Episode 51
Ezekail asked back, his tone sharpening.
“We’ve been focusing on poisoning in the treatment all this time, and now you’re saying there’s a new cause for the blindness?”
“Of course the poison must have had some effect. But that woman did not hold your eyes open and pour an overflowing amount of poison into them, Major. In truth, I believe the amount that actually seeped into your eyes was not great. Even so, it was toxic enough to require a long period of detoxification. It was fortunate it entered through the eyes. Had it been mixed into your food, Major, you likely would not be sitting here now.”
Dr. Briman phrased, in a roundabout way, the future in which he might have been poisoned to death. Even so, there was no one present who failed to understand his meaning.
Creeeak. All of a sudden, the backrest of the bench tilted backward, and his body pitched with it. Ezekail reflexively tightened his waist to steady himself and groped over his shoulder.
“Ah……. I’m sorry.”
Rose apologized in a trembling voice.
She must have been terribly shocked; even as Ezekail stroked the back of her hand, she still could not loosen the hand that was gripping the backrest so tightly it had tipped over.
Then again, she had just heard that he might have been murdered by drinking poison, so of course she would be shaken. Was Rose not the woman who had saved him, even at the cost of injuring her own body?
“There’s no need to be upset, Rose.”
Ezekail comforted his lover.
“I’m going to pay them back exactly as much as I suffered. I intend to let them taste that poison themselves, too. Only then will they realize whom they tried to kill, and how.”
Because the person listening was softhearted Rose, he could not reveal his true feelings outright and softened his words. If he had been in front of his subordinates from the 37th Regiment, not only Ezekail himself but men like Monkam and Feder would have drawn forth a far more honest anger.
Despite his attempt at consideration, Rose did not seem particularly calmer.
“Dear me, do I not seem reliable? You’re trembling so much.”
From now on, he would have to choose his words more gently.
Carefully, so Rose would not be frightened or startled, like a spring breeze.
Bringing Rose in front of him and soothing her, Ezekail resumed the conversation that had briefly stopped.
“Because of the pain from the poison, I imagine the Major rubbed his eyes roughly or kept clawing at them for a time, did he not?”
Ezekail nodded in agreement. Dr. Briman continued his explanation.
“The surface of the eyes was already wounded by the poison, and strong external force was applied on top of that. So what I meant was that it would be difficult to say the current blindness is entirely the poison’s fault. The pain caused as the poison penetrated, and the strong external force applied in an attempt to suppress that pain, clouded the eyeballs. That is the final cause of the blindness.”
“Then what happens now?”
They had barely solved one problem, only for another to arise. He had spent the spring escaping opium and alcohol addiction, and the entire summer detoxifying that damned poison, but there was no telling how long this next trouble would take.
He was in no mood to find stability, but Ezekail tried to maintain his composure.
Rose came to her senses belatedly as well. In the past, she had been the one to comfort Ezekail when he grew agitated, but today the two of them had changed roles. The more he recovered the past self he had lost, and the more Rose was reminded of “that woman,” the more it became so.
Recalling the conversation she had almost missed while her mind was scattered, Rose studied Dr. Briman’s expression.
Her own embarrassingly obvious true feelings, and the frustrated state of mind Ezekail must be experiencing, were both so familiar that there was no need to dwell on them.
At the moment, what she was most curious about was Dr. Briman’s thoughts.
How did he feel? Was he merely troubled by a treatment that would be delayed without any promise of an end?
Or perhaps did he want to give up?
Their eyes met.
To her surprise, the moment Dr. Briman met Rose’s gaze, he smiled with a face that looked far more at ease. His expression was much brighter than on the day he had first been half-forced to take on the treatment.
She knew by instinct.
There was a way.
And it was a way he was more confident in than detoxification.
“We operate.”
Dr. Briman answered at once.
“Operate?”
Rose asked back in astonishment.
Most of the surgery she had heard of was amputation. It was a method of cutting painful parts out of the body, like sawing off rotting arms or legs, or pulling teeth that ached. That was why villages after war were full of wounded soldiers missing an arm or a leg.
“Rather than an uncertain treatment like detoxification, surgery is preferable. At the very least, one can distinguish with the naked eye between the normal and abnormal parts of the body.”
Even so, Dr. Briman declared it clearly.
“You mean you will operate on the Major’s eyes?”
“Yes, that is correct.”
Rose, whose imagination had run wild on its own, was left speechless for a moment, so Ezekail spoke in her place.
“What kind of operation is it?”
“It is an operation in which the pupil is precisely incised and the clouded portion is extracted.”
Rose drew in a breath. Even after hearing the explanation, she could not grasp what kind of operation it was.
“In other words, we will be operating on the inside of the eye.”
Was there such a surgery? It was the first she had heard of it.
“Is that possible?”
“We must bring someone for whom it is possible.”
Only then did Ezekail recall that Dr. Briman had not said, “I will operate,” but, “We will operate.”
“You will not be performing the surgery yourself, Doctor? Who is ‘we’?”
“I am advanced in years, and the feeling in my hands is dull, so if I were to operate myself, the chance of failure would be high. An operation that handles such a localized area is more likely to succeed when performed by a doctor with sharp eyes and delicate hands. And I know the most capable doctor in this field. She is young and exceptionally skilled. If she performs the operation and I assist at her side, you may hold on to hope.”
After being silent for a while, Ezekail asked in a low voice.
“If I undergo the operation, will my sight return?”
“I trust that she is a doctor with the ability to make that happen.”
“Even so, I did not expect you to recommend surgery in the end.”
“As a doctor, I am merely proposing the method with the highest possibility of treatment. You have suffered hardships beyond words until now, Major.”
Dr. Briman repeated with conviction.
“Then now, it is time for you to open your eyes.”
It was a moment when light and darkness crossed.
9. Goodbye, Rose
“Master, I have obtained the red diamond you instructed me to find.”
The good news continued one after another. This time, Mrs. Serva came to Ezekail with welcome tidings.
“It is a large, vivid red diamond. They say it was part of a collection once owned by the royal family of a duchy that has now vanished into history. Because its color is so clear and rare, many people had their eyes on it, so apparently it was hidden away instead of being put up for auction right away, for fear of theft. When word got out that it would appear in this auction, an enormous number of people gathered, and we won it at the highest auction price. You told me not to mind the cost, but the price truly was so staggering that I simply could not avoid telling you.”
Mrs. Serva let out a small groan. Even she, who had served as head housekeeper at the Valdemaera main residence and was accustomed to managing large-scale finances, seemed to have been startled by the expenditure.
Ezekail summed it up briefly.
“Well done.”
“Still, I remember carrying the young master on my back and raising you as if it were yesterday, and now here I am obtaining a diamond for your proposal. When did you grow up so much?”
Mrs. Serva, who had tossed out the joke with deep emotion, returned to a serious tone and continued her report.
“In any case, I have already arranged for a jeweler as well. But red diamonds are so rare that several of them never appear at auction at the same time. Especially not of this quality. It is unusually large for a red diamond, but diamonds lose value each time they are divided, so the jeweler says it would be far too wasteful to split it into a necklace, ring, and earrings. Since it may be too large and inconvenient to use as a single ring, he suggested dividing it in half to make a ring and a necklace, or else setting it as a necklace only.”
“I’ll have to think about that.”
“And although I sent an agent in order to conceal our identity as much as possible, to be honest, anyone with the ability to trace where the funds came from will probably be able to find out.”
“Well, that can’t be helped.”
Ezekail had not expected that an exotic jewel that had set the auction house abuzz would fall into his hands without leaving any trace. For many prestigious families, including the Valdemaera family, keeping watch over where highly valuable items flowed was itself one of their more important concerns. That was why, when a family’s fortunes declined, they paid attention to what treasures that family would put forth and fought among themselves to claim them.
In any case, it was a story unrelated to him. Neither Ezekail nor Rose was the type to spend without a plan until their family fortune declined, and they could simply leave this mansion and move elsewhere before any uninvited guests seeking the jewel appeared. Besides, even blind as he was now, he was confident he could beat down a petty thief or two.
“I hesitated over whether to tell you this or not…… but I thought it would be better for you to know.”
Mrs. Serva lowered her voice and whispered.
“Lord Akenaus also had his eye on this red diamond and attended the auction.”