[Episode 32] - A Promise with the Queen Dowager
“Have a drink with your daughter-in-law, Your Highness.”
“...Have you gone mad?”
At my suggestion that we drink together, the Queen Dowager frowned, turned her head away, and waved her hand as if telling me to get lost. I did my best to ignore the gesture and took the empty seat beside her.
Ignoring the Queen Dowager, who was glaring at me with every possible expression of displeasure, I sat down, poured into an empty glass the wine she was said to particularly like, and offered it to her.
The Queen Dowager looked at the label on the wine, clicked her tongue, then accepted the glass I handed her and drank. Watching her, I filled my own glass as well and took a sip.
As the bitter, sharp liquid scraped down my throat, I couldn’t help but grimace. This wine... why was it so bitter? It didn’t taste good to begin with, but above all, it was incredibly bitter.
“Does it taste bad?”
“...To be honest, I don’t think it suits my taste.”
“What would someone who doesn’t even know the taste of liquor...”
Perhaps displeased that I knew nothing of alcohol, the Queen Dowager tossed back the wine I had poured her and let out a hmph through her nose.
Unlike me, she emptied her glass of this bitter, awful-tasting liquor without a single change in expression, and I couldn’t help but admire her.
As I was forcing myself to sip from my wineglass in an effort to empty it, the Queen Dowager stared at me for a moment, then downed her wine in one gulp and let out a deep sigh.
“...I hear you ordered silence regarding the First Queen’s corpse found in His Majesty’s room.”
“Yes? Ah, yes. I thought nothing good would come of needless rumors, so I did.”
At the Queen Dowager’s words, I recalled the time I had entered that shut-in layabout’s room. Aurora’s corpse, sprawled beneath the canvas. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen Aurora after she became a fairy since then.
Had she died, just as Sylphy said? As long as she didn’t cause me any harm, I didn’t really want to care. Whether the two of them truly became one, or whether she left for somewhere else out of shock over the king’s death.
The Queen Dowager stared at her empty wineglass and let out a heavy sigh.
“...Yes. A rumor that the king had gone mad and was doing this and that with the queen’s corpse would bring nothing good. Thank you for handling it well.”
“Pardon?”
For a moment, I thought I had misheard and asked again, but the Queen Dowager looked at me with an expression of utter disgust and held out her empty glass. It meant: stop talking and pour.
“It seems your ears are blocked.”
“Hehe, no. I heard you clearly.”
As I answered while pouring her wine, the Queen Dowager clicked her tongue. I felt like I was starting to understand what kind of person she was. Was alcohol the answer after all when it came to getting close to someone?
As we quietly drank, the Queen Dowager’s maid said that drinking without any snacks would damage the body and brought out several things to nibble on. Cheese, sausages, and other snacks that paired reasonably well with wine.
When I promptly picked up a piece of cheese and put it in my mouth, the Queen Dowager, as if one compliment had to be followed by one insult, clicked her tongue and glared at me.
“Putting that aside, why did you act like that during the meeting?”
“Pardon?”
“You were so different from usual, groveling before those old men, it was pitiful to watch. You should have done at least half of what you do to me.”
The Queen Dowager picked up a snack, put it in her mouth, and chewed, looking at me as if annoyed. Even if she asked why I had acted that way during the meeting... honestly, I hadn’t known what the correct way to behave was back then.
No matter how I made excuses, nothing worked on the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Pressured by him as he nitpicked everything, opposed everything, and denied everything, I had no choice but to appeal to emotion.
And from the start, in a meeting that was to decide my treatment, there was no way I could behave rudely toward the ministers, the central figures of this country and members of the Council of Elders.
Before the Queen Dowager, they were gentle puppies,
but before me, they were like beasts.
“...How could I possibly do so in a place where the central figures of this country had gathered? Your Highness overestimates me far too much. I believe I properly understood my place there.”
“Are you saying that groveling before nobles is the place of one who is royalty? Are you saying that the place of this country’s queen is to say she will become a maid and lick my feet?”
Royalty...
Certainly, “Vivian” was royalty of this country.
But she had not even received the royal family’s surname, and the rumors about her were poor. To be honest, I doubted there were any people in this royal castle who considered me royalty and followed me as such, aside from the maids under me.
I took a long drink of the bitter wine and grimaced at the taste. Seeing that, the Queen Dowager clicked her tongue in irritation and turned her head away from me.
“You came back from the dead only to throw away your self-respect? How truly unsightly.”
“Y-Your Highness?”
Startled by the words “unsightly,” I turned to look at the Queen Dowager, but she would not look at me. I had thrown away my self-respect... Then what on earth was I supposed to have done there?
They had already made up their minds to drive me out, and they had more than enough reason to expel me from the royal palace. Even I thought it would have been stranger if I hadn’t been driven out.
Hadn’t even the Queen Dowager tried to expel me in that meeting? Saying she would send a letter to the temple, saying she would give me property. And yet now she was suddenly saying I had thrown away my self-respect, that I was unsightly...
Was it because the tipsiness was starting to rise in me?
For some reason, emotion welled up in my chest, and in a choked voice, I asked the Queen Dowager,
“Then what would you have had me do there? Everyone joined forces to drive me out. What good would it have done for me to scream and shout at them and fight back?”
“What did you say?”
“You said I threw away my self-respect, did you not? Yes, I came back from the brink of death and threw it away. If it means I can remain by the princess’s side even a little longer, I intend to throw away whatever self-respect I have left as well.”
As I blurted out those words, it felt as though my throat had tightened, so I gulped down the wine left in my glass. At that instant, my head spun, and when I clutched it, the Queen Dowager looked at me with a bitter expression.
“...You said you wanted to become someone the princess could rely on.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Then start by picking up the self-respect you threw away. Even if it has been decided that you will leave the royal castle, until that time comes, you are this country’s ‘queen.’ Never again show yourself groveling before nobles.”
“......”
“What do you think the princess will learn from seeing you as you are now? Do you intend to let her learn from a queen whose self-respect has hit rock bottom, groveling and saying she will become a maid? Or do you intend to raise the princess as a maid?”
Tsk. The Queen Dowager clicked her tongue and stared at her empty wineglass with a bitter expression.
At the Queen Dowager’s words, I felt as though I had been struck in the head with a hammer. From the shock, I realized what I had done wrong and let out a hollow laugh.
Because I hadn’t received the royal family’s surname, because I would be driven out of this place anyway, because the rumors were bad and no one thought of Vivian as a queen. Had I buried myself too deeply in such thoughts?
Lost in too many useless thoughts, I seemed to have forgotten the most important thing. So fixated on staying beside the princess, I had completely failed to consider what the princess would learn by watching me.
As I filled the Queen Dowager’s empty wineglass, I smiled bitterly.
“...My thoughts were short-sighted.”
“Tsk. As long as you know.”
The Queen Dowager let out a deep sigh and said no more. I did not ask anything else either, merely raising my glass with her. Perhaps because the night breeze blowing over us was cool, a laugh escaped me without my realizing it.
After some time had passed, when the night wind had carried away a fair amount of the intoxication, the Queen Dowager cleared her throat and looked at me.
“Are you preparing properly for the princess’s birthday party next month?”
“The princess finds dancing difficult, but... aside from that, preparations are going well. The dressmaker Your Highness sent said the dress would arrive soon. Once the dress comes, I will visit you together with the princess.”
“That is enough. I can see the princess in her dress at the party.”
I had thought the princess’s birthday party might be postponed or canceled because of the king’s death, but the Queen Dowager did not postpone it. Rather, she firmly declared that precisely because it was a time like this, it should be prepared more magnificently than ever.
Now that I thought about it, there was already only a little over a month left until the princess’s birthday party. I was wondering what to do, since the princess’s dancing remained the same, when—
The Queen Dowager met my eyes and abruptly said to me,
“You are to name the princess.”
“.....Pardon?”
For a moment, I nearly dropped the wineglass I was holding.
Me, name the princess? Since the Queen Dowager had naturally taken up the regency, I had assumed she would be the one to give the princess her name. As I stared blankly at her, the Queen Dowager sighed softly and continued.
“What, do you dislike it? Are you planning to dirty my ears yet again with self-deprecating nonsense like, ‘How could someone like me dare to give the princess a name’?”
“N-No. That is not—”
“Not, my foot. Tsk.”
In truth, I couldn’t say it really wasn’t. The moment I heard it, I had wondered whether it was truly all right for me to give the princess a name.
And I knew how much the princess wanted her own “name.” Was it really all right for someone like me to give her something she longed for so desperately?
As I hesitated, the Queen Dowager clicked her tongue, looked at me as if I were pathetic, and shook her head. As if I were truly pathetic for still acting like I had no self-respect even after she had said all that.
“Originally, a child’s name is something given by their ‘parents.’”
“......”
“In my eyes, the princess’s current ‘parent’ seems to be you, not me.”
“I am... the princess’s ‘parent’...?”
...I had intended to be satisfied with simply being in charge of the princess’s education.
I had not intended to become the princess’s parent. No matter how much the princess yearned for the parental love she had never once received, I wasn’t confident that I could provide it for her.
I only wanted to become someone the princess could rely on. In my mind, the category of “someone she could rely on” had not included “parent.” I had thought of it more as something like a friend, or a teacher...
As I faltered, the Queen Dowager set the glass she was holding down on the table.
Thwack!
She flicked my forehead. At the sudden pain, I looked at the Queen Dowager with question marks practically floating above my head, and she glared at me as though thoroughly fed up.
“You hopeless thing. You are practically begging to be beaten. You said you wanted to be someone the princess could rely on. Was that not the same as saying you would become the princess’s ‘parent’?”
“I-I did not mean...”
“The only people a child can ‘believe in and rely on’ are their parents. The moment you thought that way, it was no different from saying you would become the princess’s parent. Stop thinking useless thoughts and think of the princess’s name.”
“C-Could you at least give me some time to think...? Even if you suddenly tell me to think of the princess’s name, nothing comes to mind...”
Actually, there was something, but...
I cupped my stinging forehead with both hands and pleaded with the Queen Dowager. At that, the Queen Dowager let out a small sigh and drew a firm line.
“I will give you two weeks. Before then, come to me and tell me the princess’s name.”
“I will do so...”
When I bowed my head, the Queen Dowager waved her hand at me, telling me she had nothing more to say and that I should hurry up and get out of there. Thinking I would only get thumped on the head again if I stayed any longer, I quickly rose from my seat.
Just as I was about to leave the terrace and turned the doorknob, the Queen Dowager called me to a stop.
“Queen.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Make one ‘promise’ with me.”
At the sudden word “promise,” I tilted my head, and the Queen Dowager rested her chin on her hand for a moment as if considering what to say, then glanced at me and continued.
“Care for the princess with enough affection as a parent that she can forget the wounds His Majesty and the First Queen gave her. So that she never cries as she did at the funeral again. Can you do that?”
At that word, “promise,” I simply smiled.
Rather than a “promise,” it was the “request” of a guardian. I did not know whether I could do well as the princess’s parent, but what I had to do for the princess remained unchanged.
“I will do my best to do so.”
“...Yes, then that will do. You may go now.”
With those words as our last, I bowed to the Queen Dowager and slipped out of the terrace. Even after sending me away, the Queen Dowager seemed intent on drinking more, busy filling her empty glass.
When I stepped outside the terrace, the Queen Dowager’s lady-in-waiting looked at me with an inexplicably flustered expression. Then she hurried over to my side and whispered in a small voice by my ear.
“...? What? The princess has shut herself in...?”
*
After the funeral ended, during the time Vivian entered the meeting.
The princess was walking down the corridor with a sorrowful expression, heading for her room. She still could not truly believe that Father had died, and it felt as though she were walking through a dream, her feet floating above the floor.
As she walked down the corridor, she heard the maids chatting at the far end. The princess, who usually received sweets from the maids, unconsciously turned her steps toward them.
When the princess approached the maids gossiping at the end of the corridor, they did not even notice she had come near and kept talking without pause.
“In the end, do you think Her Majesty the Queen will leave the palace?”
“Well... won’t she? She never received a ‘castle’... The head maid said this has happened several times in history. Whenever it did, in cases like this, it ultimately...”
“To think I’d feel sorry about Her Majesty the Queen leaving the palace... I would never have thought this way in the past. Right?”
“I know what you mean... wait...?”
The maid turned her head at the gaze she felt from below. Then, seeing the princess standing behind her, her face gone deathly pale, the maid could not close her mouth.
The maid who had been chattering beside her also fell silent at the princess’s expression, unable to say a word. She came to her senses and tried somehow to make an excuse, but the princess spoke before she could.
“What does that mean?”
“P-Princess... That’s not...”
The princess looked at the maids with empty eyes. With Father’s death, she had no grief left to feel, and faced with this hollow emotion, she did not know what expression she should make.
She simply opened her eyes wide and looked up at the maids, her gaze asking whether what she had just heard was true. The maids, not knowing what to do, clapped their hands over their mouths, but the princess had already heard their words clearly.
The princess lowered her head limply, turned her back on the maids, and trudged toward her room.
“Her Majesty the Queen is leaving...”
As the princess repeated those words, a single tear ran down her cheek. At the tears she had thought would no longer come after crying all day, and at the emotions welling up inside her, the princess ran into her room and locked the door.
She told them not to let anyone into the room.
She said she would never leave this place again.
That was what the princess declared.