Authors Note: For this particular chapter, I apologize for the wait. My computer had a virus and I lost my work.
Taking one step after the other seemed an impossible task. My dress was ruined, and my hair now had entangled itself with leaves and spider webs. I cringed, and listened to Lucia speak with sloppy familiarity to this stranger. My only comfort was the silence that caressed my ears from the wood, as I heard none of Maraks men following us.
It had unnerved me to see Maraks mood change so seriously when I refused to mount his horse. Regardless, Lucias drunkenness from the soup was far beyond the confirmation I needed not to trust this malicious stranger. I could not run, not without my sister. If I were to run for help, who is to say I would find trustworthy people in the dank dreary night to help us. Now that I thought of it, I might bump into Maraks men again. For now, I only cherished the fact that he did not gallop away with my little sister.
"You're very quiet back there." Marak spoke back to me interrupting my thoughts. We had traveled a long way and I had yet to see the gate.
"Are we almost there?" I asked calmly and softly, letting his inquiry hang in the air.
"The longer you wait for something, the more you appreciate it when you get it." He responded, no doubt smiling whilst ignoring my inquiry in return.
I glared up at him while he swayed in his saddle. I could hear Lucia snoring now. Good, I wouldn't be interrupted.
"How do you know where to go if you are a traveler?" I asked
He chuckled a little before he responded. "Perhaps I should ask you the same question, except you are the one who lives here and you still got lost." He jested
I looked up at him plainly, unimpressed by his sly slab of a comment. "So teasing and sarcasm seems to be all that is capable of pouring out of your mouth, and yet you still can come across as unintelligent." I countered with a grin. He must act this way with everyone. But the pious holier than thou attitude was wearing thin for me now.
"Perhaps I am not sarcastic, but merely intelligent beyond your own understanding." He teased back at me.
"Would it ever end?" I thought to myself. "I am afraid, my dear kind sir, that my sister and I must continue on our own. I see no gate and my feet are terribly sore." I stated with tiredness.
"Maybe if you would have ridden with me your feet would not be in such a predicament." He suggested as if I were a small unlearned child.
"There is no one here to laugh at your jokes, and might I ask you as to where Lucia would have ridden if, as you so cleverly pointed out, that I have ridden with you?" I asked curtly.
He did not respond, and the tension in the air reached formidable heights. I stopped dead in my tracks, agitated beyond my amiable patience for this malicious stranger. Aware of my defiance, he stopped, then turned his great dappled grey towards me ever so slowly. My heart raced like never before as the horse stalked towards me slowly. Marak leaned down, now parallel with me and his next words where almost menacing. "Look ahead My Lady, the gate is there." He stated quietly.
Despite the shiver my body gave, I looked ahead and saw a shimmer off of the gate from the moonlight. I did not look up at him. Quietly, I walked past him and his horse covering the rest of the distance towards the gate, yet feeling his eyes glued to me, watching my every move.
Lucia stirred awake giving a big yawn as she did so. "Oh look Letha, we are here already." She said with enthusiastic steadiness. I rolled my eyes at her naivety. "If only she knew."
As we turned into the half circle to the manor, my eyes watered with despair at the horrifying sight before me. We all stopped at the scene and I could hear all of us holding our breaths as we took it all in. A servant girl tied to a wooden post in the middle of the half circle, whimpered softly as she noticed our presence. Her clothes had been ripped apart and hung at the sides. Thick rope wrapped around her tightly, and long bloody red marks from Aunt Eleanora's cane over her belly and swollen blue breasts illuminated from the moonlight. The poor girl looked up, and to my shock she revealed herself to be the same girl that dropped the glasses only a few weeks earlier.
For the life of me I could not help but blush scarlet in embarrassment, as I again became aware of Marak. This entire night I had doubted him and judged him to be a meaningless brute, and yet here we stood at my home where an innocent girl had been beaten and exposed for every passerby to see from the road. Heat rose up from my back to my neck, as I could not bear such judgment to fall upon me.
"Lucia, go to the servants' courters and tell them to untie her. Do not wake our Aunts or Uncle, just go straight through the kitchen door and up the stairs." I demanded with pure concern.
Marak dismounted and helped Lucia down from the saddle. But she did not go as I had instructed. Instead she did something that terrified me to the core, and feasted her eyes upon the naked girl only to linger when she got to her breast made large and swollen from the tight ropes. She just starred, and what bewildered me was I could not read her expression. She was not happy nor sad, but perhaps confused.
"Lucia!" I snapped with anger and strength I knew not I had. "Did you hear me? Go get the servants now!" I demanded, my voice becoming dangerous.
With that, her expression changed to embarrassment and sorrow, but I feared it was for the wrong selfish reasons. She delayed no longer and rushed to the east wing of the house, and a few minutes later came back with a man servant. Barefoot and indisposed he ran as if his life depended on it, and took a small blade to the ropes. He sawed so furiously I feared he might do even more damage to the girl. When her ropes fell she collapsed to the ground, moaning as she went, but not before the young man caught her in his arms. He draped her in his own cloak and lifted her up and started walking anxiously towards the house.
Lucia looked to me and spoke with tiredness. "I think I shall rest for the night." She stated softly.
I looked deep into her eyes and saw uncaring. What was this that I saw in my sweet little sister? What made her look upon a woman's naked body in such a way? When I pictured Lucia, all I could see was us laughing upon the hill only hours ago today. When I looked at her beautiful rosy red cheeks, I could picture myself holding her in my arms as an infant as if it were only yesterday. What was this insanity I saw now? Lucia walked away without a word, and I was shocked still, my mind reeling and turning while my feet stuck to the ground.
The shuffling of feet behind me reminded me that there was still a cold danger about the night, and I turned to face Marak.
It took me a few moments to gather my thoughts, and for once this night, Marak did a kind thing and waited patiently for me to speak. "I am sorry sir, but I do not have any coin to give you this night. I don't know where or who keeps it in this house." I said tenderly, as was my way.
For the first time I saw the grin I had been sensing all night, twist at his mouth from under his hood. I blinked hard, fore I thought it might be my imagination that fooled me. It looked as though his skin were almost a blueish color. As he walked towards his horse and mounted up, I walked behind him silently until he led his great horse out of our circle and onto the road. I shook my head and told myself that it was late, and my eyes were tired. I had not seen what I thought. He paused and looked down at me, his black hood falling loosely over his face.
"Perhaps I should come by another day, and pick it up then. My services shouldn't go unnoticed; wouldn't you say?" He asked with a smile, teasing once again.
"Of course." I lied. I would be safe at the manor. There were too many people for something to happen unnoticed. But Marak would be the one to pay. Once I told Uncle Hugh that Lucia had been drugged, when Marak came back for a payment he would punish him. Without a doubt I knew he would. Uncle Hugh was too proud of a man to let something that drastic go unpunished.
"Then I look forward to seeing you again, Ms. Letha." Marak bowed his head in respect, which was strange. From my first impression of him I would have never imagined him doing something like that. He seemed so rouge, and bowing seemed to look foreign to him.
And as peculiarly as he came, he galloped back into the black starry night.