Chapter 100
He left the mansion without delay and headed for the charnel house.
Sure enough, the slightly ajar door of the charnel house proved that a visitor was present. Ezekiel hurried down the stairs leading underground. Heavy footsteps collided with the stone walls, drawing out a long echo.
“Lizan.”
It was just as he had expected. The girl with long, chestnut-brown hair hanging loose was there. He saw her from behind, crouched on the cold floor, placing a single winter flower atop Lady Serba’s coffin. She must have plucked a flower from the garden before coming to the charnel house.
“Oh, um…….”
Anna, who had already guessed the visitor’s identity upon hearing the footsteps, opened her mouth falteringly with a nervous expression.
“We helped her and brought her here. Rose—oh, right, Lizan was a bit shocked to hear the news about Lady Serba……. But she’s ill, so she didn’t seem to have the strength to attend the funeral. Since there wouldn’t be another time to pay her respects to Lady Serba if not today, and we didn’t plan to stay long either…….”
Listening to the excuse that bordered on rambling, Ezekiel looked down at Lizan. The woman, already gaunt and hunched over, seemed all the smaller and weaker.
If she was going to come out, she should have at least wrapped herself in a blanket; even as she descended into the underground charnel house, surrounded by stone walls and colder than elsewhere, she was dressed exactly as she had been in the bedroom. No matter how much they had dressed her in winter clothes, they were merely indoor garments. Moreover, her feet, which had been haphazardly shoved into ill-fitting shoes that belonged to someone else, were bare and painfully pale.
He swallowed a sigh.
“……Aren’t you cold?”
The doctor had said so—that Lizan had likely endured life in the internment camp despite suffering blood loss from her miscarriage and pain from poison, thanks in large part to her life at Milena Girls’ School.
Sielsa, where Milena Girls’ School was located, was extremely close to the northern border and counted among the most frigid regions within Astrie.
Even from what he had personally experienced in Derosa, winter in the north arrived not one step but several steps earlier than in other regions. While the mild west and south were abuzz with the joys of harvest, the north was often beset by blizzards and severe cold. Lizan had spent several years living in such winter land. Thus, the doctor had said that she seemed to have survived by unknowingly developing a constitution that endured and withstood the cold.
Nevertheless, in Ezekiel’s eyes, Lizan—pale and drained of blood—looked infinitely colder than anyone else present. He took off his outer garment first and draped it over her shoulders.
“I’ll take Lizan back upstairs.”
He issued a dismissal. Anna shuffled backward, fidgeting. Polina looked as though she had something to say, but sensing the subtle atmosphere, she returned with Anna.
Even after her companions had disappeared, Lizan merely traced the tightly shut coffin lid with careful fingers. Watching her movements, which somehow seemed reluctant to part, Ezekiel gently stopped her.
“You mustn’t open it.”
Could it be that she wanted to open the coffin lid and see her face to exchange a final farewell?
Ordinary funerals proceeded that way. The ties formed in life would look upon the deceased’s last appearance and remember them for a long, long time, each leaving a flower to lavishly adorn the inside of the coffin.
But Lady Serba had died from a gunshot. The agony of the moment the bullet struck had remained as a distorted expression. Moreover, several days had already passed since her death, so the condition of her body was surely far from the peaceful visage of someone who had just passed.
“Serba would be grateful just for you remembering her and coming to say goodbye. She always wanted to see you.”
Come to think of it, Lady Serba had adored Lizan from the very beginning. The fact that he had never once doubted Lizan was in no small part due to Lady Serba having thought so highly of her.
She must have seen at a glance that she was a person good at heart.
His subordinates had called her actions deceit, but the price Lizan had paid was far too devastating to dismiss with a simple word like deceit.
She was a woman who, tormented by the prickings of her conscience, had striven somehow to atone, and ultimately threw herself to his vengeance. And he had imprisoned Lizan, who had been prepared to die quietly, in an internment camp and stripped away everything precious about her, piece by piece.
And so, nothing remained for her. Everything had been ruined.
The fingers that had been gently brushing the coffin halted. Staring blankly at Lizan’s shadowed profile, Ezekiel suddenly felt a chill within him.
Was grief for Lady Serba the only thing in her heart right now? Or could it be that, in Lady Serba’s death and the coffin holding her body, she was seeing her family dragged off to the internment camp, their fates unknown?
Immediately after rescuing Lizan, he had sent people to find the whereabouts of her parents imprisoned in the northern internment camp. The problem was that there was no way to know whether her parents were still alive, or if they were, in what state.
The northern internment camp was notorious even among all the camps in the nation for its uniquely harsh and grueling conditions. It was a place where those who had succumbed to the bitterest winter cold were buried frequently.
Even those accustomed to northern winters like Lizan would find it hard to endure naked, and her parents were retainers of the Valdema main house with no particular immunity to the cold.
It was already out of the question for them to return in good health. He could only hope that they were at least clinging to life, and if he wished for more, that their limbs were intact.
Only then could he dare to speak of good news. To see Lizan’s face relieved of worry would be incomparably wonderful.
“You’ll catch a cold if you stay here. Let’s finish the farewell and go up.”
Her fingertips had turned purple, curled from the cold rising from the coffin. Reminded of how her extremities had been bluish and frozen the entire time she was imprisoned in the camp, Ezekiel could endure it no longer and raised Lizan to her feet.
Only then did he realize his mistake. He shouldn’t have touched her unexpectedly; in his haste, he had slipped up.
It hadn’t been long since he’d noticed that Lizan flinched every time his hand touched her. At first, he had dismissed it, thinking she was still a patient unable to leave her sickbed and thus sensitive to small stimuli. But as he helped her with her meals and tended to her bedding, watching her closely, Lizan’s signs were strange. In moments when their bodies brushed carelessly, she seemed excessively tense, and at times she even appeared to stop breathing momentarily.
Troubled by why she would be so frightened even by something as simple as helping her grip a spoon properly or tidying her disheveled hair over the pillowcase, Ezekiel slowly reflected on his own actions.
It was harrowing. He had kicked the stomach of Lizan, who had swallowed poison, and struck away her hands as she begged and pleaded for her family’s lives. On the day he interrogated her true name, even when she couldn’t speak, he kicked a pebble at her and forced her to write. He could vividly see her curled up in pain, clasping the pebble with trembling hands to trace the strokes of her name. And in the Derosa mansion, when Lizan—walking the corridor blindfolded—had unintentionally bumped into him, he had ruthlessly shoved her to the floor.
Except for the period when she had firmly established herself as “Rose,” he had consistently been savage and cruel toward her. Having been struck by a soldier’s strength, it must have hurt terribly. It must have been miserable, frightening, and lonely.
The Lizan of the past might have endured his cruelty out of guilt, but the Lizan of now surely had no heart left to endure.
Memories rose one after another, clawing at him, and his stomach churned with bitterness. In the end, that day, Ezekiel had to swallow Rodarnum to quell his burning heart.
“Let’s go.”
At his urging, Lizan silently took a step. The moment she did, the oversized shoe slipped on her foot and flopped noisily. The sight was so perilous his heart lurched. If she was going to borrow shoes, she should have chosen a sturdy pair in her size, yet for some reason she had sought out the most worn and shabby ones available. It was a miracle she hadn’t slipped coming down the stone stairs without railings. Anna and Polina must have gone through considerable trouble supporting Lizan, who lacked even the strength to hold herself up.
“Wait a moment.”
Before scooping her up into his arms, he quickly added a word.
“It will only be for a moment. Just until we get up the stairs.”
So loose were they that both shoes fell off with a clatter and tumbled back down the stairs as they ascended. Lizan cast a blank gaze after the shoes that had vanished in an instant, but he pretended not to notice.
The weight and volume curled in his arms were truly wretched. It was the result of his own doing, day after day, as her blood dried and her flesh wasted away.
He wished she could remain in his embrace a little longer, but upon reaching ground level, Lizan moved her legs. It was a signal to put her down now.
He looked around. The ground surrounding the charnel house happened to be bare earth frozen into a thin layer of winter frost.
Ezekiel wrapped one arm around her to steady her and first took off his own shoes, placing them neatly aside.
“Step on the tops of my feet. Can you stand?”
Lizan looked at him somewhat puzzled and ignored his words, trying to step onto the bare ground. Ezekiel quickly slipped the tops of his feet beneath hers. Only then did her pale white feet awkwardly step on his insteps.
“Put on the shoes. I’ll let go once you’re in them, so don’t rush. Slowly.”
He held her waist tightly and supported her until Lizan pushed her feet into his shoes. There was a slight hesitation, but her small feet soon slipped one by one into the shoes.
His shoes were even larger than the pair belonging to some unknown person that Lizan had come out wearing. It was unavoidable given the difference in their builds. Still, the soles were sturdy and thick, so her feet wouldn’t be cold.
Ezekiel crouched down and tied the laces tightly so the shoes wouldn’t slip and flop.