Venus Rouge

Interlude: The Maid's Monologue

I wasn't born under any mystical aligned stars or to the sound of all the birds in the world singing.

Nothing that pointed to any big fortune.

I was born a farmer’s third son, near the end of June. No good omens and no bad omens. My entrance into the world was nothing special, unless you consider the fact that I was alarmingly underweight “special”. Then again, which baby born in the reign of Duke Richard Verne was not underweight? The very fact that both my mother and I survived put me firmly on the “healthy” side for babies born at the time.

This didn’t change the fact that I was smaller than my brothers. I took after my mother who was called the village beauty back in her youth, so I was the one who looked rather feminine on top of being a runt. I had the title of the village chief’s son, but, with our conditions, it didn’t really mean much.

Every day in the village was a struggle, and even the harvest was never anything to sing about. The wheat stalks were spindly and pale yellow. After so many years of farming on it and so little rain at times, the earth was dry and dusty. Even though this pitiful show was the fruits of our labour, the tax collectors still took most of it away, and families were left with barely enough gruel to survive the winter. Even the village chief’s household wouldn’t escape this. When spring came, we still had no choice but to continue farming or starve. It was a vicious cycle that was not unique to Verne fief if the words of the few ragged travellers is to be believed.

This is the way it was for as long as I’ve known and even longer according to the words of the elders.

They always called me a very healthy child because my legs didn’t bow under the weight of my body and my skin never got as leathery whenever we had to go very long without eating much. I was very glad for this. If I appeared healthy, then my parents wouldn’t have another person to worry so much for. Mother was pregnant again and didn’t need the stress. Being pregnant in our village created mixed feelings of joy and fear for the life of both mother and child. It didn’t help that the Lord had been particularly hard on us with taxes that year, so food was tight.

Mother didn’t survive it. Father blamed himself. I was only six at the time when she was laid to rest beneath the dry, barren earth in a casket filled with wildflowers. My infant brother-- a frighteningly frail little thing, was all that was left of her.

Trying to take care of a baby among a household of four males was challenging, but we managed somehow to care for our household’s newest member.

Time went on like this with no improvement. Taxes didn’t lessen, and the harvest was still poor. Our villages graveyard kept increasing in size. There were whispers that the Duke was to wed a widowed Baroness. The rumor rose quite a few eyebrows.

Who would want to wed a man like Duke Verne? I grew up hearing stories from the older villagers of  the duke making people disappear and even rumors of him having a taste for the company of young boys! To the villagers, the lord of the land was a terrifying figure. We couldn’t help but speculate about what kind of woman this Baroness Onyx was to fancy him.

We had heard of the Onyx fief before. Many had fled there when times got too hard and never looked back.

On one spring day there was a grand procession on the fief’s main road, and all the villagers scrambled to watch it with wide eyes.

There was a beautiful ornate carriage in the lead flanked by men on horseback in shining armor. It was followed by several more less decorative carriages and even more guards.

I’d spent all my life in our little village, and the farthest I’d ever went was to four of the neighbouring villages on occasion with extra rare trips to the main town, Viennes. I’d never laid eyes on a noble before. I almost considered them different creatures altogether. I’d heard stories of fat nobles, cruel nobles, greedy nobles, powerful nobles, kind nobles, tragic nobles, and even incredibly beautiful nobles. Most of the villagers were just like me in this regard and were eager to take this chance to see an actual noble.