A Simple Tale

I don’t normally attend funerals. At least, not fancy ones like this funeral. They make a big ceremony of it when a Duke dies. Not the simple churchyard rites done for the likes of us.

I wasn’t invited to this funeral. Yet I felt I must go.

Sometimes life’s not so simple.

The Duke was a handsome man when he yet lived. And did he ever know it. I wasn’t the first girl he was sweet on and I wasn’t the last. He told me I had eyes like emeralds. Why I listened to all his pretty words, and laughed at his stories, I don’t recall. Maybe it was that fine-looking figure. Maybe because it was as close to emeralds as I was likely to get.

When I missed my courses, I told him I was with child. At first I thought he smiled. Then I realized that curled-back lip, which days before had kissed my flesh, held a sneer. “Little fool,” he spat. “You were stupid to let that happen. You’ll pay dearly for it.” Perhaps I had been lucky, but no one had treated me so cruelly in my fourteen years. When I cried, his sneer became disgust as he pushed me out the door.

And yet he, thinking thus of me, knowing my condition, still desired me to visit him in his chambers. When I refused, he told the steward to hold back my month’s wages.

A week later, the pains came, and the blood. There was so much of it. I wondered if I would die. I curled on my pallet, and Martha passed the word around that I was ill. “Ague,” she whispered. “Flux,” and they stayed away.

For two days, I lay there. At first, I thought my suffering a punishment from God. I had sinned, of course. I wept to think of it. But then I thought perhaps God had given me a gift. By taking the child, He had spared me from a worse fate. A good outcome for the child would have been a bad one for me. I would have been sent away.

What was I now? Not a mother. No longer a child. A sinner, yet one favored by God.

Things weren’t so simple.

In the graveyard, I watched the holy man speak, the brocade of his church garments glimmering in the sun. I shifted, the unfamiliar shoes pinching my toes. I was not invited, but nobody knew me in this black gown and veil, lifted from the closet of the Countess. Her other gowns, finely stitched and ornamented, might have been recognized, but one black dress is like another.

As I had returned to my work, and one day followed the next, my sorrow and shame had faded, slowly replaced by wrath. How dare the Duke throw me out like a worn handkerchief? How dare he keep back my pay? My family was delighted when I took this job, leaving behind the dirty village to serve the nobility. My wages had placed meat on the table for my sister and brothers and provided fuel throughout the winter. What would they do now?

As God had spared me, shouldn’t I return His favor by sparing my family?

My choice was simple.

The Duke had called me a fool. Recalling his voice, my anger simmered as I walked, hooded, in a borrowed cloak to spend my saved coins at the apothecary.

He thought me a simpleton, like the other girls who had received his attention. Annie had gone in a hurry during the last harvest, saying she must nurse her dying mother. Jane, always the prettiest of the maids, had left just after Epiphany. I have not forgotten the look in Jane’s eyes, which met mine as she pulled her wool cloak tight around her and disappeared into the snow.

It was a simple task to get hired to serve at the wedding of the Marquess. It was the largest party the county had seen in many months. The laughter of the new Marchioness pealed like bells over the lawn as we carried out trays and plates and wine. The Duke’s jowls reddened, stretching his silk collar as he guffawed, pleased with the humorous story he was telling.

He never glanced at the face of the servant who placed the jeweled goblet before him. They never did.

Three days later, they buried him. As I watched the casket being heaved into the earth, I smiled.

Who’s simple now?

Writing Prompts:

• Mandatory line of dialogue: "I don't usually attend funerals." 
• Theme: Deception