When he spoke, Summer jerked her hands away from her face to stare at him. Spirits didn’t speak! And surely if her mind were tormenting her with visions of Humphrey, he would not also be unhappy. She lifted a hand and touched his cheek. “Are you real?” she whispered. “Surely not. You are in the Low Countries, happy and strong.”
Humphrey couldn’t help but laugh loudly at that, leaning back on the bench. He spent a few seconds enjoying it, but she looked rather not amused at his reaction. “If you meant it as a joke, it certainly worked…” he said. But she still wasn’t laughing. “So you meant it. Not as a joke.” He leaned forward once more.
“Well I am not happy and strong in the Low Countries. For all I know the Low Countries can be burned up and sunk into the Ocean and be cursed forever to hell,” he said, sharply. “I am definitely not happy and neither am I particularly strong. Half a year of poisoning does that to one’s body. And an imprisoned wife does it to the soul.”
He stared forward thinking of his last words, how this was the first time he said it out loud, where she was. The sky didn’t fall on him yet, he thought. “It’s my fault, I left her there,” he said, softly, almost as a whisper before he caught himself. “So how did your life become this miserable?” he asked, turning to her, lifting the widow’s veil from her face.
His laughter hurt. Not as if he were laughing at her, but that the events of his life were so different from what she had believed. His bitter words describing his life hurt worse. Summer pulled her hand back, closing them tightly together in her lap. “I am nothing,” she told him, softly.
“While you loved me, I was allowed my freedom — my father, my family believed you would protect and take care of me. When we were parted,” Summer closed her eyes, tears sliding down her face, “I was made to marry a young knight. A friend of my brother’s. He died in /your/ brother’s war. He left me with nothing. I have no name, no child, no living. I live only on the sufferance of my sister and my father.”