman, who had arbitrarily crushed one life, stood unsteadily for a while, panting. Soon, she crumbled in place like a sand tower collapsing from the inside. Hugging her thin upper body as if clawing at it, she curled up tightly. She looked like someone who had been hit with a sudden chill all over her back.

“He will, kill me. Me, me… He will kill me and be done with it… He will kill even me… He will, kill… He will finally, dry up all the seed of Ducomeng…”

The noblewoman muttered, losing her mind.

Flash. Lightning struck again. And in that moment, Griselda could see the ‘child’ abandoned on the bedding.

“Hee, heek…”

A scream similar to that of the old woman who had gone first came out involuntarily, involuntarily. She could fully understand the midwife’s wickedness. It’s a demon.

Truly a demon.

Griselda recalled that the appearance of demons and evil spirits she had only seen in holy paintings was exactly like that ‘monster’. Ah, so at least it certainly wasn’t human, that thing.

Skin so black and solid it looked cold, a grotesque lower body as if a pair of bird legs had been grafted on below the hips, brass-like nails, horns growing through the temples, a long tail like a snake.

Even the left arm was just a one-third stump dangling in the air, as if it had stopped growing. And those silver eyes, glittering even in the darkness as if dragon eyeballs had been planted.

Its gaze, narrowly looking at her, met hers.

At that moment Griselda covered her mouth. It was a thousand blessings that she didn’t blurt out whatever came to mind. If she hadn’t, could Griselda have survived that day in that place? Wouldn’t she have ended up like the midwife? No one can be sure.

In any case, having covered her mouth first, she almost dropped Giovinetta. While barely catching the falling child, her gaze tangled with the noblewoman’s miserably distorted one. Silently, their two astonished eyes screamed at each other.

“This woman… made a mistake. If only… she had kept her mouth shut… I wouldn’t have… gone this far…”

“……”

Griselda could not answer because her chin was trembling. She only stared intently at the noblewoman’s empty eyes that seemed utterly inhuman.

“…Will you tell?”

The noblewoman asked, pale. It was a question asked with barely moving lips, and Griselda did not understand at first.

“P-pardon?”

Griselda barely gathered her wits and asked back, panting.

“I asked if you’re going to tell the duke…”

The noblewoman’s gaze, staring at her with eyes wide open, was blurry. Griselda saw that the pupils before her were dilated like an abyss deep enough for a person to fall and die in.

She’s gone mad, that person. The expressionless white face of the woman who seemed to have no trace of sanity left, who thus appeared to have gone completely mad now, was also like the fingernail of a frozen corpse. Griselda knelt down, clutching Giovinetta to her chest.

“I, I don’t, know what, you mean, I…”

“That the noblewoman produced a devil… Will you tell him that?”

“No! No, Your Ladyship! Absolutely not!”

That answer alone was the way to live. She sensed it like a cornered mouse. That if she did not promise silence, she would surely die, either beaten to death by that wooden box lying there, or stabbed by a spear on the noblewoman’s orders.

“…There is no way. I have no other way… I… I can no longer endure him…”

The noblewoman murmured blankly, letting her ghostly gaze fall. With a lifeless corpse on one side, the chins and chests of one woman and one girl were trembling without distinction.

At some point, the noblewoman seemed to have made up her mind about something. She stood up. Even that appearance was strange. Although she was raising a body that was dripping down, she was as stiff as wood.

If a completely rotting corpse were to stand, would it not look just like that?

“…Support me,” that corpse commanded.

“What are you doing? Hurry.”

While Griselda hesitated, not knowing what to do with the ‘normal’ child here, the noblewoman urged her impatiently. In the end, leaving the child carelessly on the floor, she ran to the noblewoman and offered her shoulder. The noblewoman, with sunken eyes, walked wheezing like an invalid.

She rummaged through the dressing table drawer and pulled out a dagger. The moment she confirmed that a sharp metal was gripped in the hand of a woman who had just committed murder, Griselda almost ran away, abandoning the noblewoman.

The nerves that had jumped settled after a moment. Fortunately, the noblewoman hid the dagger in her bosom. Griselda barely swallowed an unspeakable fear somewhere while feeling the noblewoman’s bones leaning on her body. The two women immediately left the birthing room.

Though only one door had opened, it felt like a completely different world had opened. Her breathing eased. Although the gazes focused on them were bleak, this place that had crossed the boundary of fear seemed much more like a place where people lived. The noblewoman strictly forbade entry to the birthing room to several retainers waiting at the doorway, then moved towards the underground.

Puzzled and bewildered gazes followed the two from behind, and Griselda felt like she would die from her trembling heart. In fact, she could not even distinguish what she feared most right now. Death? The mad mistress at her side? If not, the monster left in the birthing room with the newborn.

Or discovery.

Was she afraid of the tragedy that would surely sweep through this fortress?

Her mind was not whole, as if covered by a curtain. They went deep into the tower. And that day, Griselda saw the underground inner palace for the first time.

She had imagined that if it was a sanctuary that even the duke could not freely enter, it would surely be splendid with treasures the noblewoman had brought from her maiden home. However, the inner palace she had vaguely pictured only in dreams was like ruins.

She was quite surprised by its appearance. The inner palace was more like a tomb. Empty of even a single trivial item, there were only three or four stone coffins placed.

The sizes of the coffins varied. Some were longer than the height of an average person, while others were shorter than a child.

“Let’s go near the coffin.”

Griselda moved her reluctant feet according to the noblewoman’s instruction. It was the smallest coffin of all. And she helped the noblewoman push the coffin lid to one side. Griselda, who unintentionally looked inside, stepped back startled. Right there was a monstrous arm, withered and twisted.

Like a trap.

The noblewoman, who leaned against the coffin as if clinging to it, not afraid of the fingers splayed out as if trying to grasp something just before death, took out the dagger. Griselda saw that hand convulsing terribly. The milky blade trembled in the air.

“…What should I pray for? What should I pray for now? How should I… I…”

The noblewoman muttered anxiously for a long time, holding the blade to her palm.

And silence.

The confused soliloquy stopped abruptly. Without any sign, the noblewoman sliced her palm with the knife. The soft flesh cut easily, and the blood pooled in her hand flowed down. Down, down. Into the coffin. Into the coffin. Onto the dried skin lying dead in the coffin. Plop.

A cloud of red blood burst from inside the coffin.