The Seahorse and the Spice 🪼🎩✔

13: The Freedom We Give Others

I hadn't discussed my past with anyone in a long time. I didn't even discuss a lot of it with Andrew, just told him that by legal standards, I was in like as the duke but if nobility knew they would immediately throw me away. It was all hush-hush and under wraps. Eadric peeled the potato and I handed him about four as I chopped them up and stuck them in the bowling water. Once it was simmering really well, we sat at the small table in the kitchen, each with a slice of cake.
"I thought that if you were the child of a nobleman and someone else, you were considered a bastard and cast away from the family?"
"That is true."
"Our family is like that..."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm not telling you. You have your own history to tell."
"Fair enough..." I took a bite of cake. "How learned are you in how the nobility system works?"
"I know how it works."
"Good then I won't have to stop for clarity... My father, Thomas Barma, was the third son of the duke before him. The old adage is 'an heir and a spare are all you really need'. The third son usually gets looked over in the nobility department and many people don't care what he does because he most likely won't get the title anyway. My father was like that... he was wild and raucous but he knew how to have a good time so I've heard. He used to go to this tavern that was on the outskirts of town and drink and have fun, doing as he pleased. That's where he met my mother, my real mother.
"Mother was the barmaid at the tavern, keeping the men in place and even knocking a few of them around to keep her place free of fights and a bad reputation. She was not afraid to throw a good punch of her own though. So the story was told to me, they met when he got pissed as a fart, flailing all over the place right before he was supposed to go to the opera house and see a play. Mother helped him to his carriage and he grabbed her arm, pulling her to him. 'Come with me.' He said to her. Mother didn't know what to say and she pulled away from him. 'You're drunk, milord, you don't need to do such reckless things as ask a common-woman to something so grand as the opera.' Then he grabbed her again and pulled her close, kissing her on the lips. 'I want you to come with me.' He told her.
"I still hear talk of that night at the opera. The night Thomas Barma brought a barmaid into the opera house comes up time and again. My mother said she never felt so out of place but never more alive. When he got sober, he realized what he'd done but he also knew he loved her. Without much of a resistance of others, my father married my mother. Instead of living in a lavish mansion like this, we lived in a cottage close to the tavern. My mother still was a barmaid even while pregnant with me and Father helped from time to time.
"When I was born, my father found a small home that was more like a miniature estate and moved us there. The house cost a lot more than the cottage, by far, but Father still had money. Remember, he was the third son and thus, not exactly looked at often. We stayed in that house until I was ten and that's when all hell broke loose."
I looked over at the soup and got up awkwardly. I grabbed the spoon and stirred it around a little then took a tiny taste of it. It needed to cook longer, definitely. I went down and sat in front of Eadric, who looked like he was enthralled with an adventure rather than a tragedy.
"What happened? Why did hell break loose?"
"It was the year of the war. My father's oldest brother, the heir, went to the front lines and was killed in action. Father's second oldest brother caught an illness and didn't shake it, dying about a year after the oldest. That left my father, the third brother, to be the heir to the dukedom. When my grandfather told my father that he was the heir now, my father refused and bucked the position for a long time. Finally, my mother talked him into listening to my grandfather and he accepted the position as the heir. What we didn't know was that my grandfather had been making his own plans without telling anyone about it and had ultimatums that my father had no idea were going to come up.
"One of the firsts was that Grandfather told Father that my mother could not be his wife. My father was furious and asked why. Grandfather said that she was a commoner and everyone would look down on the family name if they knew they had just kind of absorbed a commoner –a barmaid, no doubt- into their perfect home. My father did not want to leave my mother nor me and my Grandfather made a deal with him. He would allow my father to keep my mother and me in the manor but he would have to divorce my mother and marry a noblewoman that he had found. She had agreed that she would let Mother stay and even went so far as to say that she would claim me as theirs to keep me from being a bastard. It took my father a long time to find out the right thing to do, but Mother knew that carrying on the family name was very important.
"Mother sacrificed her happiness, her love, and her home so that my father could do his duty as the heir of the dukedom. We were moved into this manor and a wedding commenced after Father divorced mother. Father often left Lady Janis' bed for my mother's, even though she was forced to become a servant. Janis did not like that she was in the house, even though she offered the invitation. She made my father have to choose to let my mother live alone, away from us, or be a servant. Mother didn't want to leave me and I didn't want her to leave me, so she sacrificed her freedom to become a maid for the household. Once Janis thought she had Mother low enough, she went and made Father feel guilty for leaving her bed for Mother's. Soon after, everything changed completely.
"My mother was a strong, independent woman and my father killed her every day. He eventually forgot about her, getting wrapped up in the noble business he thought was stupid for the longest time. I made sure to stay with her and be there for her. When she called me 'sir' for the first time and bobbed a small curtsy to me, I knew she had given up hope. I hated when she acted like I was just another nobleman in the house, not her son... Some months went by when she began to have bad headaches. She got very sick and died in the night while I was laying next to her, keeping her warm through a cold spell."
We were silent for a while as Eadric looked up at me from his lap.
"How did your Father react?" he asked softly.
"Ironically, Father was very emotional. He even made them bury her with the noble family. After that, I realized that it wasn't the sickness that killed my mother but the broken heart she had to deal with day after day. She had to watch as he got farther and farther away from her and was going along with another woman at that. Knowing that she had insisted and got herself in a mess like that hurt her more than most things. It hurts me still, knowing that she sacrificed everything to make him happy and yet he left her behind. I hate my father and vowed to do anything and everything to tarnish our name. I hate the name Barma. It makes me want to puke at everything she'd done that cost her her happiness...
"But that's how I learned cooking, because I was always with my mother. She taught me how to do it as well as making tonics and such for her headaches. She was a wonderful woman... Minerva reminds me of her so much. Her outgoing personality, her quick quips, her virtues, and the way she loves you boys. I've seen the look of a mother to her children and you've got a wonderful woman who does just that... We should make an extra bowl for her, yah?"
Eadric nodded as I took another sip of the soup. It was alright but I haven't cooked for a lot of people in a while. Mother was always better at it than me...

Minerva
I put my hand over my mouth as I leaned against the doorway that led to the kitchen. I never knew that he had gone through so much heartache. I felt horrible for treating him the way I had. I walked back to Bastion's room to check on him. He was looking horrible, the worse he's ever been. I was worried he may die