It is now well past dusk, and Maria is pretending to read. The last long shadows from the setting sun have disappeared, leaving her single candle to illuminate the pages as she sits in front of the window, restlessly and distractedly trying to focus on the words passing her eyes. Time and again she turns a page, from habit and momentum, only to turn back when she realizes that she has comprehended nothing. But the reading is a ruse, and it is for something else that she sits by window, something for which she watches with most of her attention, and only reads with a small remainder.
Mi-tan is pretending to dust. Above the cold hearth, she takes a framed photograph in her chubby Chinese fingers, for at least the fourth time, and dusts underneath it and around its edges. She then places it back, and straightens it. She steps back to check its appearance, carefully straightens it again, and moves along to the next object – a colorful ceramic vase, probably very old, and from very far away, full of crumbling dried flowers. As she picks it up, a few stems and seeds fall to the mantelpiece, which just gives her more to dust. She carefully moves all the little objects from the mantel – a small stone elephant, an incense burner in the shape of an angry, reeling dragon, and a few other trinkets – out of the way, brushes the crumbles into her hand, and throws them briskly into the cold ashes of the fireplace.
Maria is distracted by Mi-tan. Though she is accustomed to the maid’s quiet presence, and in the daylight often forgets about her even if she is in the room attending to some chore or another, the corners of her eyes keep jumping to the shadows cast by Mi-tan’s slight, silent movements. This bedroom is new to her, and she still has not become accustomed to its nuances, to the fall of the candle's shadow into the corners. It is fully dark outside now, and Mi-tan gives a quiet “pardon me”, taking the candle from Maria’s table and using it to light the two candles on either side of the door, hung from the wall on heavy iron sconces.
This had always been her father’s room, and still she feels an awkwardness about it. Her father has moved to another room nearer to the rear of the sprawling estate, nearer to the wild woods. He wanted to be farther from the town, whose fires now flicker in the distant darkness over the grove of trees separating their home from the road. She had taken this room because, as the master’s suite, it offered the most luxury and convenience. Besides, she could see across the front lawn to the trees, where she now gazes distractedly, forgetting to be pretending to read.
The estate could have almost been called a castle, but in these days, few would think of it in this way. Though no form of royalty, Maria’s father had been a successful lawyer in years past, working directly for the king, and he had been well rewarded. The land in these parts was owned by nobody except the king, as there was plenty of rich woodland for anyone who wished to tame it. The king himself was a minor one, one of many within a few days’ ride. He presided over his modest castle, a small army for defense, a primitive court system of his own design, and not more than a couple thousand commoners who paid him homage of their crops and herds in exchange for protection from invaders and amicable resolution of their disputes.
But in recent years, Maria’s father had become progressively more reclusive, and many in the town hardly remembered when he had been a notable figure. After his wife died, now some twelve years past, he seemed to have lost his spirit for life. He was growing old now, his beard growing longer and more scraggly, his clothes dustier and more ragged, and he spent more and more time alone with his books and the forest behind the estate. He gave up his luxurious second-floor room in preference to a smaller, quieter one back near the forest, and Maria had accepted the better room without hesitation. Her old room, where she had lived since childhood, she had outgrown, and this had its own fireplace, washroom, and separate sitting room, from which on a clear night could be seen the lights of the town. But she didn’t realize that her heart would never separate this room from her father, that she would always feel slightly out of place here, as she does tonight as she pretends to read and Mi-tan pretends to dust. She turns back the page for at least the third or fourth time, still not comprehending anything, looks again out across the now-moonlit lawn toward the trees around the edge, and with restless breath looks back at Mi-tan, now dusting behind an old picture of a broken stone bridge that has hung in the same place ever since she can remember.
Finally Maria places her hand heavily on her book and breaks the silence.
“Mi-tan, what are you doing?”
“Dusting.” It is Mi-tan’s nature to speak briefly.
“You already dusted that at least twice”, says Maria, indicating the sculpted glass bird Mi-tan now holds in her hand. “You’ve cleaned everything, and you’re usually done an hour ago. Don’t you have something else to do?”
“No.”
“Well, can you please just stop with the restless and unnecessary dusting. You dusted everything and then dusted everything again! You’re just dilly-dallying about for some reason, like you’ve got some daunting task to avoid. What, is there some terrible mess or burnt and crusted casserole in the kitchen that you cannot face?”
Mi-tan stops dusting for a moment. Obviously further pretending isn’t going to do any good. She isn’t really dusting, she’s waiting, watching, keeping the girl company.
“Child, I see you. I am old woman, seeing many things. I know you are not reading, you are waiting. I concerning for you, so I waiting too.”
“Oh, Mi-tan, where could he be? He was supposed to be here at dusk. It is now nearly two hours past. Where can he be? He has never been this late, not even once. ”
She is speaking of Sarkin, her boyfriend. Sarkin is a member of the king’s small army, and spends most of his time guarding the king’s castle, chasing down fugitives from justice, or other services to the king. Everyone in the village knows of their courtship; though it seems there are only two, or now three, that know of his occasional visits to her room.
“I don’t know, child,” says Mi-tan, and though Maria waits for something more, she doesn’t continue.
“Thank you, Mi-tan,” Maria says gently. “Actually, it is nice, not being alone. Why don’t you sit down, though. Your merciless dusting is wearing my nerves threadbare. Perhaps you can tell me a story or something.”
Mi-tan knows a great many stories from her Chinese childhood. Most of them are the stories of fantasy, of legendary princes, of fantastic dragons, and of powerful demigods, stories told by her grandparents and probably told to them by their grandparents. In times of trouble, fear, or boredom, Mi-tan has always had a story to tell to Maria.
And so she begins a story about two princes who fall in love with the same beautiful, priceless maiden. Of course she tells in many details and rivulets of her ancient culture which wouldn’t really help our story, but suffice it to say, Maria is engrossed, though she stays by the window and watches across the lawn to the trees, and nearly an hour passes. But Mi-tan never finishes the story.
“He’s here!” Maria interrupts Mi-tan suddenly, and picking up the candle from the table, passes her hand in front of it thrice, in their agreed signal that it is safe to approach the house. “Oh, I am so glad to see him. Thank you, Mi-tan, for the company. I’d like to hear the end of the story, perhaps tomorrow?”
“Of course, child”, says Mi-tan, and goes back to dusting, again not because any dusting is really necessary, but because she simply needs something to do, and it is something that she feels comfortable doing.
Sarkin silently crosses the lawn and opens the heavy, creaking wooden door. Maria and Mi-tan hear every step as he mounts the stairs, and Maria waits counting by the door. There are thirteen steps, and she counts them habitually. Every stair makes a creepy, haunted squeak, as though in protest at the weight of bearing these human loads these many years, especially at this time of night.
The stairs have always made these spine-tingling squeaks. When this bedroom was her father’s, she remembered clearly how scary was this dark stairwell whenever she came to visit him. He could certainly have had the stairs repaired so that they didn’t make so much noise, but it comforted him to know when someone was coming. If in the night some unseen enemy, perhaps some misguided brigand, or some criminal bitter at his legal prosecution, were to approach his room, he would have the heavy door, plus thirteen squeaking steps, of warning in which to react. Fortunately, he never had need to use this warning. Maria didn’t feel she needed it, as she had no enemies in her short and beautiful life, and she meant to have the stairs examined one day or another. For now, she hadn’t, as she is reminded by the thirteen squeaks of Sarkin’s arrival. He knocks gently on the door.
Maria opens the door slightly at first, and once she is sure it is truly Sarkin, she open the door widely and greets him with a hug.
“I’m so glad you are all right,” she says. “We have been so worried, myself, and Mi-tan has kept me company. I was beside myself. Is everything all right? Why are you dressed up so?”
Sarkin is wearing the full regalia of his service to the king, made mostly of the heaviest leather, with the king’s insignia across his broad chest. His long sword is fastened surely to his side, and under his arm, the distinctive metal helmet worn by all the soldiers of the king. It has a shiny fin across the top, and on either side, the king’s insignia again, and markings to show his rank. It is unusual for him to arrive so securely dressed, as it would be more customary for him to wear common clothes when coming to visit Maria.
Sarkin sees Mi-tan and greets her with a slight bow. He is a little surprised to see her, as his visits are usually conducted in secret, but he understands with this little explanation why she is here. She stops dusting and stands with her head downturned, as is customary for a servant in the presence of one of the soldiers of the king.
“I’m terribly sorry, my darling,” he says to Maria, “but I was pressed unexpectedly into the service of the king. I knew you would worry, so it was all I could do to get away for just a few moments. Myself, and all the king’s men, I suspect we’ll be busy all night, and continuing tomorrow, unless we can find… well, unless we can find whom we seek.”
Maria still clutches to him, but pulls back enough that she can look in his eyes. “Oh, Sarkin,” she says with evident concern, “whatever is the matter? Is it a battle with a neighboring kingdom? Some band of robbers? What is it?”
“I’m afraid I cannot explain. It is an ugly matter, truly, and nothing for the pretty ears of my beloved, nor her maidservant, who should not be troubled with such matters. But alas, I have only a few moments, by oath, and I must return to my duties. I came only because I was expected, and I wanted you not to worry. I must be leaving very soon.”
Maria wasn’t satisfied. “But my dear Sarkin, I will worry about you so. How can I know how long you will be gone, or on what matter, or how I can hope and pray for your success and safety? Surely you can tell me at least enough that I can correctly pray.”
“It is terrible,” says Sarkin bravely, “and not something for delicate women.”
Maria’s request approaches the pitch of a plea. “Please, my dear, tell me something. I am a brave woman, you know, and Mi-tan is here to give me company. Surely you can tell me what is the matter.” She clutches his sleeve so insistently that he knows he must tell her something. He knows only the truth, and truly he knows that she is brave, so probably it is best for her to know. He looks her in the eyes, holding her securely at the length of his arms.
“Old judge Futhera was killed last night. He was discovered this morning in his bed, with uncountable knife wounds in his chest. Two of his servants were also discovered, faithfully on his guard, but also ruthlessly murdered in the night.”
“And Clarice?”, asks Maria, for she knew the judge’s wife well from her childhood, from church baking and sewing circles, and other community activities back when her mother still lived and engaged with the social events of the town.
“She is in perfect health, though understandably confused and bereaved. She noticed nothing, though she slept beside the judge in their common bed, not aware of anything until she found him this morning. She said even that she smelled the blood, but didn’t know until the morning what was the smell.”
“Oh heaven,” says Maria. “How is it possible that her husband was murdered beside her in the bed, and she heard nothing? Would not his cries awaken her?”
“No,” says Sarkin simply. “He was found wearing a marmagog. The killer must have slipped it on him before the murder.”
The marmagog was one of the newer inventions of that time. They had little medicine, and certainly nothing more for anesthesia than simple bitter wine, which hardly quieted the cries of pained soldiers after a bloody battle, or of sick children afflicted from the painful grabora virus that sometimes crept in with the winter chill. The cries dispirited the attendants, worried the relatives and generally lowered morale all around. So a very clever doctor invented the marmagog. It was a metal device, worn about the face, designed to prevent any verbal outburst as a result of pain. It was very effective at muffling any attempts to scream or cry, and though it didn’t actually reduce the pain, it was hailed as medical miracle, because it reduced the perception of the pain by those around the patient. Every doctor had one.
“Oh heaven,” says Maria, “what a horrible death to die, at the side of one’s wife of many years, unable to cry out. But who could have done this?”
“That’s just it,” says Sarkin, “we don’t know. As nobody noticed until many hours later, the killer seems to have completely escaped. He might be walking among the people of the town, even now as we speak, perhaps taking stock of another victim. We have no way to know. The orders of the king’s men are, of course, to hunt until we find him. That is why I am called to duty, and must soon return to it.”
“Can you stay for just a few moments? Perhaps, we can sit down for some tea before you go?”
Maria’s suggestion might seem out of place, but everyone in the room understands. Maria wants a moment alone with Sarkin, and there is no other polite way to ask Mi-tan to leave, even for a moment.
“Of course, my darling,” says Sarkin, setting down his helmet and seating himself on a small couch near the unlit fireplace.
With a slight nod, Maria directs Mi-tan to fetch the tea. On the low table in front of the fireplace is a large silver tray holding an artistically sculpted teapot and matching silver cups. Mi-tan scoops it up in expert balance, and with barely a sound, makes her way out the door. Of course, even her dainty feet can hardly help to get a rise out of the thirteen squeaky stairs, and Maria and Sarkin can hear her gently open the door at the bottom of the stairs.
Suddenly the air is shattered by a loud clanking and clattering of silver falling in disarray to the stone walkway outside the door. Thinking that Mi-tan must have tripped unexpectedly (though she has never done that before, to anyone’s memory), both Maria and Sarkin jump up, Maria grabbing the candle from the table, and make their way down the thirteen stairs to the door. The door stands ajar, and coming out into the courtyard, they find nothing but the silver wares scattered about on the walkway. Mi-tan is gone.
Maria calls out Mi-tan’s name once, but the silence that follows is chilling, and she can’t call out again. The wind blows gently in the trees, and a few crickets call across the cold night. Sarkin guides Maria wordlessly up the thirteen squeaky stairs to her room, and puts on his helmet.
“Stay here,” he says, with his bravest, firmest, and most gallant air. “I’ll go see if I can find Mi-tan. I’m sure everything is fine, she was probably just startled, and dropped the teaware. But I want you to stay here, just in case.”
Maria clings to Sarkin for a moment, but she knows she must be brave as he pulls away, helmet secured and hand on his sword, and makes his way down the creaky stair.
She sits near the window, the one candle casting a pallid, hoary, flickering light on the lawn below. She watches as Sarkin surveys the edge of the forest, foot by foot, in a silent, defensive challenge. She squints her eyes to pick up any detail in the darkness, but she can’t see much.
Without warning, the silence is broken by the clash of steel on steel. She jumps squinting to the open window, but can see no more than the occasional glint of the moonlight on a sword or flash of a steel helmet. Again and again she hears the clanging and clashing, but all she can see are movements, indistinct against the darkness of the forest.
Suddenly all goes quiet. A last few rustles in the leaves, and all she can hear are the quiet of the air, an occasional breeze, the crickets in the distance. She holds the candle out as far as she can out the open window, trying to find any detail of what is happening outside in the yard.
Then, in the flickering of the pale candlelight, she sees a dark fallen mass near the edge of the trees. At first it’s just a darkness, then an object, then a fallen body, sprawled among the undergrowth of the forest. And then she sees the helmet, and she is gripped with fear. The helmet of her Sarkin, fallen close to his limp body, crumbled and pitiful in the candle-lit darkness.
She has hardly a moment to realize her situation, when she hears the creak of the door at the bottom of the stair, and before she can even understand it, she hears the footstep on the bottom stair. And then another. She counts without thinking: two, three, four.
Her fingers tingle, her mind reels, her heart pounds in her ears. Some hideous monster approaches up the stairs, be it man or beast, and it has already taken Mi-tan and her beloved Sarkin. She scrambles for a plan. She has no weapons, no aid, nobody to turn to in the darkness. Five, six, seven stairs he mounts, and still she has no defense. Her eyes dart around her room for anything that she could use to defend herself. She notices the heavy iron candleholders to each side of the door, and with a strength known only to those engulfed in mortal fear, rips the sharp black casting from the wall to the right of the door, throwing the extinguished candle to the ground with a splash of hot wax. She grasps the implement firmly in her hand, with the sharp protruding ends outward and down as one might hold a knife for a vicious outward stab.
Everything goes quiet, and she realizes that she has lost count of the stairs in the noise and chaos of ripping the candle holder from the wall. Is this vicious killer still mounting the stairs? Or poised at the other side of the wooden door, waiting for the moment to tear out her throat? She stops, motionless, ear to the door, listening.
She hears only a faint moaning, a deep, husky breath, like some dragon out of Mi-tan’s unearthly tales. Some sinister monster, growling quietly and secretly as he waits to tear out her throat. She hears his breath, a strange guttural wheezing, nothing like the breath of a human being. She knows that whatever it is, it is just on the other side of the door.
She steels her grip on the heavy iron and pulls the door fully open in one motion. She realizes in an instant that she has made a mistake – in her haste, she grabbed and extinguished the candle to the right of the door, being the one closest to her stronger hand, leaving only the candle on the left to give light to the hallway and stairway. But the door, opening to the left, obstructs the remaining light, and she can see nothing. She stabs blindly forward with the iron candle holder again and again, feeling that she is striking flesh, piercing muscle, slipping between bone and living tissue. With all her strength she stabs again and again, feeling the splash of warm blood on her forearm and between her fingers.
Her fingers become slippery, she loses grip on the heavy iron piece, and she feels it fall away from her, stuck in the heavy body. She cowers backward, crouching, and hears the heavy fall of a body backward down the stairs. She tries to count the stairs, but a falling body is not like footsteps, and she can’t keep track. But she hears it heave heavily against the bottom of the stair.
Maria scrambles through the doorway, closes the door, and bars it with the nearest chair. Retreating behind the bed, with nothing for a weapon, she listens for several minutes for the creature to pursue her, but it does not. Fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes she waits… nothing.
Finally she creeps up to her bed, feeling the exhaustion of her evening. She is in shock, hardly able to comprehend the events of the night, but she falls into fitful sleep.
She awakes in the morning to the calling of the morning birds, and the sun streaks in through the open window. When at first she sees the sun, she remembers all of the previous evening as a bad dream, now cheered and dispelled by the new day. She pulls back the covers, climbs slowly out of bed, and comes up to the window, soaking the sun into her tired skin.
There, by the edge of the forest, she sees again Sarkin’s shiny helmet, and the weight of last night crashes down upon her. Yet in a moment she realizes that it is not Sarkin who lies by the edge of the forest, but some dirty, miserable, hairy convict - unrecognizable, indistinguishable, and irrelevant.
She stumbles in a flurry to the door, frantically removes the chair which blocks it, and in one motion flies down all thirteen squeaky stairs with nary a sound. At the bottom, in a crumpled, bloody heap, she finds the lifeless body of her beloved Sarkin, still with the candle holder buried heavily in his chest, and firmly attached around his face, a marmagog.
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