A Handmaid’s Guide for Revenge

She looked her body over. Strange as it was, it was better than her old body in many ways. For one thing, her physical abilities were far superior to her former self.

‘Besides, this is inside the Magritte Empire.’

The doctor she’d spoken to earlier spoke Imperial Magritte with a central accent. Given his unhesitating use of the language from the start of their conversation, it was clear that Isabel had woken up within the Empire.

If so, it was a stroke of luck that she had woken up in a different body.

If she had woken up in Magritte in her original body, things would have been very difficult. She would have been immediately arrested and executed again, mistaken as the murderer’s twin, or perhaps even burned at the stake as a witch.

More fortunate, however, was that Margarita would not recognise Isabel in her new body.

Whether this body is poisoned, executed, or assassinated, there is no way her daughter will recognise Isabel. So her daughter would not be hurt if she died again.

‘Margarita.’

She closed her eyes slowly, feeling her eyelids close, and the image of her daughter’s face came to her as clear as paint.

Her starry green eyes twinkling and smiling.

The innocent ten-year-old she’d had to leave behind to die.

Isabel let out a low breath. She was unable to create a foundation for her child to live on her own because the situation turned so urgently.

‘She’s a smart girl, so she’ll be fine, but still.’

I must hurry back. I need to go back and be a carer, if not a mother. Until the symptoms worsen, I will create an environment where she can live independently as much as possible, and if possible, I will find another guardian.

After that, I can go to a place where no one knows me.

Once I’ve given Margarita a secure future, I’ll be able to leave in peace.

‘After all, without Rita, I have nothing.’

Isabel thought dryly and pushed herself up. There wasn’t much time.

Just in time, the doctor knocked on the door. When Isabel answered, he opened it and stepped in. He clutched a bag with both arms and narrowed his eyes.

“This is all your luggage. I swear, I didn’t even touch it!”

“Thank you.”

He stood in the doorway, torn. Perhaps because of what had happened earlier, he was a little afraid to approach Isabel. Hesitantly, he threw her luggage from a distance, unable to get in front of her.

“Then… I’ll go back out there and see…”

“Doctor.”

Isabel grabbed the doctor as he hurried out of the room. He jerked back at the sudden call.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry, but what is that painting?”

Isabel pointed to a corner of the wall.

There was a picture of a lump of metal with a huge wheel on it. The wheels suggested a form of transport, but it was all too familiar. It could have been her imagination, but it struck her as odd from the moment she laid eyes on it.

“Oh, you mean that picture. It’s a cut-out of a newspaper illustration from the train’s inauguration.”

“The train…?”

“Yes, the train.”

“What’s that?”

The moment she said that, the doctor gave her a puzzled look.

“Ah… Have you never been out of the countryside before?”

“…”

“Well, it’s a vehicle that boils water and turns wheels with some sort of steam or something, and it’s been around for five years now, you really don’t know?”

Isabel asked calmly after placing her luggage on the bed.

“What year is it, by any chance?”

“Of course it’s 810, the 810th year of the Magritte Empire.”

“Not 800, but 810.”

“Yes, not 800, but 810… yes?”

The dumbfounded physician was no longer on Isabel’s mind.

Isabel Gemnin had died in December 800, and now it was 810.

Ten years had passed since her death.

‘So it is.’

The moment she realised that ten years had passed, Isabel self-flagellated. There could be no miracle in her life without any flaws.

Why should a God who had not come to her aid when she had cried out for one so loudly, help her now?

She looked down at her hands on her lap. Margarita was ten years old, so all ten fingers. Ten years had passed, so another ten fingers.

Ten plus ten equals twenty. Ten plus ten is twenty. So Margarita is twenty years old.

‘Twenty years old.’

Isabel’s brow furrowed.

‘If she’s alive, she’s twenty.’

Her mind went cold, as if her head had been dipped in cold water.

A decade was a long time. It was enough time to take the life of a child ten times her age.

‘What if, what if Margarita had gone wrong in the meantime. What if she was no longer in this world…’

Isabel fought down a rush of anxiety.

“Do you mind if I look at the newspaper?”

“Well, sure. There’s one on the table over there…”

“Thank you.”

Isabel opened the stack of newspapers on the table. She quickly flicked through them, organising them chronologically. It was about a month’s worth of newspapers and gossip.

She flipped through them like she was grasping at straws. She flicked through the papers hoping to find a name in small print somewhere, so she could check on them.
But contrary to her expectations, the front page of the latest newspaper showed an illustration of Margarita.

Rich black hair waved down to her chest. Green eyes that contrasted with the colour of her red dress, and two small moles near her left collarbone.

Her daughter, Rita, it was clear.

‘She’s alive.’

Isabel let out the breath she’d been holding. Her nervous heart pounded frantically.

Margarita was alive. She had survived ten years on her own, and had become a celebrity in the capital.

<Countess Grey’s mother was a slave?>
<Countess Grey’s Monthly Fashion>
<Where money and alcohol flow, she is there too: Margarita>

Some poked fun at Rita’s obscure birth, others analysed her wardrobe, and still others condemned her extravagant behaviour. Every gossip magazine was discussing her.

“Oh, it’s an illustration of the Countess of Grey, she’s so beautiful.”

The doctor standing next to her feigned ignorance.

“The Countess of Grey, madam.”

Isabel rolled the word around in her mouth. The doctor smiled, apparently unaware of the tremor in her voice.

“Yes, the Count and Countess of Grey. I saw the illustrations in the paper when she was married about a year ago.”

“So She’s been married for a year.”

“Indeed, it was quite a commotion at that time. Isn’t it quite stimulating that the third marriage of the Earl of Grey was to a non-noble?”

“Is it?”

Isabel asked with a moulding glance, and the doctor caught the mood and shut up.

She swept her palm across the illustration. Margarita was covered by Isabel’s hand, then uncovered again. Despite her best efforts to keep her mouth shut, Isabel found it difficult to contain the anger rising in her chest.

“Rita, married to the Earl of Grey.’

The difference in status was not the problem. It was that he was thirty-five, yes. If she truly loved him, she could make a hundred concessions and move on.

But he was the Earl of Grey. The man who had falsely accused Isabel and taken her out to the square. The man responsible for her murder.

Executed without trial, Isabel’s crime was ‘the murder of the Countess Diana Grey’, and the Earl of Grey was a coward who had killed his first wife with his own hands.

‘There’s no way Margarita doesn’t know that.’

It was an open secret, an open secret to which the nobility were all blindfolded.

‘And yet, if Rita married the Earl of Grey, there is only one reason.’

Revenge.

Isabel’s only daughter plunged into the heart of enemy territory to avenge her mother.

***

Isabel’s memory travelled back a day.

It was the third day after Countess Diana Grey had fallen to her death from her terrace. Isabel, who had been the Countess’s exclusive maid, had been on leave since her death and was staying in the house outside the mansion.

There was a knock at the door. It was too early in the morning for a visitor. Isabel went to the front door with a puzzled look on her face and asked.

“Who is it?”

“…Isabel Gemnin, is that you?”

It was a strange man’s voice.

There were no male guests at her house at this hour.

Isabel reflexively took a step back and looked behind her, where her daughter Margarita was sitting at the kitchen table, eating stew.

With a sense of foreboding, Isabel gave Margarita a quick hug and lifted her out of her chair.

“Come on, Rita. Why don’t we play a little hide-and-seek?”

“Suddenly?”

“Yeah, it’s been a while. You know you’re not supposed to come out until I find you, right, Rita?”

Margarita stared at the door, then nodded. Isabel stroked her daughter’s hair once, then began counting.

“One, two… five… ten.”

As Isabel stood blindfolded, she heard Rita rustle and hide in the closet, followed by a bang, followed by a knock on the door.

“Open the door, Isabel Gemnin!”

As if Isabel had sensed something was amiss, the movement outside changed. Two or three people were pounding on the front door simultaneously and furiously.

She pushed her desk straight out of the way, blocking the doorway. When she looked back, she couldn’t see if Rita had hidden well.

BANG!

Several men broke through the doorknob with their swords. The furniture blocking the door quickly gave way under the force. Isabel stood with her back to the wardrobe where Rita was hiding.

“Are you the people from…?”

The men in the doorway were familiar to Isabel. They were Count Grey’s men.

“May I ask what you are doing here?”

Despite their threatening demeanour, Isabel replied with servant-like politeness. But what came back was an ugly arrest.

“You are under arrest for the murder of the Countess Diana Grey.”

The knight in the lead, Duncan Silo, grabbed Isabel’s wrist and dragged her outside.

“Do you have any proof? I had nothing to do with her death!”

She was met with silence.

Isabel was thrown into the square and flogged.

The knights didn’t even ask her to admit guilt. The Count had decided that she was the culprit, and that was enough for them.

Under the flying whip, Isabel gritted her teeth. At first, she thought she would survive and return to Rita’s side by any means necessary, but as time went on, she realised that she would never live to see her daughter again.

She would never return to her daughter’s side alive ever again.

They would not let her live.

“You’re a bitch, you never admit your guilt.”

“Doesn’t matter, I’m not under orders to make her confess.”

Duncan grabbed Isabel by the hair as she fell to the floor and whispered into her ear.

“Don’t hold on, just die. You were the culprit anyway, and everyone will believe that.”

Isabel’s cloudy eyes reflected Duncan’s. After a few futile attempts, she grabbed the hem of his trousers.

“…hm”

Her words were muffled by the blood pooling in her mouth. Duncan brought his face to the corner of Isabel’s mouth.

“What did you just say?”

Isabel clutched at Duncan’s trousers and crawled desperately to her feet. She gripped the rough hem, her fingertips white with blood from scratching at the dirt.

“…Ser. Since I did as you ordered, you will give me the money as promised, right?”

“What?”

“You made a promise, ugh, didn’t you? That you would give my family money if I killed the countess…!”

With bloodshot green eyes, he drew in his last breath and shouted loudly. Loud enough for everyone in the square to hear.

It was a lie, with not a single word of truth in it.

The maid knew full well that her words had no legal force.

However, by this, Isabel’s death can never become their innocence.

If Isabel were framed and executed right now, people would remember.

– That time, that day, that maid said she was going to get paid.
– Was it the knight alone?
– No way, I don’t know, but there must be more.

There would be a day when it would be revealed in her sleep.

Isabel planted a tiny seed for that day. It was the first small act of resistance she’d ever made.

“Ha…”

Duncan’s face contorted into a grimace. He threw Isabel to the floor.

“You, you crazy bitch…”

The whip swung with increasing force. Isabel sprawled on the floor, coughing painfully.

It hurts. The scraping of her flesh against the rough floor, the oozing from the whip marks left all over her body, the twitching of her muscles as the lash flew again.

There was nothing that didn’t hurt.

And yet death did not come easily. The uselessly long rope of life continued to stretch thin, barely holding on for dear life.

Half a day passed again.

The sun had set in the square.

On the dusky floor, Isabel gasped like a fish out of water, no longer having the strength to moan, but strangely enough, the pain was still clear.

“Damn persistent.”

Someone said in an irritated tone.

Isabel thought so too. She was in so much pain that she wished she could die, but she couldn’t die.

Isabel forgot that she had thought she had to live for her daughter and just wanted to die. She hoped that her breath would stop soon so that she could end this life.

However, Isabel’s breath stopped several hours after that, after the sky had turned pitch black.

‘Margarita.’

Isabel blurred her vision against the starry sky and suddenly remembered her daughter’s name. She couldn’t quite see out of the corner of her eye.

“…garita.”

She repeated the name again, her pronunciation muffled.

‘Tonight, I didn’t even have dinner ready.’

Just before she died, Isabel regretted that she hadn’t made a big pot of stew.

That was the only regret she had as she died.