The Forgotten Lord: Tales of Misbelief I

by Barb Hendee

  Salmon was one of his favorites, and he still enjoyed playing draughts. Often, if I could get him downstairs, he would come back to himself. Of course he was never happy, but if I tried hard enough, I could sometimes keep him from being unhappy.

  “No,” he whispered. “If I was half the man I once thought myself, I would go downstairs and walk out the front doors and let this,” he held up his left wrist with the missing hand, “happen to the rest of me. But I can’t. I’ve tried to force myself.” He shook his head slowly. “What a coward I am.”

  “You are no coward,” I argued. “You are cursed. It is not your fault.”

  “Isn’t it?” he asked with an edge of hysteria. “Then whose fault is it?”

  I had no answer, and our eyes locked again. Unwanted memories rushed up inside me of how we had both come to this state. And as we sat there, lost in a moment of silence, I felt certain that his memories rose too, and our memories echoed each other’s, along with our losses.

  I had lost a father. He had lost a wife and son… and then he had lost his freedom.

  Was it his fault?

  I didn’t believe so. He had acted as almost any man would when threatened.

  My thoughts kept moving back, before the horrors even began… before Vordana arrived…

  · · · · ·

  I was just a girl, struggling through the trying years of my teens, when Stefan Korbori and his wife, the lady Byanka, first came to Pudúrlatsat. Lady Byanka might not have been beautiful, but she was blood kin of the Äntes and the favored second cousin of Ivanova, half sister to Prince Rodêk. And Rodêk was the reining grand prince of Droevinka.

  I was in awe of Lady Byanka, but I began to worship Lord Stefan from the first time I saw him.

  He sat on a black horse in the courtyard, in his chain amour but without a helmet. I’d never seen anyone quite like him, with his height and bearing and his handsome, clean-shaven face. Though I was considered the prettiest girl in the village, he didn’t notice me. He had eyes only for his wife. I liked this about him.

  The arrival of a new lord always caused anxiety in the fiefdoms, but he quickly proved himself fair and just, listening to any legitimate problems of those who served him and dispensing justice only when it seemed necessary.

  My father thought well of him.

  My mother had died the night I was born, but my father, Captain Geza, had been in charge of the manor guards—serving whichever lord was assigned there—for most of my life. However, he and Lord Stefan soon founded a different relationship from any I had seen before between my father and one of the noble lords.

  “If he leaves for a better assignment,” my father told me, “he says he will take us with him. My advancement is tied to his now.”

  I had mixed feelings upon hearing this news. I loved my home and harbored no desire to leave it. At the same time, I was flattered that Lord Stefan expressed a wish to keep us at his side.

  Though my father’s position was officially Captain of the Guards, he and I had always shared a small house in the forest behind the manor. He tended to arrive early for his duties, and then set the night watch before returning in the evenings. Stefan had no objections to this arrangement.

  All seemed well, and then—if possible—things improved even more when Lady Byanka asked me to become her personal maid. She related that her own maid had not wished to come to Pudúrlatsat, and so she was in need of one. I wanted this position more than I could express, though I had no knowledge of the duties of a lady’s maid.

  “You’ll find it easy,” she said, looking at my hair, which was piled on my head that morning with a few curled tendrils hanging loose. “I see you are naturally gifted. You need only to assist me in dressing or bathing… or doing my hair. I will teach you anything else.”

  Soon, I knew exactly what to do. I enjoyed serving my lady—and I worshipped my lord from afar. Before long, they had a beautiful son. I was allowed to hold him sometimes, and the world seemed perfect.

  I was ignorant of events as they occurred on the evening that everything changed.

  I walked out into the courtyard as three visitors arrived outside the gate, and they were stopped by one of my father’s men. I was on my way to the village on an impulsive errand for my lady, so my thoughts were otherwise occupied. Dusk was not far off, and I was in a hurry.

  As I trotted closer, one of the newcomers at the gate caught my attention.

  He was unusual in appearance. As he dismounted from his horse, I saw he was of medium height and slight of build. Unarmed, he wore a shin-length umber brown robe that swished when he moved, and it was tied closed by a scarlet cord. He had clearly been traveling, but there was not a speck of mud anywhere on his boots or clothing.

  Around his young face of twenty or so years hung hair as white as an old man in his final days. It lay unbound across his shoulders, reaching to mid torso, and glowed vividly in the fading evening sun. He certainly wouldn’t be thought handsome, with his thin-lipped mouth and deep set eyes, but he would be counted as striking.

  He glanced at me as I passed by, but I didn’t notice a thing about either of the two guards with him.

  I did stop briefly to look back to see my father coming from the barracks to greet these new men—and to politely inquire what they wanted. As captain of the guards, my father was like a wall between my lord and nearly everyone else.

  So, as always, I left such matters to him, and I hurried on toward the village, hoping the shop I sought would still be open. My lady had suddenly decided she would want a bath that night, and we had discovered she’d used up the last of her soap.

  In my eagerness not to disappoint her, I’d forgotten all about the visitors by the time I reached the bridge.

  I did manage to procure the soap, and I was soon on my way back to the manor. It was dark by the time I arrived. The first inkling that something was wrong struck me when I saw there was no guard at the front gate and the courtyard was empty.

  Though eager to return to my lady, I knew my father always posted a front guard at night. I decided to make sure he knew the gate was unguarded. I checked the barracks first without finding him, and then I trotted to the barn to see if he was there. The front doors were open, and I walked inside as I had done many times before.

  Two steps in, I stopped. Hanging candle lanterns illuminated the scene before me.

  My father and two of his men all turned my way.

  Three dead bodies lay at their feet: the white-haired visitor and his guards. Both guards’ throats had been cut and blood pooled around their heads. The white-haired man had a jagged hole in his chest, but there almost no blood on the floor of the barn… as if he’d been killed somewhere else.

  No one spoke for a long moment, and then my father simply said, “Elena.”

  He was pale and his breaths were shallow. He’d been a soldier in his youth, but he never spoke of those days. In all my life, I’d never seen him use his sword.

  My spell of shock broke as he turned to his men. “Take the bodies into the forest and bury them where they won’t be found. Then take the horses out, unsaddle them, and drive them off. If anyone asks, we’ve had no visitors from Kéonsk. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I knew they would do whatever he asked. No one told me to leave, and I stood there as they loaded up the bodies, leaving only bloodstains on the floor. In a short time, I was alone with my father.

  He glanced at me and then began to pace. If possible, he was even paler than before, and I could tell he was beyond shaken.

  “Father?”

  Had I not walked in on this grizzly scene and caught him in his current state of mind, I do not think he would have ever told me what happened. But I had walked in, and I had seen the bodies.

  “You cannot speak of this,” he said.

  “Speak of what? What has happened?”

  “My lord killed a rival… Vordana, the white-haired one. He came claiming be a replacement as steward of the
fiefdom and… and Stefan ran him through. Then Stefan ordered me to kill the guards and hush all news of visitors today.” He choked on his last words, as if they hurt.

  But I felt differently. “This man, this Vordana, he claimed he was here to replace our lord as steward?”

  “Yes.” My father glanced back at me, perhaps wondering how I would react. “He carried a letter from Baron Buscan.”

  I picked up a bucket. “I’ll get some water. We need to clean up the blood.”

  After that, a whole moon passed and nothing happened.

  Of the people who spent time inside the manor, only my lord, my father, and myself knew of the events of that night. We awaited any investigation from Baron Buscan, but none came. It was as if Vordana had never existed. I soon began to wonder if the letter he had brought might have been forged… or for some reason, Baron Buscan did not wish to pursue the matter.

  I didn’t care which. I cared only that my lord was safe. I began to relax, and I could see Stefan beginning to relax. Only my father had been changed, unable to recover from being ordered to kill those two guards.

  Then the world shifted again.

  Several hours after dinner one night, I was just heading upstairs to help my lady into her nightclothes when I heard her scream. The sound was terrible, filled with more pain than my ears could take in.

  Before I took a step, Lord Stefan came running from the main hall. He didn’t even seem to see me as he bolted past me up the stairs. Coming back to myself, I hurried after him. Lady Byanka was still screaming, and I followed the sound of her voice to the open doorway of their son’s room. Stefan was already inside.

  Lady Byanka stood by their son’s bed, ripping at her own hair.

  From the doorway, I could see the child… or what I believed had once been their child.

  The little face and hands were shriveled husks above the covers, and his eyes were open but dried and sunken. He looked like one abandoned in a wasteland to die of starvation and thirst, and all that remained was a dwarfish, withered old man.

  Byanka cried out like a mad woman. “I hear the guards whispering… of the visitor who came that night. What have you done to us?”

  When Stefan reached out to give her comfort, she shoved him and began howling again.

  I pulled back and slipped away, mourning both their sorrow and the loss of their child. But neither of them would want my pity… not him and certainly not her. Also, I hoped that if she were left to herself, she would finally turn to him for comfort.

  She did not.

  In the days that followed, her state remained unchanged. She must have loved that child so much. I began trying to help her, but she would no longer let me do her hair. Instead, she wandered the passages, weeping and talking to herself.

  Dark rings soon appeared around her eyes, followed by lines in her face, as if she were aging. This was more than sorrow, and Stefan expressed to my father that he now feared some unknown plague was spreading among us.

  My father took this seriously. He closed the manor to outsiders and kept his guards out of the villages as much as possible.

  Lady Byanka continued to wane over the next three days. No matter how much water or broth she drank, she suffered from a terrible thirst. When she finally died, Stefan wept, crouched by her bedside where she lay as withered as his son had been.

  I felt numb. I longed to help him, but there was nothing I could do.

  Within another moon, the peasants and animals of Pudúrlatsat began dying.

  Crops and trees withered as well, and because of this, I began to doubt that we faced a plague. My father still followed Stefan’s orders without question but wouldn’t look his liege in the eyes.

  One day, they both rode out to an outlying village of the fief. When they returned, Stefan strode to the main hall with a face like thunder, and I slipped outside to find my father in the barn. He told me they had found the other village healthy and thriving. Only Pudúrlatsat suffered from this mysterious blight.

  My father had no comfort to offer his lord, and I realized this was up to me.

  I walked back to the manor, opened the doors, and I found Lord Stefan writhing on the floor, just inside the entryway.

  His left hand was nothing more than a rotting pulp.

  Turning my head, I cried out, “Father!” Then I dropped to my knees.

  “He was here,” Stefan whispered. “Vordana was here.”

  I went cold, fearing that my lord had gone mad.

  My father and several guards got him into bed, and then Father made the hard decision that the hand would have to be amputated and the wound cauterized. He ordered me outside. I wanted to protest. I was much stronger than he realized, but I would not argue with him.

  Afterward, I sat with Stefan for days and nights, trying to get him to take sips of water and broth. His eyes were glassy, and he seemed aware of very little.

  Then one afternoon, as I was trying to get him to swallow a spoonful of water, he looked at me—truly looked at me.

  “Elena?”

  That was the first time he’d ever used my name.

  “Drink this,” I answered.

  Reaching up with his good hand, he pushed the spoon away. “You found me on the floor?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was here, inside the manor. Vordana was there. He spoke to me.”

  Though weakened, he didn’t sound remotely mad.

  “Do you remember what he said?” I asked.

  A pause followed, and he gazed upward at the ceiling. “Every word.”

  I didn’t speak, and after another pause, he began to whisper, almost like reciting a litany.

  “He said to me, ‘I can maintain my watch here just as easily behind a puppet, but for my broken life, yours is forfeit. You remain in the manor and, by my command, if you step beyond the threshold, you will die in that instant. You will do whatever I instruct but always while locked within your stately cage. I will drain your town and land as I need to sustain myself. When they are gone, I will turn to you and your household’.”

  I sat frozen and believed he had seen Vordana. Such words could never have come from Stefan.

  “I put his words to the test,” he whispered. “I put my hand outside the door.” He raised the bandaged stump of his wrist. “I am cursed, Elena. I caused the deaths of my wife and child, and I brought a curse on Pudúrlatsat.”

  “No! You have done none of these things! You acted as any lord would to protect your place, your position. He did this… is doing these things. Not you.”

  Stefan rolled his head on the pillow and stared at me. On that afternoon, for him, I finally began to exist.

  The days continued to pass, and the village continued to slowly die away. Crops failed. Livestock wasted to nothing. People grew old before their time. Soon, the manor guards began to slip away in the night.

  My lord remained trapped inside, a prisoner in his manor. The servants began to avoid him. He talked to himself and stopped bathing and sometimes waved his stump of a hand in the air. Then the servants too began slipping away in the night.

  I almost never left the manor anymore except to go into the village to find fresh food for my lord. But those brief trips were also how several of the villagers noticed that I appeared unaffected by whatever was happening. My fresh, unlined face became the cause of some suspicion. At the time, I was much too preoccupied to realize this.

  As of yet, the blight had not infiltrated the manor—except for the deaths of Byanka and the child. After their deaths, perhaps it was part of Vordana’s punishment to leave the great house for last.

  With the servants and guards abandoning Stefan, he was more alone than ever, and I worked as hard as I could to fill the void. My father’s duties were doubled, as he now rode to all the outlying villages to check on them. I do not think he noticed how much time I spent with Stefan, who was still recovering.

  My father blindly considered me “the nurse.”

  But something was slowly
changing. With Stefan unable to leave the manor—and his family gone—he grew hungry for anything to fill his days. I began devising a combination of amusements or duties for him, such as games of draughts, along with bringing him the reports from my father on the state of the villages and of any problems to be solved, and he began spending his mornings writing out his decisions or rulings. Thankfully, he was right- handed.

  He began looking into my face more and more often.

  I knew he did not love me. He had loved Byanka partially for the position and status she’d gained him. I could gain him nothing. But… he saw me.

  One night, I was in his bedchamber, helping take off his shirt, and when I looked up, I could see pain and longing in his face. I knew it wasn’t me he wanted, it was only something, anything to allow him to lose himself for a while, to forget.

  On instinct, I rose up onto the tips of my toes and touched my mouth to his.

  That was how it started.

  Somehow, word soon got out that I was sleeping in Stefan’s bed. This news, combined with my apparent immunity from the blight brought a mix of hissing slurs and open hostility. Who could blame them? Lady Byanka had only been dead a few moons, the lord of the manor mysteriously refused to step outside the front doors, and I appeared to be playing mistress of the house while everyone else’s lives and livelihoods slowly withered away.

  My father was shamed by my actions, but he stood by me.

  For a short while, having me seemed to help Stefan make a modicum of effort—on his own—for getting through the day, but it didn’t last. How could it? I was no substitute for his freedom… and I could not assuage his guilt over what was happening to the village.

  Before long, he began sinking back inside himself, spending his evenings in the main hall, in a chair before the hearth, staring into the fire in silence. One night, no matter what I did, I could not coax him into eating his dinner. He would not respond or take his eyes from the flames.

  A fierce anger gripped me—over what had been done to him.

  Grabbing my cloak, I fled outside into the darkness, and I ran down the curving path and across the small bridge. At the outskirts of the village, I stopped and looked into the thick trees.