Akira Rises (7 page)

CHAPTER NINE

B
aron Rolfe cared not what other barons did or did not do. He would not back down. Baron Rolfe had asserted his rights. Men of power before him had done the same, and maintained their power The young peasant girl fit very well beneath him. It mattered not she wept and was betrothed to some peasant. She had been pure. He fancied himself in love with her. And when he forced her to drink wine laced with potent aphrodisiacs, she became pliable. He did not know that she had sedated herself already. He could almost believe she wanted his attentions. Within days. the young maid too, like Lady Shy before her, discovered that if Baron Rolfe knew she loved something or someone. he would use it against her. Fear was a formidable enemy. Baron Rolfe infamously ruled his holdings with fear. So she submitted, and remained in the manor, restricted to the baron’s private chambers. She submitted to keep her Tom alive. Murder was in her heart. She waited. She wished she could be braver. She prayed she would find strength and opportunity.

While the young woman wished for a dagger behind a locked door, in the dining hall Akira swallowed hard, trying to keep her face passive, and her demeanor obedient.

“If you are caught riding the horse, it’s throat will be slit in front of you.” Baron Rolfe's brusque voice was chilling as he stared down his daughter. “If you care for that horse at all, you will obey. You were warned that riding unaccompanied was forbidden. You were warned that dressing in men’s clothing was forbidden.” The volume of his voice rose with his vexation.

Her father’s scowling expression was foreboding. Her thoughts were dark.
How long is this list of past warnings going to be?
She knew him to be long winded, but more than that he was unbending, and very cruel. Cruel indeed. She would rather be whipped than be forbidden to ride the horse her mother had given her as a gift. She would rather take a different punishment; a whipping instead was doable. She knew she could take it. Bruises and welts faded with time. She unconsciously touched the small scar on her lip. The scar was worth the look of surprise on his face when she spat on him.

The threat of harm to her horse made her wince. It was not an idle threat. She momentarily forced herself to raise her eyes to his to acknowledge his threat, acknowledge his physical power over her. She reminded herself that at least he had no power over her thoughts. Her thoughts were her own. Fuming inside, she forced herself to lower her gaze quickly as if in submission, as if signaling her obedience.

Baron Rolfe looked down at his hawkish nose at his seventeen -year-old daughter. Akira could take a beating even as a very young child, with barely a whimper, and still defy him. The key to her obedience was to threaten something she loved. He admired her courage, but her courage would have better served a son instead of a daughter. It was time to reign her in again. He ignored Edgar’s look to show some leniency.

“Your mother pampered you for far too long. God rest her departed soul. It is time to take you in hand. I shall send for my sister to continue with preparing you for marriage or a convent. Perhaps she can clean you up, put some meat on your bones so a man could find you beneath the bedsheets.” He eyed her critically. She looked thinner. Grieving for her mother, no doubt the reason.

The daughter before him was wild, and stubborn. Her mother had given her far too much freedom and filled her head with notions that women should read, have opinions, do more than cater to a husband’s needs. “With all your wanton behavior riding all over the country have you managed to preserve your virginity?”

Akira flushed with anger. “Yes.” Her answer was quick, indignant, and emphatic. She refused to address him as father. She refused to say “sir.” He was crude. How dare he speak to her of something so personal, especially in front of her brothers seated along the dining table? But then, what had he not dared to do as of late?

“Good. If I suspect you are not telling the truth, I’ll spread your legs and check myself. Running wild unchaperoned, teaching the village children to read. They have no need to learn to read! He snorted.

“My gawd, do you need to talk like that at the dinner table?” Edgar protested, feeling embarrassed for his sister.

“Well if she would stick to needle work and make herself presentable to nobility there would be no need to threaten now would there?” The baron barked back annoyed. “She does not need friends among the low life!”

Akira blushed as she cringed. She had no reason to doubt him. If her brothers thought he was just trying to scare the shite out of her they were stupid. He was capable of doing horrid things. He could not scare her easily with threats of beatings or being locked up. Akira refused to let her thoughts dwell on the things he could do to her person. If she did not show fear he would get harsher and meaner, until she did show fear. Today it did not suit her to antagonize him. He had threatened to harm Pegasus, so she allowed him to see the fear that would stroke his ego. And it did. His satisfied look told her so.

She cursed the horrid fate bestowed on her. Being born a female was indeed a cruel fate. In her mind she said all the things she dared not voice.
Boys and men have freedom, they do more, and they can own property and keep it. They can fight, hunt, travel alone. They do not need chaperons, no one cares if they take a girls’ virginity! They brag!
She bristled.
I find nothing noble about the noblemen and women you would have me seek approval from.

“Your brothers can use Pega…” the baron stuttered. He forgot the name of his daughter’s horse, “whatever you named that damnable animal for a spare mount. Make sure he is turned out with the other draft horses.” The words of her father registered and interrupted her rebellious thoughts.
Over my dead body
she thought, biting the inside of her lip.
What bull shite is this? Everyone with nut sacks can ride my horse! How unfair! What new way is he going to test my resolve to not kill him?

Resentment burned through her veins. Her cheeks felt hot. Her hands, hidden from sight by a table cloth balled into fists on her lap. Her knuckles shone white. Her father barked on, warning of the consequences of willful disobedience.

The wild spirited daughter dropped her head down lower. Her chin touched her chest. It was not because she was yielding to his authority; it was to hide the look of contempt in her eyes.
Why couldn’t he have been the one to drown
she wondered. Her thoughts were dark. She felt no guilt for wishing him dead. She knew it was a terrible thing to wish a parent dead, but he was an evil man. The way he had started looking at her since her mother died made her skin crawl. When he was drunk, he commented on how much she looked like her mother. His eyes did not stare at her face. An unease made her wary. She made herself scarce more and more often. She would dress in men’s clothing and ride as far as she dared. She had friends in the outlying villages. Akira helped with whatever task they were busy with. If they were gathering firewood, Akira would pick sticks and branches also. If the women were scrubbing clothes she scrubbed alongside them. If they were digging potatoes Akira would get in the dirt and help. Any excuse to be away from the manor would do. Anyway to help the people her mother cared for, she offered willingly. She knew that her mother had done more than one would expect a noblewoman to do. That her mother had worked against her husband in secret, and lost her life trying to protect her made Akira determined to follow her mother’s lead. Akira longed to prove to her mother’s secret allies that she would do whatever was needed to bring down her father.

She sat at the table wishing to be someone else, somewhere else, where she did not feel so helpless. Her brothers had cautioned her to be patient, that things would change soon enough. When they said things will change soon enough, she responded with, “Is he going to die anytime soon?” When they asked her to lay low, do needlepoint and spy upon their father for them, she cursed and reluctantly agreed. What plans they made, they did not share. They asked for her trust. All they trusted her with was keeping her ears open. They would shite themselves if they knew what errands she had helped her mother with. Her brothers probably knew nothing of the secret alliances her mother had.

Akira sensed a trap, walls closing in. Her father’s biting words felt like hands around her throat. As her heart sank her rebellion rose
. I will not obey. I will not be a prisoner.
A sudden flood of guilt consumed her. Her thoughts turned dark.
I should have been with her when she drowned. We should have escaped together into the spirit world. We would have been at peace because we did not choose death
.
I cannot choose death by my own hand, for then my spirit will be denied joining that of my mother’s. I cannot choose to cease to exist because then that bastard will win.
Akira’s anger rescued her from her dark thoughts. She held onto it. For it was all that was between her and desolation. She could not let her own story be one of defeat. She lifted her head. She consoled herself that her mother was in a far better place. It was not how her mother’s life story was to have ended. If her mother’s soul had found the other world no one returned from, her soul would have peace. The priests called that other world heaven. What other people in other lands called it, Akira did not care. As long as it existed, and her mother’s soul found it, a name was just a name.

Akira pictured her mother in her mind to escape the nasal sounding voice that grated on her ears. She listened just enough to answer appropriately if drawn back into the conversation, listened enough to make the expected facial expressions indicating her attention was his. She pictured her mother telling her to act obedient, telling her to calm herself. “Control your emotions” her mother had said, over and over. “For if you show anger, he will be harsher. If you show defiance, he will try break your spirit.” Akira remembered and heeded her mother’s words. She remembered when she was very small how her mother would cup her cheeks and look into her eyes to make sure her messages were taken to heart. She missed the touch of her mother’s hands on her cheeks, the comfort of her caress. Akira clung to her memories.

The baron banged his fist on the table. “The king wants too much for this damnable land!”

Akira flinched involuntarily. Her father was banging his fist to drive home some point about rents being too high. She tried ignoring his complaining. She was certain the rent he paid the king for his lands was nothing compared to what he collected from the peasants and villagers. Her friends living in wattle houses could not afford to eat meat. She watched as he threw a half-eaten drumstick to the dog waiting patiently at his feet. She pictured gagging his voice with a handful of dried horse dung. The bountiful food at the manor was not shared fairly with the peasants who tilled the earth he had dominion over. Akira remembered the many times she had stolen food from the kitchen and shared with her peasant friends. Her mother had helped her with generous picnic baskets to share. Thinking about her mother made her ache. She needed her mother’s wisdom. Her brothers wanted her to spy upon their father. They told to just keep her ears open. They told her not to take risks. Whatever plans they were making, if they had any, they had not shared. It rankled that they treated her like a child. She wished for some confirmation they had plans, and the means to put them into action. She did not know how long she could tolerate her father’s threats.

Akira thought about Anne, and begging her to not take her own life.
Did I make a mistake? In my efforts to help her, did I cause more harm than good? Should I have helped her run away?
Akira looked down at her own hands and remembered the touch of the rough motherly hands that clasped her own hands as Anne’s mother thanked her for her the little help she was able to offer. As hard as she tried to help the young woman, it had not been enough.

No one foresaw that her father would use old laws and customs he had dragged out of obscurity to satisfy his obsession. He had taken Anne, a betrothed virgin to his bed, claiming first rights and then refused to return her to her betrothed for their wedding. He broke the old obscure law as he did the newer laws. Akira had been heart sick. What her brothers had done to pacify the peasants she did not know, and they would not say. They had to have done something for Akira could not imagine any other reason for the lack of violence she expected after what her father had done. Had her brother’s simply bought them off and denied them justice?
If only you would talk to me,
she thought as her eyes searched their faces.

Akira let her thoughts drift to the lands beyond the mountains, to the west, from whence her mother came. She remembered the bedtime story she had once loved and then hated. She remembered the other stories of a far-away place where life had been good to her mother. A pessimistic voice inside her head whispered the wonderful stories were too good to be true, no matter how desperately she wished them to be. Her heart yearned for them to be true.

Common sense overruled. Common sense was like a cold bucket of water dumped on a glowing ember of hope.
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride
. The wishing time of childhood was truly gone and the innocence of childhood had been long gone before its time. The young woman looked the at the place where her mother used to sit. It was empty.
Feeling sad serves no purpose. What good is anger if it changes nothing? What good is patience if awful things happen while we are being patient?

Baron Rolfe’ voice penetrated Akira’s wall of thoughts to block him out. “Akira, with a little artifice and gilding, you will look as beautiful as your mother. You will clean up nicely. I will ask the servants to bring your mother’s dresses to your quarters. I’m certain you are about the same size. The dresses you wear are more suitable for one getting married to the church. And since I haven’t made that arrangement for you, you will get rid of them. Burn them. And do something with your hair.” The baron turned to his servant. “Have your wife take Lady Shy’s clothes to Akira’s room tomorrow. Burn all of my daughter’s high necked dresses and gowns.”