Myrding

Tekla

“You helped her deliver a child.”

Dengeir’s maid was afraid to meet my eye. She cowered as I pressed her, head hunched down between her shoulders. I hadn’t noticed her vague resemblance to the inn girl I spent the night with until I was towering over her. Likely a relative of some sort. I expect they compared their experiences of me later and found them widely different.

The kitchen was hot and stuffy from the roaring fire and filled with the aroma of baking bread mingling with the musty smell of the evening stew simmering in the large cauldron hanging from a hook above the hearth. Mutton and fall mushrooms, with onions, garlic and rosemary. A breached cask of fragrant honey mead stood waiting on the counter. This space was filled with a cozy contentment absent from the rest of the mansion. The kitchen belonged to the maid who worked it, and was untouched by the shadow that lay on Dengeir and his family. There was peace here, and I disturbed it.

“Tekla,” Thadgeir said softly. He crouched by the frightened maid. “Just answer the witcher’s questions.” I could sense his frustration simmering much like the stew. “I know you love my niece like a sister. She’s in danger now, and you need to help her.” I had less confidence in the young maid’s warm feelings towards her blue-blooded mistress; in my experience, those who rule rarely see those they rule with clear eyes. If they see them at all. 

“Is there a child?” At Thadgeir’s question, Tekla gave him a quick glance and shook her head in denial. 

“There is,” I rumbled, and the girl twitched. As a Breton, I’m less physically imposing than many Nords of this land – less than the bulky Berit stuffing bread into his beard-hole by the back-wall – but I’ve been told that my voice is surprisingly deep and sonorous. I’ve learned to use it as an effective tool, though Viarmo at Solitude’s Bard’s College tells me I should stick to my writing when it comes to artistic pursuits.

“Filla’s chamber reeks of filth,” I said. “But beneath that there are traces of other scents, too faint for any human to catch. Blood and amniotic fluid.” The girl stared at me then, briefly, eyes wide with shock and superstitious fear. “There are also whiffs of lye soap. So a child has been born, and the mess has been washed away.” I crouched next to Thadgeir and tried to make my voice sound kind. “You have served your lady well through a difficult time in her life,” I said. “But now you serve her best by telling me what I need to know to help her.”

“The lady made me promise not to tell anyone,” Tekla whispered, looking beseechingly at Thadgeir. The old warrior sighed heavily.

“I’m sure she did, girl,” he said. “A child out of wedlock would mean ruin to her. I see now why she locked herself away and refused to let her father see her.” I didn’t. It seemed a laughably poor bit of subterfuge to me. “But that child threatens her life now. It has turned into a myrding. Do you know what that means, Tekla? That demon child crawls from its grave each night to prey on Filla’s blood until she has none left to give! You must tell us where it is so that the witcher can kill it with his silver sword! Isn’t that right, master witcher?”

Well. Close enough. “More or less.” I caught the silver glint of my medallion dangling placidly from its chain around my neck as I shifted my weight. “So the child was stillborn?” I pressed.

The girl swallowed. “It was dead,” she mumbled. She nervously squeezed the amulet around her neck. Arkay, the god of the cycle of birth and death. Very fitting. I’d bet a septim it was a recent acquisition. “It was strangled.”

Thadgeir was outraged. I silenced him with a short gesture.

“She had tried before,” Tekla went on. The words were loosening in her breast now, as well as the tears that were beginning to roll down her cheeks. “She tried to kill the babe while it was still in her womb. She even stabbed her belly, once. The child survived it all. It would have been a strong boy, I’m sure. But when he was born, she…” Tekla’s breath shuddered. “While he was still in the womb, she had some reason left,” she said. “She spoke and cared for herself. Some days, she almost seemed her old self again. But she saw the child in her mind as he was growing. It weighed on her, I saw. And after she… It broke her.”

“Did she tell you who the father was?” Thadgeir’s voice was strangled with anger.

Tekla shook her head, a stray strand of golden hair creeping free of her demure servant’s shawl and sticking to her wet cheek. “When I tried to ask, she fell quiet and her eyes went far,” she said. “Sometimes she would cry.”

Thadgeir shot to his feet and paced the length of the small kitchen. “She must have been defiled by some daedra filth,” he hissed. “Who else would sire a monster on her?”

I was less certain.

“The babe looked like any other child,” Tekla murmured. “Except, well… dead…”

“Where is the body?” I asked. That was more important than the identity of the girl’s forbidden paramour. “What did you do with it?”