Written by the bard Solan, at the request of the Lady Kassia, who insisted on it being written exactly as she performed it. Her servants claim she requested him by name, and he dared not refuse the Lady’s request, having learned what became of his predecessor.
The Widow and the Wretch
The Empire was still young then. Not what we know today, but well on its way. In that time there were farms dotting the landscape surrounding the city. The forests hadn’t yet been cleared. The land wild and mostly unplowed.
Except for the farms, as I said.
Timbur Deep attracted people to it, drawn like a moth to a flame.
The Lady huffed with a smirk.
Some might say like a moth to a bowl of water under the moonlight.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters is the who, dear Solan.
And the who in this case are three young friends, aged barely twenty years each. The lovely Delia, whose beauty was known from the Vrana to the Sova, river to river as we say. She was in love with Magnus, and madly so. Together they lived on a farm less than a day’s walk from the city, where the hills began to rise and the roots of the oak ran deep. Magnus was a most charming boy, strong, and handsome.
Of course he was handsome.
The Lady’s brows came together, wrinkled.
Jody was the third. A friend to Magnus and Delia since none of them reached a knee. They were born in the same season, and at times nursed from the same tit. Played with the same pups. Dug in the same dirt. Grew together until they grew no more.
Jody loved Delia too. Magnus as a brother, sure, but Delia had his eye for many winters. Her beauty matured before either of them, and she enjoyed their attention. We have to be fair in that. But as they aged, her heart grew closer to Magnus until finally, they married.
For a time, the three stayed together.
They played together.
They shared secrets with each other.
But that secret was never shared.
Why do you suppose that is, Solan?
The Lady frowned when I shrugged.
He wanted her, Solan. That was his secret. I believe I told you that already.
For years he’d coveted her. He’d even tried to suggest they, the three of them, bed together, during a night of drunken laughs. The other two took his suggestion for a joke, and their denial wounded him.
Poor Jody.
Always left out.
Then what is a man to do who cannot have what he desires?
So close to a woman that he could not touch, yet too close for any other woman to find him on her own?
The Lady paused.
The boy plotted, Solan dear. He plotted.
He conspired secretly, trading favors to a scribe who belonged to the Legion.
The scribe did his part.
He drafted a simple order – Magnus was drawn into service, and should meet with the Captain in a clearing near their farm before the sun rose after the night. Jody delivered the order himself, claiming that it was given to him on his way out of the city. The three wondered aloud why Jody hadn’t been drafted as well.
“Must’ve been lucky,” he told them.
He’d not lied before, so they believed him. Jody was their friend, their brother, the man they’d known since any of them could know.
Magnus prepared himself. Delia too. They spent one final evening together. They did what a young couple does when one night is all they have.
The Lady grinned at me.
What do you think Jody heard that night?
He heard what he so desired and could not have.
Such a tease, she was.
Before the next sun came, Magnus had gone into the woods. To the clearing as ordered. A small cliff overlooking the river. No other souls were there when he arrived, and he was proud of himself for being early.
The Lady clapped her hands loudly.
Lightning struck the back of his head. Only lightning it was not.
His lips kissed a stone when he fell, the same lips that had kissed Delia only hours before. Magnus rolled to his side, his unfocused eyes searching behind him.
He found Jody.
Standing there with a stick.
The Lady shrugged, placing her fingertip against her lips.
A stick is too small. A log is too big. Help me Solan.
I offered the Lady the word “branch.”
Branch is fine.
Jody stood with the branch, thick and coarse, and now decorated with Magnus’s hair, which had torn when he struck.
Magnus groaned.
Jody offered him nothing.
He drew an obsidian knife from his belt. Short. Sturdy. Angled to a point like an arrowhead.
His boot came to Magnus’s shoulder, pressing his chest flat into the dirt.
He groaned again.
The sharp point of the blade pressed into his back, between the shoulders, just to the side of his spine. It cut easily, as if the skin parted through magic, and plunged until only the handle remained, and the point found his heart.
The deed now done, there was no turning back.
Jody rolled his friend, the keeper of his secrets, off the cliff.
The body fell into the river with a heavy splash.
He threw the blade in too.
Then there was nothing.
He returned to his room on the farm.
He did not sleep, dear Solan. He did not.
The Lady shook her head.
That day when the lovely Delia woke she tended the farm as they always did. Jody worked with her, never straying far. He’d catch her sometimes with a tear forming, or a sniffle, and offer some small comfort.
A joke.
A story.
A tale of “remember when…”
It helped.
Delia cared for Jody too.
He noticed her eyes on him as the day wore on.
Not that it was anything.
Yet.
The Lady smiled. She stood and began to walk slowly around the room.
That night Jody dreamed.
He didn’t dream often.
In fact he couldn’t remember the last time it’d happened.
But he dreamed.
He was back in the clearing. The same one where he had been with Magnus. The… branch… was lying there still. Only now it was decorated differently. Small droplets of blood. Jody reached for it.
Then woke.
The Lady stopped, glancing at me over her shoulder. Then turned away again.
The next day was the same.
They worked the farm together.
Only it was not the same.
Jody had some urgency to visit the city. He promised Delia he’d return before sunset. Then off he went.
Do you know what he brought back with him, dear Solan?
I guessed it was another letter, a forgery from the scribe. The Lady seemed delighted.
Another letter!
This time for Delia.
He reached the home. Tightened his face. Wore his best sorrow. Then stepped inside.
When she saw it, her face bathed in tears.
It was a notice from the Legion that Magnus had died in battle.
She was sure.
It was the only reason the Legion would send a letter.
Poor Jody wept with her.
Hugged her.
Her body pressed against his.
Her softness.
That night he offered to comfort her, and she politely declined.
The Lady clicked her tongue, and resumed her slow pacing.
That night when Jody slept, he went to the clearing again. In his dreams, of course, in his dreams. The same dream as before, only this night when he reached for the branch, there was a slight sting in his back. His dream-self stood and turned, and he felt as if the ground had fallen away.
Magnus was there.
His face still. Eyes blank.
Jody woke in a sweat, an itch between his shoulders that he could not scratch.
He shook his head, then fell back to sleep.
The next day, Jody’s back would not stop itching.
Delia saw this and asked him what was wrong.
“I think something bit me,” he said.
“Let me see,” she told him.
Jody took off his shirt and turned his back to her.
“It does look a little red,” she told him. “Let me put a salve on it.”
He hadn’t expected her to be so kind, but she seemed in a better mood that morning, and he welcomed the relief.
Delia had always been the healer, always interested in what crushed herbs and a bit of paste could do. She had many tiny clay jars with various concoctions at the ready. She retrieved one, scooped some of the silky mixture with her finger, and gently applied it to his skin.
Relief overcame him immediately.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
Delia smiled at him.
“You’re tense,” she whispered back. “Is everything okay?”
The Lady paused, waiting. I remained silent. She continued.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Tell me,” she whispered.
Jody considered it.
He considered a confession. Though he hadn’t considered which.
He shook his head.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “I’m just sad about Magnus.”
It was a half-truth, after all; they were friends, and he did not think himself to be a monster.
“Me too,” she replied.
He put his shirt back on, and for the rest of the evening they said little. As darkness crept over the land, he once again offered to keep her company for the evening.
This time, she nodded.
Jody lay behind her in the straw bed, his arm draped over her.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
She nodded.
They fell asleep.
The Lady walked to the side of the room and reached her arms behind her. She held the laces of her dress and pulled, slowly loosening them as she continued.
It became complicated for them, dear Solan.
They worked together.
Cried together.
And, importantly, they laughed together to stave off the sadness.
Each night Delia applied the salve to his itch.
Each night he comforted her.
The nightmare returned. Again and again. The clearing. The branch. And Magnus staring.
Each night he wanted to kiss her.
Each night he was still so far away.
His hand came to the back of her neck, holding Delia close. Their foreheads touched, skin to soft skin, as they laughed over a memory from long ago.
He could taste her breath.
His face nudged forward, ever so slightly.
As it did, she’d whisper: “Tell me.”
The Lady let her dress fall to the floor around her feet. I asked her if she needed to stop for the evening. She laughed at me.
Dear Solan, why would we stop now?
We are so close.
Jody is where he wanted to be for so many years.
He spends his nights with Delia.
He just can’t bring himself to tell her what he wants.
She only wants a confession of his love.
The Lady started pacing again, slowly. I was deeply uncomfortable with her skin laid bare. It did not seem to bother her.
Night after night, dear Solan, they grew closer.
Until that night.
She lay on a wool blanket in the straw.
With her eyes she beckoned him.
And Jody drew closer.
He held himself over her.
She whispered: “Tell me.”
His face brushed against hers.
Jody groaned. His desire for her was too much.
“Tell me,” she whispered again.
“I…”
She smothered the words with her lips.
They kissed deeply. Passionately.
Delia’s hands found his arms. His shoulders. Her legs wrapped around him.
“Tell me,” she whispered again.
The Lady circled me, stepping behind my chair. I felt her fingertip graze the back of my neck. My heart pounded.
“Tell me,” she whispered.
The Lady whispered it into my ear and raised the hair on my arms.
Delia reached down to find him, and he gasped as her fingers closed. Her other hand reached around to his back, just behind the shoulders.
“Tell me,” she whispered into his mouth.
Poor Jody could suffer no more.
“I did it for us,” he whispered.
She pulled him closer.
“Tell me,” she whispered into his ear.
“I love you, Delia,” he whispered back. “I always have. I…”
This time it was not her mouth that silenced his lips.
He fell into her.
Fully.
Jody pressed in tightly.
Both could only moan now.
Delia pulled him closer.
Her fingers slid between his shoulders, near his spine.
The Lady kept her mouth near my ear. Her breath came hot, but her voice became cold. Her fingertip trailed down my neck and paused.
Do you know what she found, dear Solan?
When her fingers touched his skin?
Slick.
The Lady stood, stepping to my side. Her movements were agonizingly slow, her bare hip brushing my shoulder.
The itch was not simply an itch, Solan.
The wound had been opened and not healed.
The salve she’d been applying prevented it from closing.
It grew and festered.
The Lady shrugged as if amused. She kept her back to me, less than an arm’s length away. I could smell her warmth.
Delia’s fingers traced the edges.
Jody only felt pleasure.
Her fingers found the slit. The hot, slick center. They slid in…
The Lady turned to face me, stepping closer.
Slid into the warm fold between the skin.
One finger.
Then two.
Then…
The Lady stepped one leg over my lap, straddling me. I did my best to continue writing, but the feather of the quill brushed against the crease in her hip.
Do you know what happened next, dear Solan?
Do you?
Tell me.
The Lady had leaned forward to whisper into my ear. I was being driven mad.
She touched his heart, dear Solan.
Just a finger.
She reached inside him.
And when she did, he moaned in ecstasy.
He gave her his spirit.
And breathed no more.
The Lady lifted herself. She paced behind me again. I felt soft skin brush the back of my neck. She’d leaned over me.
What Jody didn’t know, dear Solan, what he couldn’t know…
The Lady whispered, allowing one hand to slide down my chest.
Was that when Jody murdered Magnus, his spirit released.
It was drawn to the one place it wanted to be.
With her.
Do you understand, dear Solan?
I nodded. The Lady kept her breasts against me.
When Magnus’s spirit found her, it brought his last memory with it.
The memory of Jody standing over him.
Do you understand, dear Solan?
Tell me.
A long jagged line follows, as if the bard’s hand was dragged across the final page. It is stained with specks of crimson which is not found on the others.