Chapter 35
***
Louise finally got the chance to talk about her mother's ugly will.
"Yes, I swear it was the first time. My mother, who hadn't been in her right mind for months, suddenly pulled out a pearl and told me to cherish it. She died leaving me a will.................."
"What was it?”
"Cherish it, and when His Highness the Crown Prince ascends the throne.......... That's all, and I haven't heard it since."
Ferdinand narrowed his eyes, as if weighing Elizabeth's last words, and then rebuked Louise.
"You pawned such a thing so easily, and if it had fallen into the wrong hands, all their twenty years of labor would have been for naught."
The label of a pro-imperialist aristocrat had followed her parents' name all her life. Louise had never been ashamed of her parents' names, who had served their country faithfully.
But to be raised by such parents and not even recognize the lord's goods.
Louise bit her lip in shame.
A pawnbroker had tried to sell the pearl, so valuable, for a pittance because he thought they were baroque. Not just Caius’s, but her parents' years of hard work would have been for nothing.
“I couldn't afford the funeral expenses......... we were living in poverty, and I didn't have the eyes to see..."
The apologetic voice was small.
Ferdinand slowly reached out one hand and laid it on Louise's arm.
"But the past is the past. The King has chosen Ermoli's name in the end, and all you can do is help him in his endeavor, which will repay your parents' favor, and perhaps even redeem Ermoli's name."
Restore Ermoli's name?
If Caius and Ferdinand were right, then her parents had already betrayed their duty as servants once. But how dare she be so greedy?
"That was a long time ago. Your parents are both dead, and few know the exact details of what happened twenty years ago. People will soon remember only that you survived and came to offer the pearl to the king. If you succeed, Ermoli will stand by Heidenberg again."
Ferdinand, seeing Louise's bewildered face, added slowly.
"If that is your will."
In the end, what Caius hoped for was a perfect lie.
He wanted to disguise the part of her she wanted to hide the most, so that no one would ever know, and turn it into a proud trophy. Her parents' betrayal was more pain than she could bear, more pain than she could admit.
But even if he could fool all of the Empire, there was one person he could not fool: Caius himself.
And so Louise would forever be his misfortune, a stain, a haunting reminder.
***
"His Highness was a very smart boy. By the time he reached his first birthday, he had already counted to a hundred."
The first time her mother said the word "His Highness" was when she woke up after two months of wandering through her eighteen-year-old past.
Louise was heartbroken. She was terrified of what other past her mother might be wandering into.
The story continued without much of a clue.
"And then one day he called out to me, 'Mama!' That was before you were born, and I was so surprised..................."
Louise laughed softly.
"Was it a long time ago in the capital, mother? I didn't know you were so close to the prince, you never told me that."
She blinked her eyes again and again, as if suddenly coming to her senses, and said, "Oh, look at me. I’m talking in my sleep now, with my eyes open," and then avoided the conversation.
Louise didn't bother to bring it up again. Sitting across the table from her sick mother in her old house, she couldn't bring herself to listen to the pompous tales of the palace.
But in retrospect, she did hear the prince's stories from time to time afterward. Mostly when her mother was distraught.
"His Highness’ eyes were the color of deep gold, like honey solidified, a Heidenbergian.................."
It wasn't until later that Louise calculated the number of golden eyes that were mentioned in the fragmented stories that she realized it was her mother’s memory of the missing prince.
From then on, she pretended she hadn't heard her mother's story.
First, she didn't want to tell her confused mother the rumor of the prince's death, and second, she didn't want to get in trouble if her family history became known.
I should have asked more questions then.
Louise looked up at the dark ceiling and thought.
Only then did Ferdinand's story hit home.
Her parents had betrayed the prince. They had betrayed him, and yet they could not bring themselves to say his name.
So loyal were they to him, that they put the child in their belly before the imperial son.
And so the young prince, seven years old, was to lose his guardians in a single day.
The grim tale took shape and sank into her heart; Caius’s hatred was no longer unjustified.
Twenty years ago, in the winter, a gunshot rang out in the distance that threatened to bring the house down.
-Bang!
Young Caius jumped out of bed, gasping for air as if he had just been pulled from the water.
"Ha, ha. Ha..................."
Every time he heard a gunshot, he was instantly drawn back to that night. The night his parents died.
Caius buried both ears in his thick pillow. He wished he could dive back into the sleep to escape the night, but it was impossible.
Martin, the butler, still a young man at the time, pointed the barrel of his gun out the open window again.
-Bang!
The sound of the gunshot echoed for a long time, mingling with the cries of the animals, the bitter winter wind, and the rattling of the windows in the darkness.
Martin glanced down at Caius, who raised his reddened eyes, and said expressionlessly.
"Time to get up and cleanse your clothes."
Caius crumpled the pillow he'd been hugging and glared at the butler.
It was a nightmare, how dare the butler of a fringe noble family order him around, or how dare he sound the morning gun to signal the time to rise.
All because Ermoli had abandoned him.
-Bang!
The gunshot repeated.
"Stefan will come get me eventually. How dare you treat me like this............. if Elizabeth finds out."
Holding on didn’t change the reality. Even knowing this, Caius’s sleep-deprived brain threw back his pillow and grumbled.
"I shouldn't forgive them."
Ferdinand emerged from the doorway, holding the brightest lamp in the mansion.
He admonished the sulking young prince in a clear voice, as if he had never been asleep, on the subject of his sudden appearance.
"Whether Elizabeth, daughter of Rigne, knows it or not, it is you who do it; whether you pardon or admonish, it is you who do it, because you are the Prince."
".............alone. Because I am alone now, Margrave. Because no one will fight for me if I don't."
"Yes, you are right."
Young Margrave was like a bear in size and a wolf in ferocity. He added menacingly.
"Because I, Ferdinand the Margrave, will not spend a single drop of precious Burg blood for the frail deficit of an imperial family that could die at any moment."
Caius gritted his teeth.
"Why did you bring me here, why didn't you leave me to die on that mountain!"
"How many times do you make me tell you? I have told you that if I had known you had lost the Pearl of Albrecht, I would never have done it."
It was definitely not something he wanted to repeat this morning.
Caius woke up red-eyed, and a thick fur coat was placed in front of him. This was not the flimsy hunting outfit he'd been alternating between.
Dazed, the brutal reality of the situation crashed into his ears.
"The blizzard will pick up at dawn, and it's easier to find tracks in the snow, so you’re going to make the first move."
"By ...... by myself?"
Ferdinand explained, looking as if he wanted to ask what he'd been told.
"Rather than hope that the Marquis and Marchioness of Ermoli will appear on a snowy mountain and rescue you, I suggest you climb it. If you survive, I will come to your rescue again after the snow stops falling."
***
-Bang! Bang!
There were hundreds of bird graves of all kinds. It was a horrifying sight for Louise to behold, but the gunfire continued to ring in her ears.
-Bang!
"Hit, hit, it’s a hit, Your Excellency!"
"You call it a black grouse hunting party, but I didn't realize you'd hunt grouse with such precision, Your Excellency."
The morning's winter sunlight flickered across the man's face as he handed the smoldering gun to his servant.
****
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