Chapter 231

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 231
Chapter Title: No One is Perfectly Good
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With a powerful crunch!

The wooden wall collapsed under the force of the axe, revealing a space behind it, just as she’d suspected. But Ariadne pursed her lips.

“There’s a safe.”

Perhaps it had been too optimistic to expect a hidden slush fund to appear just by breaking down a single wall.

What emerged from behind the wall was a massive safe that took up the entire surface.

It was the kind of safe where you had to enter an alphabetic combination to unlock a handle, which you then turned like a ship's wheel to open the door.

Clank, clank.

She tried jiggling the handle, but it didn’t budge.

“Giuseppe. Bring me Secretary Albani.”

Ariadne thought Secretary Albani would know something.

But Secretary Albani was seeing the safe for the first time as well.

He explained that Queen Marguerite had been directly involved in the construction of the Rambouillet Almshouse from its very design, but he himself had been assigned here from the Queen’s palace much later. This was the first he’d ever heard of it.

In the end, she could only send him away with an order to bring every diary, note, and memo Her Majesty the Queen had left at the almshouse.

The only result was that the surveillance on Secretary Albani, who now knew another secret, was tightened.

“...Should I go to the palace?”

The Queen’s memos left at the Rambouillet Almshouse were of no help.

Not only were there few of them, but most were scribbled in such terrible handwriting that it was hard to make out any meaningful sentences.

‘Alfonso gets his terrible handwriting from his mother.’

The thought made Ariadne smile for a moment. But soon, she felt gloomy again.

She had already written and sent over four letters to Alfonso.

The only regular ship to Yesak was a military vessel operated by the Republic of Porto.

At first, Ariadne sent the letters through the normal channels, but later, thinking they might have been lost, she paid extra to send them and even entrusted them to a merchant who was a business associate of Representative Caruso.

But there was only silence; still no reply from Alfonso.

‘Does he not want to see me anymore?’

Could he have fallen in love with a noble lady from Gallico, or found solace with a beautiful dancer in Yesak?

When her thoughts reached that point, she shook her head vigorously.

The Prince Alfonso she knew was a man quite indifferent to temptation. He was faithful and had never once done anything to break her trust.

‘But he has a soft heart, so if someone appealed to his sympathy…’

Ariadne shook her head vigorously again. When thoughts spiraled like this, it was best not to think at all.

‘Right, the safe.’

The task at hand was the safe. What would Queen Marguerite have set as the password?

Fortunately, it wasn’t the type of lock that would jam after several failed attempts. She could keep trying until she got it right.

‘Still, the password is so long…’

The lock was a full 17 letters long. It was by no means something that could be opened as easily as a four-digit lock.

She decided to abandon the humanistic approach of guessing the word by considering the setter’s mindset and instead try a more technical method.

She obtained some graphite, sprinkled it over the letters on the lock, and observed where it stuck the most.

She reasoned that the frequently used letters would have more grime from fingers.

As expected, there was some progress.

‘The first letter is ‘A’.’

A smile touched her lips. However, not all the dials showed signs of wear.

She could roughly make out that the fifth letter was ‘N’ and the seventh was ‘O’, but the rest revealed nothing.

‘It must be ‘ALFONSO’ for the first seven letters, right?’

She’d figured that much out. And Ariadne was half-convinced.

Queen Marguerite had hidden this slush fund from her husband for her only son.

‘Did she foresee a day like this would come?’

She let out a dry laugh. Perhaps after living as a married couple for over twenty years, one develops a sort of precognition about their spouse’s actions.

Ariadne couldn’t have imagined that Leo III would refuse to send troops or funds even to his own son, but this meant Queen Marguerite had figured it out ten years ago.

‘To have to live a lifetime with such a man… she must have been truly unhappy…’

Mulling over these thoughts, she perked up her ears, listening to the various clicks and whirs from the lock as she continued to work on the combination.

She was so sharply focused that she lost all track of time.

Listening to the soft clicks as she turned the dials, she jotted down failed word combinations on a piece of paper and kept trying the next one.

‘ALFONSO DE CARLO doesn’t have the right number of letters.’

My beloved Alfonso, Alfonso son of Carlo, Alfonso the golden prince…

All failed.

After trying for a long time, she was starting to get a little tired.

Knock, knock.

“My lady.”

Giuseppe entered.

“It’s already past five o’clock. If you plan to dine at home, I believe it is time for you to be heading back.”

“Ah.”

Absorbed in her task, she finally let go of the lock she had been fiddling with.

“You’re eating at home too, Giuseppe?”

“Yes. It doesn’t really matter where I eat, but my mother always waits for me.”

Giuseppe smiled artlessly.

Since rising from the youngest stable boy to Ariadne’s closest aide in charge of the household’s men, he had become quite composed and dignified. But when he spoke of his mother, he was every bit the beloved youngest son.

He was usually a man of few words, but he became talkative when the topic was his family.

“You go home so diligently, your mother must be a good cook.”

“Haha, not at all. No matter how you look at it, it’s pig slop… This is a secret between us, away from my mother.”

Ariadne chuckled a little.

“Of course.”

Giuseppe’s complaints-slash-boasts about his mother continued.

“She still calls me ‘my baby, my baby.’ And I’m about twice her size.”

The moment she heard those words, something flashed in Ariadne’s mind.

Leaving Giuseppe behind her, she approached the lock as if possessed and began to align the letters.

‘My baby…’

ALFONSO, MIO BAMBINO. (Alfonso, my child.)

Click.

The sound of the last letter falling into place rang out with a softness unlike before.

Ariadne naturally grasped the wheel-shaped handle and turned it to the right.

Grrrrrrrrrind.

The sound of mechanical gears engaging was heard as the wheel turned, and the door opened smoothly.

“Dear God!”

Giuseppe’s exclamation struck her ears the same moment the contents of the safe came into view.

“My lady, this is…!”

“Giuseppe, shhh.”

It was an enormous amount of gold. Gold coins filled white burlap sacks, all of them ducats, said to have the highest purity.

Ariadne stepped into the safe, picked up a gold coin, and bit it.

Crunch.

It was definitely a gold coin.

“My lady, there’s something here!”

Giuseppe, who had been looking around from behind, called to Ariadne. She turned around.

On the inside of the safe’s door, a letter was tucked into a pocket-like pouch.

Ariadne picked up the letter and asked Giuseppe,

“Giuseppe, go outside and stand guard. Don’t let anyone into this room.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

After sending Giuseppe out with his vigorous reply, Ariadne unfolded the letter and began to read.

「My dearest son, Alfonso.」

It was a letter left by Queen Marguerite for her son.

「I pray that you never have to see this letter, that I can give you this money with my own hands, or better yet, that there will be no need for these funds at all.

Your mother is a sinner. Blinded by concern for my child’s safety, I resolved to let the sick and the weak starve to death in great numbers.

It is a decision a normal mother might waver over, but one the mother of the nation must never make.

But in the end, at the close of the day, what lingers in my mind is the innocent gaze of my own child.」

There was more written after that, but it was illegible under rough ink marks. It seemed she had crossed it out with two lines after writing it.

‘Was it a description of a specific incident that happened at the time?’

Ariadne tilted her head, puzzled, and continued reading.

「I purposely did not have another child. If the second were a daughter, I cannot fathom where your father would sell her off to, and if the second were a son, knowing Leo’s nature, only one of you would survive. Competition, endless competition, means that cross all boundaries…」

The text after this was once again crossed out and hard to read.

It seemed she had deemed it unsuitable content for a letter to her son.

Ariadne frowned, trying to decipher the faint letters visible beneath the two crossed-out lines.

「He cares for nothing but himself. I tried to think positively, that he was just naturally indifferent, that he didn’t understand because he was a man, but today it has become clear. He is…」

The part after this was completely illegible, as if she had blotted it out with more ink.

「It doesn’t matter what happens to my life… Replaced the staff in charge of meals with aides from Gallico… My husband turns a blind eye to affection… An investigation will not happen…」

There were so many crossed-out parts that the ink used to strike them was sparse, allowing her to roughly grasp the content.

It seemed there had been an assassination attempt on Queen Marguerite, likely by the then-Countess Rubina, and the young queen was afraid she might die.

And she was reeling from the betrayal of her husband.

‘So. ‘My child,’ Alfonso.’

My own child.

She must have felt all alone in the world except for her young child. I am weak and powerless, but I have a young one to protect.

Her maternal love—no, her ultimate survival instinct—that made even Queen Marguerite, who always spoke of a monarch’s duty and the need to fulfill her responsibilities, lose her senses and do the unthinkable.

A person who can uphold their morals even when facing death is a truly virtuous person.

And most people are not virtuous. Ariadne looked back on the choices she had made in her past life.

The image of Prince Alfonso collapsing after eating the pudding she had given him. The palace guards, suppressed and killed in the coup d’état started by Cesare.

The shepherd, hung dead from a tree. …And in this life, Greta. The weight of blood, engraved on her left hand.

Ariadne simply couldn’t bring herself to sternly rebuke Queen Marguerite.

However, that the late queen was a sinner was an undeniable, solemn fact.

‘…I will atone for your sins against the people in your stead.’

Ariadne could not condemn the queen. Partly because she was so greatly indebted to her, and partly because she, too, was a sinner.

Instead, she resolved not to abandon the Rambouillet Almshouse. It was a burden the king had forced upon her, a position she could have treated as a temporary post.

In fact, it was a position given to an unmarried lady; if she were to resign upon marriage to ‘focus on her domestic life,’ there would be no excuse to keep her.

But Ariadne would make the Rambouillet Almshouse into an institution that could truly save the poor.

She had more than enough financial resources to do so.

And she also fervently hoped, from the bottom of her heart, that this would be an atonement not only for the queen’s sins, but for her own as well.

‘Raphael said that no one is without sin…’

And that the human species, by virtue of being human, can never be eternally pure.

But isn’t it the constant effort to become pure that separates humans from beasts? Ariadne thought.

Even if it proves meaningless, just one more step. A little closer to what is right.

‘And these funds…’

She looked around at the astonishing amount of ducats that filled the safe.

She would have to count it to know the exact amount, but it was undoubtedly an absurdly large sum, nearly equivalent to the entire national budget for a year.

‘I will send them to their intended destination.’

What she had was more than enough to support the Rambouillet Almshouse. Prince Alfonso would get his war funds. A very large sum, at that.