Sighing softly to the river comes the breeze,
Setting nature all a quiver, rustling to the trees.
-Pirate's of Penzance by Gilbert and Sullivan
The tower was tall, the tower was strong, and that was what she needed most. Once upon a time, she had been in love. Once upon a time, that was a laugh. The start of so many fairy tales, and the end of so many dreams, the fresh bruises on her arm stood out muddled and purply-brown to this testament. If she was to tell the story of her own life, it would have started out like this. Once there was a fair lady whom was in love with a lowly stableman. Her father would not hear of it, he had richer grander things in mind for her. So first chance he got, he married her off to the first count who came along, the Count Ardentia, to become his second wife. And ever since it had been a nightmare, it was why this tower had become her asylum, the one place where no matter what he’d done to her, she could hide.
Ever since she’d come to this place, all she had heard about was Wendy, the first wife, her portrait she’d found in the attic, she’d had been beautiful, but a frail thing, and when she had died in child birth (their second child who also died shortly thereafter), the count had never forgiven her. In fact he’d taken it out on all the female’s in the household, most of the servant’s that were still left, those who had not run off, hid in fear when they saw him coming, and would lock themselves in their rooms at night. And she was just another servant to him.
Most night’s he came to bed drunk, most day’s he was drunk, it seemed that unless a church member was in the house he was drunk. And when he was drunk he took it out on her. Was that all she had been reduced to was to a “her”? It was the way she felt, once people who loved her called her Rosamund, now she was for the most bit, her.
Sure the view was lovely through the slits, or crenellations, as father had called them, but were they worth the bruises she tried her best to hide from the world. How many times had she had had a black eye and had to make excuses about how the sun was too bright for her eyes to the point that she had had to wear veils over her face, or long-sleeved dresses in the middle of summer because she was cold. At least the servants had heard her. He had probably been nice when Wendy had been alive, but that was gone now, even after his daughter had gone to live at her Uncle Matthew.