Chapter 5 – Decided Fate

Agreeing with Lotta, the maids respectively voiced their sympathy for Edna, who was taken as a scapegoat.

“She looks so fine despite everything, I wonder how she came to be so stupid. I can already imagine how much Edna will be whipped.”

“That’s that, but did you see the color of Edna’s eyes? It was an abstruse brown color that’s hard to put in words. I think it was mixed with a little bit of gold.”

“No way! To me, they just sound like rotten, cold eyes. They were an unfocused, somber black.”

“No, they’re not! They were golden when I saw them.”

As the maids started squabbling over Edna’s eye color, Lotta immediately cut their conversation short. “It’s noisy. What does the color of Edna’s eyeballs matter when she’s already gone? Come on, let’s go get dinner ready instead. Miss Anna is so fickle that we never know when she might decide not to marry again, so some of you should start with cleaning up her room first. If the lord sees you like this, he’ll have you flogged at once.”

Disgruntled, the squabbling maids scattered at Lotta’s rebuke and returned to their work. As Lotta said, Viscount William was a man who put whip before thought upon seeing the maids engaged in such chatter.

Lotta was suddenly reminded that she bathed Edna earlier. It was surprising that no one in the castle had seen Edna properly to the point that the maids went as far as to have a dispute over the color of Edna’s eyes. She was always hiding herself well under shabby, oversized clothes so, naturally, no one knew how good her body shape was. Maybe she, too, wouldn’t have known had she not bathed Edna today.

She had a fleeting moment of wondering why Edna had not washed often. Edna couldn’t have done it purposefully as a means to protect herself because her brain wasn’t possibly capable of such a complex though. Be that as it may, she would be able to sleep soundly for the time being in the absence of Edna’s gruesome sounds of punching and screeching.