Jean Dôn
The old man was sitting quietly in the balcony. He let the breeze blew over him. He didn’t mind the chill, despite his old bones screamed in opposition. Nothing really mattered. If he was to catch a cold this morning and struggle in fewer before the night – then pass away from this life tomorrow, then so would things be. He was not afraid of dying. Anytime would have done.
Dôn still gave him a motherly look and placed his heavy cloak little bit better upon his shoulder, almost unnoticed fist but then Jean tried to chase her away from pampering himself so much. But in the end he just settled for warm smiles and little bit of that Elfand’s glimmer in Dôn’s eyes.
“You do not fear the death by coming this way outside in such weather.”
Jean didn’t answer. He wanted to say that in Wales, back in the old times of his youth, weather used to be more severe, but that hardly hold no true. If the Children of Foulgues had chosen their exile in terms of punishment, this far away land was like God’s own impression of hell.
“I would give just about everything for a death of common man. To die in pneumonia, to die from broken lungs. What a thought for an assassin to wish upon.”
“You are being too harsh upon yourself” Dôn answered. Her smile was really elfish today, merely mocking everything human and serious in most appropriate fairy fashion.
“Am I?”
“If not then you are being just silly.”
But Jean didn’t answer. The cold wind from Valhalla and from the graves all around the known world made him shiver more than the day’s normal breeze had done.
And for a moment Dôn sensed it. The presence of his own ghosts around old Jean. She remained silent for a moment but finally asked:
“You are taking lot of haunt with you to the afterlife if you cannot let them pass you Jean.”
But Jean didn’t answer first…
“You know. Lot of them had been children? Innocent and lively lads so full of future and life, but I have…I have had to take it away from them. …Because of what? They have born with wrong name?”
“If you bare guilt over them, aren’t you at same breath stake stating how your own will and mind have not been able to control the hand that holds the knife?”
“I served both of my brothers. I have served my nephew well. If I wouldn’t have had will over my guilt, I would have been betraying my own name…”
“My name, Dôn…”
And Jean kept silence again. He had only come aware of Dôn’s true nature late in his life, still not certain whether to accept her as his great grandmother as well as the Queen of the Elfland.
“If those deaths bring dishonest to
your name, why you condemn my guilt?”
“Are we witty this morning, aren’t we?” Dôn smiled. She then turned her gaze outside from the castle, upon the ever green forest and myriads of lakes that surrounded them.
“How many nations? How many graveyards? I recall Bavaria, Germany, Rome, Egypt…Russia…how much of world you have seen just to bring death in my name?”
“The death himself must envy you there in the other side. Your clan has made fortunes with their trade. I think I’ve earned more money to our family’s estates than Arnoul or Pierre ever did as princes.”
“Well you, Jean Dôn, are not among the famous people of the earth.”
“I know. And that’s how it should have been. You tend not get to pass the guards and spymaster as the world wide known assassin. This trade is for those of pedestrian fame. I have never sought as to be remembered from what I’ve done. Let my tombstone be: “A loving husband, father and brother, ever loyal servant with humble heart.”
Dôn didn’t answer. She had little of condemnment and judgment left for this old man that so much have suffered among the rest of her children. If he wouldn’t have done what he had done, someone else would have. Sometimes the ways of the man were distant and strange for Dôn. She didn’t envy them for the load they had to carry.