Between Lions and Men

5: bad for shepherds but better than night for thieves

Briseis

I return to the farm house and begin work on my bread. Sadie is out in the pastures mending a fence and loitering in the sunshine in general. I have opened the windows. A cool breeze blows in. Let me be something like happy. Something, somewhere close to that.

The vials tucked away in my bag. Some small protection. Strange that I should be so happy at the prospect of my own suicide. But we all cause our own deaths, don't we? In some form or fashion. I'm airy headed with thinking of far too much. So much so that none of it seems real. It's all so tragic it's stupid.

My husband wanted children. Very badly. I never fell pregnant, nightly attempts, for years. Nothing. I bled every month, with alarming regularity. He thought there was something wrong with me. He got shot by these soldiers that came off the river. He died in a field like a dog. And now a pretty soldier with gold curls lies in his bed every night, and lies with me barely enough to keep in practice pleasing a woman. I honesty think that's what it is with him. Someone told him ought to, so he does. He far prefers his Sergeant. But he'll take me now and again. And twist my hair. And put his hands on my neck and back. And whisper in my ear trying my language until I am forced to smile. And of course he got me with child.

And if he lives and goes home to his wife, he won't want this child. If he lives. He thinks he'll die. He says that often to me. "Don't worry if I should die Bri. I probably shall." Worry isn't the correct word I don't think. The fact is that once the soldiers leave there will be no doctors, nothing here. Nobody here that will even care for me not when I was living with him. Other women yes, so perhaps I might live through childbirth if a few midwives stay in the village. And then I'd raise his bastard here alone?
I can't keep the farm or the house. I'm living off the supplies in retrospect I realize we're stealing from their army. I have nothing.

Nothing but this. I rub my stomach again, underneath the thick sweater. Like I think it will change. Well, it will, just not the way I expect. Still there, firm and hard well beneath my skin. The smallest of tightness on the once loose skin across my hips. He wouldn't notice the difference.

But to leave? Would they even take me? Is that a thing that's done? I don't know why I care for this country, I don't I suppose. I know nothing different. I didn't know war until it came either. Poor bastard. I shouldn't bring it into this world at all. It's fear for my own life now, and some small sentimentality. The desire to pretend there will ever be anything like a happy ending for the likes of us.

"Where's Menoetius?" that's how he seriously enters a room. Dripping with water from the sea. He ran all that way. He does once, maybe twice a week. Sometimes they go together, but usually he does it alone.

"He's in camp, there were some men, sick there," I say, turning from the bread I was kneading.

"Drink?" he asks, frowning.

"I don't think so, they were coughing. The mail came, you have a letter," I go to my bag to fetch it.

"My wife?" a grimace on his pretty young face. He could (and if Menoetius is to be believed which he is not, has) passed for a girl. Smooth skin, no real sign of a beard despite his age, and pretty long lashes on his soft eyes.

"Yes, several, he tore them up," I say, withdrawing the letter.

"Bless him, you see why I keep him?" he says.

"You should read them, here, this is from your son."

"I should not read her letters-------here," he holds out his hands hopefully for his son's letter, smiling at the boy's messy script on the front.

"At least read them," I say, going back the bread. He ignores me, opening the letter and sitting at the table. Okay, he's not going to camp at all today it seems. I was hoping for some quiet. But he seems quite planted.