The Devil's Inheritance

THE NIGHT

      She could have seen me that night; the child… Ivy, they called her. She could have
seen me the night I murdered her mother; the General’s wife. I thought she’d seen me: her
eyes were locked on mine. But still they seemed to see through me. I was pretty sure the shock of discovering her mother’s corpse in their favorite hiding spot made her completely numb. A living corpse of sorts; one that was as blind as a person who closed their eyes would be; one that could hear only the closest sound and feel only what was inside. But even so, I kept hiding, looking at her. The site of the little crown princess-to-be intrigued me. I wanted to see with my own two eyes what exactly sparked the king’s interest in her. What made him wish to have her as his daughter in law.

      It was difficult to tell through the pouring rain. I could see nothing except the dark
shadows of her brown locks, the nothingness that seemed to spill from her deep-black eyes; her little figure, slightly trembling – from the shock of her discovery or the cold outside, only she knew. Or, maybe, not even her. She wore only a thin, white night gown, already soaked through from the moment she set foot in the garden that night. She was such a small child that, if I haven’t looked closer, I would have mistaken her for a wounded pup from that distance. When I could finally discern more of her face, I could see her cheeks speckled with red dots and streaked with the water from the rain and her own tears. She said nothing for a long while. She moved no muscle… until she finally broke the barrier of the horror of seeing the dead woman and started screaming for help. Screaming for her mother to return. She lay her little hands on her mother’s cheeks and placed her forehead on her chest. She continued whispering for such a long while I was sure no one would ever come for her. I was sure she would die there from a broken heart. But her friends found her; the crown prince and the
future General. They were mere children themselves, both scared by the site of the brutal murder and the pooling blood on the marble tiles, but they both knew they needed to help their friend in a way or another, so the older of them took the lead. The future General ordered the crown prince to seek the girl’s father, to take with him as many knights as he possibly could and bring them all there.

        But the prince could not hear his brother’s words. He was only six years old himself and could not ignore the site of a dead body as easily as his eight-year-old sibling could. So, he just stared until the older boy grabbed him by his shoulders and mercilessly shook him until his eyes focused on him and not the garden behind. For a while they only looked at each other, the prince’s blue eyes focused on the redness of the other’s, then, finally, the older spoke. His voice was truly one of a future General’s. Even I could hear it from that distance over the harsh sound of the pouring rain.

       ‘Go, Alasdair! Seek the General, tell him his wife has been murdered and his daughter might be wounded! Do not stop until you find him and make sure you have at least one guard next to you the whole time!’, he ordered again with no sign of hesitation.

        It was clear as daylight that the certainty with which the boy spoke to the little prince
was all he needed to turn around and run into the dark hallways of the castle in search of the General and his men.

        I looked at the future General - that was now standing, trailing his younger brother
with his gaze - for a long while, before his shoulders finally gave way under the weight of what he needed to do. He was just a little boy after all, not yet a General, and even with all his long and hard training he did not know what exactly to do. Especially when he saw his small friend crying, covered in so much blood it was impossible to tell her apart from the
stained marble. But he had to be strong for both her and his brother if he wanted to help them get through this unharmed.

        So, after a long while of thinking, he sighed and approached the little girl. The rain finally started to calm, now almost completely gone but for the occasional droplets falling
from the tree branches around.

        The boy staid next to her for a while, looking down, until he finally decided to ask:

        ‘Are you alright?’

        His tone and facial expression completely changed from the way he looked and acted
around his brother. He talked in a soft voice, almost as soft as the wind that wondered
through the little creek, and his red eyes didn’t seem as menacing anymore.

        The girl didn’t answer. She kept her head buried in her mother’s chest, her hands
clutching the satin of the corpse’s ripped and bloodied dress. Her whole figure trembled with every cry of pain she let out and I saw the moment the boy realized she might die of suffocation. He twitched a little, battling the urge to grab her and drag her away at once.
Instead, he knelt in the pool of blood, next to his friend, and placed his hand on her small
shoulder. No words needed to be said as he stood there, looking over the back of her body, searching any sign that she might be hurt. In the end, he sighed in relief and caressed her
brown wet curls.

        ‘You must get up, Ivy.’, he whispered under his breath, draping his arms around her whole body and settling his forehead gently in between her shoulders.

        They stood like that for a while, in an embrace so gentle it seemed otherworldly. He kept caressing her arms and shoulders, whispering reassuring words.

        I knew how strange that must have been for him. He has never done anything so
loving. He never showed anyone any trace of care or worry. But he felt he needed to do it for her now. At least until the rest returned. Which, sadly for both of them, happened faster than expected.

        When the boy heard the shouts and the footsteps of the knights and the General, he
quickly got up on his feet and told the girl to leave her mother. He told her there was nothing she could do anymore and that there was no need for her to stand there any longer. But she just kept weeping, screaming for her mother, caressing her white cheeks.

        Finally, the General arrived. He stopped running right at the feet of his wife, the rest
of the guards stopping right behind their leader. The little prince stood next to the entrance of the palace, hiding behind a pillar, tears streaming down his red cheeks.

        The General silently fell to his knees in the blood of his love and struggled to only get one word out: Serena… It was the woman’s name. He didn’t cry; he couldn’t in front of his daughter, his men and the boy he trained to be as strong as he pretended to be. But I saw his eyes redden. He grabbed his daughter in a tight hug, not caring if she screamed or kicked. He held her in his arms until she finally relaxed and stopped crying. She took a deep breath as he gently kissed his daughter’s forehead. I couldn’t hear exactly what he whispered to her, but it made her slightly nod before reaching for her red-eyed friend’s hand. The future General held her hand, looking in her eyes, getting as close as he needed to cover the site of her mother’s
corpse. It wouldn’t help anymore, but it was a loving gesture that even I found admirable.

        The boy helped her turn her back to her mother, gently placed his cloak on her wet
shoulders and led her to the stairs where they found the prince.

        I followed the children through the halls of the palace, through the dark rooms they
would never enter unless in case of an emergency – which it seemed it now was one - beneath arched ways, into the two brothers’ room. I kept hidden into the shadows of the high ceilings, watching carefully every trait of the relationships between the three of them, seeking whatever could someday be of interest to my master; the one that ordered the murder of the girl’s mother.

        They finally entered the brothers’ room, where the older settled the girl on his bed,
telling her to rest, then turned toward his younger brother; the crown prince that was frozen in front of the small window next to their wardrobe, tears in his light-blue eyes. The future General grabbed him by his shoulders. He did not smile, as expected, but rather gently patted his teared grazed cheeks.

        ‘You did well, brother. You managed the situation as a true king would have. Now, go
rest!’

        He released his hold on his younger brother and returned to the girl, settling next to her, on the edge of the bed and holding her close to his body, trying to warm her. He seemed to think for a while to give her some of his or his brother’s pants and tunics to replace her soaked night gown, but then realized that they would be too large for her to properly wear them, so he just resumed rubbing her back and arms until she drifted to sleep. Careful not to wake her up, he raised her bruised, cold and bare feet on his mattress, covering her with the blanket and the silk strip draped at the foot of the bed, not even taking into consideration that she was still soaked through with both rain and blood. He simply glared at her unconscious body for a long while until his brother finally asked:

        ‘Is she alright? Or is that… her blood?’

        His voice was barely a whisper and it made the future General’s heart squeeze
painfully. He didn’t realize that his brother could be as affected by the site of the dead body as the little girl was.

        Softly, while rubbing the girl’s hand, he called for his brother.

        ‘Come here, little brother! I will tell you a story.’

        ‘I don’t need no story, Reagan! I don’t like stories anymore…’

        The little prince sounded even to me a little skeptical about his own words. After all
he was still a child; mere six years old have passed since he was born. He seemed too eager to pass his childhood.

        ‘That’s right… I forgot. You are too big now to listen to stories anymore.’

        The future general gently smiled at his brother.

        ‘But do me the pleasure and listen to this one. You don’t have to like it.’

        I saw right through the red-eyed boy’s deception. But it still made me smile. I almost forgot… Being surrounded almost all the time just by adults, perverted by riches and power, I forgot how pure and innocent little children could be. How selfless they tended to behave. The little General had the power of a thousand men and didn’t even know it.

        He calmed the little boy, he made him understand that the story was not meant to hurt his ego, but to calm him and the little General’s working mind. So, the little prince slowly got up of his bed and approached his older brother’s bed. The future General patted the empty space next to the girl and, after the little prince settled, nestling under the heavy blanket, the red-eyed boy started his story.