#80

Perhaps I had buried my face in the pillow, nauseated by the nightmares that haunted me incessantly. Thanks to the girl tilting my head, my breathing eased, and soon the well-dried autumn sunlight parted my sticky eyelids. My body, exhausted from cruel dreams, trembled slightly.

“…es.”

“Pardon?”

“Johannes.”

There was no reply. Breathing heavily with unsteady breaths, I glanced up to see the girl staring down at me with round eyes. She seemed lost, not knowing whose name I had called.

“Ah!”

A crystal-like exclamation came before a proper answer. The girl immediately approached me. As she lifted my arm that had fallen and was scraping the floor onto the bed, she spoke softly.

“If you mean the knight, he has gone out. He said he’d be back around evening.”

Gone out. My head felt waterlogged and dazed. I could barely breathe, with my arms folded across my chest. The girl, who had tidied up the disheveled blanket and covered my back well, casually plopped down on the wooden floor and added lightly.

“He mentioned he might be a bit late today.”

The girl’s reed-colored eyes filled my view. That’s how close she was. It was a rudeness that would have normally provoked my anger, but at that moment, my mind was so full of Johannes that I couldn’t think straight. So I didn’t even think to scold or push her away.

At that time, I felt like a devil myself.

Because the sensation of the nightmare – piercing my first husband’s chest, cutting the old man’s throat, and finally beheading Johannes – lingered at my fingertips.

I don’t know how many times I stabbed Johannes in the back before beheading him. When I finally stood holding his head in one hand, the blood flowing from Johannes’s neck was like a river from the underworld.

“Why… Why is he late?”

I asked the girl while lying face down. I wanted to see Johannes right away. Why did I do such a thing in my dream? Even knowing it was just a terrible nightmare, I felt guilty and anxious. I wanted to confirm Johannes’s life with my own eyes. That’s probably why I whimpered a bit, without any sense of propriety.

“Where did he go? Did he go far? Leaving me behind…?”

And the girl seemed quite surprised by my reaction. The reed field that had been wavering before my eyes finally widened like a plain. The girl, who had been showing a momentary bewildered look with her already large eyes even more rounded, patted my shoulder and tried to comfort me.

“Oh, come now. Why are you crying? Don’t cry. He didn’t go far, you know. Just, he said he’s ordering a new carriage. That’s why he’s late.”

“A carriage…?”

The girl’s eyes, densely dotted with faint freckles, seemed to flutter with an ‘Oh, oh?’ Once the tears started, they flowed freely without any proper reason. I muttered, soaking the fabric touching my eyes.

“I can now…”

“Yes, yes.”

“Ride…”

“Yes, my lady.”

“A horse… you know…”

“Ah.”

“Why…”

“Hmm.”

The unfinished end was a sorrow I didn’t understand myself. I just kept sobbing. Naturally, the girl looked very flustered.

Outside, where not even a small commotion could be heard, there would be no one. The girl glanced alternately between the entrance and my face, as if looking for help somewhere.

She clenched and unclenched her fist, fidgeting for a moment. Then she pursed her lips with a strange expression. Soon after, she pulled up one of her sleeves, pressed it against her palm, and carelessly wiped my eyes.

“You know, the knight didn’t seem to be aware.”

The girl said, as if admonishing.

“Moreover, aren’t you in quite a difficult condition to move right now, my lady? Even I wouldn’t think of putting you on a horse. To be honest, I couldn’t do it, right.”

“Still…”

“You might not be aware of it yourself, my lady, but you could really die doing that. No, no. Horseback riding is too much for this body. No.”

The girl shook her head firmly, feigning determination. Of course, not a word of her story was wrong. However, as things weren’t going as I wished, the sadness that had no cause to begin with welled up even more. In the end, regardless of the bewildered gaze of the uncouth marketplace girl, I buried my face in the pillow and cried as if I were being washed away.

Looking back, I wonder what kind of behavior that was. But at the time, I wasn’t even ashamed. My whole body ached as if the muscles had been boiled in a pot, the nightmares that had tormented me for days were still frightening even after I woke up, and Johannes’s timely absence was only fueling my anxiety.

The girl, who had been consistently rude and naive, perhaps not knowing my status in detail, finally started to gently stroke the back of my head. I didn’t push away her touch and just cried, “Johannes, Johannes.”

In fact, at that time, nothing was particularly sad. It just felt like I was vomiting out all the lye that had long accumulated inside me. All the tears I shed were old poison.

I know. It was probably nothing more than an indiscriminate tantrum. There was no one left to restrain or force me, and it was a childish fit that came from my resolve to let go of the last shred of self-control that I had barely maintained just a few nights ago. I was rubbing the dark bruise inside me with tears of stubbornness. Shamefully.

“Stop crying, my lady. Please?”

The girl, who had somehow become teary-eyed as well, rested her chin on the edge of the bed like a dog worried about its owner. I saw from the corner of my eye that the girl’s straight nose bridge was approaching so close that it seemed to be only about two finger-widths away from my nose bridge, and then I buried my face in the pillowcase again. And I wailed even louder.

At that moment, I was free.

Except for the hell within me, nothing around me was threatening. And I found it unfamiliar. No menacing gazes?

Do you perhaps know that there are times when you feel anxious precisely because you can’t feel any anxiety? A strange state I had never experienced since that summer when I was six years old, confined to the women’s quarters. The new situation I found myself in was so unfamiliar that even the taste of tears wetting my lips seemed different from usual, despite having spent more days with wet eyes than dry ones in the past few short years.

The shabby inn where I had laid my body for the first time in my life. The apricot-colored morning where even the footsteps of a serf, probably heading to work, coming through the ill-fitting window frame, seemed shabby.

In that air that was just unfamiliar, without any eyes subtly watching me, without any voice demanding restraint, without the old man, I cried like that for a long time. I really cried to my heart’s content. Without anything holding me back…

Ah, without considering anyone’s feelings.

Of course, the shame was ultimately mine alone. It came a little later.

“Is it… difficult to get a carriage?”

I asked awkwardly, burying my stinging nose tip in the blanket and catching my breath with a wheeze. The girl, who had been sitting with her hands folded between her thighs and rolling her reed-like eyes, looked at me. It was a puzzled look, not understanding the intention of my question.

I couldn’t immediately part my lips even after seeing that gaze. The girl’s face, directly catching the white sunlight, was so clear that somehow the back of my neck felt hot.

No matter how ignorant she might be, she wouldn’t carelessly spread the word that the noble lady she was in charge of had cried like a child in front of her. I finally turned my swollen eyes away from her. I slightly rubbed my nose bridge against the pillowcase and moved my lips.

“I mean… I don’t understand why he’s insisting on ordering a carriage when he could just find a suitable one.”

“Ah, about that.”

The girl finally crumpled one of her fairly neat eyebrows and smiled sheepishly.

“Actually, while there are several stables around here, there are hardly any places with carriages? They brought all the three or four available ones to the front yard of our inn for inspection, but it seems they didn’t meet the knight’s standards at all.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. I knew he was a cold person, but he turned out to be even more difficult than my first impression. All the merchants who were negotiating were shaking their heads.”

“…To Johannes?”

I asked in surprise at the unexpected story. At first, I thought I must have misheard something. Johannes, cold? What did those people do? Negotiation? …It must be a joke. I stared blankly at the girl for a moment.

Perhaps misinterpreting my reaction, the girl, putting on a deliberately cold expression, pointed her finger at the empty space between herself and me while speaking. Her voice, which she had lowered on her own, was even quite stern.

“Hmm, this one has a terrible appearance, that one is too light, and that one has loose wheels… The price is outrageous compared to the quality… Wow, in the end, he sighed with his lips tightly closed, and that look in his eyes was exactly the same as when our chapel priest gets annoyed.”

Was it meant to imply that he knew everything so don’t bother trying to play tricks? The girl asked me as if talking to herself. However, her lips didn’t part immediately.

It was because I felt a bit dumbfounded watching the girl imitating Johannes, of all people, in front of me. From what I heard, it did seem that Johannes had shown a more sensitive attitude than usual, but…

Who would call him cold in this situation?

Anyway, even to his subordinates, he’s always been a soft and gentle man, and I don’t know who he takes after to have such a mild temperament. At the time, I thought this while staring blankly at the girl.

After all, weren’t those who tried to negotiate with Johannes all serfs and freemen? No matter whose land we’re staying on, aren’t the lives of those bound to that land not even worth calling lives? Those who have no mouth to object or limbs to seek revenge even if treated unjustly. Of course.

So if Johannes, a heavily armed knight, especially one shielded by noble blood, had put a knife to their throats, as is usually the case, the deal would have ended easily.

Even if he had just hinted at his status, not only would negotiation be out of the question, but they wouldn’t have dared to imitate him like this. To add, they wouldn’t have even dared to speak of it carelessly, even where there were no ears to hear.

Of course, as a fugitive fleeing from the lord’s pursuit, he can’t go around using his name, but still.

This child, did she see Johannes as some ignorant wandering knight? When that thought crossed my mind, the corners of my mouth twitched involuntarily. If I didn’t firmly press my lips, it felt like laughter would burst out. Well, given his appearance must have been quite a sight, I couldn’t completely fault the girl’s misunderstanding.