Chapter 226

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 226
Chapter Title: The Frog Forgets It Was a Tadpole
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“It is an honor to meet you, Your Eminence.”

Representative Caruso bowed low. It was a bow so deep it bordered on servile.

“My name is Caruso. I am a humble merchant in the capital.”

For the head of the Boccanegra Company, which was capitalizing on the era of the Great Plague to become the continent's top merchant guild, it was an absurd display of humility.

But how often in a lifetime did a merchant get to meet a high-ranking clergyman? For Caruso, in the Kingdom of Etruscan of this age, such deference was only natural.

And he had not come alone. He had brought a grimy man with him.

He was a large, sturdy man, but even if washed and well-dressed, he could not hide his squalid air.

Representative Caruso gestured with his chin toward the man he had brought.

“This man is someone I came to know through my work… a dockworker. We trade in tobacco, you see.”

He put it nicely, but the man was less a dockworker and more a vagrant, and the tobacco circulating on the central continent was not imported through legitimate trade routes but smuggled in its entirety.

He was practically a drug trafficker. This was another source of Caruso's humility.

Had Caruso been meeting a high-ranking clergyman under normal circumstances, he would have concealed his trade items.

But today, there was a reason to reveal them.

From Cardinal de Mare's perspective, it was the sort of introduction that made one want to avoid any association.

“Why have you brought this man here?”

The Cardinal, therefore, asked Ariadne with a frigid expression, ignoring Caruso.

Ariadne could guess the unspoken words that followed the Cardinal's question.

‘Why on earth have you brought such a lowlife into my study? If this is some pointless act, you will pay the price.’

Undeterred, she opened her mouth and spoke calmly.

“First, allow me to provide some background.”

Ariadne looked at Cardinal de Mare.

“Father, do you truly believe that Mother killed Paolo Scampa's red-haired daughter, the almshouse manager's child?”

Cardinal de Mare raised a hand to stop Ariadne.

“One moment.”

He gestured toward Representative Caruso with his chin.

“Can this man be trusted, Ariadne?”

Before Ariadne could answer, Representative Caruso stepped forward and placed a hand on his chest.

“I swear to God, if I leak anything I see or hear in this room today, may I be struck by lightning and die.”

He nudged the grimy man with his foot and said.

“The same goes for this oaf.”

Ariadne was inwardly impressed by Caruso's quick thinking.

If she were to vouch for him as ‘trustworthy,’ Caruso would appear to be Ariadne's accomplice.

That would risk undermining the credibility of the testimony he was about to give.

Respecting Caruso's intent, she indirectly guaranteed his silence.

“I will take responsibility for ensuring it.”

Ariadne replied calmly. To Cardinal de Mare's ears, it sounded like, ‘I will make sure he keeps his mouth shut, even if I have to threaten him.’

As the Cardinal fell silent, Ariadne continued her story.

“Why on earth would Mother hire someone to murder the daughter of an almshouse manager she had never even met?”

To this, Cardinal de Mare answered his daughter irritably, as if she were asking the obvious.

“Wasn't it a case of mistaken identity while trying to kill our maid? Both were redheads of a similar age, found nearby.”

Ariadne nodded.

“That's right, Father. But why did Mother want to kill that red-haired maid in the first place?”

Cardinal de Mare, about to answer without thinking, found himself at a loss for words.

Lucrezia often beat the maids in the house to death.

It was an occasional occurrence, so he had never given much thought to the reason.

But upon reflection, the maids Lucrezia had beaten to death were usually ones the Cardinal had touched, or ones Lucrezia mistakenly believed he had touched, or those who blatantly revealed their ambitions toward him.

The Cardinal was by no means a man who frequently dallied with his household staff, but even in unjust cases, siding with a maid would send Lucrezia into a frenzy. For the sake of domestic peace, he chose to turn a blind eye.

Besides, managing the household staff was the lady of the house's responsibility.

But that redhead was not a maid whose life intersected with the Cardinal's at all. On the contrary, she attended to Isabella and Ippolito.

“Could it be…?”

Ariadne perfectly picked up on Cardinal de Mare's thought and answered.

“Yes. It was because Maletta was carrying my brother Ippolito's child.”

“Hey!”

At this, Ippolito shot up from his seat in anger.

“You're saying I knocked someone up? Do you have any proof? Who do you think you're trying to frame!”

Ippolito could act so confident because all the witnesses were gone.

As far as he knew, the only people who knew for certain that Maletta had been pregnant were Maletta herself, Ippolito, and the late Lucrezia.

As soon as Maletta confirmed her pregnancy, she had rushed to him. Less than an hour after telling him she was pregnant, she was thrown out of the de Mare estate.

Physically, she wouldn't have had time to tell anyone else.

He didn't know how that girl Ariadne knew, but in the end, any testimony his half-sister had must be secondhand information or some rumor floating around the streets.

In that case, he could just brush it off as his half-sister slandering him based on false rumors.

Ippolito was strongly convinced that if it came down to a battle of credibility between his word and Ariadne's testimony, he would win.

Who would his father believe? The daughter born of some unknown mother's womb, raised outside the family? Or the son born of his proper wife, the heir who would inherit the family name?

But Ariadne's expression was strange.

“What, you're smiling?”

His expectations thwarted, Ippolito raised a fist.

“Have you lost your mind?”

Ariadne answered cheerfully.

“I'm not mad. Are you trying to cover the sky with the palm of your hand, brother?”

“What?”

“There is a witness. Do you know someone named Loretta?”

Ippolito's brow furrowed. Loretta… Loretta… Who was that?

“She was our late mother's last personal maid.”

“Ah.”

The explanation jogged his memory. The rest of Ippolito's face contorted along with his brow.

Ariadne said with a sneer.

“When Mr. Scampa and the local guild demanded Mother's head, the market streets were rife with rumors. They said a maid was carrying Ippolito de Mare's child, and that his mother had tried to kill her for it.”

Ippolito retorted.

“That's just a rumor! People make up all sorts of things!”

Ariadne knew better than anyone that smoke could rise from a chimney with no fire, but that wasn't the case here. She said casually.

“And where do you think that rumor came from?”

Ariadne looked straight at Ippolito, who could only see one step ahead, and said.

“Loretta confessed everything when she was interrogated by the local guild! When Mother and you tried to get rid of Maletta, Loretta was the one who handled it all! She was the one who went to identify the body! Of course she knew the whole story!”

Ippolito's face turned pale. It went from red to blue—quite a spectacle.

“After Mother's death, Loretta couldn't return to our house and went back to her hometown in the outskirts. But she can be summoned at any time.”

She continued, looking at Ippolito as if he were pathetic.

“Besides, there are plenty of people in the local guild who heard Loretta's testimony! And there are countless servants in our own house who saw the things you did with Maletta!”

Ariadne straightened her posture and glared directly at Ippolito.

“The maid you dallied with, Maletta, got pregnant. She wanted to become your mistress, but you had no intention of being tied down by a mere servant!”

She turned her gaze to Cardinal de Mare.

“And in fact, I heard some of it myself.”

“…What did you say?”

“Maletta considered me her sister-in-law.”

“What?”

Ariadne smiled faintly.

“The late Maletta was actually the older sister of my personal maid, Sancha. Because of that connection, when Maletta was thrown out of our house and wandering the streets, I arranged for her to stay at the Rambouillet Almshouse.”

The Cardinal felt uneasy about Ariadne's involvement in this affair, but he listened on with patience.

After all, he needed to confirm the facts of the matter.

“I had a chance to meet with Maletta briefly then. She begged me. She said she was carrying my brother Ippolito's child, that she didn't want to get rid of it, and pleaded to be allowed to give birth and raise it.”

The Cardinal glanced at Ippolito. His son's face was beet red, and he was trembling with rage.

He was the son of privilege. Tall and handsome, dressed in luxurious purple satin indoor wear, his hair and nails impeccably groomed. He reeked of wealth.

Yet this boy had once been in the same predicament as the child in Maletta's womb.

A child in the womb of an unmarried mother, unable to marry the father.

It was only because Simon de Mare had willingly agreed to take responsibility for his woman that Ippolito de Mare was alive and standing here today.

But when Ippolito's time to choose came, he made the exact opposite choice of the one his father had made—the very choice that had saved him.

“I promised her that if she stayed hidden at the Rambouillet Almshouse, I would find an opportunity to speak to you, Father. But she died before I could.”

Ariadne looked at Ippolito as if he were something disgusting.

Ippolito could see all too clearly the contempt in his half-sister's eyes spreading to his father.

In his desperation, he shrieked.

“Yeah, so what!”

All eyes in the study turned to Ippolito.

“I didn't want to marry her. She wanted me to take responsibility! Am I supposed to let some girl like that tie me down? San Carlo is crawling with daughters of noble families, and I have a bright future ahead of me! Is that so wrong? Would you want to marry her? And let's get one thing straight, did I kill her?!”

Ippolito shouted confidently. His mother was dead. No one knew the truth.

“Okay, I admit I told Mom I didn't want to marry her. But I thought she would just talk some sense into the girl and send her away!”

Ippolito made a throat-slitting gesture with his hand.

“Who would've thought she'd just chop her head off? It was her own damn luck that she died!”

Ariadne grimaced at his vulgar gesture and his evasion of responsibility.

Ippolito paid her no mind, continuing his impassioned speech, spittle flying from his mouth.

“I'm human, too. If I had known, I would have stopped her. Why kill her when you could just chase her away? But Mom had already done it. Is it my fault that my mother loved me so much she committed murder? Is it my fault I couldn't stop her in time?”

Ippolito looked around the room triumphantly.

Cardinal de Mare remained tight-lipped. The merchant and his lackey had been sitting silently since their introduction. And his detestable half-sister, seemingly cowed by his outburst, was no longer arguing.

*Good, now that I've put them in their place, they'll be quiet.*

Just as a smile began to form on his lips, the grimy fool that the merchant Caruso had brought with him raised his hand.

“…Uh, excuse me.”

Ippolito snapped viciously.

“And who are you?”

The dockworker—no, the vagrant—glanced nervously at Ippolito, then shot a look at Representative Caruso, and spoke with his hand still raised.

“You're the young master, Ippolito de Mare, right?”

*How could he not know that by now?* Ippolito thought, whipping his head around to face Ariadne.

Even wasting time talking to this oaf was a shame.

“Hey. Black-hair. I'm not interested in your little circus act anymore. Get these lowlifes out of my father's study right now.”

Just as Ariadne was about to respond, the vagrant spoke first.

“The one who came to us and requested we cut off the redhead's head wasn't the madam. It was you, young master.”