Chapter 197

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 197
Chapter Title: The King's New Sword
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Director Albani of the Rambouillet Almshouse faithfully complied with Lady Ariadne de Mare's request.

From the very day the grain was delivered, the almshouse shut its gates, halting all entry and exit.

Inside, those with fevers or muscle aches were isolated, and their meals and sanitation were managed separately.

Sure enough, the day after the almshouse closed its doors, a patient with a high fever appeared.

Twenty-four hours after the fever began, the first patient complained of excruciating pain in their newly swollen lymph nodes.

"...It's the Black Death."

Ariadne, who received the news in writing without any face-to-face contact, sighed deeply.

It was a sigh of half worry, half relief. That patient would now die.

There was no cure for the Black Death. Although the initial spread had been stopped, the plague had begun.

She took up her quill and wrote a letter with a flourish.

「The Rambouillet Almshouse is a place where outside access is inherently difficult.

If the disease began to spread within, it must have first broken out through a recently admitted resident or staff member.」

Standing behind the writing Ariadne, Sancha lamented.

"You mean to say, my lady..."

"Yes. ...The Black Death was already rampant within the walls of San Carlo."

In her past life, the Rambouillet Almshouse might have been nothing more than an easy scapegoat.

For the enraged citizens, a poorhouse was the perfect place to blame for the plague that had overrun the entire city.

If the Black Death was fated to spread throughout the city anyway, had she meddled in the almshouse's affairs for nothing? Ariadne briefly wondered, then shook her head.

The Golden Rule must have guided her there for a reason.

That wasn't all. Ariadne had already researched ways to improve the Rambouillet Almshouse during her time as the Acting Princess Regent.

The current Rambouillet Almshouse, regardless of how noble its founding intentions were, had consequently transformed into a place where people went to die.

The city's poor were gathered in one place like garbage, and in a facility with extremely high population density, they were given only minimal rations.

All sorts of diseases regularly made their rounds, and corpses were carried out.

When space opened up in such a squalid facility, new paupers were brought in to fill the void.

The streets of San Carlo became clean and pretty, but the bodies kept piling up at the Rambouillet Almshouse.

It was a gruesome method of urban purification.

*'At least burning wood gives you warmth. To let people die so uselessly is the worst of all evils.'*

Of course, a mindset befitting a member of the de Mare family also fueled her desire for structural reform.

Why let the able-bodied population die in vain?

*'In this life, I will definitely...'*

The 'Rambouillet Almshouse Reform Plan' that Ariadne had established in her past life was scuttled when she failed to become queen.

Of course, the reform plan had been transformed into meticulous documents and neatly organized on the desk of the Acting Princess Regent, but she couldn't imagine that the new queen, Isabella, would have accepted the policy proposal of the younger sister she had cast out with her own hands.

Finishing the letter amid her thoughts, Ariadne handed it to Sancha.

"Disinfect the letter with the smoke of burning mugwort, then give it to Anna to send to the almshouse."

"Yes, my lady."

"How are our people in the annex?"

"Fortunately, it seems no one has fallen ill yet."

Ariadne nodded with a relieved expression.

She herself, as well as Sancha who had accompanied her to the almshouse, were both in good health. It was a stroke of luck.

"Let's just hold on like this for the remaining week, avoiding contact with the rest of the family."

"Yes!"

"Tell the family members to refrain from going outside as well, and to wear a face covering if they absolutely must go out."

"I will do so, my lady. Please don't worry."

And amidst all this, the prices of plague-preparedness goods like grain, beeswax, linen, and mugwort were skyrocketing.

***

Ariadne's guess that the plague was already rampant in San Carlo was correct.

Three days later, Leo III was faced with a startling report.

"Patients with swollen armpits and blackened hands and feet are appearing in the capital as well?"

"I regret to say so, Your Majesty..."

Marquis Valdesar bowed his head.

"What measures are being taken! Is there a cure?"

"As the plague moved north from the south, doctors have tried all sorts of things, but to no avail. It is believed that once you catch it, you die..."

"Hah!"

Leo III turned pale.

"Has it spread to the palace?"

"No, Your Majesty. It is mainly spreading around the Campo de Spezia district."

Campo de Spezia was the district where the gypsies lived.

"Filthy Moors!"

Leo III immediately started blaming foreigners.

While there were a few residents of the Moorish Empire in Campo de Spezia, most were gypsies from the central continent.

By birth, they were technically Etruscan citizens.

But their culture, race, and religion were different. When a situation like today's arose, they were always the first to be made scapegoats.

"It's because those from the Moorish Empire don't bathe!"

Marquis Valdesar thought that if one had to find a reason for the high number of infections in the Campo de Spezia district, the active contact with the outside world due to the many merchants should be considered first, but he said nothing in front of Leo III.

He had nothing to gain by correcting his superior's misconception. It was best to keep his mouth shut.

"Marquis Valdesar."

He simply answered obediently.

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"Throw them all out of the city!"

Marquis Valdesar bowed his head to hide his expression.

He had expected as much. It was exactly the kind of idea Leo III would have.

And in truth, while it was an unbecoming act for the monarch of a nation and a father who should embrace all his people, it was also the most common prescription issued by provincial cities that had been struck by the Black Death.

"Those foreigners, we let them live in San Carlo, and all they do is spread disease! Utterly useless!"

"How should we set the criteria for expulsion? Blackened skin, high fever, swelling in the groin or armpits, coughing, muscle aches. The symptoms shown by the patients are diverse."

Marquis Valdesar deliberately listed symptoms of varying severity.

He was afraid the King would order all foreigners, even healthy ones, to be thrown out of the city.

In San Carlo, there were several industries in which only the gypsies were engaged.

While some, like fortune-telling, were purely for entertainment, there were also indispensable ones mixed in, such as special types of butchery, alchemy, and beeswax crafts.

If an entire industrial sector were to disappear, the city would fall into economic chaos.

Leo III fell for Marquis Valdesar's gentle guidance.

"Be as strict as possible! If they so much as sneeze, throw them out immediately!"

But he didn't forget to add.

"Especially the foreigners!"

Leo III looked at Marquis Valdesar with a face that seemed angry but was, in fact, tinged with fear.

"If the plague spreads to the Royal Guard, we are finished."

A division composed of the Kingdom of Gallico's heavy cavalry and infantry still showed no intention of leaving the Gaeta region.

In fact, they had recently become more aggressive.

They had built a garrison in a strategic location in Gaeta and were raiding the surrounding areas, attacking peasants to plunder their food supplies.

Until now, Leo III had been so worried about the captive Prince Alfonso that he hadn't dared to protest strongly to the Kingdom of Gallico.

But the situation had now changed.

Not only had Prince Alfonso escaped on his own, but the plundering by the Gallican army, which could have been dismissed as individual transgressions, was becoming more and more blatant.

Leo III intended to send an army to stop the Gallican division.

But the only decent standing army the Kingdom of Etruscan possessed was the Capital's Royal Guard.

If the Royal Guard were to fall to the Black Death, the kingdom's last spear and final line of defense would vanish.

Count Contarini, aware of the King's plans, cautiously inquired.

"Your Majesty, regarding the matter of dispatching the Royal Cavalry to the north..."

"How can I send the knights out of the capital in this situation?"

Leo III snapped irritably.

"If the cavalry contracts the disease while moving in large numbers, will you take responsibility?"

In this era, the medical cause of plagues was believed to be "bad air."

The idea was that the disease was transmitted by things like the smell of sweat from soiled sheets or the stench of decay from corpses of Black Death victims, which was not an observation entirely divorced from the phenomenon.

The sweaty and unsanitary marching tents of an army were the optimal environment for the Black Death to break out.

"Hah..."

Count Marquez let out an involuntary sigh. The King had no intention of deploying the Capital's Royal Cavalry for now.

That meant the Gallican division could continue to freely ravage the Etruscan border.

It was now the season to harvest the wheat sown in spring.

The southern region, a traditional breadbasket, was in chaos due to the plague, so a normal harvest could not be expected.

All that remained was the north, and the northern wheat fields were being swept over by the Gallican army.

Grain prices were already rising sharply, and there seemed to be no way out for the coming year.

"Your Majesty, the royal army alone is not the answer."

Count Marquez slowly opened his mouth.

"A levy of the nobles' private soldiers is necessary."

Leo III looked up at the ceiling with a stifled expression.

The feudal system was originally a political structure where national defense was the shared responsibility of local lords.

The king would lead the armies provided by the local lords to wage war, but he could only borrow the troops for a set period and had to return them to the lords once the war was over.

Under feudalism, the king's power was structurally weak, and the king always had to be mindful of the nobles.

Leo III, whose royal authority was strong as the sole legitimate prince by bloodline, did not like that.

*'Insolent worms. Who do they think they are to give orders to whom.'*

He used the complicated inheritance situations of the great noble families and taxes to chip away at the authority of the local lords.

Leo III's reign was long. Like a gentle rain soaking clothes, the nobles' authority was eventually cut in half.

Now, there were only a handful of great nobles left who had the authority to maintain private soldiers.

However, while Leo III had devoted his energy to reducing the power of the great nobles during his reign, he had paid little attention to raising a central army, which incurred fixed costs.

And the price for that was the current situation. The Kingdom of Etruscan had no proper army aside from the Royal Guard.

"Who... would be able to come."

In response to Count Marquez's urging, Marquis Valdesar answered as mildly as possible.

"The Duchy of Taranto, once the kingdom's most reliable sword, is now led by a thirteen-year-old girl."

In truth, the Duchy of Taranto was the only great noble house that was willing but unable to come; the rest were simply unwilling.

The other nobles with the authority to raise private soldiers—dukes, marquises, and margraves whose provincial domains were intact—could come but would not.

While no family had openly thrown down the gauntlet to the King yet, the excuses were endless: they were sick, afflicted with disease, old, or their lands were invaded by the plague.

"Your Majesty."

The door behind the King's office slid open, and a soft female voice was heard.

That door led to the King's private chambers.

The one who emerged was Duchess Rubina. The three ministers all rose from their seats and bowed.

"Duchess of Pisano."

"Welcome, Duchess!"

"What brings you here..."

This was a level of treatment Rubina could never have dreamed of when Queen Marguerite was alive.

She was now acting as the de facto mistress of the house.

Entering the office through the private chambers was something a mere concubine would not dare to do, and something Queen Marguerite, who had refrained from political involvement, would never have done.

But Rubina was unabashed.

"Your Majesty, what is troubling you?"

She pressed herself against Leo III's back and whispered.

"But Your Majesty has the Duke of Pisano."