The Providence of Yselan - pt. 1/3
In county Bremer there once lived two neighbors who were rich and powerful men from the village of Kesselin: their names were Lord Brocwulf and Sir Petter. Stuck to the hip since childhood, they each married a woman from Stift, and once they returned to home after receiving many honors across the Grassland, Lord Brocwulf saw fit to give Sir Peter many lands to administer on his behalf. In thanks, Sir Petter promised him the title of godfather of all his children, and this pleased Lord Brocwulf very much.
Soon after, Sir Petter’s wife Lady Lulla became pregnant, and when it came time for her to give birth, Lord Brocwulf and his wife Lady Tephonia gathered to witness the delivery of two healthy baby boys. Jubilant and happy their parents were, and Lady Lulla cried with unconditional love for her sons. Lord Brocwulf thanked God and embraced his friend kissed his friend’s wife on the cheek. Lady Tephonia smiled but was false in her emotions because she was proud and envious.
She spoke most foolishly in a joking way, and said, “So help me God but I feel sorry for this man; Sir Petter should shake his fists at God, for his shame and his dishonor is twice what it ought to be—and it ought be none! His wife has birthed two sons! Impossible unless two men have done this to her.”
Sir Petter, to his regret, greatly mistrusted his wife for as long as a green leaf burns in a fire—which is to say not long but longer than one thinks it should be. He immediately came to realize his error and defended his wife’s honor. Lady Lulla’s cheeks burned with hatred, and she stared daggers at Lady Tephonia and her cool smile.
Brocwulf looked hard at his wife; he knew her words were untrue and reproached her harshly. “What a woman you are! To speak in this way offends your character and ours as well for knowing you. She is a good woman who would never shame her husband in such a way. Yet your actions have shamed me for marrying you and have made the both of us low.”
Lady Tephonia had never liked Lady Lulla, and likewise this dislike was shared. Now, though, the two women hated the other and refused to speak except only when necessary to the other, and when necessary, their conversations were short snippets like birds curtly chirping.
The servants and midwives who were present shared this gossip far and wide and it wasn’t long until all the village knew. Many wished comeuppances on Lord Brocwulf’s wife, God forgive them. In turn, their respect for Lady Lulla grew, for any woman who does not immediately kill the bitch who calls them a whore is a woman with unmatched curtesy.
Lady Fortuna never misses an opportunity, and as Fortune would have it, Lady Tephonia became pregnant and gave birth to twin daughters. When the midwife showed her the second daughter, the lady was greatly distressed; the pain of childbirth was replaced with the anguish of humiliation.
She lamented her fate, crying, “Wretch! A wretch I am! A hole I am in, dug by my own words. How I wish I had not spoken! I believed an old wives’ tale, how childish of me! What shall I do?”
Fearing her honor, an evil idea formed in her mind, and she looked at the babe in her arms with disgust.
Then was when Lord Brocwulf entered the chamber. Estate matters had taken him from his wife’s side, and he had rushed back as soon as he was able. If he had been by her side throughout, he might have been able to quell her fears and vanquish the plan that had entered her mind, but now it was too late, and Lady Tephonia’s mind was made up. To hide her imagined shame, she would kill the second-born twin. Her husband would not allow it and tried in vain to make her see reason.
“Killing is a terrible thing; you shall hate yourself for doing it. She is our child! She cannot cause you pain. Your own beliefs have brought you here, and you are unwilling to change.”
His words had nought an effect. She could not be moved from this course of action, and deep down he knew he could not convince her otherwise.
Lord Brocwulf was not a weak-willed man—such a descriptor had never been uttered about him—but in that chamber he had a moment of weakness, and he agreed to kill his own flesh and blood because his wife was too weak after giving birth to twins. When the door shut behind him and he stood in the yard, he stared long at the mewling babe in his arms and his heart broke.
It was the midwife who convinced him to give the girl to another. One month previous she had delivered a stillborn baby, and it caused the parents heartbreak. They would treat the baby as their own, this she knew as true, and they were of noble parentage, and so could care for the baby properly. This was as good as killing the baby, for the Lady need never know, and she swore never to tell the Lord.
Thus, Lord Brocwulf of Kesselin betrayed his daughter and let her mother hide her imagined shame. On her wrist he tied a brocade of ash leaves, and into her blanket he placed an ash leaf which had been stuck in his hair, and whispered, “My little Yselan, my little Cinder! I had your name picked since I heard your heartbeat. My love will never burn out for you.”
Then second-born baby girl was taken from his arms, and he never saw her ever again.
True to her word, the midwife brought little Yselan to the noble couple. She grew up loved and cared for, and she loved her baby brothers, and she grew into a beautiful woman, and on her eighteenth birthday, learned the truth. She desired to know who her birth parents were, but her adopted parents did not know for the midwife who brought her to them did not say and they did not ask because they were overjoyed to be gifted with a child, and they had feared asking questions would take her away from them.
Yselan learned where she might find the midwife and went there to the village of Stift. There she found the midwife, now an aged women close to death. She whispered her secret into Yselan’s ear.
Outside the midwife’s house, Yselan fiddled with the ash-leaf brocade hung around her neck like she always did when nervous. It didn’t fit her wrist anymore. To think it had been given to her by her real father. But why, when he abandoned her into the care of another family?
On New Year’s Eve she set off to Kesselin to confront her birth parents.