WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Malfoid

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◈ Fragments of Thorns and a Cradle ◈

Chapter 15

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Content Warning: bereavement; domestic abuse; physical violence; sexual coercion or assault; suicidal thoughts or self-harm.

Time passed. Her mother never opened her heart to her father. He was kind to her for months, but when she resisted and opposed him, his interest soon cooled.

Around that time, her mother took her own life. She hanged herself. Her father shed no tears. He did not attend her funeral.

Her mother was buried somewhere other than the family cemetery. Somewhere, just as her last child had been sold somewhere.

Unlike ordinary female slaves buried with their masters in the family crypt, her mother lay in land with no connection to the family, covered by thick weeds.

Before coming to San Arzok, Agnes had visited her mother's grave just once. She had wanted to return, whenever she missed her mother, but Randolph would not allow it. He would not permit her to leave San Arzok.

And so Agnes inherited her mother's life. Its burden. Its fate. More cruel and hopeless still. This hateful cycle of life that would not end unless she died.

"Who were you looking for? Where?"

Her head, smashed against the wall, hurt as if it would split. Perhaps it had, for blood stained the wall. A chilling force lurked in Randolph's blue eyes. Had he gone mad? What had happened to him? He was not his usual self. Agnes did not know what to say.

"Lucrezia? Why would you look for her?"

He looked incredulous. Agnes pressed her lips together. Randolph shouted at her to speak. His distorted face looked demonic. In his frenzy, he seized her shoulders and shook her.

"What are you so dissatisfied with?"

It felt as if her eardrums would burst.

The furious man covered Agnes's bloodied lips with his own. Agnes had no strength left to struggle and simply received the kiss. After he parted her lips and entwined his tongue with hers, he spread Agnes's legs. A terrible, long night descended.

After that night, Randolph treated Agnes very well. He often said he loved her. He told her she was beautiful and lovely, that not even an angel could compare to her. When he whispered such things, he seemed like a young boy sweetly confessing love.

"Meeting you was the fortune of my life. Your child is as lovely as you."

He stroked Agnes's bruised shoulder and arm. Agnes gave him no response. The places where he had beaten her still throbbed. The bruises around her eyes and dried blood had not faded, yet he spoke like that. She could not understand it.

Her face was so swollen that she looked less beautiful than a dressed-up beggar, yet he still desired her. But when she considered it... Her father had been the same. Sometimes he had been kind. And those days of kindness had always come after days like this.

Agnes had believed Randolph would be different, but he was no different. Perhaps he was worse.

At least Agnes had never meant to oppose Lucrezia. Even on the days she had been driven mad by jealousy, hating Lucrezia for spending nights with Randolph, she had not intended to defy her. She thought everything was flowing as it should.

A few days earlier, Agnes had gone out to welcome Lucrezia so she could make a good impression. She wanted to be kind to her. If that had exhausted Lucrezia, Agnes would not have gone.

Anything. Whatever Lucrezia wanted, Agnes was prepared to obey. If she wanted Agnes hidden somewhere out of sight, she would do that. If she ordered Agnes to emerge and become her attendant, she would do that too.

But this had happened. Agnes did not know what she had done to deserve Randolph's beating.

"What do you want me to do?"

Randolph stretched out his arms to hold her and kiss her gently. Agnes asked him.

"Nothing. You need not do anything."

"..."

"Return to who you were before. Return to the lovely girl you were. Tell me you love me."

Ah. That was it. What Randolph wanted was love. He wanted to continue a romance with a female slave that should have ended after a season.

Agnes thought him childish. He was worse than her father. He wanted to keep playing at the romance that other knights stopped when they came of age.

"I don't know how I loved you."

"..."

"I've forgotten how."

Randolph's face hardened. Agnes confessed that she did not love him anymore. But she said she was still his faithful slave and concubine. Though they were not joined as family, she was Randolph's servant and would always fulfill her duty.

Randolph stared at her like a dog from hell. They broke completely after that. The time they had loved each other for a season turned foul beyond recognition. Agnes regretted ever loving him.

Agnes's child was an ordinary child. He resembled Agnes greatly and the marquess a little. He was an adorable little boy with curling blond hair and vivid sea-colored eyes.

Whenever Agnes pleased him, the marquess lifted the child and kissed him. But Agnes disliked Randolph touching him. She did not like him lifting that small body and kissing him.

But children, especially boys, liked their fathers.

In Lucian's eyes, Randolph was always a wonderful man. He wanted his father to visit every day and hold him. He wanted to sit on one of his father's thighs while Randolph stroked his cheek, kissed his forehead, and laughed, "My little knight!"

Whenever Lucian called for Randolph, Agnes felt her heart tearing apart. Randolph praised and showed affection to the child in front of Agnes, but she knew it was truly a means of tightening the noose around her.

Whenever Agnes faltered or defied him, Randolph used the child to punish her. Lucian was otherwise useless to him. It was for the same reason that Randolph had wanted a child from Agnes so desperately.

While Randolph was heaven in Lucian's world, the child Randolph truly valued was Lucrezia's son.

The purpose was different. He had taken Lucrezia to see a son born from her womb. Agnes and her child... It likely did not matter to him at all.

He had chosen a woman with perfect family and status, one no flaw could be found in, to bear the child who would inherit everything. Naturally, even what they ate and wore was different.

It was unavoidable because that was etiquette. Still, Agnes's heart hurt.

Perhaps because he was born from a desire for such a perfect son, Lucrezia's child possessed something exceptional even in Agnes's eyes.

If Agnes's son was an ordinary child with nothing lacking and nothing outstanding, the legitimate son the marquess cherished was, in kinder words, intelligent, and in harsher words, frightening.

He was strangely emotionless and sharp for a child. He was quiet and expressionless. When displeased, his mocking words were chillingly cold.

Whenever Lucrezia's son, Endymion, encountered Agnes, he stopped her with cold eyes and called, "Agnes."

Then he rebuked her for the disrespect of not greeting him.

Agnes felt sad and angry that even a child spoke to her this way. But there was nothing she could do. That was proper etiquette, and defying it was wrong.

Even in her father's home, Agnes had always occupied the lowest place. Even servants treated her carelessly, and her father deliberately did not correct them.

It had been bearable to clasp her hands and lower her eyes before the baroness, her father's wife. It had been bearable to call brothers and sisters only a few years older than her young master and young lady.

But the thought of bowing her head to Randolph's son at San Arzok made rage rise in her. Humiliation made her teeth ache and tears gather, yet she gave Endymion what he wanted.

When she told Nanna, Count Laborve's concubine, Nanna pitied her, saying that etiquette must be very strict in such a distinguished house.

Nanna did not seem to get along very well with the count's wife, but she seemed quite close to the daughter the countess had borne. They exchanged gifts and called one another by name. It was nothing like Agnes and Endymion.

"Agnes."

One day, Endymion stopped her in the corridor, as he always did.

"Good day, young master."

Agnes greeted him as he wished, then tried to leave.

"Where are you going?"

Endymion stopped her again. Agnes swallowed her desire to run and turned back toward the child.

He had bright gold hair like spun thread, just like the marquess. His skin was milky white and soft, and his small face had inherited the marquess's striking features.

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