#50

The banquet was boisterous. Gold and silver cups raised high danced in the air to the rhythm of string instruments and trumpets. Blood-red wine like the blood of the defeated overflowed, soaking the tables.

The jester in a pointed hat scurried about ringing his bells, while mercenaries and prostitutes at the lower seats laughed uproariously with flushed faces.

At the head table were only father and the elders. Elder brother was nowhere to be seen.

Winfrid, arm in arm with dozens of Johannes’ followers, drank excessively, passing drinks back and forth, downing alcohol his body couldn’t handle. Normally they would have been at each other’s throats, but now the young men stomped their feet and shouted together.

The young lord would skewer five or ten on his spear each time he charged out! That’s right! His valor is truly comparable to a war god! Absolutely! What does it matter if some nobles’ heads are cracked! Right! Though it’s a shame we can’t collect the ransom for lives not taken!

Everyone laughed at this part. The price was victory! Yeah! Ah! It’s crumbling, crumbling! What? Who?

Winfrid giggled. Having drunk too much, his limbs were limp, and though supported by equally drunk knights around him, Winfrid couldn’t stop laughing. Guffawing, laughing and laughing until his stomach felt like it would split. It was as if his lungs were full of air.

Just before Johannes returned to the banquet hall, Winfrid was so drunk he couldn’t even imagine his elder brother on the battlefield. In his dizziness, Winfrid thought: Ah, ah. That’s because I’m a man who knows nothing of war.

Yes, he didn’t know. How could a monk who only read scriptures in a quiet monastery imagine the weight of a horse falling with foam at its mouth, the warmth of sticky blood, or the cumbersome armor caked with dirt? His weak self had never even been near a battlefield.

And well, he never would be. So hahaha! All he could do was laugh out loud. He felt dizzy.

After Johannes left, turning the banquet hall to ice. Unable to suppress his heightened mood, Winfrid staggered this way and that, somehow managing to return to his room where he impulsively scrawled a letter.

After fiddling with the quill tip for a while in front of the densely filled page, he crumpled up the paper. Even to his drunken eyes, the handwriting was too messy, and he realized his elder sister’s temperament wouldn’t allow for such a long-winded letter.

Moreover, he couldn’t rule out the risk of the scribe informing her ‘husband’. No matter how foolish his elder sister was, she wouldn’t be unaware of this much. So after much deliberation, he neatly copied a few lines of lyrics in beautiful handwriting.

He couldn’t help but snicker. His white hand flew across the yellow paper. It was a vicious intention to see this through to the end. So, if his memory served him right, this was…

Pathetic bastard.

The hand holding the quill stopped abruptly. Thud, his smooth forehead hit the desk. Winfrid chuckled quietly without even rubbing his sore forehead. His thin shoulders that had been shaking up and down for a while suddenly drooped. At some point, his hands clasped under the desk tightened.

Though it was good to have helped end an impure relationship, there was no way to completely turn a blind eye to his own impure motives.

It was astounding that he could be so obsessed with seeing the complete ruin of a man he respected. It felt like the blinders narrowing his vision had suddenly been removed. The sense of defeat he had tried to ignore all night. Bitterness welled up from within.

By provoking and drawing out elder brother from his high place to prove we were of the same ilk, what did I gain?

Nothing. His situation hadn’t changed, and never would. Didn’t I know this would happen? No, I knew. Then what’s the cause of this dark emotion? Why even ask. It’s himself.

He never even considered ways to rise up. Because it was impossible. So despite knowing the outcome, unable to bear the twisting in his gut, he clung to elder brother like a water ghost, unable to hide his glee at seeing his opponent wallowing in the same muck.

No, not even the same muck.

He could no longer deny it. Even if he went mad, elder brother was still elder brother. Didn’t the tales of elder brother’s valor heard throughout the banquet prove this? How stirring was elder brother’s back as he stood before their iron-like father.

Though it was said to be the result of losing reason, even that was actually for the sake of his lover.

So he had no choice but to acknowledge the qualitative difference between elder brother’s fire that burned beneficially even as it consumed him, and his own fire that frantically tried to devour even what belonged to others.

But what, a belt? A belt with ends that meet? Damn it! That’s not it. It’s not different! Ugh! Winfrid struck his own thigh with his clenched fist.

I never even had a chance. The male organ I was born with was an embarrassingly barren foothold. It was frustrating enough to have my order pushed back by the fate I was given, but to make matters worse, even my body was in this state.

A stud horse to continue the bloodline if elder brother died without an heir, a substitute for emergencies. But I’ve never received any expectations. No warmth has ever been given to me.

Whether father, mother, blood relatives, or retainers, they were all too busy jostling amongst themselves to spare even a shred of interest for the second son confined to his sickbed? It wasn’t just once or twice that I wanted to flay the hides off all those bastards glimpsed through the bookshelves.

But what good is a foothold, it was rather a shackle! If only I had been born lowly, I could have died somewhere long ago.

In the midst of all this, is it my fault for not trying? Is this warped mentality that has become dull-edged, even carving into my own flesh until finally twisting, entirely my own fault?

No! It can’t be. The reason elder brother’s and my fires look different is because they were ignited under different conditions, but the self-destructive nature itself is no different! Ah, ah! Stop spouting nonsense!

Bang! Winfrid abruptly stood up. He rose so quickly that the chair, not properly pushed back, fell over with a loud noise. Dust rose from the carpet.

Soon, it slowly settled to the floor, like Winfrid’s mood. What pitiful excuses…. Winfrid muttered as if sighing.

…I knew.

He was not unaware that even if his and elder brother’s circumstances were reversed, elder brother was someone who would have shone on his own. And that he himself was just one of many ordinary people clinging to elder brother.

He had always respected that back that always took the lead. In addition to his innate martial prowess, his upright and bright personality that drew the whole world to his side was impossible not to admire. When elder brother’s knights exuded the heat of the battlefield that he himself had never tasted, Winfrid thought with a stirring heart.

Don’t get cocky, no matter how much you fly and dance under the glory led by elder brother, I am that great man’s closest confidant. I am the man most cherished by your knight of knights.

For the sole reason of being blood kin.

Yes, even though he had been so despairing of the fact that he, inferior beyond compare, happened to share the same bloodline as elder brother, that very bloodline was conversely his one salvation. He knows this. So…

…Let’s stop.

Let’s quit.

Winfrid righted the fallen chair. He put away the unfinished letter out of sight. Instead, he rummaged through the drawer and found a box containing a ring, then staggered out of the room. He slipped into Griselda’s bedroom just like that.

Somehow, today felt like the day.

He wanted to grasp something tangible, to hold in these empty hands.

Well, this too is probably due to the alcohol. Griselda, Griselda. The only woman who embraced and cared for me. The woman with the pitying gaze. The woman whose occasionally unguarded touch made me tingle, whom I couldn’t leave alone without taking the initiative to deflower.

The woman trampled by pathetic me.

You, just take this now, though as a monk and a bedchamber maid it’s a relationship with no future that can’t be shown anywhere, but whatever. But…

Griselda spouted words that instantly sobered him up. Though I understand your reluctance, couldn’t you just accept it gracefully as usual, trembling, since I’m giving it anyway?

Moreover, didn’t I just reaffirm my respect for elder brother? A devil? If you’re going to spout nonsense, at least say it in moderation so I’ll listen, is this woman crazy, what the hell is this…

Sound…

Suddenly, his mind cleared.

“Do you have a spare neck?”

Even the faint music from afar could no longer be heard. Winfrid glared at Griselda.

“Do you have a couple extras stashed away? You seem to be spouting nonsense freely in front of me, just now. Surely you haven’t been babbling like this to other ears.”

He was dumbfounded. It felt as if his insides, soaked and sloppy with alcohol, dried up in an instant. Based on the content of Griselda’s ramblings, there would be no way to explain even if she were dragged out by her hair and beheaded on the spot.

Fortunately, Griselda shook her head vigorously, her face deathly pale. Relieved for now, Winfrid let out a long, incredulous sigh. She may be crazy, but not crazy enough to want to die.

“No. But still, for someone like you…”

It was only after soothing his startled nerves a bit that proper anger welled up. Winfrid ground out his words.

“How dare you… elder brother…”

“I know it’s words deserving of death.”

Griselda abruptly stood up. Winfrid’s gaze was drawn upward as her head suddenly rose. In the end, he had to tilt his chin back slightly. Their eyes met, up and down. Winfrid frowned in disdain. A maid looking down on her master, it was an impossible dynamic under normal circumstances.

“…This is what happens when I’m too lenient, you climb all the way up.”

Even Winfrid’s gaze was like a sharp knife for a moment.

“I expected you wouldn’t believe me.”

Griselda took a deep breath.

“I too thought it was just a dream for a long time. But please listen a bit more. Please, please.”

She turned away abruptly as if unable to bear something. Soon she began pacing back and forth in front of Winfrid with short steps. Her thin shoulders, hunched in the late darkness, were trembling. Chewing on the tips of her shortly trimmed nails, she spoke.

“Lord Winfrid, I… I really feel like I’m going to die now. Ah, yes. I really feel like I’m going to die. I thought it was over. Since the young lady safely departed for the south. But… but! It wasn’t. What should I do! I can’t see the end. Ah! Something was strange that day. That day, when the young lord came up to the women’s quarters, I should have noticed…! That face…! I knew…! So perhaps I could have prevented it!”

“What day.”

Winfrid spat out irritably. Griselda’s attitude certainly seemed unusual, but from the disjointed content she was spewing, it was impossible to guess the circumstances.

“Speak so I can understand. What day are you talking about?”

“The young lady.”

Tak.

Griselda, who had been circling dizzily, stopped in her tracks. Her pale face creaked as it turned towards Winfrid. It was a face frozen like a withered birch tree.

“The day she spoke for the first time in 5 years.”

“That day.”

Winfrid repeated the end of her words, focusing on Griselda’s lips. That day. What? Griselda stared blankly at Winfrid. The story didn’t flow easily. However, it didn’t seem like she was stumbling over her words due to some reservation. Was she recalling the distant past? It was just an empty whiteness, as if in a daze.

“The young lady…”

Griselda, who had been silent for a while, finally moved her lips.

“The young lady…. The very day she stabbed the young lord.”

“…What…”

For a moment, he was at a loss for words.