The Trespasser's Daughter

© 1999 by Jaye n'haNaomi

orchestra@wingedharper.com

Skill: Point of View

630 words

  1. Good morning, Majesty. I hope your Majesty is well?

  2. The problem? Yes... How did it start? It goes back so far I'm not even sure... let me think... Half a score of years, it was. My sister and I at the river, overseeing our handmaids washing. My sister? You remember Elise? She was fair, so fair, a year younger than I. Not a lad in the shire but looked twice when she passed. I was always lanky and I always squinted. My hair went gray when I was seventeen. But I'm ahead of myself...

  3. Midsummer's eve it was. We were to be home by sundown but Elise was never biddable. I might have gotten her home if the lad hadn't come along. Wintor, his name was. You recall him? Ah, I see you do.
  4. Well, the sun was just touching the tops of the trees when he came 'cross the bridge. Fair he was, and strong, with a smile to set your heart a thudding. He smiled at me and I smiled back.
  5. He saw her and his smile for me died right there, and a new one for her took its place. She stayed out with him the night, though she swore they did naught but talk. To this day I don't know if I believe her.
  6. Next day he came to ask the hand of the elder of us. Father agreed, and as you know well, the eldest was I.
  7. The time went quickly and at equinox my dress hung in the press, my shoes beneath them. I set each stitch myself, so all would be perfect for Wintor.
  8. My wedding day Elise brought me bread and wine, and I partook. And M'Lord, that's the last I knew until next morning. The two of them were wedded and bedded and like Rachel, I was still a maid.
  9. Father was never the same after. He took a chill the first hunt of the winter. He left the castle for my dower and gave them the cottage of the old stable master, may he rest in peace. Elise thumbed her nose at me through the window at night, and by morning she aired the sheets they slept between. The townspeople loved them, but they knew nothing of what she had done to me.
  10. The years passed, though, and their one dream was denied - a child. Elise never quickened, and slowly her tongue turned to vinegar. Wintor grew quieter and quieter and Elise shriller with each passing moon. I came to wish she would bear, if only to save my own ears!
  11. And then one spring her laundry stayed white at dark of moon. The days passed without her flow, then the weeks and the months, and her belly thickened. I tell you, M'Lord, I dreaded the child's fate.
  12. Then my rampion went missing. First a bit, then more and finally a whole row. Finally one night, I sat just within the doorway with a dark lantern, and at midnight came Wintor across the rock fence, quiet as you please. When I heard his belt knife cutting the stem I loosed the light. He was a sight, M'Lord! For the time I stood silent, and then he began to beg. Spare him. Spare him for Elise. Spare him for the child.

  13. "Keep the rampion," I finally said, "And I wish her well of it, on one condition. I take the child at its birth."
  14. The fool groveled. He begged. Anything at all, even the child.
  15. The problem?
  16. I never thought beyond that child. She sleeps here in my shawl and I will keep her safe if I must lock her in the tower.
  17. But M'Lord, what of the twin?

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