Seventeen

The hour that my plans came crashing down around me, I was sleeping. The sky was still dark and the sun was at least two hours from rising, and I clung tightly to that warm fog that happens in the early hours of a day when wakefulness is an option and not a requirement. But someone was demanding entrance into our inner household- not just the outer chambers where the poor sometimes came to warm themselves on the particularly cold nights. Someone was demanding- loudly- to be admitted into our home, and I could hear them even here, in the deepest part of the compound.

I rolled out of bed as quickly as I could with my big belly slowing me down, and Mayla helped wrap my robe around me. We left our chambers and saw, down the hallway, Caper, cowering on her knees before a big, burly man brandishing a sword. “Where is he?” the man demanded, waving the blade threateningly. Behind him, other soldiers were looting our corridors, shoving expensive silver and gold trinkets into their personal sacks.

“I d-don’t know,” Caper wailed. The soldier pulled his sword back and, with one swift, heavy blow, he brought it down across Caper’s delicate neck. She made a choking, gurgling noise and then fell to the floor, silent, as a pool of blood spread in a dark halo around her.

I must have opened my mouth to scream, shocked at the brutal reality that was Caper’s violent death, for Mayla’s hand came crashing down over my face, silencing me before I could make a sound. “Back!” she whispered, barely audible. “Back, back, back-“ she was ushering me back into my room, all the while keeping her wide, frightened eyes on the soldiers ahead of us.

She silently pushed my bedroom door shut and locked it. The click of the lock sounded like the boom of thunder in a quiet house to us, announcing our position, and we listened carefully, but the sound of my blood rushing through my veins was all I could hear. The soldiers didn’t yet come for us.

“What will we do?” Mayla asked, pacing.

“Who are they?” I asked uselessly.

“Soldiers from the East,” she answered, waving her hand. “Didn’t you see the uniforms? Father hasn’t been protecting the borders and paying them the way he should and they’ve been sending ambassadors for months now, trying to coerce him into doing the right thing, but he’s a stubborn cow of a man and he’s so greedy and lazy and now he’s cost us everything. They’ll kill us all.” She glanced up at me, and then down at my bulging belly. “Not you, though,” she said. “You have a chance, Piya. They won’t kill you if there’s any chance you’re carrying a son.”

I wrapped my hands around my belly, and the baby within me moved rapidly, kicking uncomfortably in the tightly confined space as if it could sense the danger we were now in. “How do you know why they’re here?” I asked uselessly, my mind once more trying to solve the irrelevant problems that had less dangerous answers than the important problems- like how we were going to get out of her alive.

She looked at me for a moment, considering me. “You realize we’re going to have to fight for our lives, don’t you?” she asked, putting her hands on my shoulders. “Your eyes are glazed and you look as if you’ve seen a ghost. I really need you to focus, Piya. Please.”

But something ticked in the back of my mind, a nervous question demanding to be answered. “But how did you know?” I asked again, ignoring the impatient way she shook me.

She dropped her hands to her sides and looked away from me, resigned. “I’m going to die anyway,” she whispered, plopping down on my bed. “I may as well tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“Chan wants to know about you, all the time. He’s wildly obsessed and he doesn’t like not knowing things… He approached me and asked me to become your friend, to spy on you and report back to him. I refused at first, but then he caught me listening in on a conversation Papa was having with one of the visitors from the East about money and some sort of illegal trade. Chan hit me and told me that if I didn’t agree to report back to him, let him know about every move you made, the beating would be far worse and he’d tell Papa that I’d been listening in.”

I nodded my head, something heavy in my chest crushing the breath out of me. “And that day that I found him hurting you…?”

She stood up, her movements urgent. “That’s when I refused to tell him anything else, Piya! I know it started out as a lie but I love you so much, and once we became true friends, I couldn’t stand the thought of betraying you anymore. He gave me a few warning blows and then it finally escalated to… that.”

I nodded my head, feeling the brokenness of betrayal trying to force its way into my mind, but I couldn’t deal with that right now. I could hear the heavy boots of the soldiers in the hallways, slowly and thunderously making their way closer and closer to my door.

I grabbed her wrists. “We’ll work this out later,” I said. “For now, I have to figure out a way to get you out of here. Maybe I could hide you.”

“You can’t do anything for me,” she said. “You’ll be lucky if you can save yourself. You have a chance, Piya, but it’s only a chance. There are no guarantees. You’re far enough gone that they could cut the baby from your womb if they wanted to, and then just do away with you.”

We heard a scream echoing from somewhere deep within the house, and I remembered the servants.

“Are they just going to massacre everyone?” I gasped, and Mayla nodded.

“Haven’t you ever read a book?” she asked, on edge and irritated with my ignorance, picking up her pacing once again. “It’s their right as conquering soldiers. They’ll rape the women if they want to. They’ll enslave them if they want to. They’ll kill them if they want to. They can do whatever they want, so long as they bring Chan and Papa-Roy and any other male member of the household back to the East to answer for their crimes.” She glanced over at the crib where Forrest still slept peacefully and my heart lurched. I couldn’t let them take my baby.

The servants continued to scream as loud banging noises echoed throughout the compound. The house sounded as if it were falling apart around us.

“The servants quarters!” I said, grabbing Mayla’s wrist. “We can escape, just the way we planned- we just have to do it tonight. Now!”

Mayla didn’t hesitate.

“We have nothing prepared, though,” I said, my enthusiasm faltering. It was freezing outside, and there were now monsters lurking in the dark. We couldn’t go trapezing through the mansion, gathering supplies before making our escape. If the plan were to work, we would have to go directly toward our exit. Every precious moment that we were exposed would count.

“There’s no other option,” she said, already pulling me toward Forrest’s crib.

“Wait!” I hissed, pulling away from her. I slipped my shoes on and threw an extra pair to her. I grabbed my biggest bag, a ridiculously expensive travel bag that had been part of my dowry, and I blindly threw things into it- socks, Forrest’s baby blanket, clothes.

“Piya, we have to go- now,” she said, pulling at me again. At last, I handed the bag over to her and she slung it across her chest. I gently lifted Forrest from his crib and wrapped him in a blanket, and as a last thought, Mayla grabbed the light weight blanket that was draped across my bed and threw it over her own shoulders. I doubted its usefulness out in the elements, but I kept my mouth shut and followed her out into the hallway.

Forrest, miraculously, continued to sleep the deep sleep of the innocent in my arms. I lifted him to my shoulder and cradled him there, and Mayla and I ran.

Our shoes were really only slippers, meant for the delicate and leisurely life of wives, but I was thankful that they made no sound as we ran down the stone hallways, leaving Caper’s bloodied body and the plundered mess that used to be our home behind us. When we came to the end of the long, winding hallway, we stopped and listened, waiting in the dark for any sign of the careless soldiers. When nothing but quiet greeted us, Mayla gently pushed the double doors opened and stepped into the kitchen.

“Whoa there, boys, look what we’ve got here!” Rough hands grabbed my arms and yanked me forward, and I fell to my knees, jarring Forrest roughly. He awoke and began to cry.

“Be careful with her!” Mayla shouted, her words coming out too quickly, revealing her panic. “She’s First Wife, Queen Piya Roy of this household and she’s pregnant with a son!”

The hands immediately loosened their grip, and calloused fingertips helped me to my feet.

Three overly large men looked at each other, obviously wondering what to do with me.

“Would the Lord Overseer like her as a concubine, d’you think?” one of them asked. “Lots of money in concubines.”

“Nah, not this one. She’s fat as a cow. I might have a little fun with her though-”

“She’s pregnant!” Mayla spat again. “With a son.”

The soldier holding her slapped her roughly across the face, and Mayla cowered. I wondered briefly how many beatings her soul could take before it decided to drift away. We all knew people like that- those who’d been hurt and discarded one too many times and who gazed out at the world through glazed over, unseeing eyes.

“Nothing more from you,” the man said, jerking her shoulders. Her head swiveled, reminding me of a rag doll, and she quieted.

“What should we do with them, Kandal?”

The third soldier stood quietly in the darkest shadows of the dark kitchen, watching as his two minions roughed us up and kept us still.

He was quiet for a moment longer, and just as the two brutes started to fidget, glancing at each other nervously, Kandal’s low voice whispered, “Kill them.”

“No!” I heard the guttural sound of Mayla’s voice echoing her last word as her throat filled with blood. The soldier holding her dragged a sharp blade across her neck slowly, enjoying the process and the way she squirmed uselessly, and then he gently lowered her to the floor as if she’d simply passed out. I wrestled my way free from the dangerous arms holding me, and they laughed as I fell to the floor beside my only friend, my pregnant belly and Forrest wailing between us.

She was clutching her throat as her shoulders heaved, and her big eyes rolled toward me. She was moving her lips, trying to tell me something, but I heard nothing but the gurgling sound coming from her throat. Red blood bubbles burst between her lips. I didn’t know what to do, and I felt useless, as I so often did in the presence of Mayla. She was a little powerhouse of knowledge and endless kindness and ideas, a troubled girl used or ignored mercilessly by everyone around her. Now, she was dying. She was dying quickly, and there was nothing to be done about it.

I bent low and pressed my lips to her ear as tears ran down my face. “You are so loved,” I whispered. “You are not alone. I’m here, and I love you so much. There’s nothing to forgive. I understand why you did it, and I’m so thankful we got to be friends. You’re the most beautiful person in the world to me, and your friendship is everything.”

I lifted my head. Mayla let go of her throat and wrapped one bloodied hand around my own, squeezing it weakly. Her shoulders gave one last shudder, and she stared into my eyes as she gasped uselessly for air, watching me. I held her hand and for just a moment, I ignored everything else. I blocked out the sound of the soldiers laughing, the muted sound of other people screaming in other parts of the compound, even the sound of Forrest whimpering in my arms. For just a moment, I watched Mayla die, and I died with her. I hoped that she felt my love for her and that she knew some kind of peace in her final moments, and then her eyes glazed over and she was gone.

It took me a few moments to realize that the grief filled shriek that echoed throughout the house was coming from me. It came from such a deep, broken place that I couldn’t even register it at first, and then I couldn’t stop.

I wondered if they’d kill me next. I half expected them to, but there was a numbness inside of me that kept any real notion of caring at bay. My arms mechanically soothed Forrest as other soldiers burst into the room and chaos reigned in around me. I was aware of watching Chan’s mother being dragged away with a rope tied around her neck. She was wearing only a short shift and there was blood on her knees. There were ropes tied to her ankles, and a few seconds after I saw her trudging by, lead like a horse by a gang of soldiers identical to my own torturers, I saw the heads of two of her sister wives tied to the other end of her ankle ropes, their bodies left to rot somewhere deep inside of the castle. Even this grizzly sight did nothing to jar me.

A hard slap to the back of my head brought my sense of hearing back to me. “I said, shut that baby up or we’ll give him something to cry about,” Kandal said, nudging Forrest roughly on the back. This made him wail harder. Fearing for his safety, not knowing what else to do, I yanked my nightdress down and shoved my breast into his mouth. His wet nurse is probably dead now, I thought, my mind searching for logic in all of this mindless violence. Though my milk had yet to come in and he got nothing from me, he suckled and calmed, the familiar notion soothing him.

Rough hands were pushing me down the hallway, and I watched as the soldiers in front of me stepped on Mayla’s lifeless body. I stooped down and kissed her head, wishing she were still with me, an overwhelming sense of loneliness enveloping me. And then I left, never looking back. A part of me had died with her, true, but the rest of me was still here, still very much alive, and I had to face this on my own.