The king's handiwork -1

Earlier that morning, the king's soldiers went straight to the households of Irvington friend's. The king grouped the soldiers into three sets of two and sent them out simultaneously. The first pair reached James' house and upon their arrival, they met chaos. The door to the man's house was ajar and they saw his wife trying to hold him. It was a confusing sight at first but when they got closer, they noticed that James was trying to break free from his wife's grip and for some reason, he looked insane. They walked further towards the entrance to see James' four year old son standing in a corner, crying as he watched his parents struggle between themselves. "James get a hold of yourself! Why are you acting like this all of a sudden?" His wife said as she tightened her grip on him but her efforts were almost vain because the man's hard elbow gave her a hard hit to her stomach making her grip loosen a little. But she didn't let him go. She had woken up to see her husband sitting on the floor, staring right at her like she was some disease he should stay away from. Worriedly, she asked "Honey, what is it? Why are you on the floor?". But the moment she opened her mouth to let those words out, the man acted even more repulsed by her. Her brows knotted as she stood up from their bed and walked towards him and the moment she did that, he ran out of the room taking her again, by surprise. She ran after him just to hear him scream "I don't want anything to do with you woman, I hate you, I hate you. I don't want money, I don't want you, I hate all of you!" The words kept rolling out of his mouth and James' wife got even more confused by what was going on. At first she thought he had drank wine that morning thinking that he behavior was a result of drunkenness. But as the seconds went by, she knew it wasn't the effect of strong wine because he was now running around the house doing his best not to let his wife touch him. The noise eventually made their four years old son wake up from his slumber, the little boy and his nanny came out of his room and saw the mess that was taking place.

"My lady, what is going on?" The nanny ran towards James' wife who was still running after her husband. "Help me get a hold of him" came her reply. Like a loyal and obedient worker she was, the nanny ran quickly towards her master. Being that her energy was still high compared to Mrs Yorkshire who had been chasing her husband for a while now, the nanny got to Mr James. Their child who was still young both in age and reasoning, thought his family was playing a game and with his short legs, he ran behind them giggling and trying to catch up with them. When the nanny reached Mr James, she grabbed him by the hand making him pause for some seconds but unfortunately for her, an iron stool was lying around like it was waiting to be used. "Stay away from me you woman, don't touch me!" Mr James said as he picked up the iron stool with his free hand and in a split second, the stool made contact with the Nanny's head and like nothing happened, Mr James continued running, on his way out of the house. Mrs Yorkshire was puzzled as she didn't expect her husband to react that way. The young Nanny was already lying on the floor with a hole to her forehead. A hole that was probably made from the sharp foot of the iron stool clashing with her head. Blood cascaded down her face, entering her eyes and even tinting the white colored part of her eye. The girl tried to keep her eyes open because she slowly felt herself crossing to the other side. Mrs Yorkshire bent down and with shaky hands tried to stop the bleeding but it was pointless because the more she looked at the wound, she realized that the girl's skull had broken.

"Why do you have such a fragile head?" Mrs Yorkshire cried as she continued to tear pieces of her lacey night wear to cover the hole, seeing if the bleeding would stop or reduce but the blood kept pouring out like a fountain.

The child who had a smile on his face earlier now looked confused as he stared at his mother and nanny who was running, looking all hale and hearty and not near death some seconds ago.