The morning after his niece’s wedding, Don Pedro de Monteverde awoke in an oaken box. Swallowed by darkness, engulfed by silence, the lord-knight could make out the pattern of the wood’s grain, what direction it traveled, but not the color of the wood itself. He had never allowed himself to get blackout drunk, but there’s a first for everything.
He must have been drunk, for someone fancied putting him to bed in a coffin. He thought he knew who done it, too. Sebastian, you bastard… the lord-knight thought. His brother had always been something of a joker, ever since they were kids. This, Don Pedro thought, was step too bloody far.
Pushing the lid to free himself, Don Pedro was surprised that it wouldn’t budge. He pushed again. No give.
Memories of the previous night swilled at the back of his mind. Liquid. Lazy. For some reason, he recalled laying down in the coffin of his own accord—a certainty in his hung over mind: this was no practical joke.
The more he pounded at the lid, the more he panicked. When dirt filed into the coffin from the intermittent seams he created, the more he panicked. Don Pedro began to believe that someone might have actually buried him.
With trembling hands, he probed his body for wounds, bruises—any sign of foul play. He found none. In fact, he was remarkably comfortably given his cramped quarters. The ache in his pelvis that had niggled at him since the first day of the rebellion had mercifully vanished. So too, his breath was hot and lurid, yet filling his lungs offered neither pain nor satisfaction.
“Once you do this, you can never go back…”
The words came unbidden to his mind. A conversation. A plan.
“Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?
Had this been truly been his own doing?
“Gods in hell…” Don Pedro whispered, yet he did not recognize his own voice. The rasp of his voice summoned memories of a woman he had met last night, the voice echoing in his head.
No… I wasn’t drunk last night, was I?
The realization calmed him, and he settled into the coffin like an elderly dog settling into a pile of leaves. Only once he’d ceased his struggling did he notice the sound of a spade slicing soil. Perhaps it was a joke—Sebastian had buried him in the garden and was digging him up. Yes, that’s it. Surely, that’s it.
But Don Pedro wasn’t so sure once the spade struck the lid of his coffin. He remembered a woman and armored knights coming to his home in the night. He remembered drinking tea—not wine—and hushed conversation. He remembered the conviction in his heart as he laid down in his own coffin, by his own will.
My heart! his hands scrambled to his chest. There was no heartbeat. No… no, it can’t be…
Someone grabbed the coffin, dragging it out of the hole. Don Pedro stayed still as a doornail as his bed shifted and rolled, then settled again beneath open sky. He saw gentle rays of light poking through the gaps in the oak.
When his captor ripped open the lid, Don Pedro was blinded at first. Blinking, shaking his head, he opened his eyes and when he opened them, he looked down at his hands. They were pale, devoid of all color. Pallid. Sallow. He couldn’t feel his fingertips, nor could he smell the morning air.
No… it wasn’t supposed to be like this.