Healing/Redemption13 min read
I Found a Broken Duke and a Fortune
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"Move," I hissed, hauling him up by the collar.
The stench of earth and old bone filled my nose. I had just woken on a hill of dead things and now a man's weight was on my shoulder. He moaned, a thin sound that might have been a name.
"Don't talk," I warned. "Just breathe."
He coughed. Blood stained his sleeve. I looked at his face in the moonlight. He was young. Too young to look like he had been beaten into a map of bruises.
"Who are you?" I asked, sitting him against a stone.
He tried to smile. The smile bent like broken metal. "Let it go, miss. I'm done."
"No," I snapped, heart thudding like a trapped bird. "No one dies on my watch."
I dragged him to my feet. He weighed less than I thought. He was thin as a scarecrow. I shouldered him and ran for the road.
"The duke's men will come back!" he whispered on the way. "They'll—"
"Keep your voice down," I said. "If they see you with me they'll skin us both."
We hid behind a boulder. I pressed my ear to the road and heard horses. I swallowed the panic that wanted to turn me into noise.
"Hurry!" a voice barked. "The duke will have us dead if we don't find the second son."
I laughed—no sound, raw. "Second son? You mean his family will pay?"
The wounded man looked at me. His breathing was shallow. "Daniel," he managed. "Daniel Cleveland."
"Daniel Cleveland," I repeated. The name meant nothing to me on that hill of rot, but I remembered one thing. If he was a duke's son he had money. My hands tightened. My modern bank account sat in another world, untouched, a ghost of a fortune. I had traveled here as an accident of luck and bad timing. If I could get him home, I could get paid. I could survive.
"Don't ask why I carried you," I said, standing. "Just be alive long enough for me to find the road."
When the men passed without seeing us, I made a decision.
"I will carry you," I said. "But you will live if only because I said so."
He tried to protest and then slept. I ran.
"Who is she?" a soldier asked when they found us on the road.
"That's my girl," Daniel forced out. "She saved me."
"You," the leader said, turning toward me. "You shouldn't be here."
"I found him," I said, teeth clenched. "He's breathing. I'm bringing him home."
They helped. They called him "second son" like a charm that could mend him. They loaded us into a cart and drove toward a light that might be a house.
"Stay with me," I said when they left me in a room that smelled of tea and old wood. "I'm not leaving you alone again."
He touched my hand, fingers like dry leaves. "You don't have to," he said. "Go. Take the reward."
"I don't trust you to die quietly," I said. "And you're ridiculous if you think I'm letting you ruin my plan."
He closed his eyes. "What plan?"
"Money," I said. "A roof. Food. A ledger. I want a life that does not smell of cold dirt."
He turned his face to me, and in the weak light his eyes were living things. "You should not have done this."
"I should have grabbed the cash in my world first," I muttered. "But I did not. So now we bargain."
Days passed in a blur of cloth and broth. The family—dainty women with sharp hands—called me "savior" and fussed over Daniel. Daniel's father—Raul Baumann—was a man with heavy eyes. When he bowed to me, I counted coins in my head.
"You saved my son," Mrs. Baumann said, voice trembling. "We will not be ungrateful."
"Thank you," I said. "But we live in practical times. I want payment."
They talked among themselves. The more I acted like I would take nothing, the more generous they became. In the end they offered a house, two shops, five thousand gold coins, and land. My fists trembled when they said the number. I swallowed the sudden dizzying thought of comfort and privacy and the lit screens I had once owned.
"There is one thing," Mrs. Baumann said softly. "A custom. A custom to bind her to him for good."
"You mean marry him," I said.
"To seal the blessing," the old woman said. "To keep him."
Daniel watched me. He looked tired as if grief and life had eaten him clean. "I do not want to use you," he whispered. "If you marry me I will ruin your life."
"Then sign a contract," I said. "I will. I will marry. But there will be a bond. A ledger. You and your family promise me the gifts if I stand by you and do the duty."
He looked at his parents and then at me. "Do it," he said. "If you are willing, I will try to be more alive."
I retched down the contracts. We used a pen pressed into warm wax and I pressed my mark, small and fierce. I called a clerk and wrote the terms. I did not pretend the marriage would be a romance. I pretended to survive.
"Will you sleep?" he asked the night we were wed, laying his face toward the rafters.
"We'll sleep," I said. "You will rest. I will count my coins. We will pretend the rest."
That night, in bed, he was a man who wanted to be less alone. I wanted coins. We were honest in different ways.
A week into my clean clothes and my strange new title, something began to shift.
"Eat," I told him one morning, shoving a chunk of boiled pork into his bowl. "People who eat have a choice. People who don't, are done."
"I..." he hesitated. "I am embarrassed."
"Then don't be," I said. "You never had a choice like this before. Take it."
He tasted the meat and tears came unbidden into his eyes. "I don't know how to want anything," he said. "Everything has been dull."
"Then want this: more bites," I said. "You owe me the life of a man who can walk to the garden on his own. You owe me nothing else."
Slowly, like a spring thaw, Daniel woke. He laughed small, then louder. He stood a few steps without help. He told me stories of riding, of winter drills, of a childhood before pain. He told me once, quiet as a secret, "I thought of letting go that night."
"Don't," I said. "Because I like this world better when you're in it."
"I might ruin you," he warned again. "I might be weak."
"You've already given me everything," I said. "Saved me from that burial hill. You gave me a way in. That is more valuable than gold."
He started to exercise. He flinched, then measured his steps. An old trickler of hope rose in him. The household braced itself. The old Doctor—our odd uncle, Denali Krueger in my translation of the family's thoracic healer—pulled me aside.
"I have treatments," he said, eyes bright. "Old therapies and strange ones."
"Keep your hands to yourself," I said. "I prefer the muscle of labor."
He smiled like a conspirator. "There are therapies family keeps secret. They can help mend bones and mind."
He taught Daniel a regimen of slow pulls, breaths, and injuries to be coaxed. He taught me to be a partner, not a nurse. "Let him want," he said. "Let him fail and succeed."
We did.
Months fell like pages. The house warmed. The clan softened. I improved recipes in the kitchen because food is a language I know. Daniel learned to stand in the sun. Once he stood by a window and told me secrets no one else had heard.
"Do you ever feel sorry for me?" he asked one night.
"No," I said. "I feel busy with you. I feel charged."
"That is a new thing."
We were not in love like stories declare. We were building a life like carpenters building a door: measured taps, patient nails. But the topmost thing I wanted—security—came true. The ledger sat on my desk. Gold glinted in the trunk. I even had a permit from the crown: the King's seal that let me trade as an official merchant.
"I don't know what to do with power," I said when Hugo Flynn, the King, handed me a polished token. "I thought power was violent."
"It's the same whether you hold a sword or a shop," he said. "Use it right."
"It will buy me many elbows of pork," I joked. "And maybe a proper mattress."
The permit, the royal gift, they changed how people looked at me. I could feel more than hunger settle into a new shape: possibility.
Then the ghosts of the start came back like dogs.
One afternoon guests arrived. The courtyard hummed with the town's folk. I laughed—my markets were soon to open. Daniel walked with me under the lemon trees. He had a cane but he walked. He was lighter.
Suddenly the town murmur shifted into talk.
"Those criminals!" a woman sniffed.
"They sold a body! They thought no one would know," another said.
My stomach dropped. I watched the crowd part and men in ragged clothes dragged forward—men I had seen on the road. The ones with blades. One held his face like a mask. The leader was the man I had called "sold."
"They—" he stammered. "We were hired. We didn't know—"
"By whom?" demanded Daniel, voice like a bell I recognized.
"By outsiders," the man said. "By a merchant who wanted an excuse to shake down the family."
"Who?" Daniel snapped.
The leader's shoulders twitched. He wouldn't speak.
I stepped forward. My hand fumbled into my bag for the small glass box I kept for receipts and proof. I had been careful. When I first found Daniel, I had lifted a scrap of cloth from his coat and in the carriage had found a paper—names, promises, and a stamped seal. I had kept it, thinking it might be a key.
"Stop," I said. "I know who hired you."
The courtyard hushed. All eyes turned to me. Daniel blinked. His face went white as chalk.
"You do?" his father asked.
"Yes," I said. "And I'm going to show everyone."
I walked to the main house and ordered the steward to fetch the town bell and the master's lantern. No one stopped me. I had the permit, the patronage, and the family backing now.
"Come with me," I said to the men. "Stand in the center."
They were dragged. I opened the glass box. I poured the papers onto a table and pulled the leaded ribbon away. There, in the center, was the merchant's name and at the bottom a crest: the same crest that stamped the letters the men had used in their bargain.
"Who is this?" I asked, pointing.
A murmur rose. Faces turned toward the market gate where a sedan chair had waited and a man with too-clean clothes stepped down. He was a merchant with an untroubled smile. He was the sort who bought debts and sold rumors.
"I would like to know," Daniel said, walking forward between two guards. His voice was strong. "You ordered people to steal and to hurt. You used a road as your landfill."
The merchant's smile dropped like a mask. "It was a business," he said. "I—"
"A business?" I laughed coldly. "Your business was murder if you thought making a body disappear would give you credit with the Duke."
"You do not understand," he hissed. "The Duke had property disputes with my client."
"Then you hired men to throw him into a mass grave?" Daniel demanded.
The merchant's eyes darted. People had drawn close. Phones didn't exist here, but hands moved toward pockets and someone shouted for a town scribe.
"You are a liar!" a neighbor yelled.
"I took money," the leader muttered when the merchant stayed silent. He looked at the crowd as if he begged their mercy. He got only knives of noise instead.
"Prove it," the merchant blustered. "You have no proof."
"Really?" I said. "You never thought I'd keep a scrap from his coat? That scrap led to your name and your seal." I held up the paper. "You had a shepherd write you a note. It is here."
The merchant's face changed slowly, like a fruit gone bad. Color bled away. His hands trembled. "You—you're ruining me," he said.
"Your ruin will be public," Daniel said.
"Stop!" the merchant shouted. He lunged for the papers, but a guard stepped between them.
"Let him go," he begged, voice breaking into timbre like a child's cry. "I can pay. I will pay. I'll give you gold."
Laughter spilled through the crowd. "You sold a body," someone said. "Gold doesn't buy that."
"Shut up!" the merchant snapped, then burst into pleading, "Please! I need—"
He was quiet when a dozen people began to take out their own notes—reminders, owed sums, receipts, ledgers—with his crest stamped like a curse on each. They began to read aloud what he had promised and then failed to give: rents, bribes, extortion. Slowly the citizens who had lost houses and wages circled him like crows.
"Look," said an old woman, voice iron. "This seal is on all their evictions. He starved families just for profit."
"Bring him to the green," someone shouted.
"No," the governor said quietly. "We will have proper judgment. The market will decide."
They dragged the merchant to the square. I stood with Daniel and watched. He did not look at me when the crowd turned cruel. He looked away as if the old habit of averting shame still lived in him. He clutched my hand and I squeezed his back.
The trial was short. The merchant tried to bribe witnesses. One by one they told the truth. The town scribe read the contracts. The seal stamped his papers. The merchant's lies fell like thin leaves in a rain.
"Do you deny hiring men to remove bodies?" the magistrate asked.
"No," he said at last, voice nearly gone. "I ordered them to scare the family. I wanted them to be afraid of losing sons."
"But they killed—" a neighbor shouted. "They opened a grave site."
The merchant's knees buckled. He looked at the men he had hired.
"They did it," he said, voice small. "I didn't see them—"
The leader of the gang broke. He had thought himself untouchable. He had been paid and then abandoned. Now he stood under the sun and everything changed.
"Shut up!" the merchant screamed. "You promised—"
"You promised blood," said Daniel, stepping forward so everyone heard. "You promised we would be broken. You got what you deserved."
Faces in the crowd moved from curiosity to anger to hunger for accountability. Men took out phones and recorded. Women shook their heads. Children pointed.
"You wanted to hide him," I said, holding the merchant's crest aloft. "But you left a paper. That paper has your name. That paper is your fingerprint. Now you will answer where all men answer: in front of the town and with the law."
The guard took the merchant's hands and bound them. His face went from red to pale. People spat near him. His pride was gone, washed away.
"Please," he begged, voice thin and small. "Please, I didn't—"
"Silence," the magistrate said. "You will pay restitution. You will forfeit property. And you will be banished from market towns for a decade. Your crest will be displayed beneath your name as a symbol of shame. You will stand at the Pillar of Truth and be read your crimes."
He looked from the faces to Daniel, who stood steady. The merchant's inner fortress crumbled.
"Stop!" he cried one last time, falling to his knees. "I beg you! I have a family."
"Then go to them enjoying your stolen coin," said a woman. "Tell them you paid for a corpse."
They led him through the square to the Pillar of Truth. The magistrate read aloud the list of his crimes: bribery, ordering men to conceal bodies, extortion, causing deaths. Every phrase landed like a hammer. The merchant's mouth opened and closed with each word. Children had their phones out and recorded him. Old wives shook their heads. Men who had once done deals with him spat on the ground.
The merchant went from a neat suit to a bent man. He tried to raise his eyes. The crowd caught their breath.
"Please," he whispered, then louder, "I will pay! I will give you everything!"
The room laughed, a bitter sound.
"You will not buy back what you took," Daniel said. "Nor will you buy your dignity. You will hold the shame."
The merchant's knees buckled again. He sobbed and the sound echoed. He begged forgiveness but no one offered it. He had chosen profit over human lives.
They placed the merchant's crest on a board facing the market with the words "Beware" nailed above it. They set men with lists to open lawsuits and to reclaim land. The leader of the gang had his own hearing and was sentenced as an accomplice.
The public humiliation was complete. The merchant was not jailed at once; the magistrate followed the law. But he was ruined: his trade banned, his shops seized, his name published in the market ledger. People pointed fingers and whispered; others recorded the moment and sent it through the city. For three days his face was the talk of market and tavern.
He came back once, two nights later, to plead at the front gate. He found Daniel waiting. The merchant fell to his knees in the cold mud, coat filthy.
"Please," he begged. "I'm empty. Give me mercy."
Daniel looked at him, and I watched his face harden and unknot.
"You broke people's lives," Daniel said. "You thought towns are minefields you can use. You thought our grief would be a footnote to your profit. Get up."
The merchant tried to stand. He fell.
"Tell me why," Daniel said. "Tell me the name behind you."
His voice was a blade.
"I was paid by a syndicate," the merchant said, voice thin. "I did not know their names—"
"Then they are worse," Daniel said. "You are their instrument. But you are small enough to be punished while they hide. You will not be allowed charity. You will work the docks if anyone will take you."
The merchant pressed his forehead to the dirt and begged until he had no words. People walked by and spat. Children who had once been victims of his evictions looked and laughed.
It was not mercy. It was not a glorious fall. It was a small, public ending that made him taste what he had forced others to swallow. He would live and remember every day with a face that recorded his shame.
I watched Daniel turn to me. His eyes were soft and cold. "You did good," he said.
"We did good," I corrected. "My ledger has a line for seeing wrong and fixing it."
He smiled then, the kind of smile that creaks like a door. "I owe you more than a ledger."
"You owe the town sorry," I said.
"I will give it," he promised. "I will pay for what was stolen."
We walked back to the house hand in hand. There were no fireworks. There was just a slow warmth as if the sun had decided to stay a little longer.
After that day, people viewed me differently. I was not just the greedy bride; I was the woman who unmasked a merchant. The King granted me further privileges. Daniel began to dream of more than survival: repairing houses, opening a market for honest merchants.
"I used to think I was a failure," he said one night, working his hand through a small sapling in the garden. "But this—" he touched the sprout "—this is better. Healing is a kind of victory."
"You're learning to live," I said. "I'm learning to care."
"Then we both win," he said.
We were not heroes. We were people who held each other's bad breath and good jokes. I kept my ledger. But I stopped counting days only by coins. I counted them by the way Daniel would smile across a table, or how the cook learned to put one extra plate at dinner in case we had company.
At night, under the same crooked beams where I had once plotted my escape, I would kiss him and think of earth and numbers and the long road that found me here. I had come with only a card and a bank login in another life. In this one, I had clay and gold and a husband who was learning how to want.
We made a market. We seeded bread in the hands of those who needed it. We taught men who had lost trade to make honest things again. Daniel walked our streets and nodded to those he had passed like ghosts. He apologized and he paid. He made amends. The merchant's name remained a lesson on the market board.
"You're good at this," he told me once, leaning with sun on his shoulders. "You have a way of making things right."
"I do," I said. "And I learned from you. You learned to step into the sun."
We never forgot the hill of bones. We visited it once, and I left a ribbon on a stone. I did not tell him that my first thought there had been money. I did not tell him how the coin had warmed my hands more than the thought of saving anyone.
"You saved me," he said, reading my silence.
"I saved a life," I said. "And you saved a heart."
We laughed then, the way people do when they have survived something and still have breath.
Years later, when girls came to the market to apprentice under my shop, they would whisper about the woman who had been a beggar and who became queen of commerce in her town. She married a sickly duke who learned to walk. She bought land and fed the poor and she did it all with a stubborn ledger.
"How?" they would ask.
"You work," I told them. "You fight the people who cheat. You make sure the broken are seen. And if you must, you make the guilty stand in the sun."
They wanted a recipe. There was none except simple work, hard bargains, and a refusal to be buried on any hill.
The ledger sat on my desk with neat entries: rent, repair, coins, kindness. On the last page, in my smallest handwriting, I wrote: "We are both saved."
The End
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