Episode 3
Madam Serva seemed to have returned to that day before she knew it. To her, who had devoted her entire life to the Valdemaera family until she became a white-haired old woman, the shabby state of her young master, who had slipped into the countryside on a snowstorm-swept night to avoid people’s eyes, must have remained a shock she could hardly bear to acknowledge.
All the more so if that master had been a soldier who had flown the black flag on the battlefield, won military merit, and returned in glory.
“When you live in a remote backwater like Derosa, rumors are bound to arrive slowly. It was only after I received Lord Ezekail that I learned what had happened in Cleris. They said that because he had been away for so long fighting in the war, there was no one at the main house he could trust at all. How desperate must he have been to seek out an old woman spending the rest of her days in this distant, leftover annex estate?”
In her youth, Madam Serva had served at the main house in Cleris, then, as she grew older, had withdrawn to take charge of the mansion in Derosa. Though she was called the head housekeeper, the mansion was small compared to Cleris and had few staff to manage, making it the perfect position in which to spend quiet years.
But when a man suddenly came rolling in, she hurriedly increased the staff and even took on the role of chief attendant. It was a somewhat muddled rank, but as this was a detached residence far removed from the main house, run with only the minimum number of people, no one in the mansion particularly took issue with it.
“I heard you raised him, madam.”
Rose spoke of a story that circulated within the mansion. It was so famous it could hardly be called a rumor.
In a family of such high standing as the Valdemaeras, a noblewoman’s child-rearing was usually handled by loyal close retainers. That was why the man, who was extremely suspicious and wary of employees, trusted and depended wholly on Madam Serva alone.
“That’s right. With these hands, I fed Lord Ezekail, dressed him, held him, and lulled him to sleep.”
Madam Serva nodded.
“If only I were twenty years younger—no, even just ten—I would care for him as I did then, but now I’ve grown far too old. With these dim eyes I can’t even see his face properly, and with these legs I can’t stand for hours. In the old days, I could hold Lord Ezekail in my arms and soothe him all day without tiring at all……”
Regret gathered around the old woman’s eyes.
“He needs help now more than he ever did as a child. Truly, it is an outrage that would make heaven and earth rage. Even having old eyes that aren’t what they once were is this inconvenient—how could he possibly endure the shock of waking from a brief sleep after his victory ceremony to find that eyes that had been perfectly fine had gone blind?”
What did it feel like not to be able to see?
Rose recalled the previous night, when she had been dragged into his bed. For one very brief moment, she had shared his sight. A darkness no different whether one’s eyes were open or closed, that damp, hopeless terror.
“……Of course. It must be agony beyond imagining. It’s only natural that he can’t trust people.”
Blindness resembled the sensation of falling into the middle of a deep-blue sea. No matter where one looked, there was only pitch-black water; no matter how endlessly one flailed, there was that dizzying feeling of sinking infinitely down beneath the abyss.
A chill rose along her spine. Rose wrapped her arms around herself.
“Just what……”
Wrinkles gathered around Madam Serva’s aged eyes.
“Truly, just what sort of woman could she have been?”
Casting a vacant gaze into the air, the old woman murmured to herself.
“Have you heard about the culprit, Rose? That woman whose identity no one knows—whether she was truly an employee of the Valdemaera mansion or merely approached him pretending to be one.”
Rose silently looked at Madam Serva. The madam continued in a firm tone.
“Still, it’s obvious who was behind her.”
The man, Ezekail, had also pointed to someone behind it. Akenaus. The eldest son of the Valdemaera family, two years older than him.
“Fratricidal strife between brothers over a family is not such a rare thing. But I never imagined Lord Ezekail would be driven out in such a state. To be honest, the fact that Lord Akenaus was able to remain safely in Cleris was entirely thanks to Lord Ezekail.”
When war breaks out, men are basically conscripted by force, but there do exist a very few ways to avoid enlistment. If the family is at risk of extinction because there is no heir, or if an older or younger brother has enlisted.
The two brothers who would carry on the Valdemaera line were both young and unmarried, and since Ezekail had volunteered first and received an officer’s rank, Akenaus remained in Cleris under the pretext of guarding the main house instead of volunteering for the army.
“Lord Ezekail saw the woman’s face with his own eyes, yet because there is no way to explain it, he cannot catch her. How hellish must that feel? The culprit may be somewhere very close.”
“……Have you managed to identify the culprit at all?”
“Well, we have people out asking around. But honestly, it will be very difficult to achieve results. I left Cleris far too long ago, so even when Lord Ezekail tells me the circumstances, I cannot guess who it might be. There is also the possibility that Lord Akenaus spirited her away long ago.”
Madam Serva, who was a Valdemaera person to the bone, wore a look of discomfort, yet even so she could not bring herself to refer to Akenaus carelessly.
“I see.”
“Even if we draw a composite of the culprit, Lord Ezekail, the only witness and the victim, cannot confirm her appearance. How could we identify someone with only the information that she was a woman with brown hair?”
Brown hair was the most common color of all. Even counting only this mansion, more than half the employees likely had brown hair of one shade or another.
Rose nodded.
“That is difficult.”
“But in my opinion, that woman must certainly be quite beautiful.”
Madam Serva added in a low voice.
“If there had been a feature that stood out at once, he would have been able to point out a suspect easily. But he never said anything of the sort. If there is nothing that catches the eye, it means she is a harmonious beauty. What do you think, Rose? Don’t you agree?”
“I’m not sure. I…… don’t really know.”
It was a difficult topic to answer. Rose chose her words carefully.
“Could she not, instead, be a woman with no distinguishing features because she is very ordinary?”
“Ah, Rose, you don’t know the Valdemaera family well. The truth is, I suspect that woman may be someone who had a deep personal relationship with Lord Akenaus. In that case, she would naturally be beautiful.”
Madam Serva was almost convinced.
“You have no idea how much I regret leaving Cleris. I should have simply stayed at the main house and watched with my own eyes what sort of women came and went around Lord Akenaus.”
As though that very woman were standing before her, Madam Serva swung her cane threateningly. Then, when she lost her balance and staggered, Rose hurriedly supported her.
“Does Lord Ezekail think the same?”
“Most likely. Even if I left the main house long ago, it’s not as though I don’t know the atmosphere of the Valdemaera family, where I spent my life. Somehow, I cannot believe the employees of the main house would have harmed Lord Ezekail. The employees, more than anyone, are people whose lives depend on the rise and fall of their masters’ family. With what nerve would they betray a central figure of the Rose War?”
For a time, because of his military renown, when people spoke of the Valdemaeras of Cleris, they thought of Ezekail before Akenaus. Naturally, the employees must have hoped as well that Ezekail would take charge of the family and lead it.
Madam Serva cast a sideways glance near Rose’s head. To prevent any hair from falling onto the laundry, Rose had twisted her hair up and covered it with a headscarf.
“I saw you on the first day, Rose. To be honest, if the color of your hair that I saw that day had not been red, I might have suspected you as the culprit. You are such a pretty young lady, after all.”
Rose, flustered for a moment, asked back.
“Red…… you say?”
They had exchanged only a few words, yet her voice was terribly cracked. It seemed it would take quite some time for her vocal cords to return to normal.
“What did you say, Rose? I didn’t hear.”
“No. Nothing. I was only talking to myself.”
Madam Serva patted her shoulder with a pitying expression.
“Your voice has been in a dreadful state since earlier. It’s so hoarse that speaking looks painful for you. I can hardly hear you properly, either. You must not be feeling well, so stop for today and rest early, Rose.”
The area Madam Serva had assigned to the employees was the third floor. The first floor was where Ezekail, whose movements were inconvenient, and Madam Serva, who cared for him, mainly stayed, while the second floor was used as a storeroom for miscellaneous items such as ornaments and furniture that had once been on the first floor.
The use of lamps was entirely forbidden on the first floor, but the same prohibition did not extend to the employees’ rooms. Above all, it was impossible to cook food, clean, and boil water for bathing and laundry without using fire at all. With Madam Serva’s permission, fires were lit and lamps were turned on in places where they were needed, little by little. Moreover, even if they were not seen by their master’s eyes, the employees still had a duty to maintain a neat appearance.
However, because they had to become accustomed to the mansion’s darkness, everyone merely made a voluntary effort not to use fire whenever possible. Of course, there was also a tendency, after being submerged in darkness, to begin avoiding light more and more, since suddenly facing a strong flame made even healthy eyes sting and ache.
Rose slightly lifted the corner of her bedroom curtain. Light from outside seeped in at a suitable density. Sitting with her back to the light, she took a small glass bottle from her luggage. The clear liquid, half remaining, sloshed inside.
“Truly, just what sort of woman could she have been?”
Madam Serva’s resentment echoed in her ears.
A woman with brown hair, backed by Akenaus Valdemaera, and, according to the madam’s conjecture, a beautiful woman in a deep personal relationship with the family’s eldest son.
Some of it was right, but some of it was wrong.