Sullivan 'Sully' Spruce and his wife
Bryony
Flashback - the Murder of
Dorian Bay
Witchwood Cottage, Archet - 1 year ago
The sheets were not silken but they were sheets and after such a time the pair of them'd had out in the wild lands, she was grateful for sheets. So long as he did not expect her now to wash the sheets. That was the type of thing which wives did for their husbands, was it not ? Washing … Stretching out in the last throes of slumber, Bryony felt grown up in a way that only a woman laid in her mother's bed could feel. She was now the woman of the house. With a bonafide man laid out …. somewhere on the floor she hadn’t swept yet. And might not bother to sweep, for all that.
Rolling over to rest her chin in her hands, the Bree-woman propped up on her elbows. Narrowing her eyes she raked them down the length of the huge bear of a fellow littering the rug. He smelt of the whiskey they had shared last night. His chest rose and fell as she dared close enough to walk her fingers up it, and she hummed merrily to herself. The nonsensical theme of a new bride on the first dawn of her married life. A meaty slab of a fist swatted at her amusement and she drew back with the ghost of a smile when he missed making contact.
"
Shut the twittering, woman,"
Sully heaved himself to turn and face away from her. "
Ain't you hungry ? Go and fetch some vittles' or .." he fell away from caring to think up any alternatives. To think at all, when his head was so swollen. "
An' quit the dangang banging."
"That's not me," she had imagined the noise within her own head, and startled to learn he heard it too. Was he now somehow privy to her most innermost thoughts ?
Sully seized the drape of the dishevelled bedcovers and stole them down to cover him. His new wife knew new chills. Grasping the low standing bed frame, she squatted down, drew knuckles across wooden floor, found and threw a shoe, located a shirt and wrestled it swiftly over her head. It was his, not hers, but that was all the same now and mattered not a jot. She had separated from the thin veil of comfort and resolved to depart from the night before.
The morning after still looked much like the night before. Thin shards of sunlight were thrown like spears through the splits in the dusty curtains. She could make out souvenirs of their unruly celebration. Bottles emptied, clothes strewn here and there.
Bryony stood on a thigh high leather boot and clutched her ankle in dismay. A primal response to the hurt done her by the inanimate object, she hurled it with an almighty '
Ngrrhhh" across the room.
Sully groaned like the slow open of a door in his wife's mind.
Clutching her head in one hand,
Bryony spun to find the small kitchen and rest easy with now both hands clasping for a lone surviving bottle. It was emptied of all contents but the bottom spittle and she regretted the sprinkling of this as soon as she had rained it through her teeth. Her fast broken, in a manner of speaking, the blemished bride tottered around the open room, harvesting her holy stockings from where they'd been flung. A thin, weary underskirt and a rather too immodest bodice she was years too old to suitably pull off.
Dragging the outsized manshirt like a cloth along all surfaces, she finally shook it out over the floor where her new spouse still snoozed. Wicked was the glee which filled her as she unleashed the curtains, rallying in light to see her turn and spin in a girlish delight. The smell of their night of debauchery almost overcame her as exertion saw her struggle with the window. One glass pane should fold up to tuck in beside it's twin, and allow air to pass through aneath. But the clasp was stubborn and she was impatient. A slap against the glass was the worst that she might do against it's defiant rebellion. And another and ..
That banging again. Was it really in her head ? It sounded … It sounded like it was coming from behind the closet door !
One wary brown eye glanced toward the sleeping grizzly and contemplated waking him. The other espied the bottle she had emptied and not smashed. Not yet. More fearful of rousing up her husband than facing the noise alone,
Bryony seized up the bottle and raised it high in one shaking hand. Tentatively, she crept toward the small closet door, hesitating just a moment before snatching the round handle in her free hand, and tearing it open ..
Of all things that she was not expecting, the man was top of that list. He ought not to be, since of course she had known that he was here. Last night. But .. how was it that he was still here ? Ah. Oh yes. They couldn't exactly have let him run home to raise the bell and have all folks come raging with the pitchforks. Sully had said that
Bryony ought to kill him, seeing as he'd killed the brewer just the day before. One apiece, share and share alike, after all they were now man and wife. She had not cared to, and so .. well shutting him inside the closet had seemed like the best way to avoid that problem. At the time.
It was now long after the time she ought to have killed him. The landlord. The kindly stupid fool of a landlord. This was all down to him, after all. It was not she who had instigated his abduction. It was not her fault at all ! There she had been, dutifully minding her own business while
Sully made his contact with his contact. Bill, or .. somebody. That was why they had come to town. She had never wanted to come, but it was impossible to refuse
Sully. He said she would come with him and so she had. And then that interfering landlord had chanced by and caught himself a stare.
Sully had not liked that, not a piece ! The Breeman was smart enough to recognise his error and his danger, and remarked quite innocently how he had thought she looked like somebody he once knew.
Columbine Witchwood …
She could not blame him for that of course. Since the late
Columbine Witchwood had in fact been
Bryony’s mother. Before she’d left. That was the reason why
Bryony had not wanted to come back to Archet. The chance of running into her parent, or to anybody else who might ask why she had run away and why she had been away so long .. The contents of a true answer could not be disclosed. And the last time she had even entertained the thought of coming home, it had been with .. another man. It was best that she not think on him at all.
Sully had made clear that he did not approve of maudlin memories.
The landlord of the next morn seemed to have fared about as badly as had any other item in the house the night before. A riotous homecoming it had been and no mistake ! The elderly, and by now extremely sweat-heavy, gent had his wrists forcibly bound together, between his legs. With one arm pulled down in front of his chest, the other arm wrapped behind his back, he could not now even walk as much as hop and sort of flop about, all crouched over and making strange grunting gasps. It was quite ludicrous to observe and
Bryony was not sure why his unlooked for intervention had so worried her. He was after all, a pathetic sight, his socks stuffed into his mouth as he gagged and sought to speak through the fine wool.
Inspecting what was left, she put one finger upon her lips, and then pulled him to his feet. He could not make it upright but loitered in the perfect position for her to kick him square in the behind ! He was sweaty, and yet cold to touch, she reviled and wiped off the hand she had laid on him, against his white hair. "
Shh" she said, and he nodded, as though a puppy learnt a trick. Carefully, she untangled the gag and dropped it's drool-spent weight onto the floor with great revulsion.
"
Eurgh !" she could not keep from sharing.
"
Please," he replied, way past the point of humiliation. "
I have a family. Children .."
As though he had caused her some great offence, she struck hard with the glass bottle against the side of his head. "
Shh !" she said again. Then dashed the bottle hard against the floor. It splintered into a river of tiny slivered peril.
"
I did what you wanted," the landlord persisted. "
The deed is legitimate. The house is yours … both of yours .." They each cast a glance toward the immense bulk that was
Sully.
"
I remember you," the revelation startled even
Bryony, who spoke it. "
I remember you, from back when I was a little girl."
"Bryony" he nodded, eagerly, as though a starved man now offered food. "
Little Bryony Witchwood. After all this time .."
"You have a wife," she recollected. "
Two daughters, am I right ? Aster. Aster and Allysum. I expect they have daughters of their own now." she mused, leadingly.
"
Aster. She has a son and a daughter,"
Dorian Bay believed that he had tapped into the spark of humanity which might remain in
Bryony.
"
Family .." the woman rolled her eyes. "
They love you, they need you," she meandered into thought, her eyes drifting to someplace beyond all that could be seen about her.
Dorian was nodding.
"
Please," the landlord said again. "
I can help you. I can tell them. It was not down to you, any of this. It was him .."
An almighty shove sent the hapless Breeman shuffling in his absurd and desperate dance for balance, across the room. His head was bowed low because of the way he was bound. His head shattered the stubborn pane of glass which
Bryony had not found means to open. Until now ..
"
Stupid," she shook her head, even as her captive skated on the broken glass she'd littered moments earlier. "
You should have minded your own business. Should have gone home to that family of yours ..," she lectured. Quite belatedly. For by this point the landlord had slunk to his knees, dazed, his head free and frantic in the fresh morning air. He opened his eyes and dared to wonder his luck as a thin river of blood ran it’s course down his brow. But the rest of him was yet within the cabin.
Bryony resolved the issue and the threat of his calling for help (for all the good it would not do him), by leaning upon his head with both her hands. The Breeman's throat was punctured by the upturned and jagged edges of the broken window pane. For the sake of being certain, the new bride ran his now gushing jugular along the length of the whole glass, severing the flesh to pulp. There would be no putting this man back together again.
Dorian Bay had left the building. His head had, at the least.
"
Didn't I say, way back when, that I was hungry ?"
Sully's deep tones turned the murderess from indulging yet further in the wonder of what she had done. With an overly dramatic sigh, the huge man scratched his beard and sprang from his bedraggled covers. He dressed in his breeches then tried on the landlord's fine jacket and watched his wife grimace as the tiny sewn seams split all the way up his giant back.
"
Too small," she lamented, caught up his shirt she had been dusting with, and tossed it in his face.
"
Best I go hunt up some food then, while you clean up this mess," he closed in on a massive axe which was hung from the wall, and tested it's weight, not unimpressed. "
S'gonna smell soon."
"
My father was a woodcutter," she mentioned, strangely proud to see the glisten of sweat on her new husband's vast biceps. "
You've never hunted in woodland before .." she warned him.
Sully turned, swung the axe experimentally against thin air and grinned when she did not even duck. "
Ferny said the village tanner has just died. I'll be the tanner," he stepped in close, and cupped her chin in a hand which could crush it like an almond in a vice. "
You'll be the tanner's wife," he decreed. "
There’s fresh bait about this place enough to chase out all sorts of beasties." To make his point, the new Breeman took up
Dorian’s decapitated corpse by one foot and dragged it clear of the cabin.
"
You’ll be the best tanner they’ve ever seen," his wife threw back as he left, straddling his first hide, and having it wave a sorry farewell through stone cold fingers on the ground behind him. And if
Sully had thought for an instant that she was took by sentiment. Her next words saw him smirk. "
We'll be needing to pay for a new window !" she called out, chidingly.
Wives are meant to nag their husbands, after all. And she was his wife now. It said so, on the deed which they had forced the landlord to write and legitimise. The Witchwood cabin was now the property of
Mr and Mrs Sullivan Spruce. Newest residents of Archet, and of Breeland. Tanner was a fair enough profession. The smell would hide all manner of secrets and there would always be a reason to find blood in the house, a knife in her strong husband's hand.
She had not wanted to come home to Bree. But the more she thought about it, this could be the best thing she dared wish for.