Chapter 62
“The investigation of the boat revealed that, just as the Countess testified, it appears to have capsized when waves struck due to a sudden gust of wind. We also discovered handprints of someone trying to climb aboard.”
“And above all….”
Jenok took a shaky breath and finished his words with difficulty.
“The young master was with her….”
If she had been alone, who knew, but Rowena Philone was not a woman who would drag along the son she cherished more than her own life on such a dangerous adventure.
Clink. Instead of answering, Killian, who had been gulping down his drink, threw the glass he held directly at the wall. Jenok glanced at the fragments shattered beyond repair and stammered on.
“A long time has passed. We have mobilized all the fishermen and young men and continue rescue operations, but the fact that we still haven’t found them….”
“No.”
Killian sprang up from the couch with bloodshot eyes and took something out from inside his coat.
“That woman can’t be dead.”
“….”
What he took out was none other than the note from Rowena that the Regent’s son had handed over.
I wish I could turn back time.
What had it meant? He glared at the note with bloodshot eyes and recalled the woman who had insolently looked up at him inside the underground tomb.
No, the woman he remembered was not only that.
Rowena, eating on the white sand beach with an unfamiliar expression. Rowena, gazing at the island with an aloof face on the calm night sea. Rowena, sitting gracefully in a chair under an elm tree to have her portrait painted. Rowena, revealing the inside of her hard shell, if only for a moment, at the fox hunt upon hearing news of his engagement.
The woman’s face, laughing, angry, and sorrowful before him, overlapped and scattered dozens, hundreds of times.
So too his son, to whom he had never once called by name. When he tried to call the name aloud, only a hoarse sound came out, as though someone were throttling his throat. With a clouded face, Jenok approached Killian, who had unconsciously clutched his own throat with both hands.
“Your Grace….”
“She must be hiding somewhere very thoroughly. Hiding and laughing at me.”
“….”
Jenok clenched and unclenched his fist, damp with sweat. It was not a state where words would get through. His master, who had only ever accepted evidence and truth, was rejecting all reason for the first time. Though he acted outwardly no different from six months ago, only a bit gaunt and haggard, he was slowly crumbling like a cold, beautiful marble statue. From one unseen corner, he was gradually breaking apart.
At the suffocatingly cold voice, Jenok opened and closed his mouth several times, then let his hunched shoulders drop.
“…There is one thing I must show you.”
“What is it?”
“It is the painter. The one who had been commissioned to paint Lady Rowena’s portrait. He says it was just completed yesterday.”
Killian narrowed his brow as if tracing his memory for a moment, then gave a slight nod. Jenok brought in the painter who had been waiting behind the door. Following the painter’s respectful greeting, two servants entered. They carefully carried a large portrait wrapped in white cloth.
“Uncover it.”
“Yes.”
At Jenok’s signal, the painter gave the order. The two silent servants pulled away the white cloth.
The moment his eyes met the woman in the portrait, Killian unknowingly took a step closer. The painter, intimidated by a momentum that looked ready to burn the painting on the spot, paled and pleaded with Jenok for help. Jenok approached from behind Killian and carefully called to him.
“…Your Grace?”
The sound scattered meaninglessly into the air. His blue gaze was nailed solely to a certain woman looking this way and smiling.
She was unmistakably a woman he knew well, yet a stranger. Her eyelids were painted red, and her lips were a vivid color as if aflame. Rowena was not a woman who wore such heavy makeup. Unless it was an absolutely necessary occasion, she did not wear such makeup.
It was a face so vivid that even with eyes closed, she seemed right before him. A round, small forehead, slightly upturned, thin and elegant eyebrows, long and delicate eyelashes that spread softly like a fan, green irises sparkling like the fresh greenery of midsummer, soft golden hair flowing with luster as if woven from individual strands of gold thread.
He wanted to tear apart the portrait of this stranger at once, yet he could not move at all before the face smiling at him. A smile that seemed relieved, as if she had let everything go, somehow aloof and grim.
“Though Lady Rowena is supremely beautiful and elegant, I always felt something was lacking. As if she were the existence of an illusion that did not exist. It was like looking at a doll well-dressed and adorned by another’s hands. So for a long time, I anguished and anguished. For I am a painter who paints people, whether ugly or beautiful, not a painter who paints beautiful dolls.”
To the two men gazing at his work in a daze, the painter carefully laid out his opinion.
“But that day… the moment I saw her, it was as though lightning struck my mind, all doubts were resolved, and at the same time, I wanted to pick up the brush I had set down. To the extent that I didn’t know such intense desire remained in me.”
“…So.”
Killian, who had been staring intently at the portrait, cut off the painter’s words with a hoarse voice and asked.
“What do you think?”
“I truly don’t know if I should say this, but….”
Much was contained in that short question. The painter swallowed hard as if moistening his throat and answered slowly.
“Though she is a heretic, that day, at that moment, Lady Rowena was like Harmenia, the goddess of life of Crotia. I felt a spirit more dynamic and full of vitality than anything else.”
Killian took his eyes from the portrait and slowly shifted his gaze toward the painter. It was a demand to explain further.
“The goddess Harmenia is one who, when the time comes, burns herself to be reborn. She revives the whole earth with her blood and flesh, and is reborn and grows again. And when she reaches her most beautiful season, she sacrifices herself again for humankind.”
“….”
“According to the scripture of Crotia, the goddess Harmenia means eternal purity, nobility, sacrifice, the cycle of life. Everything. Namely….”
The painter glanced sidelong at his masterpiece with pride, squared his shoulders, and said.
“It is called ‘Another Beginning.’”
* * *
“Mom!”
Damian, riding a pony in the snow-covered field, called out to Rowena in a loud voice. Rowena, who had been walking along the fence, turned her head toward her son.
“Damian!”
He was far away, but his face came into view at a glance. The expression that had somehow been intimidated until just six months ago had changed before she knew it into a bright and cheerful one.
Damian was smart and took after her, a positive child. Even in a foreign land where words did not reach, he quickly learned the language of this country and conversed freely with the mansion’s servants.
As Rowena looked at Damian with pride, pleased that he could now even ride a pony, someone approached and placed a hand on her shoulder. At the familiar scent, Rowena smiled and turned her head.
“Loren.”
“Diana.”
The noblewoman with a gentle impression was the wife of Viscount Senes, the master of the Crotia region to whom the mother and daughter were indebted.
Rowena recalled the day she first met the lady before her. It was after escaping Rufus Island.
The beginning had been Jeremy’s plan.
“It turns out that Rufus Island has a day when typhoons sweep through once every three or four years. It happens during the off-season, and since it’s such a rare occurrence, only the old fishermen know about it through word of mouth. I investigated all the weather for the last ten years and drew up statistics. I can’t know the exact date, but it’s certain to be around June or July.”
“Then what do I need to do?”
“We need to call people to ‘witness’ our accident, and before the weather turns severe, we have to take a boat far out. And when I give the signal, we all jump into the sea together.”
It was a dangerous plan. At first, Rowena opposed it. She could never put Damian in danger. For the first time, a fierce argument went back and forth.
“This is the only chance. If not now, it won’t work.”
“But…!”
“You’ll live your whole life beside the Duke like a puppet. And Damian….”
“….”
“If he finds out you’ve been hiding that he’s my son all this time, what do you think that man will do?”
Jeremy had the face of someone who would not back down a single step. Seeing Rowena’s eyes shaking helplessly, he turned his face toward her.
“To live a new life, you must take on a certain amount of risk. And Damian is not as weak as you think.”
If Jeremy hadn’t been exceptionally skilled at swimming since his youth, and if he hadn’t persuaded her to the end, she would never have accepted.
Though it was something long prepared for, swimming in the sea as it began to rage was dangerous and difficult. Thanks to Jeremy embracing and leading Damian, Rowena was able to reach the destination to the end.
Boarding the boat of an outsider Jeremy had recruited, they stayed in a warehouse on the other side of the island for a day. The three took advantage of the attention focused on the front sea to hide their bodies in empty wine barrels and escape Rufus Island.
The moment they parted with Jeremy was right before boarding the smuggling ship heading to a foreign country.
“This is as far as I go.”
“Uncle….”
“Three people moving is too conspicuous. I also have matters to wrap up, so I can’t leave this place.”
Rowena nodded with tear-filled eyes. Jeremy, gazing at his nephew affectionately, briefly kissed Rowena’s forehead.
“Write to me anytime. At the inn I told you about, under the alias ‘Diana.’ Understood?”
The farewell was brief, and Rowena boarded the smuggling ship holding the exhausted Damian in her arms. The suffocating tension only eased after the ship departed.
“Here, unless it’s truly necessary, you must not walk around or say a single word. Understood, Damian?”
“Until when?”
“Until the boat reaches a foreign port. For five days.”
Thankfully, perhaps because Killian’s hand did not reach the small rural port, they were able to arrive safely in Crotia, a small country.