Way Down We Go

Chapter Two

None pushed for it, having been told by Adam and police officers and social workers and Marshall's that under no circumstances would they find out who I actually was. They weren't to know my actual name, weren't to know what happened to my parents and weren't to know anything about me from the past.

If i had stayed with them permanently and stayed there whilst and after the trial of my father, than maybe they could know who I was and what I had went through. But, of course, that didn't happen.

That went well, our little child life, until the ninth month I lived with them. Whilst playing with Francis and Elisabeth, who was overjoyed at having a 'sister', Adam, Henry, Catherine and a few doctors -from the institution my mother was in- came into the large playroom. I was taken out, replaced with the matriarch and patriarch of the household and was taken into the living room. I was then told that I was to have two visits with my mother every year.

Henry took me to the first, under the false pretence that I was meeting with an aunt, until he reached the destination and even further when I was taken into the room with her. He stayed in a small room behind us, and I waited nervously, still holding my bear and fiddling with it's long fur fibres, before the was brought in to see me, inmate uniform and handcuffs and all.

It was then that Henry was told that my mother wasn't actually dead, but insane. He was told under strict confidence, that he was not to tell anybody and the only people who were to know that Marie de Guise was being held in an asylum were select members of the de Guise clan and whomever would take me to the visits.

Everything started out fine for the first thirty minutes, it was almost as if she was back to normal, until she started to turn on me. I braced myself for impact as she touched and stroked my face and hair, remembering what this woman who was once my mother had done in the past, before she started grabbing at my throat and screaming at me.

Within the moment, she was pulled away by doctors, kicking and screaming and thrashing. I was returned to Henry's arms -sobbing and gasping and holding my neck and bear. I gripped onto him tighter than anybody before as we were ushered away to the sound of my mothers' screams. I couldn't help but listen as she screamed that she hated me, that she loved me, that she was who I was to become, that she wanted to hold me, that I never should have been born and that she was sorry and wanted to be my mother again, and I cried silently all through the four hour long drive home.

The next five visits went the same way, until she had her maternal rights terminated under grounds of insanity and danger to me should I see her again.

I was just about to turn nine then, when the Marshall came and told me the news and gave Catherine and Henry the official papers. Things became normal, for a time, anyway. Doing homeschooling with my kind tutor every day, eating breakfast and dinner with Henry, Catherine, Francis, Elisabeth and little Claude, playing after the children got home from school, being Lisa and Claude's sister and Francis' shadow. But, two months later, the Marshall came to our home again and gave us the news.

Well, me. I had been brought into the library with the Marshall, two police officers and Adam, Henry and Cathy being locked out as I was told what would happen the following Wednesday. Three of my fathers' murderers had been captured and I had to take the stand. I had been the only witness who knew exactly what had happened, the only person to have seen the faces of the murderers. I had no choice, really. No matter what Henry and Cathy petitioned when the Marshall had told them what I now had to do.

My presence was vital, I couldn't get out it it even if Henry and Cathy's words had gone past just that, words. On the night of my fathers' murder, I'd been huddled in between two couches and a massive bookshelf in my fathers' study. I'd seen the killing. I'd seen their faces, I'd seen the slaughter. I'd heard their voices and heard my fathers' screams. And, I watched him bleed out and die.