The Whipping Maid of House Calley - Chapter 65

“What kind of mess is this in my shop!”

At the overwhelming voice, the commotion stopped for a moment. In that gap, the owner of the voice forced his way through the people and asked again.

“What’s going on here?”

He was a man who looked as weighty as his booming voice.

“Hey, Bill. Ah, well…!”

When the man called Bill appeared, someone started explaining to him, and someone else chimed in from the side.

Even Duker, who had been going wild just moments ago, somehow became quiet in front of the man who looked ten years younger.

After hearing the whole story, the man helped Sheila to her feet.

Up until then, Sheila didn’t even know what kind of mind she’d been sitting there with.

Her sister was dead, that was impossible. That she’d taken her own life, leaving behind Sheila, whom she cherished like a daughter, that was even more impossible.

“Hey! Get a grip. Your sister took her own life a month ago.”

Sheila looked at the man called Bill.

“Do you know my older sister Fabiola?”

The man nodded.

“My sister couldn’t be dead. There’s no way….”

“Who are you, and where are you from?”

“I’m Sheila from Broden. Fabiola’s younger sister. Right now, I’m working as a maid at House Calley.”

Sheila answered Bill’s question without hesitation. Because she was fine.

The one who’d lost his mind wasn’t her, it was that bastard of a brother-in-law.

How could he say her perfectly fine sister was dead!

Bill looked at Sheila and said calmly, “Your older sister Fabiola is dead. The guild confirmed it and helped with the funeral. Your brother-in-law, that is, Mr. Duker, is affiliated with the guild.”

Just as Bill said, Duker was a merchant affiliated with the guild.

That didn’t mean Bill was on Duker’s side.

Most artisans and merchants in Holzeroad were affiliated with the guild.

A guild was, by nature, an organization like an association that protected the rights of its affiliated artisans and merchants and spared no support.

And because of that nature, it couldn’t pick and choose people.

So it included everyone from people with eccentric personalities to, at worst, people with criminal records.

Duker wasn’t a criminal. But he was on the side of people with eccentric personalities.

He was also close to ugly, so he couldn’t marry until he was nearly forty.

Then one day, he brought a pretty young lady from another region.

“Well? She’s usable, right? I paid quite a bit.”

Because he bragged loudly when he came here, that is, this restaurant the guild operated, people learned that a young lady named Fabiola, who had just come of age, had been sold from Broden in a buy-and-sell marriage.

Because Duker talked in such a nasty way, but in fact, whether it was a buy-and-sell marriage or a matchmaker’s marriage, the nature was similar.

You look at each other’s necessary conditions and get bound by the institution called marriage.

Duker said it cost a lot of money to buy a woman, and he didn’t even hold a wedding. That was how Fabiola became the wife of bachelor Duker.

***

As if trying to get his money’s worth, Duker worked Fabiola to the bone all day. He made a woman who had never done butcher shop work do everything, from pulling out and washing the intestines of cows and pigs to removing fur from dead animals.

It was to the point that people who saw Fabiola vomiting behind the butcher shop clicked their tongues.

If Duker caught even that, he’d say she was making a fuss and beat her right there.

Fabiola’s hardship didn’t end there.

At night, she had to be tormented by Duker because she had to get pregnant.

Six months passed, then a year passed, and still no child came. Duker grew angry, saying, “I paid a lot to buy you, and you can’t even pop out one brat?” and climbed onto her body every night.

Fabiola feared the nights, when she had to get through the work while being subjected to curses and violence, more than the days of grueling labor.

Then, about a year and a half later, Fabiola finally showed signs of pregnancy.

“If a daughter is born, I’m going to name her Sheila. She’s my little sister, and she’s a smart, pretty child.”

For the first time since marrying into this place, color returned to Fabiola’s face.

Duker, who heard her talking with the neighbor, scoffed at her. “If you give birth to a girl, you won’t even get to eat! I paid a lot to buy you, so you’ve got to give birth to a son who’ll inherit my butcher shop!”

Unable to stand it, the fruit shop owner cut in, “Like you can decide that as you please! You fool.”

“Why can’t I! Do you know how much meat I fed this bitch?”

As if. He sold the good cuts and only fed her the scraps he couldn’t sell.

The fruit shop owner shook his head and went back into his shop. There was no point in mixing words with someone you couldn’t talk sense into. It would only make your own throat hurt.

“I’m going to name the kid properly like a man, Cooper, so you’d better understand that!”

“Yes….”

The couple’s conversation didn’t go on long.

And then, one day, when her belly was starting to show.

“Honey, I don’t feel so well today.”

“When have you ever felt well?”

Duker was full of complaints.

What good was being pregnant? Fabiola often complained about being unwell and avoided sex.

So he reduced their daily sex to every other day.

But now she was thinking of slacking off at work too.

Whenever that happened, Duker remembered the 130 solids he’d paid and anger surged up.

Thirty solids probably went into the broker’s mouth, and that young older brother of hers must’ve swallowed the hundred solids whole.

To get his money’s worth, she’d have to give birth to at least seven or eight children, but she was so frail, he felt like he’d picked wrong.

“Do you not know you have to remove all the innards by today? If all the meat spoils, are you going to pay for it?”

“I’m sorry. If I just rest a little….”

Seeing Duker’s expression turn ugly, Fabiola immediately changed her words.

“I’ll do it now. Right now….”

Fabiola clutched her tightening belly and sat down in front of the slabs of meat.

It happened to be a day when meat had come in.

Fabiola devoted herself to the work without even straightening her back once.

Because she was more afraid of enduring Duker’s nastiness than of her body hurting.

Fabiola was working, drenched in cold sweat, when she finally lifted her butt off the work chair.

Her skirt felt heavy with the thick liquid.

Without Fabiola knowing, the chair had been stained with deep red blood.

“Kyaaaah!”

Fabiola let out a scream filled with pain and shock.

That day, Fabiola lost the child who might’ve become Sheila, or Cooper.

After that, Fabiola suffered from severe guilt and depression.

Thinking that if she’d acted a little smarter that day, if she’d said she would rest instead of being afraid of getting scolded by Duker, the baby might have lived.

‘Sheila, I’m sorry.’

Fabiola called the child in her belly Sheila.

Only then did she realize that, as much as she ached to not be able to see her beloved youngest sister, she had been desperately waiting for the baby that would come out of her belly. And the moment that expectation was crushed so brutally, Fabiola lost the meaning of going on living.

To Fabiola, who cried while being tormented by guilt like that, Duker always hurled vicious words.

“What’re you crying for, like you did something right when you couldn’t even protect a single brat!”

“Good grief, I’m the idiot who paid money to buy something like that.”

“You useless bitch. Go die!”

After miscarrying, Fabiola couldn’t even rest properly.

Because Duker made her do the same butcher shop work, saying she shouldn’t think about putting on airs when she hadn’t even given birth.

And at night, he tormented her again, telling her to hurry up and get pregnant again. Even if she refused, all that came back was verbal abuse and violence.

One day, Fabiola didn’t go out to work, using being sick as an excuse.

Of course, it was only after Duker beat her until she was on the verge of dying that she could be left alone in the house.

That day, Fabiola wasn’t afraid of being hit at all. Because everything would be over soon anyway….

***

After Fabiola died, Duker lived on nothing but alcohol for a month.

Thinking about the money he’d put into Fabiola made him furious, but there was nowhere he could go and demand anything.

He even regretted it, thinking that if he’d known women were such weak, pathetic things, he should’ve handled her a little more gently.

In the middle of that, Sheila came to find him. The sister-in-law he’d seen exactly once two years ago.

Two years ago, that older brother bastard named Fred took Fabiola’s price, and he thought there’d be no more contact, but for someone from her family home to come looking like this.

“Hello. You’re Mr. Duker, right? I don’t know if you’ll remember me. I’m Sheila, Fabiola’s younger sister….”

Duker flatly denied it, asking who that was supposed to be.

He had no intention of telling Fabiola’s family about her death. Since she was a woman he’d paid money to buy, he thought whether she lived or died had nothing to do with them.

If it was something troublesome, Duker hated it to death.

When they sold her off, that was fine, but if he said the woman died, they might make a fuss for no reason.

But when her younger sister came and pressed him, the commotion grew bigger.

Still, no matter how he thought about it, Duker had nothing to be ashamed of.

Because the woman died on her own, and Bill, who had become the guildmaster recently, came personally to confirm it and even helped with the funeral procedures.

“Bill, you know too, right? I’m the victim. Does it make sense that I paid good money to buy her, and she dies on her own without permission?”

Of course, he had told her to go die. Still, a bitch who really died just because someone said that was the one who was definitely at fault.

“Shut your mouth. You didn’t do anything right either.”

Bill, far younger, spoke without manners.

If it were anyone else, Duker would’ve gone berserk, but he couldn’t do a thing to the guildmaster.

Picking a fight with the guildmaster was the same as saying he’d stop doing business in this area.

Bill was still young, but as someone the former guildmaster trusted, he was a man with excellent leadership.

When Bill stepped in, the young girl who had been just shrieking and screaming about her older sister also quieted down appropriately.

While the talk went on, Duker finished off the remaining beer and ordered and drank another mug.

In truth, the taste of alcohol had gone completely to shit and he wanted to leave, but he couldn’t stand up because he had to watch Bill’s face.

“Duker.”

“Huh…?”

“If there are any of the deceased’s belongings left at your house, give them to this young lady.”

It was an order in a commanding tone that left no choice.

“Jerry, you go with this young lady.”

“Yes, Master.”

Jerry, chewing gum, answered without a word of complaint.

Belongings….

After his wife died, he held the funeral, then spent a whole month doing nothing but drinking, so nothing had beensorted out.

Whether he took a new wife or lived alone, they were unlucky items he’d have to clear out anyway, so Duker decided to comply with the guildmaster’s words without resistance.