Of Soot And Cinders

III

SOOT

The hand in my hair was knotted tight. I whimpered. I would be missing patches of hair after this. I couldn't support myself with my legs against the pace that was being set. All the weight of the grasp was left on my hair.

"Talkin' to the bloody—an ridin' on is bloody 'orse. You're a right simpleton ain't you Soot? I take no pleasure in this and if your help weren't needed the punishment would be worse. But as it is, four lashes with the iron tip and cleaning through the night and all day tomorrow, no stopping."

Jamie, the slave master, was not unkind. He had shed a tear when my step brothers had hurt me. Followed my step fathers will for my left leg to be crushed with stones and then the tendons on my right to be cut.
But I had ignored every rule I had been taught and I deserved the punishment. Jamie was the one who had to give it.

The maids had given me away. None of the slaves would have told to Jamie. The slaves were close with each other, they knew the pain of disobedience. The maids thought we were stealing their work, their pay.
Sara was different, she had a family, children. She had known me when I had first been sold to the palace by my step father. I had been barely six then.
I couldn't remember much what my parents were like. My father had died when I was two and my mother on the eve of my fifth birthday. She had been on a trip to a distant family's funeral in the northern regions of the empire when her carriage was attacked by barbarians.
It had been my fault, or so I had been told. My mother had insisted that my—at the time—new step father stay at the estate with me.
Slavery was the way I could repent for her death. If I worked hard enough and expected nothing and took my punishments without complaint, I could be forgiven. And that's why I chose not to cry out as I was whipped.

One day my tears would add up and I could be forgiven and accepted back into the arms of my step father.

__________

The grand hall was empty at this hour. I could hear only the echoing of my rag slipping against the granite hearth, and the distant chatter of drunk nobles. It was good. The quiet and the night. It calmed me, I could hum too. Something I didn't often allow myself to do.

The melody was soft and made me think of performers dancing across stages or butterflies through morning mist. I couldn't sing the words though. I didn't remember more than one line and it broke my heart to think that I was missing such a big part of it.

"It's a beautiful melody."

I jumped at the voice. My left leg twitched and hit he bucket, it tipped on its edge ready to topple. My heart stopped. I wouldn't be able to make it to the stream, not at this hour and not with the three long gashes on my back tearing at the fright. It leaned- I reached out but my movements were slow and the nearly black water was spilling out the top. I closed my eyes.

I was holding my breath and waiting for the sound of the water on stone and the cold seeping into my clothes and bones.

But it didn't come.

I felt his breath on my neck first. Then his chest, the warmth of it, hovering just above my injured back. When I opened my eyes I saw he was leaning over me, one hand on the cold stone of the hearth and the other on the side of the bucket. Only a little water had made it onto the floor.

I jumped again, this time from the proximity to another body and my shoulder hit the man's chin. He shouted in alarm and moved back. He leaned against a near by pillar base and rubbed at a spot I was sure would have been visibly bright red were it not for the late hour.