Chapter 104

Episode 104

Mrs. Serva’s funeral proceeded quietly, attended by those who remembered her. Lizan could not attend, but Anna, whose life Mrs. Serva had saved, came to the funeral and cried until her eyes were swollen. Lizan, left alone in the bedroom, was entrusted to Polina.

After the funeral, Ezekiel swiftly dealt with the matters he had put off. First, he issued an order of banishment for Merlo, who had been under confinement. When he had first seized the man, he had intended to punish him far more severely, but once the whereabouts of the handy errand-runner he used so conveniently became uncertain, his father, having learned the circumstances, intervened.

“It was on my orders that he deceived you. Does that mean you intend to take revenge on me as well?”

It was not entirely wrong. The person Merlo had deceived was Ezekiel; he had not betrayed his true master, Ezekiel’s father. If anything, the fact that he had followed orders too well had become poison for both him and Lizan.

Polina’s view—that the safety of servants depended on a master with common sense—also played a part in his judgment. Besides, had not even Lizan herself tried to hide until the end that her true identity was Rose? He could not say he did not understand at all that Merlo had not had much of a choice.

Above all, his own unconscious had already left him a warning. The person who had seen Lizan with red hair and green eyes had been none other than himself.

If one were to assign fault, everyone had contributed a little.

When Merlo heard Ezekiel’s sentence—that he was to leave Claris and never even think of setting foot in Valdemaera again—he looked rather relieved. It seemed that Merlo, too, had not been prepared to remain at the main house after falling out of favor with his future master.

By the time he had hurriedly finished the backlog of work, the sun had already set. Now it was time to return to the bedroom, watch over Lizan until she properly fell asleep, and endure another long night.

However, Ezekiel could not leave the study for quite some time. The errand-runner who had left for the northern camp to bring back Lizan’s parents had returned alone.

When Ezekiel, having settled all his business, finally opened the bedroom door, Lizan had already fallen asleep. Because of his order that Lizan was never to be left alone, Anna had been keeping watch by her side in shifts with Polina. She rose without making a sound and reported in a whisper.

“She drank the sleep tea and fell asleep a little while ago. I told her the funeral ended without incident. She looked sad, but thankfully she didn’t cry. Her condition seemed all right, too. ……Then I’ll be going now.”

Anna lifted her heels and tiptoed out of the bedroom.

Ezekiel stood still and looked down at Lizan, who slept curled up uncomfortably. Even with someone she had been close to at Derosa by her side, there was no sign that Lizan’s sleeping habits would change. He wanted to straighten that rounded back and those shoulders drawn tightly inward, but he hesitated to touch her carelessly in case she woke.

……Still, it seemed she had read a little.

Ezekiel picked up the book lying facedown with its pages spread open. As if she had been reading it until just before falling asleep, Lizan, who was the type not to leave her surroundings in disorder, had unusually left the book by her pillow. This glimpse into her daily life made him feel inexplicably glad.

Come to think of it, Lizan had been the eldest sister figure at school who looked after the younger children, and even at the Derosa mansion, she had always been a diligent person, helping her colleagues or making walking paths. Yet these days, she lived almost like a still life. Even when she was somewhat more relaxed beside Anna, the moment he appeared, she rapidly lost all vitality. Each time Ezekiel sensed the change in Lizan’s mood, he was forced, against his will, to recall the message she had left behind.

Lizan’s true feelings, relayed to him by Polina, bound Ezekiel’s tongue far more than he had vaguely imagined. Once he set aside greetings such as how she was feeling today or whether she was in pain, the range of words he could say to Lizan became terribly narrow. On top of that, she was still someone for whom everyday life was burdensome, so he had to be careful with topics that were too heavy.

“Lizan, a lot of flowers have bloomed in the greenhouse. Don’t you want to see them?”

“Lizan, have you ever raised a cat or a dog?”

When Ezekiel sat beside the bed and offered invitations he had prepared by wringing out his brain, she would avert her eyes from his gaze and look far away, or twist the edge of the blanket in her hands. They were typical reactions brought on by tension and wariness. In those moments, Lizan looked like a piece of furniture placed in the wrong room.

So Ezekiel had Polina send in a few novels that would be easy to read. That way, if she needed an excuse to focus her attention somewhere whenever his presence made her uncomfortable, she could at least pretend to read.

Fortunately, the books he had chosen and sent seemed to suit her tastes. Lizan had left traces of her reading, folding pages here and there.

He felt relieved. Ezekiel slipped a bookmark between the pages and set the book on the table beside the bed.

On one side of the table sat a teacup as well, seemingly left over from what Lizan had been drinking. The bitter herbal smell of sleep tea was familiar.

These days, the sleep tea he had once gulped down like water was something Lizan drank frequently. Polina had recommended having her drink the tea often, saying that its sleep-inducing effect naturally came with a calming effect on the mind. Ezekiel, who had never felt any notable effect from sleep tea, tilted his head at Polina’s prescription and asked in return.

“No matter how much sleep tea I drank, it never worked on me. Is it different for Rose? Does lemon tea perhaps have a similar effect?”

At the Derosa mansion, Lizan had often made lemon tea and brought it to him, saying it would help with his insomnia. When that memory suddenly came to mind and he spoke without thinking, this time Polina tilted her head.

“Lemon tea, sir? This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“Is that so? Then who drinks lemon tea?”

“Usually, people who care about beautifying their skin drink it often. Ah, and people also drink it as tea when they need to use up leftover lemons. It’s easy to consume that way.”

Ezekiel nearly let out a hollow laugh at the mention of skin beauty, but his jaw soon tightened at Polina’s following explanation.

“Women who are in no position to become pregnant use the tip of the lemon for contraception, and consume the rest in food or tea.”

“Contraception? With lemons?”

“In the past, many people treated it as nonsense, but because there were people for whom it worked with such certainty, word has spread quietly these days. It is only natural, since the living proof is none other than the Major’s…….”

From that point on, he could no longer hear what came next.

He thought there truly must not have been a single moment when she had not been anxiously on edge. While serving him, she had hidden her appearance for fear her identity would be exposed, and though she had lived terrified, never knowing when the blade of revenge might fall, she had desperately concealed that fear.

That was why she must have thought it was a hopeless relationship.

While anxiously using lemons to avoid pregnancy, and trying to hide even that by making lemon tea under the pretext of his insomnia, bringing it to him, even recommending it as if nothing were wrong…….

Lizan, what on earth did you feel?

Though you tried so hard not to become pregnant, you miscarried the child of the man who had still made you pregnant, and as you heard that man’s mockery, how much must you have suffered? How much must it have hurt?

Whenever he looked down at the sleeping Lizan, he found himself dwelling on the countless days she had passed through alone. No matter how many times he turned them over, there was no end.

With a dizzying ache in his heart, Ezekiel looked over Lizan, who seemed as if she might crumble into fine dust.

Lizan, what must I do to gather you back together?

He had secretly placed his hopes on Lizan’s parents. If her family returned safely, perhaps Lizan would regain a little strength. He had thought so until just a little while ago, before the errand-runner trudged back empty-handed.

“Why did you come alone? Where are Lizan’s parents?”

“Well…….”

“Are they dead? Both of them?”

“No, sir.”

“Then?”

The errand-runner opened his mouth with great difficulty.

“When I arrived, consumption happened to be spreading through the camp. On that day alone, I saw three corpses of people who had kept coughing and vomiting blood until they died.”

“Consumption?”

Ezekiel, too, knew of consumption, called by the nickname the White Death. The illness, which made the body waste away, turned the face pale, and caused one to die while vomiting blood, was close to incurable.

“Have they contracted consumption?”

“The guards said they weren’t certain. However, since they had been in the same room as the patients, it seems there is a possibility they were infected. I thought it would be dangerous to bring them into the mansion, so for now I left them in the carriage.”

From then on, Ezekiel moved busily. He summoned a doctor to discuss how to respond and moved Lizan’s parents, who had been isolated in the carriage, to an annex where the servants did not live. In addition, he had all the doctors and servants who went in and out of the place cover their faces as a precaution against infection. The doctor, after seeing the parents from a distance, returned to Ezekiel, who was waiting for the results, and reported.

“We will have to watch them a little longer to see whether any signs of consumption appear. At present, there is nothing we can know.”

“If they truly have contracted consumption, is treatment possible?”

“Well. To tell the truth, there is no particular treatment for consumption. When you look at people who have contracted the illness and recovered, most of them were well-built and healthy to begin with…… Eating good-quality food at every meal and staying somewhere clean and warm is almost the only treatment.”

“Are they well enough to meet Lizan briefly?”

“Absolutely not. That young lady has not yet recovered her strength either. If she were to catch consumption, her life would be in danger.”

His head throbbed painfully.

He had found her parents, but he could not yet say that he had found them. If Lizan heard that the parents dragged off to the perilous northern camp might have been infected with an incurable disease, she would waste away even more than she had now.

Even imagining it made his heart ache. He needed a sedative.

Ezekiel took out the emergency medicine that had become a habit and dropped a few drops into the sleep tea Lizan had left behind. Then he reached out to snatch up the cup, only to stop short.

Lizan was right-handed, so she would have hooked her index finger through the handle of the teacup and wrapped her other hand around the cup’s rounded body.

He hooked his own right index finger through the teacup’s handle in exactly the same way and circled the cup with his left hand. Then he placed his lips over the spot where Lizan’s lips would have touched. As he tilted the cup, the bitter mixture, now cold, flowed into his mouth.

The moment Ezekiel, having drained the tea mixed with medicine in one breath, pulled the cup away from his lips—

Lizan, who had opened her eyes at some point, was silently looking at him.