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I watched as my mother sank slowly down to the ground, her crimson skirts spreading out around her feet like the petals of a rose. Her hands were pressed to her face. There was blood streaming from her lips.
I longed to cry out, to run to her, but bit my lip instead, so hard I tasted iron. I searched her face, trying to get her to look at me, but it was as if I had suddenly become a ghost in the room. She would not look at me where I lay beneath the bed, no matter how hard I stared.
Gazing at her bloody face in horror, something was suddenly revealed to me. I knew where her other small injuries had originated. The many cuts and bruises she had quickly covered up and made up stories about.
They were from him. His touch had harmed her.
I felt a rush of fiery rage and a longing I had never felt before. I felt the fury of a small child who sees the injustice of the world and wants to reach out and stop it any way they can.
I imagined my small fists pummeling against my father’s immoveable chest and bit my lip all the harder.
The image was laughable. I could do nothing. I swallowed my pride and stayed where I was.
My mother was trying again. “You made promises to me. I beg you, do not forget the love we have shared. If you cannot keep your vow, if you cannot be faithful...”
“Why should I be faithful?” my father roared. “To one such as you. When there are any number of women–good women, desirable women,humanwomen–who are ready to throw themselves at my feet.” He staggered on his feet a little. “You think I do not know what you did to me? When you had me make thosevows?”
My mother closed her eyes, then she moved her hand and wiped the blood from her mouth on her skirt. Her hands moved to her lap, gripping the ruby fabric of her gown as if it were a lifeline.
“You know the vow you made,” she said quietly. “Whether I wished for it or not, it cannot be rescinded. We have a daughter.”
“You speak to me of vows!” My father’s voice boomed out like a crack of thunder. “You tricked me. You charmed me. Now look at me! A man such as I bound in a faerie trap. Well, there is one way to break it, Ygraine. And you know that as well as I.”
He had to bend this time to hit her face. There was a crunching sound and when he stepped away, I saw blood gushing from my mother’s nose.
“Please...”
Still she would not look at me. I clutched the pages of my book so hard I felt one tear. I had promised the librarian I would be careful with the precious tome.
Now I could not bring myself to care. Let the pages scatter to the wind. My beloved mother wasbleeding.
“Please.” Her voice had dropped almost to a whisper, the merest rustle of leaves.
“No other man would have withstood a marriage to a woman like you for so long. No other man would have borne the humiliation, the shame. They all talk, I know they do.” The slur in my father’s voice had deepened.
“No one talks, my lord. Do they not see the love between us?” Blood ran down her cheeks like tears. “Do they not all see the proof of that love in our child?”
I felt tears run down my face. My mother’s sorrow mirrored in me.
“Lies!” my father shouted. “You spew lies, Ygraine. The same lies you have told me all these years. Pretending we are happy. Pretending all of this is something other than the grossest obscenity.”
“I was happy,” my mother murmured. “I have been happy. You saved me from much worse. Even now, I do not regret it.”
To this day, I do not know if he heard the words she whispered.
And then she looked at me. Her ethereal blue eyes met mine so powerfully I felt it to my bones. The words were for me, not for him. I understood.
She broke her gaze and looked up at my father, raising her hands, turning them this way and that. “I am helpless before you, my lord, as well you know. I beseech you one last time, for our child’s sake...”
But it was no use.
My father’s legs crossed my field of vision again, blocking my mother out.
He began to rant, a fearsome tirade. He called her terrible names. Spewed words too foul to recount.
Where did all of the hate come from? Why had I never seen it before? My mother had hidden it from me. Protected me. Her love was all encompassing. It was also a curtain, shielding me from what was true.
His hand moved back and forth as he struck her again and again.
