Oh, you’re asking how it was that day? What do you think? I nearly fainted.

In all my years of service in this castle, I’d never seen such a bloodbath. Sure, the king had a reputation for being extremely cruel in his youth, but to kill someone openly in his own bedroom… It was almost unheard of for us servants.

The king, as you know, wore a mask in his youth. His curse was so terrible that there were more knights around him than servants. They say he was so sensitive and irritable that servants always lost their lives – and apparently it wasn’t an exaggeration.

Ah, right. So, you’re asking what the king’s room looks like, right? Honestly, it’s huge. Really massive. As soon as you enter, you see gold decorations everywhere. But on that day, there was so much blood that you could barely notice the decor. You know, the queen back then wasn’t actually queen yet. The king said she’d only become queen if she bore him a child, so… well, you get it. Hehehe. Right? Must be nice to be the king, don’t you think? Bringing in a princess from Kingdom and… What? You don’t get it? You really don’t know what this finger-in-the-hole gesture means? Ah, never mind, kid. Just go back to drinking your mother’s milk.

Ah, right. Back then, the queen’s maid—a relative of hers—offered to go in for us, and honestly, I should have stopped her. She was already dead when we found her. When we went in, it was terrifying—a sea of blood, and the quilt covering the maid’s dead body was completely red. Even the queen’s skirt was soaked in blood.

The queen was trembling, crying and covered in blood, and I thought, ‘Goodness, what’s happening here?’ Her hands and feet were stained with blood, and when I stepped on the carpet, the blood seeped through it too. I ended up throwing away the leather shoes I was wearing that day.

Do you know what the king was doing in the middle of all this? Guess. No, he’s not that considerate. Don’t be shocked by what I’m about to tell you. He stood there looking in the mirror and he was shaving! Yes, shaving! They say the maid scratched his face. But even his shaving was a mess – his golden beard was all over the place. It was horrifying – he was standing in a pool of blood, looking at himself in the mirror as he was shaving, and I thought, ‘This man is really out of his mind.’ I said to myself, ‘After this, I’m definitely going to quit being a servant.’

And there’s more. The king ordered us to bring a sack to put the body in, saying he’d feed it to the dogs. The Queen was really like a saint. She lay on the bedspread, crying and begging the King to let her cremate her maid’s body herself. What kind of princess would humble herself in front of her servants like that? But you know, the king almost kicked her. Well, she wasn’t technically queen yet.

And he didn’t stop there. Smiling, he said, ‘Oh, so you’ve been spending the nights in your bed with your maid, have you? I want to see you cut off her arms and legs with your own hands and feed her to the dogs.’ Isn’t he crazy? There were rumours at the time that the Queen was having an affair with her maid. But if we’re talking about madmen, he was far worse. I’ve never seen a man hurt a woman so mercilessly. The Queen had bruises on her face and was limping.

But what could I do? I would have died if I had disobeyed him. So in the end I took the saw. What? Did you hear what I said? You’ve never seen a real sea of blood, have you? I took the sharpest saw I could find and secretly told the queen that it was the sharpest I had. She nodded and wept. It was truly heartbreaking…

All night long I could hear the Queen weeping from that room – it was so disturbing I thought I was going crazy. Inside, this weak woman was cutting up her maid’s body with her own hands. Later, her voice went hoarse and all I could hear were faint murmurs. I thought, ‘This must be what makes people crazy.’

Have you ever tried to move a body at sunrise? Makes you wonder if this is what life is all about. The queen’s eyes were swollen from crying and she was sitting there with three or four sacks of body parts piled up. I was scared to death.

What do you think the king was doing? That bastard snored in bed. He snored so loud. When we started carrying the bags, he finally woke up and yawned when he got out. I mean, if you’re the king, you could just stay in bed, couldn’t you? Why did he follow us?

In fact, one of the king’s lovers had died a few days before. The king had even ordered her body to be fed to the dogs. His lovers had committed suicide after secretly keeping a lover who killed. Anyway, the queen secretly gave us some gold coins and asked us to bury the women’s body instead of feeding it to the dogs, saying it was cruel and to give the dogs beef instead. She never imagined that her own maid would end up as dog food. If the king hadn’t followed us, I would have tried to sneak the body away somehow.

Why are you looking at me like that? It’s true! I’m a man of conscience, you know?

Anyway, the king insisted on watching the dogs eat the body. I wondered if he’d found out that we’d hidden her body before, and I was terrified. As we carried the sacks, blood dripped down and pooled in the corridor. The maids fainted at the sight, we ruined our clothes, and the queen, covered in blood, followed in silence, without a word.

I’ll never have that experience again. Mornings at the castle are always so busy, and this happened in the summer. Imagine us carrying a body through all those busy people, with the sun shining and the smell of blood in the air. People bowed quickly when they saw the king leading the way, but when they saw me and the other servants carrying the sack in blood-stained clothes, they looked at us with pity. And when they saw the queen, they were shocked, their mouths hanging open.

But you know, the Queen must have seemed a little out of sorts by then. A laundry girl told me later that she’d been lying flat on the floor and had a sneaky look at the Queen – she saw the corners of her mouth turned up, as if she was smiling. Smiling, but in a way that the King wouldn’t notice. It made me think, ‘that’s how someone goes crazy’ Then again, it’s surprising she wasn’t already crazy after being beaten and losing her maid like that.

The dogs, oh boy – they hadn’t gone that long without beef, but the moment they smelled blood they started foaming at the mouth and pouncing. We hesitated, wondering whether to open the sack or not, but then the King pushed the Queen forward and told her to feed them with her own hands. I thought, ‘This man really is crazy,’ and stepped back. The Queen’s face went cold as she stared at the King, and I thought she might actually stab him. I wondered what I was going to do when the king dismissed us.