Sweet Romance13 min read
The Plum Ring and the Green Cloak
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I was nine the first time I pulled a boy out of a tangle of laughter and ink.
"You two, stop!" I shouted, stomping toward them with both small fists on my hips.
They froze, brushes still wet with black strokes, and one of them sneered, "What's this? A little woman scolding us?"
"Leave him," I said. "Or I'll tell your master."
They traded glances, then ran like the wind. I crouched and wiped the ink from his cheek with my handkerchief.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
He sniffed and pulled away. "Don't fuss. I don't need your pity."
"Don't talk like that. Come here," I ordered, and he obeyed as if pulled by a string.
"My name is Garrison," he said when I pressed a sugared cake into his hand. "Garrison Cabrera."
"I'm Bianca," I told him. "Bianca Escobar."
He ate and said, "Sweet."
"I'll protect you," I told him, too proud to look small.
"I don't need protecting," he insisted.
"Shut up. You will eat what I give you. And if you don't, I'll draw a turtle on your face next time."
He rolled his eyes, but he took the cake. He tucked it into his sleeve like it was the most ordinary thing in the world. I watched him go until the lane swallowed him.
"Found you," I said to the empty air, and I kept a piece of that moment in my palm like a pressed flower.
Years later, I would learn that he had no home of his own, that he was taken in for a while and then left. I would wait, stubborn as a stone, until a certain afternoon when he came back with dirt on his clothes and a bag of coins in his hand.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
He held out the small pouch. "This is mine. Take it and buy more cakes."
I did what felt right. I slipped my small purse into his hand. "You will come back and marry me," I said, and I meant it with all the foolishness of a child.
He nodded, as if that simple agreement could tether him to any place. He left, and I watched him go until the sun turned every rooftop gold.
I am Bianca Escobar, and that child still lives in the marrow of me. I tell you that first because everything that follows spins on the fulcrum of promises and clothes and mornings warmed by other people.
When I was sixteen, I was the thing everyone wanted to look at. My hair fell soft and dark. My cheeks held a color like new fruit. My father, Lars Wright, laughed the loudest when suitors came with bands and boxes and talk, and he grew thin with worry that there was no son to inherit the mill — only me, his only daughter.
"Bianca, come," he called one morning. "Sit."
"Yes, Father?" I said, sitting down and smoothing my skirt.
"You are sixteen. The world approaches. Has your heart fallen for anyone?" he asked, more steady than I expected.
"I want to stay with you," I said, the truth spilling out awkwardly. "Forever."
"You little thing," he laughed. "But girls do not stay forever at home. Which of these gentlemen do you favor?"
I was honest. "No one yet. I only once met a boy in white who caught me when I was falling."
My father smiled but did not push. I remember thinking then that a man in white was only a memory of a hand on my elbow. I had not yet tasted fear and gratitude blended into one face.
Then came the day a man in white actually saved me from the street. He arrived like a quiet storm: white robe, a deep blue sash, hair like spilled ink. That was Garrison, grown into a man who moved like someone steadyed by his own purpose.
"Miss," he bowed to my father. "I am Garrison Cabrera. I was foolish yesterday, forgive me for not announcing my intentions sooner."
"You are the one who nearly stole her from the pavement," my father said, half-annoyed and half-smiling. "Thank you."
"But you must keep her," I snapped, outraged that anyone would think me something to win like a prize. "I don't want to marry you."
"Do you, Bianca?" he asked, and the room felt suddenly smaller.
"I never agreed," I said. "You do not have my word."
"You did take my cake," he said. "And you said I'd marry you. That counts."
"I did not mean it seriously," I stammered.
"Then make me," he challenged, and for a moment my face knew heat from a place I'd never visited.
He left that day with a promise: he'd return, and he brought gifts — a mountain of them, some ridiculous, some thoughtful. He explained each one with a slim smile.
"These are for the cold," he said. "And these are for your father. These are for you to laugh with."
I told him they were unnecessary. He ignored me and draped a cloak across my shoulders.
"This will keep you warm," he murmured.
I felt foolish because it was true. The green cloak—soft and strong—fit as if made by my own small desires. I wore it anyway.
"Bianca," he said once, very quietly, "give me four months."
"Four months?" I echoed.
"If in four months you still do not love me, I will step back."
I puzzled at him, at the bargain he offered. I agreed. I did not know then that bargains sometimes take over lives like vines.
Sandwiched between present storms of suitors and the small comforts he provided, there came another kind of storm. An old friend returned to town the same day Garrison came. He called himself Case Hamilton, and by his side walked a boy who had once been my playmate. "Silas Busch," Case said. "He used to steal my pears."
"Silas," I said, and a pulse went through my chest I did not name.
"Bianca," Silas said as if he had the right, and I remembered the small years we had shared: games, plum blossoms, secret tastes of cake.
Garrison watched us, and I felt the tug of two loyalties — to the boy Silas had been, and to the man Garrison had become by choosing me with such steadiness.
"Bianca is mine," Garrison said one evening, quiet as the house, and I laughed.
"She hasn't agreed yet," I said.
"She will not have to if I keep being myself," he replied.
That summer, bread and sweets and scarves arrived at our door. Garrison's people were many and silent. Two young men — Axel Hughes and Emiliano Jones — followed him like shadows with kind faces. Father joked that our house sounded full of laughter for the first time in years.
"It feels like a family," I whispered one night, to Garrison and to the silver moon.
"It is," he answered. "If we let it be."
Then a name, spoken in a doorway when I had thought no one would speak it, broke the small, promising order of things.
"Basilio Ellis?" I heard my father say.
I felt the world tilt. The man whose name had closed with a hush between my father and old years — the man whispered to have ruined another's life — had a shop in the next town now and walked in with a carriage heavy with trinkets.
"You're the one who ruined my wife," my father said later, in a voice like a blade.
Basilio smiled. "What a vivid imagination. I came to offer congratulations."
"On what?" my father asked.
"Your daughter's coming match," Basilio said sweetly, and I saw then how his smile was a trap. He was all silk and cold places.
"He wants your daughter," I heard someone say at my back.
"It was you who sent the rumor," my father said finally. "You sent that lie and it cost me a wife."
Basilio's eyes flicked, and for a moment he seemed afraid. Then he smoothed his expression into velvet. "I cannot remember such things clearly. Time blurs all men."
"You drove my wife to her death," my father said simply.
"That is a monstrous claim," Basilio hissed. "You stoop to... to blackmail."
"You told people I had outraged a lady of the court," Lars said. "They said I had been taken to the prison; she rushed to find me and she died from grief. She died. Do you know what that sounds like to me?"
A crowd threaded in whenever a scandal rolled by. Old faces pushing elbows and leaning in. The air made room for gossip like a river bed.
Basilio's lips twitched. "If I wanted your life ruined, why would I stay hidden? I prosper. I sell wines and pick collars. People laugh at old tales."
"You prospered by stealing what others earned honestly," my father said. "You profited while my family starved."
The old man sat down slowly. Garrison went white and then red, as if he were pushed into an ocean and then found breath again.
"Father," I said, "stop."
"Let him say it," my father rasped.
"Basilio," Garrison said, "we owe you a debt for what you did to them."
Basilio's mouth turned into a thin line. "You are also accusing me?"
"Stand up to him," Case Hamilton whispered to Silas, who tensed like coiled rope.
"I will bring proof," Garrison said, fingers tight around a paper packet I hadn't seen him fetch. "I have letters and witnesses."
"Letters?" Basilio mocked. "From whom? A child's scribbles?"
"From men you hired to carry false tales," Garrison said. "From an inn keeper who saw you that night. From the man who sold you flour, who heard you sing of our ruin."
It was not dramatic. There were no trumpets in our town. But the room smelled of summer and sweat; the people leaned forward.
"Bring them," Basilio said, and his voice had a brittle edge.
Garrison opened the packet.
"Listen," he said.
He read the names and dates and the pattern — a map of lies. He read a ledger showing payments made to a messenger from Basilio's carriage. He read witness statements from those who had seen Basilio across town that night, laughing in a tavern while my wife trembled at the gate.
"The letters show you paid to set the rumor loose," Garrison said. "You did not care which lives you broke to make profit."
Basilio's smile was gone. He looked smaller, like a man stripped of his costume.
"This is nothing," he said. "Old grudges. People lie."
A crowd had gathered; the servants had closed windows but gossip finds its way. Someone had run with the story and more people came. "Is it true?" they murmured. "Did Basilio do this?"
"Shame on you!" cried an old woman from a doorway. "How dare you!"
Basilio's jaw worked. "I will have you all up at court for slander," he said. "You will see."
"Let the court see," Garrison replied. "Let them read."
And read they did. The next day was worse for Basilio. The slow drum of rumor became a parade. A market day, packed with stalls serving sweet rice and warm tea, turned into a place of accusation.
I had not intended this. I had only wanted to stay warm in my green cloak, to sit with Garrison and to argue like two children. Instead, the town had chosen a stage.
"Stand," I heard Garrison say.
He stepped forward and laid the packet of proof on a low stand. He spoke, and his voice was not loud but it cut through like a bell.
"Basilio Ellis," he said. "You hired liars to spread a falsehood that led to death. You profited from my friend's grief. You fed lies to a man who trusted you. We have named witnesses, we have ledgers. You cannot spin this into kindness."
Basilio's face tightened. For a heartbeat there was that old swagger, but the crowd had changed. They no longer smiled. Eyes that used to admire now narrowed.
"You have nothing," Basilio breathed.
From the crowd a shopkeeper stepped forward, holding a scrap of paper. "He paid me with a piece of gold," the man declared. "He bought silence and bought tongues. He said, 'Do this and forget it'."
A seamstress began to cry aloud. "My sister carried rumors about the wrong house. She lost work because of him. She has a ledger too."
The swarm gathered, voices rising.
"Is this indeed the man?" someone asked.
"It is him," a woman confirmed. "He laughed at the tavern that night. He offered to bet that no one would find the truth."
Basilio's skin drained of color.
"It is a lie," he said, at first with a sneer. "You are creatures of envy!"
"Those are your coins," Garrison said. "Those coins paid for the rumor. You thought you could move us like pieces on a board."
"No!" Basilio cried suddenly, and the cry snagged everyone's attention. It was not defiance. It was a child's scream.
He clutched at his chest and then at me, as if he could take back air with my name. "I did not mean—"
"You didn't mean?" I spat, fury shaking me for a moment. "You did it and then you watched her die."
People gasped. Someone cried out, "He knew!"
Basilio's face crumpled. He tried to stand proud like a man with money, but the money had been shown to be mud.
"You think your money washes you," Garrison said, stepping forward. "No amount of robes will hide what your hands have done. You should stand and explain to everyone how you thought this was an answer."
Basilio faltered. He looked at those around him and his eyes slid like a guilty animal's. "I— no— I didn't—"
"You did," said Silas, stepping like a boy who had learned to be fierce. "You lied. You saw a man weeping and thought: 'profit.'"
The crowd pressed close. Someone struck a hand on a stall table and a pile of fruit tumbled, and the sound made even the vendors stare.
Basilio's face shifted. First there was rage — hot and angry, words flung like knives. "You have no proof!" he cried. "You bribe folk and twist words!"
"Here," Garrison said, and he tossed a small cloth to a woman in the crowd. "This was the messenger's writing. You paid him with this seal."
A murmur. Someone coughed, shocked.
"Shame on you," the old woman said, and then others echoed. A child held up a wooden fan like a judge's gavel. People did not clap — they pointed, whispered, and many took small notes in the old way, etching the story into their own minds.
Basilio's expression went through a small theater of phases.
At first, there was "I can still win." His voice was tight, daring us to be wrong. Then his mouth opened as if the next words would topple everyone, but there were no words left that could cover what he had done. His face blanched into denial.
"Denial won't help," I said. "You will not order the world like you used to."
Denial bowed out into shaking. His knees bent. "No! No! I didn't mean—" he repeated.
"Beg," someone shouted. "Beg for forgiveness."
He did. "Please," he begged. "Please, I am sorry. I never meant— I never thought—"
The market fell away into silence like water drawn back from a shore. Around us, people began to react as they had when a storm reveals the cliff edge: leaning in, whispering, some taking off their hats to simulate judgement, some pulling at their sleeves, others reaching into their satchels as if to cast the last coins of silence.
An older man began to clap, slow and hollow, and then others joined in a ripple that was not celebratory. It was the sound of a door being closed on a man. Someone took a scrap of paper and wrote: "See Basilio Ellis discharge his lies," and a young scribe began to copy the statements.
He fell apart. He shouted, he tried to shout his way out, he then whispered, and when at last he slid to his knees, the sound of it was small and almost natural.
"Please," he said to me, the man who had not known him but had been wronged. "Please, Bianca. I am dying before my time. I will die soon anyway. Don't—"
"It is too late," I said. "You traded a woman's life for profit. You must live with that, Basilio."
He clung to the pavement and sobbed, then tried to beg again. People were not cruel — they were witnesses. They wanted him to feel the gravity of what had been done.
"You will be called to answer in court," Garrison said quietly, and the judge of the market — a man who used to make tapes for records — stepped forward with a ledger.
Basilio reached for pity, for the small pity of old friends. "I was desperate," he said. "I couldn't see my way."
"You chose to crush a household for money," my father said. "You will walk into the court weighed by the knowledge of what you did, or you will go to your bed each night and hear the voice of the woman you took — that is your punishment."
Basilio's head lolled back. He begged. "Please, I will pay. I will give all."
"Money cannot undo what you've broken," someone shouted.
He tried to laugh once, stupidly, as if to turn the humiliation into a business negotiation. "What did you expect, then? A song and dance?"
"Now you will dance," Silas said, and his voice had a tremor that made Basilio freeze.
Basilio's change was complete. He had moved from arrogance to a brittle shell of rage, then to denial, then to collapse and supplication. The market had recorded it all. People chewed on the story like a bitter fruit, some shaking their heads, some pressing palms to their mouths.
I stood with Garrison at my side and looked down at the man who had ruined my mother's life. He begged. He knelt. He looked at me and saw that I could not forgive him with speeches.
"Let him be known," I said at last. "Let the record stand so no one like him hides behind velvet again."
They took notes. They spread the word. Basilio left shaken, his carriage empty of the respect he used to buy. He went into the world with the sound of the market still in his ears, the whispers and the slow clapping of men who had watched a man fall.
I had imagined revenge a thousand times as a child: loud and bloody and clean. This was not that. It was rawer. The man stood exposed and pleaded. The crowd watched. He received the punishment he had escaped for years: unmasking.
That evening, as the moon rose, I sat on the low garden wall and slid the plum blossom ring I had kept into my palm.
"Garrison," I said softly.
He leaned close and folded both hands around mine.
"I did not know what it would feel like," he said. "To see him confess and beg."
"Neither did I," I answered. "But I am glad that our names are not the ones spread by liars."
He brushed his thumb along the ring's silver petal. "You were always brave."
"No," I said. "I was stubborn."
"You are both," he replied, and then, more plainly, "Will you still hold me to four months?"
"I will," I said.
He laughed, a soft sound that smelled of dawn. "Then I shall earn every day."
We walked home under a sky stitched with stars. I could still feel the market's pulse in my ears: the slow applause, the gossip, the small, awful cry that had torn through Basilio like fabric. My father slept easy that night for the first time in a long time. There were letters to file, complaints to lodge, days to fill with the small business of justice. The town had done what a town must sometimes do: it had watched and it had judged.
The green cloak folded across my lap bore the faint scent of cake. I held the plum blossom ring and felt the way the metal warmed in my hand.
"Keep it," Garrison said. "When the years make us gray, pull it out and remember that you loved once without reason, and that you waited."
"I will," I said. "And you will keep that green cloak."
He kissed my knuckles. "I will."
We built an ordinary life afterwards — not perfect, but steady. Garrison kept his vows small and then large: hot porridge when plans ran late, a pocketed cloak for early mornings, a hand to chase down a gossiping merchant. He was, in the little acts, constant.
Years future held other scenes — markets and testimonies, festivals with lanterns and sugarcakes, quiet mornings by the hearth — but whenever fear clawed at me like cold, I would wrap the green cloak tighter and press the plum blossom ring into the only drawer I allowed myself secret.
I still remember the taste of that first sugared cake. I remember the green cloak and the way it sat across my shoulders when the wind came. I remember the way people gathered at the market that day and watched as a man who thought himself above reproach crumbled before them.
"Promise me this," I said once, many years later.
"Anything," he replied.
"Promise me that when anyone else thinks they can buy the world with their coins, you will stand with me and not let them think they can hide."
He pressed the ring in my palm and said, "I promise."
He meant it the way he meant to warm my hands and mend a roof and bring sugarcakes. He kept his word the way a person keeps bread for a storm: by holding it close and being ready.
The plum blossom ring sat in my breast pocket the day I walked into the square to read my own words about a man who had hurt my family. I read slowly. People listened. Some wept. A few laughed at the absurdity of the liar's arrogance. Basilio did not appear. His punishment had already started that day in the market; the law would take the rest. He would not be a figure men admired for long.
"Do you remember," I asked Garrison when we left, "how you caught me when I almost fell that first time?"
"I remember," he said. "You were stubborn even then."
"You saved me twice," I said. "The first time you held my body; the second time you held our name."
He squeezed my hand and that was the only answer I needed.
At night, when the house was quiet, I would take the ring from the drawer and look at the tiny carved flower. I would breathe in memories like sugar taste and warm scarves. I would tuck it away again and feel the night fold around us like a cloaked promise.
The End
— Thank you for reading —