It was filthy, but under the bed was safe, it was dark and he had trouble reaching her. He didn't need to be drunk but sometimes it was better, he could miss if he was drunk, the welts over the back of her thighs and rear were that much rawer, and cleanly executed for the lack of ale. Drunk or not, if she was caught, then the leather strap and brass buckle always marked. It was a cold winter but her eyes burnt with tears, she learnt quickly that if she cried it would be better, if she didn't he would punish her more until she did.
It wasn't her fault, she didn't know she shouldn't tell, but it wasn't her mother he laid with in their marital bed. Her mother already knew of her, but not of the others Skarletta had seen, the ones in her mind, pictures of women all shapes and sizes, all with her father, in homes, inns and fields, words said that her eight year old mind did not understand fully and the women sometimes appearing in pain, but not. Her mother knew the little girl did not lie, her “Special one” she would call her, “Our secret” she would say, but the woman was weak, and Skarletta was not alone in her fathers wrath. It was a different pleasure he sought from his wife and daughter, a darker one.
Covering her ears would only dull the screams, another thing broken, another bruise made, but like a twig in the dead of winter, the mind can snap. As the daughter cowered beneath the bed, bitter words were exchanged between her parents, his slurred from ale and hers turning to pleas..louder, and louder where the shouts..until he fell. In swiping for the woman his balance was lost and crashing he fell to the stone hearth, beneath his forehead, to where his lips kissed the stone a red puddle grew, and he became as cold as the ashes within the grate.
She could not be certain, she even went to aid him, a twisted devotion to the man whose heart beat no longer, but the knife was tempting, no more would she endure his words, no more would he touch her child! Tears of freedom, of relief, ran over her face with every plunge into his back, the splatter of his warm blood coating her hands like scarlet gloves.
In time, another voice, like old parchment, soothing but commanding, words for her mother..and then within the bedroom a bony hand reaching beneath the bed where the small girl cowered, a womans hand...
