France, 1720
It had rained recently, and mud caked Ludovic de Vauban's shoes, damp creeping through the battered fabric.
But he barely noticed the cold.
A year.
Clementine had been missing for a whole year.
The rest of the family had given up on her, but he couldn't. Not his little Clemmie.
Her face flitted through his mind, her red curls and dimples, the way her laugh sounded like bells ringing, and his heart twisted. How could it have been a whole year since he'd heard that laugh?
Ludovic crested a small rise in the land, and paused, looking down. From here, he could see his house, maybe half a mile away. The sun was setting, painting the stone walls with orange, and a thick curl of smoke rose from the chimney, dark grey against that bright sky.
This had used to be home for him.
When he was a boy, he and his older sister Jacqueline would play in the fields that spread out around them, inevitably incurring their mother's wrath when they returned home with muddy knees and skinned elbows. But she was never angry for long.
His father was rarely around to help discipline them – a successful merchant, he'd spent much time at sea, bringing back tar from Finland and hemp from Russia. When he was home, he'd felt like little more than a stranger to Ludovic and Jacqueline.
When he was killed at war, when Ludovic was seven, they had mourned him, but they hadn't really missed him. Clementine had only been three at the time, Henri and Bernard barely just born – they didn't even remember the man who'd fathered them.
Then their mother remarried and everything changed.
Maurice Demont was a cruel, abusive man, who freely used his fists against his wife and stepchildren. Their happy home became a place of fear, where the children crept around in silence, desperately trying not to arouse Maurice's anger, but he was always looking for an excuse to lash out, and nothing anyone did was good enough.
When he found out that Ludovic was still using his father's surname of de Vauban, rather than Maurice's surname, he'd beaten him until he couldn't walk for two days, and when his mother tried to protect him, Maurice broke her nose and cheekbone.
Ludovic hadn't been surprised when Jacqueline left.
But that was it – she had left. She'd packed a bag, taken some food and money – which had sent Maurice into a rage – and disappeared in the night.
Clemmie had taken nothing.
She'd just disappeared.
A wave of grief crashed into Ludovic, so strong that his legs buckled and he fell to the ground.
He had searched every town and village for miles around, and spent so many fruitless hours walking the crowded streets of Lille, the nearest city to their country home, but there was never any sign of her, and now, after a year, it was finally time for him to accept what he'd somehow known from the day he woke up and found her small bed empty.
Clemmie was dead.
The tears that he had been holding back for so long escaped, and he howled, beating his fists into the mud.
Losing Jacqueline had been painful enough. Only a year separated them, and they had always been close. Waking up to realise that she'd gone and that she'd left Ludovic behind was like being kicked in the heart, but with time, he'd come to realise why she'd done it. He'd been seventeen when she left, the oldest after her, and someone had to look after Clemmie, Henri, and Bernard. Someone had to shield them from Maurice. Taking all of them would have slowed Jacqueline down, and she'd known that Ludovic would never leave them. So she'd saved herself, and abandoned them. Sometimes Ludovic was still angry about that. Most of the time he grimly understood why.
But now, nineteen months later, Ludovic had failed.
Clemmie was never coming home.
The grief inside him hardened, sharpening into a blade of pure rage.
Clemmie was dead, and he knew – he knew – that Maurice was responsible. Maybe he hadn't meant to do it. Maybe he'd hit her too hard. Maybe she'd fallen and cracked her head on something. Maybe he'd held her throat too long.
Or maybe it had been deliberate.
Either way, Ludovic would never be able to prove it, and he wouldn't try to. There would be no justice for Clementine de Vauban. But Ludovic could still give her a decent burial. Maurice wouldn't have bothered. Ludovic had failed to protect his little sister from the monster that stalked the rooms of their house, black-eyed and reeking of cheap beer, and now the very least he could do was make sure that Clemmie had a proper grave to sleep in.
That meant Maurice would have to tell him what he had done with Clemmie's body.
Ludovic climbed to his feet, his muddy hands tightly clenched.
All these years he'd been afraid of Maurice, but now he realised something. He wasn't a little boy anymore. He was eighteen, and he'd grown up tall and strong. Maurice enjoyed beating people who couldn't fight back, and maybe he too had forgotten that Ludovic wasn't a child anymore.
Maybe it was time Ludovic made it very clear to him.
He started for home.
He was almost at the back door when he heard the screaming.
That scream was horribly familiar to him – it was the one his mother had given when Maurice had so savagely beaten him that time. It was the desperate scream of a mother trying to protect her children.
Trying and failing.
Ludovic flung open the door and rushed into the kitchen.
At first he couldn't make sense of what was happening.
Instead his mind latched onto the fact that he was tracking mud into the house, and Maurice did not like mud, which meant that Ludovic should brace himself to feel the back of the bully's hand.
Then his mother whimpered, and everything became very clear.
She was crouched by the rough-hewn kitchen table, blood and tears running down her face, clutching one arm to her chest. On the other side of the table was the great stone hearth, and lying in front of the hearth –
Bernard.
The little boy lay in a bloody heap on the floor, eyes closed, his nose a red pulp. Henri was huddled close-by, sobbing, one eye swollen completely shut.
They had only recently turned ten, and they were still so small and fragile, their arms and legs like dry sticks, and Maurice was killing them.
Killing them like he'd killed Clemmie.
The roar that Ludovic let out sounded more animal than human. Maurice looked up, surprised, blood drenching his knuckles, and then Ludovic barrelled into him, throwing him to the floor, away from his brothers.
Maurice looked up at him, fury and disbelief in his eyes.
He started to get up.
Ludovic grabbed the iron poker that leaned on the wall next to the hearth, and smashed it against the side of Maurice's head. Maurice reeled, stumbling against the table, and even as he was trying to straighten up, Ludovic hit him again. There was a dull buzzing noise in his ears and everything was tinged with red. He couldn't hear the awful nose the poker made as it smashed into Maurice's skull, splintering bone and pulping the brain beneath. He couldn't stop hitting him. All the pain and rage and grief of the last ten years was pouring out of him, like a terrible wave, and it felt like it would never end.
And then it did end.
The strength flowed out of Ludovic's arms, and he dropped the poker, panting heavily.
The kitchen was completely silent.
Maurice was –
Ludovic's breath stopped as he finally saw what he had done.
There wasn't much left of his stepfather's head, just an awful red mess spilling across the kitchen floor, brain and bone and bits of scalp, the hair matted dark and sticky with blood.
Blood splattered Ludovic too. Small pieces of flesh and brain clung to his clothes, his face, and he retched, turning away and bracing his hands on the table.
His mother had crept forward and pulled Bernard into her lap. The little boy was awake now, blinking at Ludovic through bruised eyes.
The rage that had fuelled him was gone now, and all Ludovic felt in its place was an awful shakiness. His stomach rolled and twisted, and he wanted to be sick, but he'd been so busy looking for Clemmie all day that he hadn't stopped to eat. There was nothing to throw up.
He forced himself to meet his mother's eyes, and she cringed away from him, clutching Bernard like she needed to protect him from Ludovic.
She was afraid of him.
And maybe she had good reason to be.
He had just beaten her husband to death in front of her. He was covered in bits of Maurice. He must look like a monster.
He licked his lips, tried to speak, and tasted the bitter tang of Maurice's blood.
Ludovic's hands trembled.
Icy fear crept through his veins.
What happened now?
He was a murderer – he couldn't stay here.
If anyone found out what he had done, he could end up on the breaking wheel. If he was lucky he would be strangled to death before his limbs were broken, but either way he'd still be dead.
He was not dying for that bastard.
Maybe they could hide the body, pretend that Maurice had simply disappeared . . .
But nothing would change the way his mother was looking at him, like she had never seen him before. Nothing would change what his little brothers had just seen him do. They would always be afraid of him.
That was more than Ludovic could bear.
With Maurice gone, what was left of his family had a chance for a new beginning, but not with him. A line had been drawn, as bright and terrible as the blood spilling onto the floor from Maurice's shattered head. Ludovic was on one side of it. His mother and brothers were on the other.
Even if Ludovic could escape execution for murder, he was too afraid to stay here. He was too afraid that his family would always look at him the way they were now, like they couldn't believe what he was capable of, even if it had been to protect them.
So he did the only thing he could.
He ran.
He ran from the only home he had ever known, leaving everyone behind, running from the fear and guilt, trying to scrub the blood from his face with one dirty sleeve.
He ran and he never looked back.
On Friday, it's Isabeau's turn. See you then :)