"Sexby is dead."
Angelica was shocked at the small pain that gripped her heart as her husband Harry told her the news. She wasn't quite sure why exactly because she and Edward Sexby had never spoken much. The serah had rather preferred to simply do chores and stare at her on a regular basis, causing her more than once to almost lose her countenance. She was a married woman and Sexby had never had any right to stare at her that way. But he was a man with sad eyes who was obviously battle weary and she had always had a soft spot for anyone in pain, so she had let it pass.
Sexby had been mainly monosyllabic or silent whenever Angelica had bothered to speak to him. The one time he had bothered to open his mouth his words had frightened her. He spoke about such violence and he sounded so certain of its arrival that her heart had thundered in her chest and she had to force her hands not to shake. She knew in that instant that her world would change forever soon and she was not sure what side she was going to be on when it finally did change.
He did not speak much and his words frightened her and she could tell from his scars that he was a violent and effective fighter. But he had made her feel safe. Even among the men having sex with whores in the fleet prison and the violent fighting among the guards, she had felt perfectly safe because Sexby's presence had been beside her. Part of her had felt much better about Harry fighting in the war because she knew Edward Sexby, former fighter in Germany and slaughterer of many, was fighting right next to him. But that was true no longer. There was no safety anywhere because Sexby was dead, and for reasons that Angelica couldn't fathom, she felt for the briefest of moments completely inconsolable.
"How did he die?" she asked, expecting a heroic tale of him being slaughtered by the likes of Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Rainsborough from both sides. She expected to hear that Sexby had died protecting her husband and defending King Charles. That wasn't the answer she received at all.
"I killed the traitor myself."
Silence greeted her husband's words. Sexby? A traitor? How had that happened and why? Surely the man was not agreeing to fight for the Parliament, the people who would never pay him? What would afford such a change of conscience in his person? She sincerely hoped that it hadn't been her own convictions, convictions that she knew Sexby himself had thought frivolous and idiotic and a fool's dream. She feared that it had been her own convictions for she knew Sexby had none of his own.
"Why?"
"He betrayed the king." Harry's eyes did not meet Angelica's as he said this and she knew he was lieing. What she did not know was why and she did not bother to ask. Sexby had betrayed her husband and the king, and war had broken out in her own back yard. Sexby was dead and her husband was happy. Angelica closed her eyes in silent sadness. She opened them again and life went on; it had no other choice.