#56

“…When you feel better, let’s talk again. Even if it’s later…. Griselda, believe me. It’s not a lie. I, I really saw it. That’s why I’m scared…. About what might happen to you….”

A voice with a cracking end. He was even overly cautious, as if afraid of hurting her feelings. Yet he must have been the one who was hurt.

“Albe, please. Stop it.”

But she shouted in a small voice. Though brief, even to her own ears, it was a distinctly irritated tone. Finally, Griselda deliberately shook her head once. ‘Oh, really’, she intentionally let out a sigh that was almost like a curse to her husband. It was just to empty out her disappointment, with no other particular reason.

However, at that moment, her husband’s approaching presence suddenly died.

That night, there was a commotion twice.

“The duchess is with child!”

The first footsteps to echo through the empty corridor were those of the priest and maids who confirmed the duchess’s pregnancy. As the duke happened to be down in the hall, they rushed down in the middle of the night to announce the joyous news.

Though they couldn’t openly express it, most of the vassals had inwardly given up on a second child, so barely suppressed exclamations of joy mingled with the sound of footsteps descending the stone stairs.

May it be a son.

May it be a healthy son.

Griselda, who had been dozing off in the most secluded room in the tower, the nursery, woke to the faint sounds of the maids’ joyful voices. And then.

The second commotion began.

Somehow it was noisy outside. Griselda heard men’s voices faintly carrying from afar.

“…ya…!”

“…wa…!”

She couldn’t make out the words clearly. Was it cheering? No, not cheering. The clustered men’s voices came all at once, and also rang out sporadically in deep shouts from different places. So it was too disorderly and rough to be voices shouting in unison during night training. It was an unfamiliar situation, to say the least.

What’s all this fuss about.

Still unable to grasp the situation properly, Griselda rubbed her sleepy eyes and sat up groggily. The cradle was visible, placed neatly near the window as usual. And something, a sight different from usual, caught her eye. The eastern corner of the tightly shut window gap was strangely….

“…Fire!”

Bright.

A voice came through very clearly. Her heart sank. Startled out of her wits, Griselda practically tumbled out of bed and dashed towards the window.

As soon as she hurriedly undid the latch and flung the window wide open, an acrid smell assaulted her nose. Though smoke wasn’t visible yet, the odor had already risen to just below the third floor of the main tower. Startled by the unfamiliar smell, the eldest daughter lying in the cradle burst into tears. Bang!

In her haste, Griselda carelessly closed the window with a loud noise. Her fingertips trembled as if they would break off. The flames were clearly visible from the east. If the fire was in the kitchen, that would be fortunate, but if it was the storehouse, there could be no worse situation.

Goodness gracious, goodness gracious. Everything went dark before her eyes. Griselda forcibly moved her shaking arms to wrap the twins in swaddling clothes. Her ears stung. Her eldest daughter’s cries seemed to pierce her eardrums. Griselda ran to the exit. Unable to figure out what she should do, she intended to grab anyone passing in the corridor to ask about their immediate course of action. Then again, bang!

Before Griselda could reach it, the nursery door burst open with a harsh sound. The head steward, looking fierce, barged into the nursery accompanied by four armed guards. Startled, Griselda stopped in her tracks, and the head steward, standing a few steps in front of her, shouted in a low voice.

“Put those down!”

“P-pardon?”

What hands was he talking about? Griselda didn’t know. Why were the guards’ spears, which looked like they could slice through her corneas, pointed at her? As she stood there utterly bewildered, a hunched maid quickly entered and snatched the children from Griselda’s arms.

“Wh-what?”

Caught off guard and with the children taken from her, Griselda reflexively tried to chase after the maid. In that instant. Her steps were blocked from the shoulder. Her head was half turned back before she could regain her senses. The whole room seemed to shake. One of the guards had grabbed her body and turned her around.

“Bind her.”

At the head steward’s quiet command, her shoulder was twisted to the point where joints seemed about to dislocate. Something rough was wound around Griselda’s wrists, pulled tightly behind her back. She was bound in an instant. It was a rope.

“St-steward…?”

Griselda’s call was meaningless.

“Take her away.”

The head steward did not answer her.

“What is this! Steward! Steward…!”

Griselda’s dazed cries, as she was dragged away without knowing why, pooled in the dark inner chamber. Yellow sparks were scattered in dots along the angular night framed by the window.

What on earth have I done?

Throughout the escort, her mind felt crumpled, unable to come up with any answers. Her chest tightened at the urgently unfolding situation that made her eyes roll. The guards’ strides were too large. Though they were simply walking steadily, Griselda was being dragged so roughly that her ankles were about to tangle.

Huff, huff, she was out of breath. In an instant, she was dragged down to the bottom of the main tower and shoved into the great hall. The guards forced Griselda to her knees in the center of the darkness where torches blazed. The force was almost like throwing her down, causing one of Griselda’s shoulders to bump hard against something like a bundle.

“Griselda.”

That bundle was her husband, his thin face turned deathly pale.

“No! This person… please release this person! My wife knows nothing…!”

Her husband shouted into the dark space, the veins standing out on his neck. As Griselda frantically raised her head to look straight ahead, she saw the duke and the elders lined up like giant bars. None of them spoke.

Only the heavy silence that followed after her husband’s voice faded. An oppressive silence that seemed to press down on her skull from a dizzying height, as if even the rustle of clothing would reverberate painfully in her ears. Griselda unconsciously swallowed. The thoroughly impenetrable chill made her flesh tremble.

The duke, seated in the place of honor, jerked his chin mechanically. Her husband spoke in a trembling voice.

“I know well there is no way to excuse myself. But it was by no means done with malicious intent. Please believe me. I was only trying to catch that thing. You may not understand, but it had to be fire. Ah! Last night, I saw that uncatchable thing avoiding the candlelight.”

No.

Griselda barely realized what her husband had been unable to tell her that day, what she had cut off and ended up not hearing. No, even so, to actually set a fire! Oh, what should I do, this, what should I do about this…!

“That thing already seemed to be made of smoke, so I thought if I set it on fire I could kill it completely. That’s why I swung the torch. It was never intended arson! I never thought the fire would spread to the haystack…!”

“…That thing.”

The duke cut off his words and asked.

“What exactly are you talking about?”

“That monster!”

Her husband cried out, leaning his upper body forward.

“The winged devil! Did you not see it? Am I really the only witness? Is there truly no one else who saw that thing standing on the ramparts! That huge thing!”

He shouted the last part, twisting his body to turn around. Griselda turned to look back as well. How long had they been there? She saw dozens of household members crowded in the darkness.

Monster…. Devil….

A low murmur began to pool in the dark hall. And only then did Griselda realize this was a temporary courtroom. They were now questioning her husband about the crime of arson. It felt as if all the blood in her body was drying up. It seemed her lungs would split open first, then her throat would crack. Griselda clung tightly to her husband’s side on her knees. She desperately needed something to lean on. Tears welled up maddeningly. She looked at the duke with a feeling of desperate pleading.

A man standing to the right of the seat of honor among the elders bowed to the duke. The duke, who was half-leaning on the armrest with his chin propped up, inclined his forehead toward him. Monster…. Devil…. The man seemed to be whispering something, but it was almost inaudible, drowned out by the heavy noise hitting her back. …He’s mad…. Gone mad…. Behind the guilty couple was an unceasing, if low, commotion.

And then.

“Madman….”

The duchess entered through the left entrance leading to the interior of the main tower. In sync with her steps, the low noise filling the hall was pushed out from the inside to the outside. The duke glanced at his wife. Even in the dim light, the duchess’s bluish complexion was clear.

Griselda saw the duchess’s jaw twitching slightly as she walked. Despite the closest seat to her being the place of honor that looked down on people from a dizzying height, she was gasping for breath as if afraid of something else.

And those dull, unfocused pupils.

Griselda found that gaze familiar. The eyes of a frightened beast. It was the terrible trembling she had clearly seen on some horrific night, the emptiness of reason shattered by fear. In the brief moment the duchess approached the seat of honor, Griselda suddenly recalled the back view of the duchess standing by the cradle.

“…It’s so strange. I had no choice but to summon him again. It seemed the only way to quell this burning anxiety. Strange, isn’t it? Such a strange… thing.”

Even that voice like a swamp.

“Sentence him to death by fire.”

The duchess spat out with blue lips.

“Ah, aah…!”

Griselda let out a single cry. In fact, it was neither high nor low enough to be called a cry. Just aah, aah…! It was a mid-range sound bursting from the deepest part of her stomach, like language cut short by the shock of being hit in the solar plexus. It came out throwing away consciousness, so she couldn’t possibly stop it. As if spilling out her entrails one by one.