Sometimes, she wakes up in the dead of night, tears gushing down her cheeks while she stares down at her hands and curses them. Her room is as silent as the last day, and dim, where the silver moonlight dares not enter and the darkness gathers swiftly, circling about her bare feet as she slithers out of bed. The dust adorned spider webs drape from the ceiling in long, swaying arcs. The maids, much like the moonlight, do not cross into her domain, and she is very lonely. Caught as she is, between one world and the next, she no longer belongs in either. Their eyes follow her with nothing more than betrayal. If they turn to look at her at all. The mistress of the house cares not for her, and only her beloved smiles at her with any warmth, filling the dark corners of her heart with a small glimmer of happiness.

His side of the bed is cold; he has been gone for a while. Perhaps he had never joined her at all. She stares down at her hands again as she makes her way unsteadily to the door, her haunted eyes catching on the band of soft gold that binds her to the man she loves. This ring is worth more than she has ever possessed before, and she wonders, as she is prone to do each night, why he had chosen her, the scullery maid, with her rough hands and plain face, over the Ladies, and noble men’s daughters begging for his hand. He was someone who she had no right to touch, yet now touches him every night. And now carries his son, she is oh so certain it is a boy, the greatest privilege she could ever hope to be afforded.

Suddenly, her feet come out from beneath her as she crosses the landing. Her hands rush out to catch the balustrade, splatters of something cold and stale raining down on the stairs as her feet fly into the air. She clutches the banister harder, her heart hammering so loud, the house thunders with it. Once she has her breathing under her control once more, she continues on her way slowly down the stairs, staring accusingly into the eyes of the maidservant peeking at her through the railings. They want her to lose this child. Don’t they? They think she has forsaken them, that she deserves her husband no more than what any servant should deserve the man of the house. Well, she’d have to discuss this with him when he returns to her once more.

When she enters the dining room, she finds it cold and empty, save for the portrait of her late father-in-law, hanging over the sterile fireplace. His eyes are as bitter and lifeless in paint as they had been in life, the stern, hard lines of his face caught just so, she feels faced with his disapproving ghost and not the painting of a man long since dead in his grave. She runs her tremulous hands across the table cloth, feeling secure with the sensation of woven fabric beneath her fingertips. Her father had been a weaver, she remembers. Perhaps that was where the comfort formed.

The hot blade of a knife pierces her skin. She jerks back, gasping in surprise. Her blood smears the table cloth, brilliant, enticing red against the stark whiteness of it. Slowly, she picks the knife up, watching her blood glimmer as she turns it in the dull pre-dawn light. She catches sight of her face, and is equally entranced by the streaks of red on her cheeks. She laughs, before abandoning the instrument back to its place on the table.

When will her husband return?

Her feet carry her to the kitchens, where the blood on the carving board tells her there will be meat for dinner this evening. Pork, maybe; it smells like pig. The kitchens are as empty as the dining room, and, with a gentle sigh, she makes her way back through the room, prudently avoiding the crimson stain spreading out further across the floor.

The maid is still there as her feet hit the stairs, white, greying eyes fixed ahead of her in shame at what she’s done. As well she ought. There is no forgiving those who deliberately harm others. Especially those who had been your friend, your sister and your family through the arduous hours in the scullery.

She sniffs once at her as she passes. She hopes her husband will remove her when he returns, if only to save her the pain of doing it herself.

There are no sounds on the landing, and she assumes the mistress of the house sleeps on. Good. She cannot stand to see her condemning frown, or feel her words graze across her flesh. She stares for another heartbeat at the closed door, before entering her own room. When the dawn breaks, her husband will be beside her again, and life can go on.