Someone slammed his hands on the closed door.
She asked her maid to go check who it was. Soon the maid came back in a hurry and told her there was a large crowd asking for her husband to be sent outside.
She went to the door herself and called out loud, “What do you want?”
The man standing on the other side barked, “Send your husband out!”
“He will not come out. I’ve made him swear not to fight.”
“If he doesn’t come out, we’ll set fire to the house.”
“Set fire to the house? Don’t you know who lives in this house?”
“We don’t care.”
“Don’t you know whose children live in this house?”
“We don’t care whose children! Send your husband out or we’ll set fire to it!”
“My husband will not come outside!”
There was some noise as the men gathered wood outside the door and set fire to it. The door started to burn. Then the man kicked the door on to her.
Not letting his foot get off, he pressed the burning door on to her until she was trapped between it and the wall directly behind it. She cried out loud as her ribs fractured from the impact.
She called out to her maid, “Come quick, the child in my womb has been killed!”
She fell to the floor and the door fell on top of her. Her two sons and two daughters rushed to help her. The sons tried to lift the burning door off her while the daughters tried to pull her out from under.
Meanwhile, the six men outside had rushed into the house with a large crowd behind them, brandishing naked swords and canes, and surrounded her husband. She got up and rushed to her husband and grabbed him by the waist. The swords and canes that had gone up in the air to be brought down on her husband, landed on her. She fell to the ground while the men flung a rope around her husband’s neck and dragged him outside.
Slowly she got up, came out into the courtyard, uncovered her head, looked up at the sky and started cursing the attackers.
Her husband quickly motioned to his friend to stop her. The friend rushed towards the house, bent at the doorstep, kissed it and called out, “My Lady! Your husband calls for you to stop otherwise there won’t be anyone left to take your father’s name after today!”
She paused, then covered her head again. She succumbed to her wounds three months later, at the age of almost 18 years.
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O’ Father! After your death, so much grief was made to befall me that had it befallen a day, it would’ve turned into a dark night…
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