Episode 9
“Who is this mail from?”
Ezekiel asked outright.
Lady Serva walked over, click-clacking her cane, and took the mail from his hand. Most of the employees were illiterate, but those who had risen to the rank of head butler had usually received some education. Naturally, Lady Serva could read as well. However, her failing eyesight was the problem.
She pushed her glasses up and held the envelope far away, then took them off and pulled it so close the letters nearly touched her nose.
Ezekiel pressed her.
“What does it say? Why aren’t you answering, Serva?”
“……I suppose I shall have to call someone in from outside. My eyes have grown dim for quite some time now; this old woman can no longer make out the small letters of a letter.”
Lady Serva sighed. Moreover, the room was dim, so what little she might have seen was now invisible.
Rose stood in silence, then subtly glanced over the cursive name scrawled upon the envelope.
Monkham.
It was the sender’s name. After reading the visible portions with her eyes, Rose answered in Lady Serva’s stead.
“It was sent by someone named Monkham. Seeing as ‘Captain’ is written beside the name, I believe they may be someone affiliated with the military.”
“Monkham? Then it must be the search report I requested. But how did you know that?”
Ezekiel asked back.
“Rose, you can read?”
This time, Lady Serva was startled as well. Rose confessed meekly.
“I learned it at school.”
“You went to school?”
“Yes. Though I did not finish.”
“What did you learn?”
“Poetry and novels, composition, history, geometry, algebra…… so I can also keep account books. I learned instruments a little as well, but I am not proficient.”
A strange silence descended at the unexpectedly serious list of educational subjects.
“If you went to school, why are you doing menial labor of all things?”
Ezekiel was the first to speak. In his bone-chillingly cold voice, suspicion toward her was plainly revealed.
Lady Serva was no less puzzled. Given the level of education Rose had revealed, she could have demanded a much higher salary; yet until now, the girl had undertaken the grueling labor of the laundry room without a word, her hands soaking in water until they swelled.
“Why is laundry menial labor? If the master is to wear clean clothes every day, someone must do the laundry.”
Rose calmly retorted.
At the Valdemaira main house in Clerisse, her parents had scrubbed floors until their backs throbbed and done laundry until their finger joints stiffened. Though they had committed a fault, she did not wish to demean the labor of the parents who had raised her to the level of mere chores.
“Of course, laundry is work that must be done for daily life. Not only laundry, but cooking meals or cleaning the house as well. However, Rose, even I do not understand this. I had thought all this time that you were desperately seeking work. You came to us secretly, in the middle of the night. But do you not have opportunities to earn more money? Even as a tutor…….”
It was a perfectly valid doubt. Having the ability to secure a high-paying job in the city, yet deliberately seeking out a remote mansion—both Lady Serva and Ezekiel had every reason to find her suspicious.
“I…… absolutely wished to work here.”
But Rose had a reason it had to be this place at all costs.
She possessed the resolve to somehow pay the price for her sin, but even apart from that incident, Rose would have come to find Ezekiel sooner or later.
She turned her gaze and stared at the man’s cold profile.
“Major.”
At the unexpected form of address, Ezekiel narrowed his brows.
“Do you remember Milena Girls’ School?”
“Milena Girls’ School?”
His tone suggested he did not remember at all. And no wonder. To him, it must have been merely one of countless fierce battlefields he had passed through.
But she had been at that school.
“It is in Sielsa, in the north. Not far from Derosa, either.”
It was a memory of the war that remained short yet intense.
As fighting spread sporadically, ominous rumors passed quietly through regions near the border. Still, no one had expected the front lines to descend upon civilian areas so quickly.
Most citizens living in the city center had fled to other cities, but the students who remained in the mountain school received word too late and were trapped helplessly at the school. Seeing the enemy forces approach before their very eyes, the students barred the doors and resolved to defend the school.
“But what strength did we civilians have? We were all women, and without weapons. Everyone merely prayed. Please, let our army win and stop the enemy.”
Yet the front lines unfolded in an increasingly disadvantageous direction. In the end, watching their own troops withdraw bit by bit, the students trembled in anxiety.
“Soon we realized that the soldiers had abandoned this area. And we realized what would happen to us once our army left. We would likely become prisoners of the enemy, or perhaps, having none of the value of military prisoners, be killed on the spot, or else…….”
There was no outcome left but to be violated en masse by soldiers drunk on the scent of battle. This was a process that would precede all else, whether one lived or died.
The nature of war was always thus. Soldiers who had seized land with shed blood satisfied their compensatory psychology and displayed their savage lust for conquest by first violating the women belonging to that land.
The terrified students burst into tears. Gathering curtains and blankets alike, they waved them together and screamed for their lives to be spared.
“Yet rather, such displays only seemed to provoke the enemy further. They advanced upon us at a much faster speed. I truly thought we were done for. Though we would die in the end, we hid the younger students in the storeroom to try to save them as much as possible, and friends held each other and wept…….”
From within the allied forces, an army bearing a black banner returned. Someone who had managed to recognize the symbol of the flag shouted.
“It’s our army!”
“The black banner! The 37th Regiment!”
“The one led by Major Ezekiel Valdemaira…….”
“My goodness, thank you. We are saved now…….”
The students wept with relief.
Praise for the 37th Regiment spread abundantly within Milena Girls’ School as well.
The King’s Army.
People called the 37th Regiment the so-called ‘King’s Army.’ Of course, all armies belonged under the king’s authority, but the 37th Regiment alone had secured the honorable epithet of ‘King’s Army.’ And the protagonist of that acclaim was none other than Major Ezekiel Valdemaira.
Though most information regarding Ezekiel’s company, specially formed within the regiment from volunteers who carried out special operations, was kept highly classified, its fame alone was brilliant.
The bravest unit that plunged into even the most perilous battles without regard for its safety, securing victory. Furthermore, the young and beautiful major who led that company had become the greatest symbol representing the regiment, despite the fact that the 37th Regiment officially had a separate regimental commander.
“He said they seemed to have discovered that we remained at the school. The troops blocked the way ahead as if to protect us. And then they fought to the end to defend us.”
The 37th Regiment repelled the enemy after chaotic fighting and secured the school. The students who had gathered in the classroom trembling went up to the rooftop when the allied momentum turned favorable and cheered Ezekiel and the soldiers under his command.
Perhaps out of concern for the frightened students, even in victory, the 37th Regiment did not touch the firmly barred school gates. In the distance, a young officer was visible, commandingly withdrawing his soldiers with an expressionless face.
The students plucked the roses blooming all over the school rooftop and threw them at the departing soldiers.
Rose had been one of the students there. The rose she threw rode a strong gust of wind and fluttered a great distance, falling upon the officer who directed the operation. The officer glanced at the rose that had landed on his shoulder and tucked it into his uniform pocket.
Among the large soldiers, an officer with black hair possessed an especially towering, imposing stature.
She had guessed at a glance. He was Ezekiel.
“……What a remarkable fate. A wonderful story. Now I finally understand everything. So that is why Rose worked in silence, and worried about the master behind his back. He is the benefactor who saved Rose and the school.”
Unlike Lady Serva, who could not hide her excitement as the story progressed, Rose quietly lowered her head.
So when Akenaus had ordered her to harm the younger sibling, she had felt as though she had become a beast. Because instead of repaying the man who had saved her, she was repaying his kindness with enmity.
She even owed him her life twice over.
At Milena Girls’ School, and at the Valdemaira mansion in Clerisse.
“How would it be to assign Rose to attend upon the master? She is kind and diligent, and versed in various liberal arts; she would be far more helpful than this old woman. I, too, would find it much easier if I need only devote myself to managing the mansion and the employees.”
Lady Serva suggested in a much brighter tone.
Rose watched Ezekiel’s reaction with some tension. The choice regarding her placement rested entirely with Ezekiel, and she had no authority whatsoever. It was an all-too-natural principle in a master-servant relationship, so Lady Serva did not ask for Rose’s opinion either.
Even if asked what position she desired, she would not have been able to answer rashly. Though her desire to be of greater help to him was strong, an unknown fear also lingered to some extent.
Even though it was not as if he sat there knowing everything, he was half-shrouded in shadow. Perhaps because deep shadows settled along the contours of his particularly pronounced features, his expression was almost invisible.
“……Do that.”
A nonchalant permission fell.