SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Eighteen
“This is your home now,” Sempronio resolved. “No one will ever harm you within these walls.”
The old man took my arm to walk me through the castle.
“They are preparing a room for you now,” he said as if perceiving my concern. “You are no doubt exhausted from...”
I exhaled heavily, feeling the exhaustive emotions just at the edge of my thoughts.
“...from so much,” he finished. “Let’s amble to allow them time to execute my orders.”
“I need very little,” I said honestly. “The relief of your kindness is more than I could have expected.”
“Let us discuss what you must have already come to understand,” he answered. “We are unfamiliar people to you, different from those you’ve known during your life.”
It was unquestionably true. I’d never heard a voice ring through my mind as Duccio’s did. I’d never moved alongside someone through my dreams. And what Sempronio had done; the way he’d pulled my memories from me and walked through them, commanding his own experience—.
“I dare say I’m the only one left who can do that to you,” he declared, finishing my thought. “Please forgive me for taking advantage as I did, but I was too excited to meet you.”
I nodded that I forgave him, unable to focus on anything else around me. The corridor ahead appeared alien to me, though I had likely walked through it earlier. The experience of this strange and warm creature who took my arm was nothing I could explain.
“I heard you approach long before you stood before me, though I thought I only imagined it,” he continued. “You are... unusual, even among those who are different.”
He shook his head and let a slow breath out.
“But that is not important now,” he confided as if tempering a pressing wish to say more. “Of the thirty-three people who live or work here, only eight of us are similar. Do you understand what I mean? The rest are normal people, here to serve and care for us. They each fulfill a perfectly regular role and understand nothing more of the matter. I would not have them know of our differences nor come to any harm on account of it.”
With his last remark, he stopped to look me in the eye. His warm smile never left his face.
“May I trust you to respect my wish in that regard?”
“Yes, sir,” I answered without hesitation, unsure of what I could do to harm anyone.
He nodded gratefully that he trusted me, and we proceeded along our stroll.
“There is nothing else you need concern yourself with now. I will introduce the others to you once you’ve had time to rest, but know that they will be very pleased to have you with us. We are few, and each is cherished by the others.”
“Are they your children, also?” I asked. “Duccio called you his father.”
Sempronio let out a charming laugh.
“I didn’t bring any of them into the world,” he answered. “But yes, I am their father, and I will be yours from this day forth if you wish.”
The statement seemed odd, but I thought I understood his meaning. This strange and beautiful old man was more than their elder. In the bond of their separation from the world’s ordinary people, he embraced them as his children.
It’s not an embellishment to remark how the castle’s beauty affected me. All of it—from the materials to the furnishings, to their design—everything here was beautiful in ways I could not account for.
I still cannot account for it.
“This room will be yours,” Sempronio said when we stopped before one of many similar doors. Each door in the hall was tall and elegantly crafted of darkly stained hardwood. Mine was different only because it was open. He held out his hand to gesture that I should enter.
I stepped into an intimate drawing room, beset with a handsome sofa covered by the same lush crimson velvet of Duccio’s suit. The sofa was tufted with large gold buttons, each bearing the same forged design of a wolf’s head. The couch faced an elegant writing desk covered in scrolls and golden oil lamps. On both sides of the desk were bookcases filled with at least five hundred leather-bound volumes—more than the entire contents of a bookseller’s shop, I expected. This was built with the same richly polished wood that adorned the door and ceiling.
At the end of the room was an unlit fireplace beset on either side by two high-backed sitting chairs. Behind them were tall windows filled with delicate stained glass patterns that lit the room in a riot of unique colors.
Directly ahead near another open door stood a thin woman in the simple clothes of a servant. She had peppered hair peeking through her cowl.
“This is Francesca. You may trust her to tend to your needs,” he announced with a deferential tone, acknowledging the woman with a nod of respect.
“My lord,” she answered and returned the gesture.
“Rest, my dear,” Sempronio commanded, returning his attention to me. “Recover your strength. I will have a meal brought to you here, and tonight I will call on you so we may continue our conversation.”
He lifted my hand to kiss it gently, holding it long enough to show the sincerity of his gesture. He then turned to leave the room and closed the door behind him.
My lungs exhaled a deep breath of relief. I almost blushed at the warm parting. But my self-consciousness returned upon finding Francesca’s eyes staring at me.
I tried my hardest not to turn away from her, but the woman’s age made it nearly impossible to keep from averting my eyes. Sempronio wouldn’t have me behave rudely to his servants.
“Is this where I should rest?” I asked, gesturing to the sofa.
“If you wish, Donna,” she answered with a confused tone. “Your sleeping chamber is here.”
Turning, Francesca opened the door at her back and stood beside it as if I should pass through. I advanced to find myself in an even larger room. These quarters were enormous, and I turned to Francesca with apprehension.
Against one wall, bordered by the same stained glass windows that had framed the drawing-room fireplace, stood the most enormous bed I had ever seen. It surely must accommodate an entire family. Two thick posts, carved from an assemblage of wood that I doubted my hands could reach around, stood at its foot, taller than I did. Its headboard rose in stately repose up the wall to the very ceiling, inlaid with a bronze relief like the forest on the castle’s front doors. Though much smaller, it still bore the same depiction of a shining orb at the top. I realized the artist meant this detail to represent a full moon within a field of stars.
There were other furnishings in the room: a small sofa, several small tables, and a large vanity beset with an ornate chair. Each item was just as finely crafted as the last, and their finished loveliness startled me. This was a room meant to house royalty.
More stunning than all of it was a bank of enormous glass windows along the far wall that offered a northwestern view of the lake and mountains beyond it. At its center was a door with a pane of perfectly transparent glass at its center running nearly the full height. The door opened onto a private terrace covered with a small iron table and two chairs.
Francesca stood in quiet repose, no doubt waiting for instruction. She observed my garments with lightly masked scrutiny. Unlike those men on the ship, I sensed she knew just how poor and unsuitable they were for a lady.
But there was more—Francesca found them offensive. Not just because of their plain and ordinary cut, but because they smelled. In a moment of unexpected clarity, I knew what she was thinking. This was not merely an observed assumption on my part—I could hear her thoughts, almost as plainly as I could see the lines on her aging face. Francesca’s emotions appeared smooth, the way age might disappear in candlelight. But if I concentrated, I could see every thought in stark clarity, the way direct sunlight might reveal how deeply etched those lines ran into her skin.
My body smelled horrible to her, and it mortified me how this point filled her thoughts.
“I will draw you a bath,” Francesca said, and she turned to open another door.
I followed instinctively to find a third room, filled with polished white marble that covered almost every surface—from the floor to the walls and ceiling above us. There was a long table along the far wall that bore a basin for washing. More intriguing was the tub that sat under more stained glass. ‘Tub’—I’d never heard the word before, and it came directly from Francesca’s mind. There was no such thing in Morbegno, at least not that I had ever seen. If Sofia Vervio had one in her home, I doubted it could magically fill with water by the simple turning of a lever.
Francesca ran her hand through the fountain of water that emptied into this bathing tub to gauge its temperature. The marvel of water filling the tub was nothing to the sheer sorcery of how the water ran warm. To say that this all left me speechless would be to offer the understatement of a lifetime. Such engineering was a bit of genius from another world—an idea I could never have been conceived of before this moment when I saw it in person.
Francesca poured a fragrant oil composed of flowers and tree sap into the water. When the tub was half-way filled, she moved to unfasten my garments. I did not think to be shy and let her undress me without resistance in the wonderment of it all.
Francesca gasped, and from her mind, I sensed something far sharper than a simple aversion to my hygiene.
“My lady?” she whispered with concern.
I didn’t need her to describe what she saw. The images came from her mind as they might through my eyes. Bruises covered my back and legs—hideous purple and green welts from the attack days ago.
“I’m sorry,” I said, wanting to draw the dress back to cover myself.
“Who has done this to you, my lady?” Francesca asked in a panic.
“I was... attacked,” I answered sheepishly.
Francesca drew her hand to her mouth and shook her head.
“Does the master know of this?” she asked, anger growing in her voice.
“He knows that I was attacked. He doesn’t know why or what they did,” I lied. “Please, I don’t want anyone to know.”
My voice faltered, and I covered my face with both hands.
“Nor will they,” Francesca said with iron resolve in her voice. “Come.”
She withdrew the remaining garments and took my arm to help me into the tub.
The warmth of the water felt how I imagined Heaven must feel. I sat slowly and watch Francesca draw clean linen to drench with the oil.
“Here, this will help soothe your skin,” she assured me. “Rub it in as gently as you can until I return. I will go to see about your clothes.”
With a quick reach, Francesca bundled my dress from the floor and closed the door behind her.
Alone in the bath, the sublime warmth did not comfort me long before my mind fell to all those living nightmares I wanted to forget. The pain of so many horrors overwhelmed my resolve to survive, and I couldn’t prevent tears from falling once more.
Still, the memories offered a unique focus. They pulled me back to the truth that even this sumptuous world could not change.
I heard the main door to my suite open and expected Francesca had returned already. As her footsteps drew near, a knock came on the bathroom door.
“Gabriella?” a youthful woman’s voice called.
I looked up from the bath to see a lithe blonde standing at the door. Dressed in exquisite finery, she was no servant. Draped over her arm was a delicate gown made of deep iridescent blue fabric.
From her mind, she let me know that she was one of the eight.