Aristocrat | ✓

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The weeks passed at the pace of a snail on a garden's soil. A part of me was at my wit's end waiting for Lord Evenus to come back. I was brooding and keeping to myself when Marie has come up to me in the living room to hand me a letter.

"It's for you," she said, and I stared at it, a bit confused but I took it anyway. She left me by myself as I opened it. A large smile found its way to my face when I saw who it was. Lord Evenus had written to me, and I got to look at his messy handwriting on the letter addressed to me.

It didn't say much at all. It just asked me how my visit back home went and if I was doing well.

Troy has been catching mice in the camp. I wonder if he will keep looking for them when we return home.

A piece of it read. I laughed, resting my head on my hand as I looked through it. He told me of having to sort of fights amongst his men, and how the heat and occasional rain made camping difficult. Sometimes he would talk of the battles he fought or important things like his correspondence with other Aristocrats. He would ask for my advice on things that were way beyond my knowledge, but I tried my best to respond to them as thoughtfully as I could.

My letters to him were boring. I spoke to him about my chores, and riding Bessa in the afternoons. I told him that I was practicing with the gun that he had lent me and that I was still afraid that I might hurt myself with it one of these days. A lot of emotions would pour through me as I wrote, but I would stop myself from writing them down in fear that words of love and longing weren't what the Lord needed at that time.

However, at a point, the Lord has rambled on about how much he missed me and wanted to hold me. I had found myself tearing up as I squeezed on the letter in my hands. The next time I wrote back I told him how lonely I was and how I wished he was at Barcombe with me.

We will meet soon. I cannot wait to hold and love you again.

I read those words over and over, and the rate of my heartbeat would pick up with each reread.

Something else that the Lord did was to correct the grammar and spelling in my letters. At first, I felt it was rude, but I could see he was doing it with good intentions. He had been helping me with my reading and writing, but it was still a bit annoying to have my words of love canceled over and corrected. Sometimes it would vex me, but sometimes I would laugh and blush at it.

An unfortunate thing about leading men in an army is being stuck within close boundaries with them. I'm dismayed to tell you that many of them do not practice basic hygiene and are in fact useless without their wives.

Do say, Manfred, how is it that Christ has made us the way we are. It's a cruel joke to be attracted to men, is it not?

Those words made me laugh, more so because I knew what he meant. Cleanliness was associated with women. Filth in some contexts was associated with men. Catholic monks were known to bathe irregularly. Physicians suggest that opening the pores on one's skin with warm waters could lead to illness and possession by evil spirits. I would take the chance of being ill or possessed over building up grime on my body.

Sometimes a letter wouldn't come for days, and I would assume Lord Evenus was busy or maybe even dead. Once, during one of these spells I had gone to his bedroom, hugging one of his pillows as I sobbed and waited for the bad news, I had convinced myself was coming.

The bad news never came, only a lengthy letter explaining that the Lord's men had been short of supplies and the last few days had been them putting up a defense against their enemies, so he couldn't write to me.