Not worth much to us anymore
“How the roles reverse,” says the People’s Guard to her fellow Red Guards on a smoke break.
Now she returns to watch the aging maid who served the lady.
They talk.
The guard expresses bitterness that the lady had dismissed the guard’s husband after he died, saying “Not worth much to us anymore.” That callous saying made the guard bitter, made her a convert to communism, a soldier in the revolution, and now a guard for the aristocrat who had broken her heart. There is a silence, then she hears from the lady’s servant.
The maid says, “You may not know how much your husband loved you.”
She tells the guard a story the guard did not know.
How the handsome serf caught the young dame’s eye. How the dame fell in love. How the dame plotted to have the serf made a Sir, maybe even a Lord Sir.
How the guard’s husband refused this promotion to the aristocracy, because he loved his peasant wife, and broke all connection.
How the lady carried a torch for him her whole life.
How she hired the best herbalist in the city to come disguised as a wandering monk, to try to save him in his last illness. How all healings failed.
And how, to protect the reputation of her beloved, to scotch all rumors and so his treasured wife would never know, the aristocratic lady said in the great hall when in conversation the peasant man’s death came up: “He’s not worth much to us anymore.”
How the great lady retired to her spinster suite, feigning sickness herself, and wept and wept for days, growing gaunt before making herself eat and return to life
And only her maid knew the story.
