Sweet Romance13 min read
Married to a Eunuch, Loved by a Man
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"I'll go," I said.
"You're sure?" my mother mouthed, but she did not speak the words aloud. Her hands trembled on the hem of my sleeve.
"I am sure," I said again. "He cannot have children. That is what she said."
"That—" Auntie Lotus wiped her eyes and swallowed. "It's not simple, Gwen."
"I know," I said, and the cover over my face felt heavier than any promise I had ever made.
When they pulled the gauze away, I saw him. He was younger than anyone had warned, almost my age, pale as milk, and his brow was smooth like a child's. He looked at me with a single cool glance.
"How old are you?" he asked, voice flat.
"Sixteen," I answered. He snorted.
"You look like thirteen. Eat more, then," he said, then motioned the servants away. "My situation is clear. I go to the palace a month each month. You keep the house. The box under the bed is not to be opened. Any demands?"
I had been told to ask nothing. I had been told to be grateful. But my hand found his sleeve and I could not help myself.
"Will you be kind?" I whispered.
He stared. "Kind? I have no place for kindness. I am a eunuch. I have nothing to give you but a roof and coin. My foster father forced this on me at his feast. Your father needed a favor. That is all."
"I asked for only one thing," I said, "that Auntie Lotus be freed."
He looked surprised, then indifferent. "Done," he said finally. "She can leave.”
When he walked out that first night and took the lantern into the hall, I stared at the wide bed and then fell asleep like a log.
The next morning his hands were clumsy at the pot, but he left a small pouch of silver on the table.
"You expect me to live on this?" I asked.
"Take what you need," he replied without looking up. "Buy better rice from East Street. I'll be back on the full moon."
"What's your name?" I asked.
He dragged a chair and sat down. "Julian Curry," he said at last.
"Julian," I repeated, liking it like a new seed.
"Don't call me pet names," he said, then, softer, "All right. Call me what you like."
It was the first ribbon of warmth I tasted from him.
"You'll come home early if you remember the peach stitch," I said, half-joking as I held up the knee-pad I had embroidered.
He blinked at the little cloth with a peach blossom. "I'll think of the peach when I sit," he muttered. "That will have to do."
That afternoon, I planted seedlings in our yard and mended shirts and made the bed. I kept busy so the nights would be shorter. He returned with a small packet of walnut sweets and a paper note in a slanted hand.
"I don't like sweet things," the note read. "Eat them if you must."
I laughed aloud. He never intended to be kind, and yet he was.
Weeks passed. He came and went. Sometimes his temper showed like a bitter wind; once he jerked his hand away when I reached to hold it. Once he stayed close enough that I could feel the breath on my ear, and my heart felt as if it could float.
"Don't call me 'husband,'" he snapped one afternoon when I called, "or I'll throw you out."
"I won't," I said. "But will you sleep in the same room with me tonight?"
He glanced at the moon. "I'd rather not," he answered, then hesitated. "If you keep things quiet, maybe."
That night he slept in a chair. I pretended not to hear his turning and stillness, and I pretended not to want him.
When we were safe, he let me influence the little things. I watered the plants he said were ugly, mended a patch on his robe he had cut with a careless hand, and once I made a stew that made him hum like a boy.
"You made this?" he said, cup half to his mouth.
"Yes," I smiled. "You must eat. You'll work yourself thin."
He looked at me and the hint of a smile trembled on his lips. "You fuss too much."
"Good," I said. "Then fuss for me."
In the alley lived another eunuch, loud like a bell and cruel like rain. His wife's voice would sometimes cut through the dusk and make me hide behind the curtain. One night she ran out, bruised and broken, and the man who had stepped on her like a thief said my name.
"You are the new wife's friend?" he sneered. "Maybe she'll teach you how to hide a woman." He spat on the courtyard floor.
My dog—big and dumb and faithful—snapped at his leg and tore. The man hit the dog so hard the creature fell, eyes glazed. I carried him into the shade and cradled him as his breath left him.
"Who did this?" the cruel eunuch roared. He kicked the door, and his hands reached for me as if I were nothing.
Julian came at the sound. He looked at me, then at the man, and the look in his eyes was iron.
"Stand back," he said.
"She's in my house," the other eunuch sneered.
Julian moved before I understood, a frantic blur of motion. The man fell with a sound like a bell breaking. Julian's hands shook when he pulled the dagger free.
"Run," he gasped, half laugh, half cry. "Run and never come back."
I did not run. We buried the man quietly on the hill and whispered an oath into the earth. The law smelled of blood. The palace smelled of fear.
Soon enough, Julian was taken. Shackles bit his wrists and the world tilted. He looked at me once before they led him away and mouthed one word, barely visible.
"Leave."
I could not. I took the deeds and saved the silver we had. I bribed a woman of influence, an elegant mistress who toyed with a songbird in her hand—Madam Margarete Marques—until she agreed. "A woman who holds a eunuch's house dear is amusing," she said. "I will see what I can do."
Madam Marques moved as if through silk, and on the third day Julian was returned with a body full of new scars. He sat, rigid with pain, and let me wash him, and for the first time he told me the truth.
"They put me back because the new Guardsman wanted a favor," he said. "I belong to no one but the palace now. But I will not let anyone touch you."
We hid afterwards in a ruined shrine until he mended, until the frost left his eyes, until he sought favor in the right way. He found the third prince—quiet, clever, not the eldest whom fortune favored—and he lent Julian his small, dangerous loyalty.
"You're gambling," I said.
Julian touched my cheek with a hand that smelled of oil and dust. "For you," he said. "I will play."
There were gifts and new rooms and a silver rain of coins. We ate better. He grew proud like a man given back a title. He began to sleep near me always. He began to watch me the way a man guards a small lamp.
"Don't look at other men," he said once, sharper than he had any right to be.
"I won't," I answered.
"You belong to me in a way," he said, and the words landed heavy and strange. "You're the only thing I don't want to lose."
When the war of princes ended and the third prince rose, the old tyrant fell—Warren Crow was stripped of his power and drove himself into shame. The city rejoiced, and yet joy was a thin cloth over a wound. Julian rose to lead the eunuchs we had hated, and for a time we were both protected and feared.
We had a child we could not have. We took in a crackling, fierce little girl from the temple, and she called me "mother" before she knew the shape of the word. We named her Lucy. She called Julian "father" with no irony in her throat, and his heart folded like paper into a soft boat.
"She smells of incense and mischief," he would say, and then he came home early just to hear Lucy mispronounce a poem.
There were small miracles: the way he would pull his coat around me when I shivered, the time he slid a hand over my fingers while I kneaded dough, the single time he laughed and his eyes crinkled like an old song. Those were the three moments I kept carved in a small box like seed.
"We'll be okay," he whispered one night. He smelled like walnut pastry and sweat. "I'll keep you safe."
"I believe you," I said.
Then the emperor called for a reckoning. Old debts are like rotten wood—they catch fire and burn the rafters.
"Julian," I said when he came in pale as paper, "what did they say?"
"They said I must choose," he answered. "Politics. I will go to the capital. I will do as they demand so you and Lucy can leave the city."
"Don't go," Lucy begged, a child's logic for what ailed her father.
He took both our hands and smiled with a bravery that was all illusion. "You will run a sweet shop somewhere and call the walnut pastry by another name when people ask because I was the one who taught you the recipe."
He went. The winter sky held its breath.
The summons was a trick. In the court, corners had been cut, and the emperor's men moved like wolves. Julian returned with a hand full of blood in his mouth. He sat down under the peach tree and said, quietly, "They promised me an hour."
"I told you to stay away," I said, and my voice broke.
"I had to," he said. "There was a price."
He coughed and then his lips parted in a small laugh that became a shudder. "I bought time for you."
I cradled his head. He was almost laughing. "You promised you'd take care of my knee pads."
"I will," I said. "I will sew them until they are gold."
"Then—" He grew thin and the blood darkened his chin. "If there's a next life—"
"I'll find you," I sobbed.
He died in my arms. The cold of him surprised me like a winter wind. Lucy screamed, and the neighbors whispered, and the palace took his name and bent it into some strange thing.
After the funeral, I closed the shutters and sold everything that was not his. I bought a small bakery and taught Lucy to shape walnut pastries so they were round like a promise.
Time is a river that moves slow and fast in turns. One morning the magistrate—my father, Felix Bradshaw—came to the shop with his hat in hand and with a smile like a man who thought power could buy the past.
"You are well?" he asked, as if the years had not been full of barters and false bargains.
"I am," I said stiffly.
"Good," he said. "You always did have a knack for sugar and lies."
The city had changed. The prince who had taken power wanted a show of justice. The names of the corrupt—Warren Crow and others—were brought to light. People wanted to see punishment, bodies at the stake of shame.
Madam Margarete Marques, who had once toyed with a bird, walked the avenue with a new hat, as if she had not once smiled at the pain she caused. She was not spared, no matter the silk on her back.
One cold morning the magistrate and Warren Crow were called to the square. I stood in the crowd with Lucy tucked close, my hands smelling of dough, my heart pounding like a drum.
"Look!" cried a woman near me. "There they are."
"They will pay," an old man muttered. "They will pay."
The square filled with voices. The gates of the palace opened like a mouth, and men in official brass moved forward with a cart of accounts and papers. The mayor read aloud a list of charges, and the papers rustled like a storm.
"Warren Crow," he said, "you are charged with extortion, with coercion, with threats against the households of the city, with buying favors and causing deaths."
Warren Crow held his head high for a moment. He was older than I had imagined, his face a map of lines. He did not look at me.
Felix Bradshaw—my father—stood beside him, their hands invisible compasses that had once pointed them toward power. He stammered.
"I—" he began.
The mayor read on. "Felix Bradshaw, you are charged with embezzlement, deliberate negligence, and arranging a marriage by coercion to avoid judicial inquiry. The court will consider your penalties."
A paper was unrolled. It was a ledger of how they had traded the poor like grain. The baker's boy in front of me shouted, "I lost my sister's dowry!" The seamstress behind me wept and spat the word "lying" like a curse.
Crow's face changed. He had been sure he was untouchable. He tightened his fingers, then tried to appear calm. "This is a mistake," he said, voice trembling. "I was serving the throne."
"Serving?" replied a voice from the crowd, a widow whose husband had been taken in a midnight raid. "Your serving killed our sons."
The crowd's murmur flavored the air with anger. They wanted spectacle. They wanted the people who had smiled at the hungry to show fear.
"Step forward," the magistrate's accuser said, and handed a small parcel to the mayor. Inside were tokens—gifts, bribes, a folded letter with my father's seal. They were evidence.
My father turned pale. I had not seen him like that since the night I left in the sedan chair. He opened his mouth to protest, then his voice broke.
"People," he began weakly, "I did what I thought necessary—"
"Necessary?" someone cried. "You sold a girl's future for a favor! You sold your child!"
The crowd's cadence turned to a drumbeat. People who had been cowed by him for years—servants, mothers, men who had been mocked—moved forward. A woman I had once helped with a stitch spat at him.
"I worked for you," she shouted. "You took what I made, and when I was sick you turned away."
Felix's eyes searched the crowd; they landed on me. For a second the old arrogance returned, then it hollowed out.
"You're not ashamed?" he said, voice thin.
"Are you?" I called back, and my words were carried by the wind. "Do you think I forget the nights you sold my mother's cloth, or the time you let Auntie Lotus be beaten? Do you want us to clap for you now?"
His mouth opened and closed like a fish. He had no words left that would mend the years.
Warren Crow's change was more violent. At first he hissed like a snake. "You lie," he snarled. "You have no proof."
"We have records," the mayor said, and three men unrolled a sash of documents. The crowd read the numbers and the names and the hidden rooms where favors had been kept.
"You had us afraid," said a woman whose brother had been a soldier under Crow. "You threatened us."
"You're dying," a boy called, and a ripple of laughter spread—a cruel, dangerous sound.
Crow's face lost its last color. He tried to laugh, and it came out like a cough. "This is politics," he said, "this is revenge."
"Not revenge," the mayor answered. "Judgment."
They placed a wooden platform in the square. People pressed in, their coats tight, their breaths white in the cold. A woman who had been beaten by an agent under Crow's order stepped forward and spat at his shoes. A servant who had been stolen from told of nights when the palace men had taken what they liked.
Crow's face crumpled. He stepped back as if struck. His mouth that had once uttered commands now searched for mercy.
"Please," he whispered. "I served an emperor. Do not destroy me."
"Why did you take our pennies?" cried a widow. "Why did you laugh when our children starved?"
The crowd answered in a chorus. People who had been silent found voices. They told stories of ruined crops sold to the magistrate's men, of bribes that kept bread from the poor. Each testimony smoothed away Crow's arrogance and creased his fear.
My father curled like a shell. When they read of his deal that had sent the marriage arrangement that put me into this life, his face burned. For the first time I saw truly how small his chest had become.
"Warren Crow," the mayor concluded, voice iron, "you shall be stripped of titles and sent to walk the city with a sign of your crimes. You will repay what you stole and stand before the people for seven days. Felix Bradshaw will be stripped of office and publicly humiliated by being paraded through the street with the ledger of his crimes hung about his neck."
A murmur rose like a wave. Some called for harsher punishment; others said that ruin would do. The mayor's voice was steady as gravel. "We will let the court decide the rest, but the people will watch."
Crow's expression moved through pride, then denial, then terror. He tried to speak with venom, but the crowd drowned him with words of blame. His mouth opened and closed, and at last he crumpled to his knees.
"Not like this," he whispered, hands on the frost. "Not before them."
"Stand," the mayor commanded. "Walk."
They placed a simple placard about Crow's neck listing his crimes. He had no silk to hide it. They walked him out, and the crowd hissed and spat. Children who had been shushed under his rule now pointed and jeered. A thin man threw a crust of bread, and it hit Crow's sleeve.
Felix Bradshaw was next. They set a small rope about his shoulders and tied to the ledger—a long strip of heavy paper listing each corrupt act. He was walked through markets where he had once held authority. A vendor whose goods had been seized spat in his face. A woman whose dowry had been stolen slapped his cheek.
"Do you feel it?" she screamed. "Do you feel what you did?"
Felix's knees buckled. He wailed and tried to explain, but his explanations were thin paper against the gale. The people stood like a judge and jury and pulled at his sleeve.
The punishment lasted the day. It was not a blood show, but it wrecked the pride they had built. Their faces were exposed, their hands empty. When they were returned to the court, their skin had gone gray with shame. The crowd dispersed, and with them went an old terror. For a time, power lost its honey.
Afterward, I sat on the step of my bakery and watched Lucy run with a boy named Colin Jonsson who begged for a pastry to take to his mother. Colin had the bright stubbornness of someone who had survived a hunger winter. He loved Lucy with a blunt, honest heart, and when he asked for her hand I smiled until my face hurt.
"Do you love her?" I asked Colin when he came with flowers he had stolen from a guarded cart.
"I do," he said. "I would climb a wall for her. I'll carry her home, always."
"Then," I said, "keep him. He can be the kind of man that makes up for a life we did not choose."
Years passed. The walnut pastry sold faster than any rumor. I kept one of Julian's peach-embroidered knee-pads above the oven like a prayer. The little shop hummed with warmth. Sometimes a man would ask for a recipe and I would tell him it had always been mine, but that Julian had taught me to fold the dough with a thumb like this.
"Will you be lonely, mother?" Lucy asked one dusk as we sat near the peach tree where Julian had once leaned.
"I miss him," I said. "But I am not alone."
"I will tell our children about him," she said.
"You will," I agreed.
One morning my hand trembled. A white hair had slipped into my braid. I laughed a little, and then I felt tired in a way I had never been. I bisect my days between kneading and memory. When I am weak, I tell Lucy to take the shop. She laughs and slides a pastry into a customer's bag as if she were still a child.
"I will go visit his grave," I told her once. "I will tell him of the children he will never hold."
"Do not go alone," Lucy said. "Bring Colin. He keeps me safe."
So I go sometimes, and I sit by the wild peach trees where Julian sleeps. I place a pastry at the roots and talk of small things. I tell him of every humiliation I have seen turned into justice, of the way the city learned to watch its own. I tell him of how Lucy's child—our child's—name is written in a soot-streaked ledger of warm bread and small kindnesses.
He cannot answer. But the wind moves through the trees in a way that sometimes feels like memory. Once, the peach blossom landed on my palm like a promise kept.
"Do you see it?" Lucy asked, hands around my fingers. "The blossom?"
"I see," I said, and I pressed it to my lips.
I keep the knee-pad by the oven still. I whisper small jokes into its cotton when the nights are long. I keep the recipe for walnut pastries like a covenant.
"I will not forget you," I tell the dark. "Not Julian. Not the dog who trusted me. Not the child I never had."
The city moves on. The men who thought themselves gods learned to stand in the cold. My father is a shadow who sometimes brushes past a market stall, but no one greets him. The powerful learned fear. The poor learned to speak.
And each morning, I open my shop and shape a round walnut pastry, and in the curl of the dough I fold my memories, my grief, and my love.
"One for the road," I tell the boys who pass.
"One for the father," Lucy says, and the boy smiles.
At night, when the oven hisses and the peach-embroidered knee-pad rests against the warm tile, I whisper to the sleeping city, "I kept my promise."
The End
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