Letter Four

The Year of Our Lord 1112

Dear Nhu,

I have received your well wishes and hopes for a speedy recovery from my malady.  I am sure that said wishes arrived long after you meant them, but the sentiment still rings true. I appreciate the concern and know that it comes from a place of care, as you said. Unfortunately, your hopes did not come true and I find myself in a worsened state.

I do not wish to make our correspondence a list of my physical complaints, but since you inquired, I will wax on them just this once. Besides my neck being larger than usual and tender to the touch, there are strange growths and bumps in my mouth.

I do not know what caused the latest development. I have two tasters who test my food for poison, just as father did when he was in this world. I only eat food from vetted vendors and never purchase street food or accept it from someone I do not know. As father did.

But despite all my precautions, new bumps and lumps appear in my mouth each day and there is naught I can do to stop it. I’ve tried tinctures from the herb-woman, suffered through a summoning of spirits by the woman from the village who smells like a goat and secretly saw the witch woman as well. None of their cures did anything for me, they made me cough and gag until I couldn’t keep a morsel down.

I have been keeping up with father’s personal remedy for all ills. But since I have been so ill, I have not ventured far for my kills. I dispatched two servants in an attempt to improve my health and tossed their carcasses over in a ditch left by the rains of last year with the other molding bodies. No one will care two more bodies on top of hundreds. That’s the only good thing to come of this rain, dear sister. No suspicion as to where dead bodies come from.

I have designs to dispatch a batch of useless peasants later this week. They fell ill to a pestilence and have been confined to the old disease hut in the village. I do not think anyone will mourn their passing, and most will in fact bless it. I will leave the bodies there, I think. No need to hide my kills.

 I pace and pace, wearing a pattern into the floor with the stress of not knowing what this illness is as my worry’s driving force, the impetus behind. I surely would drive a man mad with all my frenzied steps, if I had a husband to drive to insanity. Maybe in this instance it is good that I am the unmarried sister.

Sorry to burden all my thoughts on you, but you are the only one who truly understands what I am going through. Sister, I must ask, do you have any intent to ever return here? It’s so quiet.

Anh