Chapter Four: The Truth
On the twenty-eighth night, I made a decision.
I had noticed that the same servant was always present at the bath. She was the only constant besides Mrs. Hargrove herself. Young, quiet, with a small scar above her left eyebrow. In a month, I had never heard her speak.
After Mrs. Hargrove left the room that night, I didn’t immediately go back upstairs. I waited until I heard the older woman’s footsteps fade down the corridor. Then I turned to the servant, who was beginning to clean up.
“Please,” I said quietly.
She looked up. Her eyes were careful.
I reached into the pocket of my robe — I had started bringing money, folded small, just in case. I held it out. Everything I had on me.
“Tell me the truth,” I said. “I’m not angry. I’m not going to cause trouble. I just need to understand what is happening to me.”
She stared at the money for a long moment. Then she looked toward the door, then back at me.
“They’ll know I told you,” she whispered.
“I won’t say where I heard it. I promise.”
Another long silence. The house settled around us, creaking once, deeply, like an old ship.
Then she spoke.
“In this family,” she said, her voice so low I had to lean in, “they believe that a woman’s body after the wedding night must be… purified. Cleansed.” She paused. “They believe that if the ritual is not performed, the first child will be a girl. They want a boy. They have always wanted a boy.”
The floor felt uncertain beneath me.
“And the peppers…?”
“They believe it drives out what they call the wrong spirit. The one that makes daughters.” She said it without expression, which somehow made it worse. “Every new bride in this family has gone through it. Some for longer than you.”
I heard myself ask, very quietly: “Does my husband know?”
She met my eyes then. Just for a moment. Just long enough.
“He grew up here,” she said.
That was all. She didn’t need to say more.
I gave her the money. She took it without a word and turned back to the tub.
I walked out of the room, down the hallway, up the back staircase, and into the bedroom. Damian was asleep, lying on his side, one arm stretched out across my side of the bed. He looked peaceful. Innocent. The way people look when they have never questioned the things they were taught to believe.
I stood over him for a long time.
He had cared for me. I still believed that, in whatever way he was capable of. But he had also let his mother take his new wife downstairs every night for a month and say nothing. He had chosen the peace of not knowing over the decency of asking.
To them, I was not a wife. I was a vessel. A body to be prepared and monitored and corrected.
I went to the wardrobe and began to pack.
