By Eleanor Stowe, Special Correspondent
The iron gates of Inverness Prison still clang each evening with the echo of treachery, and among the visitors who pass beneath them, none draws more uneasy glances than Elara Bianchovi — widow of the man once called The Liar. Clad in mourning black and carrying herself with the wary grace of one accustomed to whispers, she returns day after day to the chapel within the prison walls, where her husband Rodger met both judgment and the hangman’s rope.
“She comes to burn things,” says one guard, shaking his head. “Every night it’s another letter, another scrap of paper gone up in smoke. You’d think she’s trying to erase him from the world.”
Ashes of a Marriage
Before Rodger’s fall, Elara Bianchovi had lived a life of unremarkable gentility. The daughter of a silversmith from the Low Gate Quarter, she married the young journalist when he was still a provincial dreamer, not yet the incendiary editor of The Red Banner. In those early years, he brought her flowers and verses. Later, he brought pamphlets and arguments.
“He began speaking of revolution at the supper table,” Elara once told a neighbor. “At first I thought it was romantic talk — every young man fancies himself a reformer. But his eyes grew cold. He wanted to unmake the world, not mend it.”
By the time The Red Banner was declared seditious, their marriage had withered to correspondence and accusation. She left him quietly, retreating to her brother’s home on the southern coast. When the Constabulary came for Rodger, they found among his possessions several unsigned letters in her hand — some pleading, some condemning.
A Reluctant Witness
Now, with the noose drawn and the ashes cooled, Elara has been drawn back into the orbit of her husband’s sins. The Ministry of Information confirms that she has been “of assistance” in deciphering his private ledgers, though officials decline to say how much she knew.
“She had the keys to his ciphers,” said a clerk familiar with the inquiry. “He fancied himself a poet; he hid messages in rhyme and rhythm. She knew his habits — the words he used to disguise numbers, the patterns he favored in verse. Without her, we’d still be staring at riddles.”
Not all in the Constabulary trust her motives. Inspector Daven, who leads the wider sedition sweep, described her cooperation as “useful but incomplete.” Rumors persist that she destroyed several documents before surrendering others. When asked directly, Elara replied only, “I burned what belonged to me. The rest was his.”
The Weight of the Name
Outside the prison gates, opinion divides sharply. To some, she is the archetype of loyalty redeemed — a woman purging her husband’s poison by helping the Crown cleanse the record. To others, she is the last conspirator, shielding secrets beneath the guise of repentance.
A broadsheet vendor on Market Street said, “People can’t decide whether to pity her or hang her beside him.”
In a small interview granted to The Times-Observer through the mediation of the prison chaplain, Elara spoke with quiet exhaustion. “Do they think I didn’t suffer? Every lie he printed was a splinter driven under my skin. He lied to everyone — the public, his comrades, and worst of all, to me. I warned him that lies grow hungry. He laughed and said the truth would forgive him. Now it has devoured him instead.”
Her words were measured, almost rehearsed, yet tears blurred the ink halfway through the page.
Shadows in the Attic
Investigators recently searched her townhouse in South Inverness and found several trunks of charred papers. Among the fragments were drafts of unpublished essays, some bearing corrections in two distinct hands. A marginal note — “E., is this too cruel?” — has raised uncomfortable questions about whether Elara herself contributed to his writings.
The Ministry will not confirm whether she faces charges. “Our concern is with the living network of sedition, not with the ghosts that haunt its author,” a spokesman said. Nevertheless, the possibility that she once sharpened her husband’s words now casts her mourning in a different light.
The Public’s Fascination
Cafés and reading halls buzz with speculation. Ballads have already been written — The Widow and the Banner, The Ink-Stained Bride — romanticizing her as the tragic conscience of a doomed man. One verse currently popular among students begins:
She stitched his words till the seams gave way,
Then lit the fire at break of day;
The liar’s tongue, the widow’s flame,
Both whispered truth, but not the same.
Critics call the songs “unseemly sentimentalism,” yet the fascination persists. Perhaps it is easier to imagine her as repentant heroine than as silent accomplice.
Toward Oblivion
Elara Bianchovi now lives under informal protection at an undisclosed residence within the city. The Constabulary fears reprisals from those who still idolize her husband. Each week she is seen at the chapel, praying alone before the candlelit crucifix.
When asked if she believes she will ever be free of her husband’s shadow, she answered without hesitation: “Never. You cannot scrub out a name that was written in other people’s blood.”
Then she rose, extinguished the candle with her fingertips, and walked out into the courtyard, where the air still smelled faintly of ink and rope.