One Last Chance

“So you are telling me that this child…”

Herman had promised me nothing at all would happen. What waited for me at the ducal castle was a thing I could not possibly bear.

“…is my own son?”

I could not believe it.

It can’t be. There’s no way he’s Gloria’s own son. Gloria married Herman, and there was no child between them — so how…

If the boy truly was Gloria’s son, then his father was some other man and not Herman. Which was to say, in a word: a shameful bastard.

He looked three or four years old at the very least, and that meant Gloria had got with child scarcely any time at all after she married Herman.

What in the world have you done, Gloria.

The child had wedged himself into a corner, his shoulders drawn in as far as they would go.

“Franz! Will you get over here this instant?”

At the old woman’s bellow he came trotting over and looked the grown-ups up and down with a pair of great round eyes. Face to face with him at last, at close quarters, I was shocked all over again.

Hoillun took my part, saying the child might not be the lady’s own son after all, but…

There was no denying it. Not for anything.

It would be hard to say he isn’t Gloria’s own son.

Frightened half out of his wits, his blue eyes brimming with tears, he was the very image of my younger brother Edward as a boy.

How low can you possibly sink.

Not content with taking a lover behind the back of a husband gone off to war, she had borne that man’s child and raised him in secret all this while, and not a soul the wiser.

Schnell.

A man I could not have known for the life of me.

They met at the racecourse, they say. How on earth would I know anything of it.

I had never once set foot in a racecourse, nor ever thought to. And here I stood, saddled with a lover met in secret at one, and a bastard child born of him besides.

“…Hah.”

I complained of dizziness, swayed on my feet, and Herman caught me hastily by the shoulder.

“Are you all right?”

No. I am not all right.

That was what I wanted to say. But Tess was glaring at me with those fierce eyes, and so I made a point of pulling away from him instead.

“I am deeply sorry to be the one to bring you such tidings as these, my lady.”

Tess laid the whole of it out for me in a rapid volley. A tale like this scarcely warranted a kindly or a careful telling, it seemed, for she made no attempt to hide her irritation or her anger from me. I let half her words wash past me and drank in the sight of the nephew I was meeting for the first time in my life.

I cannot bring myself to be glad of you.

He was not my son, and at the same time he had to be my son. To all the world, within these walls and without, I was ‘Gloria Ernst,’ and this child was ‘Gloria Ernst’s’ child.

“Duchess, you do remember me, don’t you? It’s Barbara.”

The old woman came toward me with a smile hung on her mouth that set something in me recoiling, and at once Herman put out an arm and swept me behind his back.

“We shall talk from where you are. Come no closer.”

From behind that broad back I gazed steadily up at him. Even in the midst of all this, Herman Ernst was a man who did not change. With his wife’s bastard there before his own two eyes, he behaved with a strange, unaccountable reasonableness. And what was more…

How is it that he spares a thought even for me.

I could not tell whether I ought to be grateful to him for it, or sorry.

“Hah. You’ve the very face of a woman who’s never once laid eyes on me before.”

Barbara looked at me where I stood hidden behind him and gave a snort of a laugh, as though she could hardly credit it.

It isn’t that I look as though I’m seeing you for the first time. I truly am seeing you for the first time.

An excuse of that sort would never have held water. Every last person in that drawing room already took me for a woman who, with her husband away at the war, had shamelessly gone so far as to bear a bastard.

“No matter. You may not know me, but you’ll know the child you bore out of your own belly well enough. Franz! Don’t stand there like a post — go and greet her, and be quick about it!”

The old woman yanked cruelly at the wrist of the child hiding behind her. The grip must have hurt him badly; the tears dropped one after another, and still he let himself be dragged along without a murmur.

Why does he not put up a fight, not even once.

He seemed well used to being worn down by petty violence.

That must be why the child does nothing but weep those great fat tears.

Without so much as knowing what he was being hauled forward for, he never let those blue eyes fall from me for an instant.

“…Let go of him.”

The command came out of me on pure instinct, stern and hard.

“That hand — let go of him this instant, I said!”

I do not know what I was thinking. Only that I could not, for anything, ignore a child who sent me a look like that, wordless as it was.

Barbara’s eyes flew wide at the thunderclap of an order out of nowhere, but soon enough her face settled into a look that said ‘there, you see,’ and she let go of Franz’s hand.

“So it seems you do know me after all.”

Barbara smirked and shoved the child forward by the back. He staggered under the force of it and caught at the hem of my skirt without meaning to.

“Well, then — why did you go and say you’d cut off the money for his keep, all of a sudden, when you’d been paying it so handsomely? If only you’d kept the money coming, I’d have hidden this child away and raised him till the day I died.”

The child stared up at me. Then, realizing he had hold of my skirt, he sprang back in a fright.

“…”

I could not say a word.

I had cast off my own name and taken the name ‘Gloria.’ I had cast off my own life and gone on living inside a life I had stolen. Only now could I feel, in full, how vast a price such a thing would demand of me.

It meant shouldering not only Gloria’s happiness and her love, but every wrong of hers and every secret besides. Which was to say, even the bastard she had borne in secret.

“Don’t look at me like that, Duchess. If anything, madam, you ought to be thanking me. I’ve fed him well and raised him all this while, and never once put you to trouble with any paltry threats, into the bargain.”

The old woman went on, her voice grown brazen by another degree still.

“I’m not asking for anything grand, mind you. You’ve only to pay me, to the penny, the money for the keep of this child I’ve raised until now. And of course, it would be very nice indeed if you were to take the child off my hands as well.”

She had played her part, she said, and had no intention of looking after the boy a day longer. I wanted to say something to her, anything at all, but nothing I might have said would have been the least use. It was Tess’s sigh that cut in first.

“Don’t just stand there — say something, anything, my lady!”

The head housekeeper broke into a hollow, incredulous laugh, and then, finding she could bear it no longer, shouted at me. Even Hoillun’s eyes, which had always carried a gentle light, had frozen hard as a bitter winter lake.

“Go on keeping your mouth clamped shut like this and you’ll be the death of any number of us from the rage of it. I mean that my insides will burst and I shall drop where I stand, this very minute! I shall not die like this, not for anything. However am I to face the late master and mistress!”

A surge of fury seemed to take her all at once, and she struck at her own breast, again and again.

“‘That child is not mine’ — deny it, I beg of you, at the very least deny it! If you simply stand there, it’s as good as admitting the whole of it is true!”

Half mad with frustration, Tess reached out to seize me by the wrist.

“Enough.”

Herman, who had been silent all this while, spoke abruptly. Every eye in the room turned to him at once. He was gazing at Barbara with a face empty of all feeling.

“So.”
“I— I beg your pardon?”
“I said, how much do you want.”

The old woman looked a little thrown, then gathered her face back together and snapped three fingers open for him to see.

“Considering I’ve washed him and clothed him and fed him and taught him all this while, I’ll want three hundred gold coins.”

A brief silence, and then a snort of a laugh slipped out from between Herman’s teeth. Her face flinched; she could not make out what the laugh meant. She knew perfectly well herself, it seemed, that the sum she had named was outrageous.

“B— but I’ve grown attached to him, raising him these years, so if you’d give me just two hundred gold coins…”
“No.”

He cut her off, flatly.

“Let us make it five hundred gold coins.”

The sum was absurd. Five hundred gold coins came to ten years’ pay in the navy of the Empire of Balter, and to a commoner with no skilled trade to his name it was money he might never lay a hand on in a whole lifetime.

“Master!”

At those words Tess’s eyes went round as saucers, but Herman turned and gave her a look that told her, gently enough, to hold her peace.

“There had best not be one lie in anything you have said.”
“O— of course not. Not a word of it!”

He took a step nearer to her as he spoke.

“You have raised the child all this while without letting a single soul discover him — so you will have taken the meaning of five hundred gold coins well enough.”

At some point he had come near enough that his vast shadow swallowed her whole. He halted that overbearing advance and looked down at her with cold eyes.

“Hold your tongue, and hold it well. Otherwise I intend to have the price of that gold back out of your tongue, and to have it at once.”

Cowed by the sheer force of him, Barbara covered her own mouth in a cringing gesture.

“But of course, Your Excellency. An old body, as old as this one — I want nothing beyond living out what’s left of my days in comfort.”

She nodded and nodded again, as though she would keep that promise without fail. Herman looked down at her drily for a moment, then let out a deep sigh.

For a while a dreadful silence filled the drawing room. He cut through it with a low order.

“The rest of you will leave us now.”

Quick to read the room, Hoillun moved at once. He gathered up the child, who did not know what to do with himself, and Tess, who looked as though her heart had caved in, and hurried them both out. Behind them went Barbara, unable to hide the delight on her face.

The drawing-room door slammed shut. A stillness more dreadful than the one before seemed to rise and rise until it lapped at my chin.

He must be angry.

No. Anger could hardly be the half of it. Past anger and into loathing, most likely. He must surely have felt disappointment in me, and despair, and betrayal besides. I remembered the look on his face as he told the old woman to hold her tongue and hold it well, and I could not bring myself to lift my head. None of this had come about through any fault of mine, and yet not even I could have forgiven a wife such as myself.

What is to become of me now.

I had no idea. My steps heavy under me, I was on the point of leaving the drawing room.

“You.”

At that low, dark voice I stopped dead, as though my feet had been driven into the ground. Forcing down a heart brimming over with every kind of dread, I turned around.

“You have something to say to me, I think.”

Herman spoke with perfect composure.

He wore, for all the world, the face of a man granting me one last chance.