She didn’t think she’d ever seen Voldo cry before; she’d never even heard the sound of his voice. But the way he nuzzled her father’s thigh and clung to his ankles for dear life, the way he pressed those reverent kisses along his boot in a silent bid for affection and forgiveness, both- those actions spoke louder than words. And she would never forget that.
Despite his pleas, however, Voldo’s efforts were all for nothing.
Her father had him flogged and fired all the same. When she walked into his chambers afterwards, even despite her parents’ warnings, she’d half expected Voldo to turn around with those weapons gleaming, ready to carve a bloody second smile into her neck.
But he never turned to face her. He never even rose from the edge of his bed. Instead, there he sat, with his back torn and bloody, and his face buried in his trembling hands. Worst of all were the noises- the miserable, echoing sobs of a dying man. She’d never before seen such an unrestrained display of human misery.
She got that sinking feeling in her chest, similar to when her father caught her toying with his antiques- only this time it was much, much worse. Vercci’s swords and axes were only just that- metal blades and leather grips. Her father cared too much for little, lifeless trinkets. So maybe she touched them, and maybe she peeled away some of the gemstones- there was nothing to really feel guilty about.
But Voldo’s formerly pristine, white cotton sheets had now been stained a startling shade of crimson.
The color reminded her of her father’s flushed face, beet red, when he’d turned around to scream at her when she held one of his golden daggers in her hand. She’s been terrified, certainly, but she knew now that she would rather endure her father’s anger for a lifetime than spend one more minute trapped in that suffocating room, listening to Voldo’s endless sobbing.
She thought he’d receive twenty lashes, or maybe a week without supper, but she hadn’t meant to cost him everything.
“I’m the mistress and you’re the servant! That means you have to do what I say!”
Her friends had clustered around her, nervous energy radiating off of them in waves as they waited for the strange, masked warrior to… eat a centipede. But even a dog had its pride and its standards.
Voldo wasn’t about to play along with Little Lady Vercci’s childish games.
She grumbled as she held out a children’s book with a small, falsely innocent looking cup placed upside down over it.
“Come on, Voldo, eat it! You’d do it if Babbo asked you to, right?”
Despite everything, he nodded. A simple, direct question from his master’s daughter was not to be ignored, even if he deemed her orders too extreme and too pointless to follow.
“See, see, I told you!” she exclaimed to her friends, who looked on with skepticism.
“You said he’d do whatever you said. Not your father. Every servant in this villa would eat a bucket of bugs if he told them to.”
She was practically boiling then- the young lady of House Vercci had, unfortunately, inherited both her father’s temper and his pride.
“Voldo, come on, just eat it! If you don’t, I’ll… I’ll tell Babbo you hit me!”
A faint smile blossomed on her face; she could sense his fear, even when he never said a word. It was the way he squeezed the grips on those metal claws of his, and the way he tightened his jaw and straightened his back.
He feared her, and she grew drunk on that power.
“Take off that mask, get down on your knees, and open up for mamma like a good boy, Voldo!”
But still, her father’s servant did nothing. Instead, he merely crossed his arms and held his gaze straight ahead, somewhere far behind her. When he didn’t obey, her friends called her a liar.
“I thought you said he’d do anything!”
“The servants don’t work for us; they work for our parents. You can’t boss them around anymore than we can!”
“Why are we doing this? This is boring; I want to go home.”
Out of anger, she’d dropped the book and slapped herself- hard- against her cheek, just to leave a mark, though she hadn’t truly anticipated the pain. Immediately, her brown eyes flooded with tears, and she let out a shriek, bawling and screaming for her father, even as Voldo hunched over to comfort her.
Oh, he was terrified, and she knew, then, that she was the one who held all of the power in their relationship.
“This is all your fault…” she hissed between her sobs, “You’re gonna get in so much t-trouble.”
When her father came sprinting into the gardens, she’d told her little lie, and, just for drama, her friends supported her story.
“I said I’m sorry, okay?!”
She stomped her little foot out of frustration before grabbing onto Voldo’s arm and trying in vain to pry it away from his face. Slowly, after wiping away the last of his tears, he gave in and willingly lowered his hands. The young girl looked down, then, only to notice that most of his fingernails were missing.
“Wait… D-Did Babbo do that?”
She looked back up at him in disbelief, with every ounce of her annoyance dead and vanished as she took in the sight of his black eye and busted lip.
It was just like her father to lose control when it came to her. She gingerly took Voldo’s hand in hers, though considering the difference in size, it was likely no comfort at all. Even so, she stroked her thumb against his calloused palm, and ran her fingers down to his wrists, chaffed raw from the manacles.
“I didn’t mean for him to hurt you that bad, honest... Are you gonna be okay?”
“…Tell Master that you lied.”
“W-What?” She couldn’t believe it. Since the day she was born, never had she ever heard him speak.
“Tell Master that you lied. Then, he will forgive me. …And he will take me back. …Tell Master that you lied.”
“Yeah… O-Okay, I will,” she answered hesitantly, with uncharacteristic nervousness in her tone. “So… w-will you be okay? If he lets you be a servant again? …You aren’t gonna hate me forever, are you?”
He didn’t reply, then. He just pushed himself up from his bed, staggering a little- and dripping blood- as he moved to sit at the windowsill. Even as a blind man, he still enjoyed the warmth of sunlight.
“Mamma says you let Babbo bully you because you love him. But you’re a boy, and… and he’s a boy. That’s a sin, you know,” she mumbled, as she nibbled on her apple slices with the skin removed, as always. In truth, she hadn’t been anticipating a reaction; she only ever talked to Voldo for the sake of talking.
She hadn’t expected him to nod, even slightly, and without turning to face her.
“R-Really? But if you know that loving another boy is wrong, why do you do it anyways?” No response, then. He only bit down on his gag and twirled that little fruit knife in his hand. For a moment, she sat there, mesmerized. Most servants didn’t know how to fight, but she’d seen Voldo defeat trained knights and soldiers in the past. Slowly, she plucked the knife out of his hand before trying, and failing, to replicate his movements.
He didn’t bother to correct her technique, or her lack thereof. That wasn’t his job, and he was determined to get away with accomplishing the bare minimum when it came to that girl. In truth, though she was only a child, he couldn’t help but resent her for widening the gap between himself and his master.
“If you love him, then… do you want to marry him?”
He didn’t say anything, but the little twitch around his gag indicated a smile. Probably. His contentment was more apparent in the way that he relaxed his posture, for once, allowing himself to slouch.
Did he want to marry his master?
Of course he did. But the little girl was right- he was a man, and the church, and God, would never allow it. But even if he’d been a woman, he was still a peasant: no money, no land, and no title to his name. He wouldn’t sacrifice his master’s social standing for something as worthless as his own happiness. That would be selfish.
And Voldo knew that love, in its purist form, was nothing short of sacrifice. Even if he were to die alone and afraid, even if God Himself were to turn him away, let it be known that Voldo loved his Master Vercci.
Even so, for a moment, he allowed himself to daydream. What would their wedding have been like? How would it feel to wake up every morning, enveloped in his scent? His master never touched him anymore-
He could almost remember the feeling of Vercci’s hand nestled gently in his own. Though the entire villa smelled of Vercci, it wasn’t quite the same as pressing his cheek against the other man’s chest and breathing in deep, losing himself in the comfort and pleasure of intimacy. He never realized the sheer significance of what he’d had until he lost it. Love, validation, safety-
When he was with his master, he was home.
He swallowed hard around the lump in his throat.
“…Are you going to cry, Voldo?”
He did it more and more often lately. He did it when her father and mother went on a trip to Firenze together, and when they’d announced the fact that she going to have a little brother or sister, and every single time when they danced together at her father’s parties.
After the candles went out and the servants finished cleaning the villa, she would sneak through the shadows of the winding hallways, all the way to Voldo’s chambers, just to listen to the miserable sobs echoing out from behind his door. They always terrified her; she didn’t know why she continued to listen.
“That’s good,” she mumbled with a sigh of relief, “Boys aren’t supposed to cry.”
Perhaps she’d said something wrong. His entire body tensed, and he stood up to leave-
“Wait!” she shouted, grabbing his hand. Those missing fingernails were finally starting to grow back.
“Before you go… H-Here,” she insisted before pressing a single apple slice into his palm, “Mamma told me that you used to eat with Babbo, but that stopped when he wanted family dinners with Mamma and me instead. So you don’t get nice food or sweet stuff very often anymore. Well… you can have this. It’s a present from me. So don’t cry. …Okay?”
“I don’t like Paula. She’s scared of everything! We can’t even play catch because she’s afraid of getting hit by the ball.”
Voldo didn’t say anything, but she could tell that he agreed with her. He obviously thought Paula was stupid, too.
He always agreed with her on everything, nowadays, she was sure of it- ever since she dragged him onto the ballroom floor during the latest of her father’s parties. She was still at a young enough age where dancing with one’s servant was still considered endearing instead of scandalous. And that entire time, she’d been enraptured, staring into the intricate carvings of his golden mask as he glided through the room as if walking on air and simply pulling her along for the ride. Despite his quick swordplay, somehow, she hadn’t considered that the same level of grace could translate over to other skills as well. He danced beautifully.
“…Master taught me,” he’d whispered afterwards, when questioned, before quickly falling silent once more.
“Voldo, are you listening?”
She prodded him in the leg, prompting a quick nod, as he carefully cut the pit out of yet another cherry.
“The problem is that everyone else wants to keep on being friends with her. Like they’d all just rather sit around in a library reading dumb old books or playing stupid doll house. We never play outside anymore! That sounds boring, doesn’t it? I know you’re a grown up, and grown ups are always boring, but when you were little, you played outside, didn’t you?”
He nodded- of course he nodded.
“Yeah! Well, if they’re all going to be boring with stinky Paula, I think I’m just gonna play with you! You’re my best friend from now on, Voldo. Okay?”
Now that caught his attention. Of course, he only tilted his head and hissed from behind his gag, but she knew that he was happy.
“Come on,” she requested, tugging on his arm as she slowly led him out of the villa. “Let’s go to the docks!”
She’d asked him some time ago if he’d always been a servant, or if he had some other job before that. She liked to imagine that Voldo was a strange, exotic prince from some far off land, and that he only stayed with her father out of love. It was a sin, certainly, but she didn’t want to imagine that Voldo would go to Hell.
She pushed over a piece of parchment, along with a pen and a bottle of ink, and watched with curiosity as he drew an ugly little picture of a boat, sailing on open water. A sailor- that was fun, too.
“Can you take me out on one of the boats? Babbo says I’m too little for a boat ride, but you think it’s okay, right?”
Much to her chagrin, he shook his head, though he stood up to go outside anyways. They would have to stop by his chambers, first. He always donned something a little more “respectable” before leaving the safety of House Vercci’s villa.
Though they could still have fun on the beach, she couldn’t hide her disappointment. She had wanted to fall out of the boat just so Voldo would have to save her.
