[ Godfrey's taken on a mournful air as Gale gives his thoughts - but the air is sucked from the tent completely at that question.
In the heavy vacuum of silence left behind, Sir Godfrey sits, swallowing. ]
She was found to have made an intentional attempt on my life by the courts, whilst I lay in recovery. I could not intervene before she was hanged by the neck.
[ And intervene he would have; the assailant was a young woman known to him. He had no wish to see her put to death for a crime she had committed in desperation, not while he remained dedicated to helping her. He had walked himself through the alternatives he could have offered for weeks - had he only been able to attend.
Though, somewhere in Godfrey's chest, this story had never quite sat right. He had never been able to fathom how it had been that multiple days had been lost; his fellow clergymen pointed their fingers at Vladimir and claimed that all had been handled at home, that the Temple had presumed him missing in the crucial hours after the assault had been discovered. And Vladimir would not speak of the incident at all. ]
Vladimir was furious with me. [ Godfrey's gaze has drifted down to his shoes, one ankle crossed over the other, as he murmurs. ] He was a stern man for all of our time together, but never had I seen him angry, either before or since. He told me, the bastards will eat you alive, and you'll think nothing of anyone who loved you. Only to be sorry for the way you'll stick in their damned teeth.
[ Another quiet moment passes.
Something shifts across Godfrey's face. A subtle furrowing of his brow and a slow-dawning regret as he wishes he could pull back that anecdote - the fear that he's compromised the careful image of Vladimir that Godfrey's curated, one of the few which exists.
Godfrey takes his glass and drains the rest of the wine from it and, in a woozy moment, decides to prove his late husband's frustrations right; he untucks his shirt and, carefully, lifts a bit of its cover from his waistband.
Beneath it is a criss-crossing mess of pink scarring, the remains of a savage assault. Repeated, rapid intrusions, clustered to the lower-right of his firm abdomen. A bloody remainder.
no subject
In the heavy vacuum of silence left behind, Sir Godfrey sits, swallowing. ]
She was found to have made an intentional attempt on my life by the courts, whilst I lay in recovery. I could not intervene before she was hanged by the neck.
[ And intervene he would have; the assailant was a young woman known to him. He had no wish to see her put to death for a crime she had committed in desperation, not while he remained dedicated to helping her. He had walked himself through the alternatives he could have offered for weeks - had he only been able to attend.
Though, somewhere in Godfrey's chest, this story had never quite sat right. He had never been able to fathom how it had been that multiple days had been lost; his fellow clergymen pointed their fingers at Vladimir and claimed that all had been handled at home, that the Temple had presumed him missing in the crucial hours after the assault had been discovered. And Vladimir would not speak of the incident at all. ]
Vladimir was furious with me. [ Godfrey's gaze has drifted down to his shoes, one ankle crossed over the other, as he murmurs. ] He was a stern man for all of our time together, but never had I seen him angry, either before or since. He told me, the bastards will eat you alive, and you'll think nothing of anyone who loved you. Only to be sorry for the way you'll stick in their damned teeth.
[ Another quiet moment passes.
Something shifts across Godfrey's face. A subtle furrowing of his brow and a slow-dawning regret as he wishes he could pull back that anecdote - the fear that he's compromised the careful image of Vladimir that Godfrey's curated, one of the few which exists.
Godfrey takes his glass and drains the rest of the wine from it and, in a woozy moment, decides to prove his late husband's frustrations right; he untucks his shirt and, carefully, lifts a bit of its cover from his waistband.
Beneath it is a criss-crossing mess of pink scarring, the remains of a savage assault. Repeated, rapid intrusions, clustered to the lower-right of his firm abdomen. A bloody remainder.
Unhealed by priestly magic. ]
It was quite a shock to him, I think.