Episode 76
The familiar sound of footsteps, steady and deliberate, awakened her senses. Rizan lifted her heavy eyelids.
“Every time I see you, you’re always lying down. Must be nice, having such an easy lot in life.”
A voice she had longed for reached her ears. Her heart thudded, trembling.
But unlike her chest, which reacted by reflex, Rizan could not move an inch from where she lay. The bleeding had barely stopped, but the fever had continued, leaving her unconscious and ill for two days. Without even the strength to move a finger, she merely blinked vacantly.
“……Um, that girl expelled the child in her belly the day before yesterday. She hasn’t even been able to take medicine and has just been sick ever since, so no matter what you say to her, she won’t be in any state to answer.”
Speaking on behalf of Rizan, whose injured throat left her unable to express herself, the middle-aged woman lifted the blanket slightly. She had meant to help prove it by showing the clothes still marked with traces of bleeding, but unfortunately, while Rizan had been groaning and tossing in pain, the hem of her skirt had ridden up to her thigh.
“Good heavens!”
Flustered, the middle-aged woman quickly dropped the blanket.
“A miscarriage?”
Having been greeted by such absurd words the moment he entered, Ezekail scoffed in disbelief.
“Must have been Akenaus’s child, then?”
Of course, he did not doubt the middle-aged woman’s testimony that Rizan had lost a child not long ago. The instant the blanket had been lifted, the smell of blood that had not yet fully drained away had rushed out, making it impossible not to know.
The woman’s clothes, which had already been stained here and there with blood while she was seized at the inn and dragged to the camp, were now so filthy it was difficult to tell what color they had originally been. Her face, on the other hand, was so pale it made one wonder whether she was truly alive. She had already lost her color from poisoning, and after bleeding so much, her lips were entirely blue.
Ezekail glanced at the space the prisoners had cleared on one side. The black marks on the floor of the camp were likely traces of the bleeding the prisoners were waiting to dry.
In the camp, where supplies were always scarce and space was tight, the woman lay alone, several layers of blankets pulled up to her neck, occupying the widest spot. It seemed the prisoners in the same room were rather compassionate. Though by any measure, she was not a woman whose actions merited sympathy.
For the briefest moment, and only in passing, Ezekail had noticed the scar carved into the woman’s thigh. He could not have mistaken it; her skin was so white that the scar stood out all the more clearly. He did not know every kind of scar, but the neat, straight line cut into the flesh was, nine times out of ten, a blade wound. It was very similar to the shape left by a deep bayonet thrust. He had many similar scars on his own body.
But unlike him, who had wandered from battlefield to battlefield, the woman was a civilian.
……Well, then again. Perhaps it was possible.
She was the woman who, with that refined face, had shamelessly appeared carrying poison and blinded him. She must have committed some other crime somewhere, earned someone’s grudge, and been stabbed. It was easy enough to imagine.
It seemed she had lived a sordid life, quite unlike her appearance.
Ezekail twisted the corner of his mouth.
“You must have had grand dreams with that pregnancy. What a shame you couldn’t fulfill them.”
For an instant, the woman’s eyes widened. They were already large to begin with. The faint trembling of her pupils was fully exposed.
She seemed to glance furtively at him, then lowered her eyes again. The way she bit her lip lightly and controlled her expression made it obvious she was trying somehow to hide her emotions. But before that, Ezekail had already seen the glimmer caught beneath her long lashes. Tears.
“You must really be disappointed. Enough to show tears and all.”
“…….”
The woman pressed her lips tightly together. Her already blue lips lost their color and turned white.
Without even blinking, she struggled desperately not to cry. But as if mocking her efforts, a tear slowly slid down from the corner of her eye.
That was the beginning. Without making a sound, without distorting her expression in the slightest, the woman cried like an inanimate thing.
He had never seen such weeping before.
It was a grief of extreme stillness.
Could a person cry like that? Somehow, he felt he would not be surprised even if the woman melted away into her tears and disappeared.
Ezekail closed his mouth and looked down at her. Her weeping was so very quiet that, instead, it felt clamorous.
“I come from the House of Valdemaera. I heard our Major came here. Where is he?”
The one who broke that strange atmosphere was a Valdemaera errand boy who had come looking for Ezekail. After grabbing the camp guards and asking after his whereabouts, the errand boy hurriedly looked around, found Ezekail standing before the bars of the innermost room, and rushed over.
Ezekail gave the errand boy, whose bangs were soaked with sweat, a brief glance.
Was his name Merlo?
As if he had been running back and forth between the army and the camp the entire time, asking after the whereabouts of a master who never stayed still in one place, the errand boy’s face was flushed red despite the freezing winter weather.
“Another guest has come to the House of Valdemaera. Mr. Mont instructed me to deliver the news to you quickly, Major.”
The last time, his path had crossed poorly with the errand boy’s, and Ezekail had received the news of a guest’s arrival late, causing him to fly into a rage. Because of that, it seemed the head butler had sent this errand boy today with repeated instructions that he must not be late.
The “guests” received at Valdemaera these days were women. Women who might be Rose, whom he hoped would be Rose, but who were never Rose.
He let out a short breath.
The time had come to hope, and then be disappointed again.
What was ridiculous was the way his heart pounded violently at that single word, guest, even though he knew the chances of it truly being Rose were far smaller. Merely repeating Rose’s name made him urgent and restless. At this point, he almost wondered what kind of spell she had cast on him.
Ezekail was just turning quickly toward the exit when he came to an abrupt stop.
Come to think of it, wasn’t this errand boy someone who had seen Rose in Derosa?
After his spying between the main house and Derosa was exposed, the errand boy had been terrified by the enraged Ezekail and had crept around avoiding him, so there had been no occasion to see his face. But this man was, in any case, an errand boy employed by Valdemaera.
“Did you see the visitor’s face?”
At Ezekail’s question, the errand boy was startled and waved his hands in alarm.
“Pardon? No, I did not. As a mere errand boy, I have no authority to dare enter the office and see a guest’s face without permission from His Excellency or from you, Major.”
He clicked his tongue.
“I’ll give you the authority. I’ll tell Mont as well, so from now on, wait at the mansion at all times. If a visitor comes when I’m not there, confirm their face first, then report to me.”
That would reduce the time spent discerning a visitor’s identity.
Without leaving so much as the end of a glance on the woman, Ezekail strode out. Except in special cases such as guiding the way, an errand boy could not carelessly show his back to his master, so he quickly changed positions with Ezekail and made his way back down the narrow corridor of the camp.
The moment he was out of Ezekail’s sight, Merlo frowned in revulsion at the sight of the camp. The smell of disease and death that filled every room stung his nose.
The camp was the filthiest and most unpleasant place in Cleris. Because of his exceedingly busy young master, he had been forced to set foot here today, but normally he did not even pass near this area.
To be honest, Merlo could not understand why Ezekail kept visiting the camp in person. This was not the sort of place a man bearing the name Valdemaera should trouble himself to enter and leave.
Hadn’t he said he had captured the woman who blinded him?
Though Merlo had not witnessed the scene himself, rumors had spread widely that Ezekail had assembled his men, captured a woman, and thrown her into the camp.
As far as Merlo knew, there were only two women in this world capable of making Ezekail Valdemaera move personally.
Rose.
Merlo thought of that woman who had recently become Valdemaera’s greatest headache. The woman he had personally seen in Derosa, in truth, did not look very different from the other servants of the mansion based on her appearance alone. If the master of the mansion doted on her so openly, it would have been only natural for her to become greedy about her attire, but she always dressed neatly in plain work clothes and helped with other people’s chores. She even had a prim side that did not suit her age, always tying her headscarf tightly in place when others would quietly loosen it because it was hot or uncomfortable.
Even after Rose disappeared as promised, Merlo had remained in Derosa for a few more days to observe Ezekail’s reaction. But unable to endure the mansion’s atmosphere, which froze more with each passing day, he soon fled. He had the intuition that if it was revealed he was connected to Rose’s disappearance, he would be in for it that very day. At least at the main house, Fern Valdemaera, the head of Valdemaera, stood firm behind him, making it somewhat bearable.
And the other woman who had made Ezekail move was Akenaus’s underling, imprisoned here.
If he went so far as to capture her, he could simply dispose of her instead of troubling himself by coming and going from the camp.
Merlo shook his head.
In any case, the year was slowly drawing to a close.
The time when prisoners were usually disposed of in the greatest numbers was the transition from the end of one year to the beginning of the next. Once the rooms grew packed with criminals brought in throughout the year, the camp welcomed the new year by executing the worst offenders all at once to clear space. Now that winter had come, the camp, connected room by room and cell by cell, was packed full in every section, boasting a suffocating density.
“How can he not find this filthy place unsettling…….”
It was just as he hunched his shoulders and was about to leave.
Merlo, who had casually glanced inside the bars, blinked hard.
It felt as though he had seen something he should not have seen.
In other words, someone who could not possibly be here, someone who must not be here…….