#60

And before I could be surprised at whether this strength, which felt like it would crush my captured wrist, truly belonged to a dying woman, I was suddenly confused because I couldn’t fathom the meaning of the Duchess’s words.

Was she referring to Johannes?

When I inquired further, she simply gave a stern command to protect her daughter, without any other explanation. So I made an assumption.

That it might be nothing more than the delirious ramblings of a mind on the brink of death.

That it might be nothing more than a desperate question trying to confirm one last time the reality she had created but could hardly believe.

But now my thoughts have changed. It wasn’t just a question for confirmation. She, she….

She ‘knew’ everything.

She was still awake on ‘that night’.

The reason why the Duchess showed such obsession with young lady Giovinetta Isolde Yuricates Valdemar rather than Winfrid during her lifetime must have been for that reason. Therefore, I presume her last words were probably….

I know everything you did, and I turned a blind eye.

So, you too must protect my daughter from that beast.

Wasn’t it an order like that? I don’t know. There’s no way to accurately gauge her thoughts now.

However, one thing I can say for certain is that her last words were no different from the sound of cursed chains I had forgotten. What I, blind with open eyes and deaf with open ears, had failed to see and hear.

Ah, yes.

At that time, it was a peaceful era when I thought I could die without regrets if I just lived like that. For that reason, even though I voluntarily bridged the gap between the two siblings, I couldn’t easily understand even when I clearly saw it with my own eyes later.

The day when the young lady spoke her first words.

When the young lord, with the young lady’s knife in his shoulder, ran all the way to her chambers and pounded on the door as if to break it down. When he gasped for breath as if he would die right there in front of the door that wouldn’t open. When he finally, barely lowered his last raised fist after trembling in mid-air.

When he turned away.

That face.

There was a strange intuition scratching at a corner of my heart then, but I thought it was just some kind of bewilderment.

…That grown monster. No, that grown ‘young lord’ always had such a kind expression that even I was momentarily fooled. It must have been because of that. That’s why I, who had been confident in knowing his terrible true nature, was so surprised when I saw him display such intense emotions for the first time that day. The strange sensation, like a thorn stuck in my throat, was washed away by that surprise.

I should have known then. But I had no idea.

Winfrid.

As I mentioned earlier, I was able to shed my inner anger by watching you. I was able to forget my sins. It was for this reason that I protected the young lady from that monster without any particular hatred, upholding the Duchess’s last wishes.

Because of your presence, I could truly feel sorry for young lady Inette, who grew up confined without ever properly seeing the world, and who eventually went mad like her mother and was abandoned in a corner of the tower. Ah, yes. I loved you. I still love you.

Like a son.

There’s no evidence. There’s no way to prove it. But no matter what anyone says, even if you can’t acknowledge it, you are my son, born in place of Sieglinde, born in place of a mound of earth.

Do you understand, Winfrid? Can you fathom it? How much pain my ‘relationship’ with you has been for me?

I still remember the day when you, fully grown, first undressed me. I still remember your voice barking at me as I resisted, your terrible whispers pressing down on me and coaxing me, saying that I liked it too.

Ah, it was from that very day. The crying sound from that black night, which I had completely forgotten as if it never happened, began to be heard again.

The crying of the child I killed.

It overlapped with your groans biting into my bare chest. It was heard without fail after I shared a bed with you. The sound I heard after more than a decade was so vivid that I even had the illusion that it was using your body to punish me for harboring resentment.

As if reacting against that illusion, I devoted my whole heart to serving the young lady. I was trying to pay for my sins belatedly. It felt as if that crying sound, and you, would leave me if I did so.

Although she was the young lady whom no one in the family cared about anymore, with not even a single marriage proposal coming in due to the rumor of the ‘mad princess’, I did my best to ensure that not even an ant could come near her chambers.

On a particularly dark afternoon, at even the slightest sound of passing wind, fearing it might be you, I would tremble several times a day, thinking:

How did it come to this?

How did such a heinous night come upon me?

Then, from the day you started suspecting young lady Inette of infidelity, even the late Duchess began to visit me. At first, I didn’t know exactly why the Duchess was seeking me out. I thought it was just because of the sin I had committed.

So it was only after I witnessed the two siblings looking at each other with the expressions of a man and a woman, only after I saw them whispering to each other in sweet voices like lovers oblivious to the world, that I realized.

The intent behind the Duchess’s question, “He’s not my son, is he?”

Without realizing it, I had completely failed in protecting the young lady. The Duchess knew all this and crossed the bridge of hell to question me.

I felt that only if I separated the two of you, only if I protected her firmly from that monster until the young lady left far away, could I escape from this unending nightmare.

Ah, there was nothing I wouldn’t do. After all, outwardly, you two are in an incestuous relationship, aren’t you? I easily, desperately prevented it. I didn’t even feel sorry for the young lady. But.

But….

It’s quite strange, isn’t it? The Duchess is still strangling me from time to time. Even now, more than a year after the young lady safely went down south.

Do you know, Winfrid?

When I lie in bed with you, she, who is already dead, crawls out through the floor. With fingers like spider legs, she scratches the floor, tick, tick, crawling up to grab my ankle lying next to you. She grips my calf, knee, and thigh as if to tear them apart, handful by handful, climbing up to my chin.

I told you to protect her.

She pours my sins like maggots under my collarbone.

But you didn’t protect her.

White lumps fall from her rotting mouth.

You’ve never seen it, have you? No, there’s no need to ask. Surely not. It must be just a hallucination in my eyes. But while my mind knows this, my body doesn’t, and my whole body shakes like an aspen leaf every time. To death.

I regret it to death.

I regret it every night.

The night I first met the devil was all but a moment to me, and each second felt like an eternity. Each tangled, flowing piece was disgustingly vivid. Ridiculously, that day I was more afraid of the living master beside me than the ghost from the underground or the burning devil.

That person, thoroughly mad and completely cruel. I didn’t know when or how she would kill me. But looking back now, it’s a bit funny. Afraid because of cruelty? Who?

Who judged whom as a woman who would destroy anything once she decided to live? That day, I thought it was the Duchess who had no hesitation in killing a person.

After sending off her husband like that, although she looked like a torn butterfly on the outside, I thought that her bones were those of a terrible murderer, that she was my master. So I feared her, hated her. Ah, I’m the mad one, aren’t I? Can you hear?

I hear crying somewhere. Can’t you hear it?

It’s a cry that’s choking and writhing. Ah, ah, I’m sure I covered its mouth… Did the Duchess’s child really cry out loud like that when I grabbed its neck?

I don’t know. I can’t remember properly. I only vividly recall the sensation of death as I held the limp child and dug into the rain-soaked earth. It was under the western wall where crows cried.

There was not a shred of guilt there. There was no human emotion that could cloud my mind, just the intense impression of suddenly finding myself pushed in front of a shovel digging a grave when I came to my senses. It was a terrible feeling I had never experienced anywhere else.

My sanity was killed off while my body’s senses were sharp. I could see but nothing was visible, I could hear but nothing was audible. Did the Duchess who killed the midwife feel the same way?

Like a sick person wandering outside the castle in search of opium poppies.

Did the Duchess of that day, who broke open the stone coffin again out of anxiety and made one more wish, feel this way? Did Sieglinde feel this way when she buried you?

No.

What do the feelings of those women matter? The Duchess who later went completely mad was rather better off, wasn’t she? And Sieglinde even hanged herself, didn’t she? How did that body rot? But I, cruel as I am, remained more whole than anyone else in this desolate fortress for many years with my eyes wide open.

Now, judge of fate!

As if to show you how this woman has finally become filthy before you.

Winfrid, until I was treated like that by you, how peaceful were the years I spent? So the truly cruel demon was me. Yes, it was me.

Belatedly realizing the weight of evil I’ve shouldered, this murderer who now shudders at her dirty body with a heart bent like a hunchback’s was the true demon.

‘You can never escape.’

Sieglinde once said.

‘It’s shackles.’

I never dreamed it would become my shackles.

Now you should die too, shouldn’t you?

Can’t you hear, Winfrid? The Duchess is asking me. She’s asking. This is not just a hallucination brought on by guilt, it’s too vivid to be a hallucination, it’s too horrific, it’s the embodiment of sin, it’s a curse!

Ah, I didn’t know. I didn’t know that the chain of curses that bound the Duchess would bind my husband, bind Sieglinde, and even bind me.

Ah, please save me, I didn’t know… I didn’t know….

Really, I didn’t know….