#81

However, if Winfrid had heard it, he would have been jumping up and down saying what nonsense it was.

With his characteristic ‘cold’ expression, grinding his molars, he might have been waving a needle around saying, ‘I’ll gouge out those stupid eyes that can’t even recognize a precious hand when they should be crawling on their knees before their elder brother’, ‘I’ll sew up that mouth spouting nonsense’. Would he sweep my desk too?

In fact, I had never imagined it either. A young marquis without a proper residence, wandering from one competition venue to another, trudging off to someone else’s battlefield to work as a mercenary.

I watched the girl who had straightened her back while I was silent, imitating Johannes’s gestures again. Muttering something, shaking her head. Yes, ignorance is courage. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I tried to hold it back out of consideration for Johannes, but since the girl’s misunderstanding seemed more naive than rude, I ended up laughing out loud.

“It doesn’t look like him?”

Embarrassed by the sudden burst of laughter, the girl quickly lowered her hands and pulled her chin to her chest, blushing. Then she awkwardly scratched her cheek. I couldn’t quite suppress my amusement as I consoled her.

“No, it does look like him. Johannes’s speech is certainly like that.”

Cold. Difficult. As I mulled over the girl’s harsh assessment like a soliloquy, I heard the sound of wind again. Unable to contain that laughter, I struggled to return to the original topic.

With a face like a ripe apple, the girl quietly reproached me to stop laughing now. Only after dabbing at the tears that had formed in the corners of my eyes a couple of times could I ask the girl again.

“Ha… Anyway… Then, wouldn’t it be fine to choose a light carriage?”

“No, young lady.”

The girl, still looking embarrassed and gauging my reaction, shook her head as if to say I didn’t know what I was talking about.

“If you want to arrive at your destination in one piece, the carriage needs to be quite heavy. Ebony or rosewood would be ideal, but at least oak should be used.”

“Why?”

“A tired body should rest on a dry place. If you ride in a light carriage, your bottom will bounce up and down with every turn of the wheel. Can you handle that?”

“Bounce up and down?”

“Yes. Like this. Bounce, bounce.”

The girl placed her hands on both thighs and lifted her bottom. With that momentum, a few strands of her dark brown hair fell out from under her headscarf. I laughed again because the girl’s gesture was quite funny. With her expression more relaxed than before, the girl adjusted her headscarf and said,

“I heard it’s going to be a long journey. But your condition is far too poor to travel in a light carriage. I think the knight is trying to get several bolts of silk to line the inside of the carriage. It’s hard to even see such things in this backwater. Well, I can understand his stubbornness though.”

The girl rolled her eyes towards the ceiling for a moment, then looked back at me and clicked her tongue as if pitying me.

“Look at this, look how thin your arms and legs are. Every time I wash your body, I can feel your bones, and it makes my heart shrink. Oh, that cursed bastard.”

It was a sudden curse. I stopped laughing and opened my eyes wide. She might have been embarrassed by my reaction, but the girl seemed too busy scrutinizing every inch of my body with a furrowed brow to notice my surprised look. The girl’s small, pursed lips let out a deep sigh as if for someone to hear.

“I don’t know the story, but really, is it okay to beat a woman to this state?”

“Well…”

“How will you be able to have children later like this?”

“…Huh?”

Opposite to the girl’s, my lips parted slightly. For a moment, I was too shocked to respond properly. I couldn’t even think of scolding the girl. I didn’t know whether to be surprised that I had been ‘beaten’ like a piece of meat without my knowledge, or that a mere commoner dared to worry about my ability to bear children.

It was the first time I had been treated like that by someone of such a lower status.

Of course, the servants of Indridason had avoided me, but they had never shown me such direct disrespect. No, even if she was being casual because she didn’t know who I was, how could she be so informal? As I sat there with my mouth still agape…

…Child.

A child, she said.

My heart began to flutter uncontrollably. The sensation of my belly against the blanket became vivid. And in an instant, truly in an instant, I imagined Johannes’s hands and eyes caressing my swollen belly. A child. A child of Johannes and me, the two of us.

Is that really possible?

Yes, it must be possible. I answered myself. After all, we’ll be lovers from now on. We will, at night, yes, of course, like now. Um…

Night.

The time when all tired creatures lay their weary bodies beside their mates. And one person. Johannes, who would seek me out like the proper darkness following sunset. Yes, the one person who would enter me as naturally as if it had been our destiny from the beginning. My person.

I must have unknowingly curled my fingers. My shoulders tensed as I lay prone. The heat rising from the tip of my chin seemed to blaze all the way to the end of my head. My nose bridge, now completely flushed, felt ticklish as if a piece of cotton had landed on it. It wasn’t as if this had never happened before. But how was it so different from usual, such a sweet tension…

Once, Henrik said I was a ‘useless woman’. I was not unaware of this myself, and particularly felt it acutely at Indridason, but at that moment, even the single nightgown I wore felt particularly like a coarse sackcloth. How strange. My heart beat helplessly, thump, thump. Really strange.

Why do you, to someone like me?

My face was hot. Because Johannes, quietly looking down at me beyond my blurry, wavering retina, was more dazzling than the summer sun, I, being so insignificant, could not possibly look back at him.

My heart just sank. Like a child who first notices the kind blue eyes gazing at her while sitting on the ground playing in the dirt. Like a naive girl meeting Johannes for the first time, even though he wasn’t actually there.

Like first love.

I still don’t fully understand the emotions I felt at that time. I just felt that I was too much like a child in front of him, who had grown into a man without my noticing, and who wanted only me, unwavering even on his own.

So perhaps that moment was when I first realized what I meant to Johannes. Maybe I discovered myself being certain that Johannes would ‘naturally’ come to me, and belatedly confirmed on my own that I was his long-time lover, that he had been cherishing me without missing a moment.

And perhaps then, I fell in love with one person, for the second time.

I felt numb.

Back then, when I was shy and bashful just imagining it. Suddenly, the canine marks left on my neck began to ache. I remembered his trembling, as if desperately trying to hold himself back, even as he bit me in an atmosphere that could cut through the night air.

I want to do it inside you. Johannes’s low, desperate whisper too.

If it was that Johannes, yes, he probably wouldn’t hold back anymore. Ah, then of course, I would accept him, and then I would, bear a child, and…

Johannes’s child.

What should I do? I was out of breath. My chest swelled with an indescribable warmth. I felt my pulse racing wildly below my heated nape. Johannes, Johannes. If it really happens, will you be happy? I asked the Johannes flickering before my eyes.

However, the joy I felt at that moment was not simply that of a woman about to become a mother. Since I had never imagined any future other than being with Johannes right away, I think it was closer to the aspiration or exultation of a well-prepared and ripe novice adventurer.

Things like childbirth or children were just one of the signs that had inadvertently caught my eye. A sign indicating that the path we would walk together ahead truly existed. A kind of revelation saying that now you too can plan for a future and expect its fruition.

Therefore, a child was also a symbol of the many futures I could choose. Because, ah, Johannes. You would respect my wishes. Because you are the one person who truly cherishes me.

Kretzman.

Earlier, I laughed loudly, inwardly mocking the naivety of the provincial serfs. But in fact, it was not something I should have laughed at. I imagined the wandering Johannes with a different sentiment than before.

Of course, it would be nice to settle down somewhere. But I could more vividly than ever imagine myself roaming with him through forests, fields, and even to the edge of wave-beaten cliffs, and Johannes’s face smiling comfortably beside such a me.

In an instant, I missed Johannes again. I wished he would return soon. I was so excited anticipating an illusion that would never happen.

Indeed, which side was truly the naive fool?

“…I understand.”

The girl’s voice tapped at my ear as I sat dazed, intoxicated by a light without substance. Snapping back to my senses, I cupped my face with both hands, fearing she might notice the heat rising in my cheeks, and turned my gaze to the girl.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you. What did you say to me?”

“Oh, it was nothing much. I just said I can understand why the knight is so sensitive.”

When I gave her a questioning look, the girl responded with eyes full of sympathy.

“Even I, who’ve never met her before, feel this bad… I can only imagine how agonizing and anxious it must be to watch over a sister lying in such a state.”

“……”

I was momentarily at a loss for words. The girl, who had been looking down with an even more melancholic expression than mine, suddenly raised her head with a bright face.

“You know what? The complexion of the person who comes to check on you morning and evening is so pale, it’s beyond description. It’s clear how close you two must have been. That’s why I find it a bit strange.”

“…What’s strange?”

Although it might have been what Johannes had explained first, I thought that no matter how we were examined, we would undoubtedly appear to be siblings. The girl’s words made me feel as if a not entirely romantic reality was approaching me.