Everyone in the banquet hall froze, bewildered by the uproar.
The queen and her noblest subjects were scrambling to gather grapes into their hands, as if they were children tasting sugar for the first time, their eyes nearly rolling back in their heads.
Here and there, the sounds of people swallowing and whispering in confusion only grew louder. The curiosity and tension among the onlookers mounted.
“...Now, I have offered one bunch as a gift to Her Majesty the Queen, but here remains one more.”
Walter Raleigh was not a man to let such an atmosphere slip past him.
This banquet hall had become the finest place imaginable for promotion.
Holding the box of grapes, Raleigh made a full circuit of the banquet hall, seizing everyone’s attention.
“Regrettably, I have only two bunches on hand at present, so I shall pluck the remaining bunch one grape at a time and share it with—”
“C-could I perhaps taste one?”
“Ah! Of course, Baron! Come forward at once!”
And so a brave young noble slowly stepped before Sir Raleigh and plucked a grape.
“It is... transparent.”
“And at the same time large and firm. Yet there will be nothing to trouble you when you eat it.”
“Pardon? What do you mean by that?”
“Try it once. Then you will understand.”
“...”
The baron swallowed and took a small bite of the grape. His eyes widened for a moment, then narrowed.
“D-delicious...”
“And?”
“...Huh?”
The baron’s eyes swept over the cut surface of the grape. Something important that ought to have been there was missing.
Then he searched for that something with his tongue among the remnants of grape in his mouth.
It was not there either.
“Th-the seed, the seed... is... gone...”
“What? There’s no seed?”
“Is it a diseased grape? Or perhaps—”
“No! This grape is not diseased! It is a perfectly healthy, normally grown grape.”
Sir Raleigh silenced the murmuring crowd and raised the bunch of grapes high.
“The wise foreigners who cultivate this delicious grape have developed a method to keep seeds from forming in the fruit!
Whether this variety has no seeds to begin with, or whether they employ some special art, I have not been able to determine—but that much is certain!”
Murmur, murmur.
People began rushing toward Sir Raleigh to look at the seedless grapes.
They split the grapes Sir Raleigh plucked for them in half, rolled them about in their mouths, and began their verification, but sure enough, there were none.
There were no seeds.
“Th-this is no product of nature! This is... this is the Lord’s...!”
Thud.
Someone swooned and fainted, while someone else screamed.
Someone shed tears at the rapturous taste of Shine Muscat, and someone pulled out a notebook on the spot and began writing a poem.
“Behold, Your Majesty! In Virginia there are such wise neighbors, delicious fruits, precious treasures, and all manner of jewels and metals!
All of this is thanks to Her Majesty, who granted me the right to establish a colony in America, and thanks to the Lord, who raised Her Majesty to be the sovereign of England! Hallelujah!”
“Hallelujah!”
“Hallelujah!”
Before long, the crowd, half steeped in excitement and madness, was being drawn into Raleigh’s words.
The sound of the Earl of Essex grinding his teeth was drowned out by the cheers.
Even those who normally despised Raleigh were now cheering, waiting for the queen’s reaction.
After the great victory in the naval battle off Calais, England’s attempted counterattack against Spain had failed miserably.
Now, with England’s great fleet in ruins and the war with Spain entering a lull, the colony thought to have failed had revived and brought back enormous treasure.
The entire tale seemed like a blessing bestowed by the Lord upon England as it faced hardship.
Everyone gathered there was waiting for the queen’s response. Before they knew it, expectation had filled every eye.
“Your Majesty, how does this fruit taste?”
When one unlucky noble who had not tasted it shouted out, Elizabeth, just coming back to her senses, looked at Sir Raleigh with eyes that had regained their focus and said,
“...It was the taste of heaven.”
“...”
“Did you say it was a fruit cultivated by angels? It was as though some selfless angel had taken a handful of heavenly fruit and distributed it freely to mankind upon the earth.”
If one substituted the angels with Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, it was roughly accurate. After all, the fact that they could taste this fruit was thanks to their mercy and negligence.
Tsutomu Hata, the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of that era, was surely smiling down upon them all from heaven.
“Your Majesty,”
At any rate, the queen finished speaking, sprang to her feet, and asked Sir Raleigh,
“Sir?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“The name of this metal you gave me was aluminum, was it not? And this beast’s fur seems to be that of a fox.
Then what is the name of this fruit?”
At those words, the corners of Sir Raleigh’s mouth lifted in a smile. Smiling, he said,
“Shine... Muscat.”
Shine Muscat.
That one phrase struck England like a thunderbolt.
“Ah, and one more thing.
Our colonists, together with a powerful local ally, are said to have defeated a Spanish fleet. They have now captured a galleon and are using it to defend the place.”
“...!”
So too did Raleigh’s next words.
Treasure...
And victory...!
In an instant, all of England was filled with the roar of celebration.
***
...
...
...
Several days had passed since that shocking Epiphany banquet.
“Phew...”
Sitting alone in her bedchamber for the first time in a while, the queen clenched and unclenched the ring that shimmered with a mysterious white light. The sturdy, light ring had absorbed her body heat and was misted over.
What was this?
Countless rumors were circulating around this.
A cheap lump of metal whose value Walter Raleigh had manipulated?
A white gold of the New World, one that no one had ever seen before?
Orichalcum, which Plato sang was used by the people of Atlantis?
The first rumor, without question, must have been spread by Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and his father-in-law, Secretary of State Francis Walsingham. They wanted, quite literally, to devour Raleigh alive.
But so many people had witnessed Raleigh’s “gifts,” and the queen herself had been greatly pleased with them, that it was also the rumor believed by the fewest people.
In other words, the only ones who believed it were Raleigh’s political enemies, those who wanted to prevent him from raking in money hand over fist in the future.
The second rumor was being spread by Raleigh himself. He was darting about among London’s influential merchants and nobles, displaying superb showmanship.
Those who believed this version were usually people with a strong interest in money. More precisely, those interested in the money the new colony in the New World would earn.
They would all become Raleigh’s investors and patrons.
The last rumor was... the most fanciful and romantic of all. Countless fools, captivated by the possibility of a vast empire and a new civilization beyond the Atlantic, stamped their feet and lost sleep.
That rumor had been spread by the queen herself.
Why?
“It is... very light.”
Because she had taken quite a liking to this “aluminum” ring.
She wanted it to become fashionable.
She wanted it to become a new form of wealth.
She wanted the value of this “aluminum” to soar to the heavens the moment Raleigh offered it to her.
She wanted the aluminum that might exist in that New World to overwhelm Spain’s gold and silver. She wanted it to fill, even a little, the treasury drained by the defeat in the last naval campaign.
With such complicated thoughts, Elizabeth Tudor, enchanted by the numinous gleam of aluminum, kept toying with the ring.
And then.
Pop.
“Oh... ooh...!”
She wanted to eat more of those grapes.
To think there were more grapes like this in the New World...!
She bit down in one mouthful, tearing through the firm yet soft skin that enclosed the grape.
“Oooooh...!”
And along with it, she enjoyed supreme pleasure.
It was not merely the pleasure of taste.
An eternal deficit that trade with Spain—piracy, in other words—had never been able to resolve.
And now, a new luxury good had appeared.
...A new luxury good from which enormous taxes could be collected!
She felt the same pounding of her heart she had felt when she had just resolved upon war with Spain.
This was an opportunity.
Beyond those transparent grapes, she could see money. She could see new revenue that would offset the enormous expenditures of the court.
And she could see royal authority. She could see herself standing proudly, trampling all the other nobles beneath her feet with the wealth of the New World.
There was no way a mere hundred or so people could have discovered so many treasures on their own. Surely a powerful local emperor, mighty enough to help them defeat Spain, had aided them.
A vast and wealthy foreign empire, a powerful empire even Spain, which had brought the Inca and Aztec to their knees, could not do as it pleased with.
If she cooperated with them and obtained more, far more wealth and power...
Elizabeth suddenly looked into the mirror.
In the mirror, she herself was smiling without realizing it. It was a smile she had seen often before.
When her half-sister and dreadful enemy, Queen Mary, married the King of Spain and took the first step toward her downfall.
When Mary finally died and Elizabeth inherited the throne.
When she saw the blood of countless Catholics and, upon it, seized a kingdom whole.
It was the smile of an ambitious woman.
***
“They say he brought back a mysterious metal.”
“According to rumor, some say it is the legendary orichalcum.”
“They say it is harder than iron, yet far lighter, shines like silver, and does not rust, like gold...!”
“Isn’t even the name mysterious? The name they call it is...”
Aluminum.
“Her Majesty the Queen appeared wearing the fur Sir Raleigh presented to her!”
“Good heavens, the price of similar fox furs is soaring in London now...”
“It is far too difficult to keep up with demand using only the supply coming in from Scotland!”
All kinds of furs.
“Have you seen the jewels Sir Raleigh brought from the New World? They say they were cut and worked by methods no one has ever seen before!”
“That much coral, and pearls... Good heavens, did they rake through the bottom of the sea and come back?”
“Foreigners with hands more delicate than Europeans’... Wouldn’t one make a fortune by opening trade with such people?”
“Sir Raleigh has truly met with heavenly fortune.”
All kinds of jewels.
Every “trophy” Walter Raleigh had brought back was shaking not only all of London, but all of England.
Everyone who met Sir Raleigh begged him to share with them the goods brought from the “Virginia Colony,” and even Raleigh’s oldest political enemies hinted that they would like to receive the new luxuries.
A new fashion was being born in earnest.
John White’s paintings of the New World were made into prints and sold like wildfire, while several words from the Algonquin dictionary written by Thomas Harriot were repeated in society like cheerful greetings or magic spells.
Many people embroidered on their clothes the tattoo patterns said to be carved into the skin by the colonists around Croatoan and Roanoke, and above all...
“Your Majesty, no matter how hard the New World savages may try, they cannot surpass the taste of our Sussex grapes—”
“They have surpassed it by far. Walt? How many of those grapes do you have left?”
“My beloved Queen, I still have five bunches remaining.”
Shine Muscat.
That mysterious fruit, tasted by only a very few except for the queen and those close to her, and seen up close by scarcely anyone.
“This fruit is personally cultivated by a noble ‘local ally’ who is served by the savages, and is therefore extremely precious and sweet.
Moreover, it is said to aid the digestion of those who eat it and have an excellent effect on the health of the heart!”
Raleigh added all manner of embellishments to the fragmentary information about the “local ally” that John White had somehow offered as an explanation, and to the contents of “the effects of Shine Muscat” that Nemo had conveyed to John White.
As a result, Shine Muscat became both “the fruit of the gods that guarantees longevity if eaten” and “a grape with a flavor as if sent down from heaven, leading people toward the Garden of Eden,” standing at the center of rumor wherever it went.
And then...
“...The taste of heaven, you say? Hah, that is not wrong.”
This single remark from Queen Elizabeth settled everything.
Moreover, Queen Elizabeth was still wearing the ruby-set aluminum ring and the brilliantly gleaming aluminum earrings.
On her shoulders she draped fox fur from the New World, on the floor she laid wolf pelts from the New World, and throughout the court she decorated the halls with coral brought from the New World.
The Queen herself had promoted the colonial venture.
All of these circumstances were fanning the craze for “substitutes.”
England’s foxes had already all but vanished, grapes were selling so fast there were none left to sell, and the prices of platinum and silver—the closest things to aluminum—were soaring through the roof.
And yet all those substitutes were still far from enough to quench the English thirst.
They were all crying out.
“Sir Raleigh! Please! Send more fleets to the colony!”
“Walter, sell me just one aluminum ornament, just one. I’ll trade you ten times its weight in gold!”
And Sir Raleigh was…
“…The loan?”
“It was approved.”
“Excellent!”
“You do realize that if you can’t repay this money, you’ll have to sell your estate and everything else, don’t you?”
“If I don’t spend this money now, I’ll probably regret it for the rest of my life.”
He was scraping together everything, down to his very soul.
An ordinary man would, at this point, have focused on bringing over the goods piled up in the new colony. After seeing prices “go to the moon” like this, any normal person would think of taking profits at a reasonable point.
But Sir Raleigh was different.
He was a man with the heart of a beast.
A man who, with nothing to his name, had entered the very heart of English power relying solely on the Queen’s favor, and then carried on an affair with one of that very Queen’s ladies-in-waiting while praying he would not be caught.
A man who, if the coin he held rose tenfold, would mortgage even his own organs, throw every last bit of investment money he could gather into it, and wait for it to rise a hundredfold.
That was Sir Raleigh.
That boldness was his charm, and that charm had turned him from a ruined gentleman of no account into the Queen’s favorite.
Walter Raleigh immediately began buying up every dairy cow in England. The number of cows gathered in this way came to roughly 237.
Once he had amassed enough livestock to stock a large ranch, Raleigh pushed the venture forward without hesitation.
The so-called “Virginia Trading Company” was established, and under that company’s name, the construction of new ships was ordered.
Several cargo ships capable of carrying hundreds of head of livestock and all manner of baggage were newly purchased and built.
And once the cargo ships were ready, Raleigh delayed no longer.
“Thomas! Thomas Harriot! What did I tell you? I said it would work!”
“…Uh, so it does work.”
“Let’s go at once. Are these not the livestock our governor, Mr. John White, needs to develop the new colony?”
He crossed the Atlantic at once.
At the Virginia Trading Company he had left behind, hundreds and thousands of able-bodied men continued to flock in, applying for the right to migrate.
But among them, almost none were actually promised passage.
Only skilled workers accompanied by their families; everyone else was disqualified.
That was one of the conditions Raleigh had promised White.
…and it was also what White had been ordered by Nemo.
Raleigh never even imagined that he was being moved by that “noble local collaborator.”