Chapter 58

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 58
Chapter Title: Isabella's Grievance
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Forty lashes was not a punishment severe enough to kill a healthy adult man, but it was also not one that allowed him to walk home on his own. After being whipped on his bare torso until his upper body was lacerated, he had been forced to expose his backside to receive the rest of the lashes. Unable to sit or lie down, Zanobi was carried to Cardinal de Mare’s residence at dawn, lying face down on a stretcher after the whole ordeal. Lucrezia, who had fainted and been brought back early in the evening, was also at the residence. This was the maddening evening scene that greeted Cardinal de Mare upon his late return from his arduous duties. Cardinal de Mare summoned the entire household to the first-floor drawing room. This included Zanobi, who was groaning in pain. He gritted his teeth and questioned Zanobi.

“For the past twenty-two years, I have provided you with shelter, clothing, and food. So what possessed you to harm my daughter today?”

Sobered up completely by the forty lashes, Zanobi offered an excuse that, unlike his earlier claims before Leo III, at least sounded somewhat coherent.

“Isabella asked me to do it!”

His scheme was to use Isabella as a shield to weather the storm, thinking the Cardinal favored his eldest daughter most. Meanwhile, Isabella’s beautiful eyes widened in horror. *Has he lost his mind!*

“When did I ever say that!”

Isabella had no intention of inviting her father's wrath just to help the likes of Zanobi.

“That's a blatant lie, Father! Zanobi, you lied to His Majesty the King, claiming you never shot at Ariadne, and now you dare to use me as an excuse in our own home?”

Completely forgetting how she had once cooed “Brother” in a honeyed voice and flirted before Zanobi, Isabella cut all ties, berating him forcefully as if he were a mere underling. Stunned by this unexpected turn of events, Zanobi confronted Isabella.

“You told me to ‘teach that wench a lesson’!”

This was Zanobi’s own mental revision of the event. Strictly speaking, it was Zanobi who had first proposed, “I’ll teach that wench a good lesson.” Isabella had been delighted, but she had only passively agreed. The clever Isabella immediately pointed this out.

“You were the one who said you'd ‘teach her a lesson’! When did I ever ask you to do it first!”

Isabella was so frustrated she could scream. This time, Isabella certainly had reason to feel aggrieved.

“And besides, when you said you'd teach her a lesson, I thought you meant you’d scold her at home or play a little prank on her, not shoot a crossbow at someone in the hunting grounds!”

“I shot at the horse, you know.”

Although he had fired the crossbow thinking it wouldn't matter if it hit the person, Zanobi had, of course, already rationalized this part to himself. Deciding there was no getting through to this scoundrel, Isabella turned to Cardinal de Mare and pleaded with her father.

“Father, Father, I swear I didn't ask him to do it first. I may be at fault for not stopping him, but I’m not some lunatic who would incite someone to shoot a crossbow.”

Cardinal de Mare had a different sort of question.

“Isabella. What on earth did Ariadne do to make you hate her so much? Do you detest her simply because she is your half-sister?”

“That’s not it!”

Isabella hastily denied it, afraid of being labeled as lacking sisterly affection. Ostracizing a sibling because of a different mother was considered one of the most vulgar behaviors in the Kingdom of Etruscan. And in truth, Isabella hated Ariadne not because they had different mothers, but because Ariadne threatened her own glory. She would have acted the same even if Ariadne had been her full sister.

“Ariadne acts arrogant and insolent about every little thing!”

“Arrogant and insolent? My second daughter?”

“She is arrogant! And forward! She doesn’t know her place before her older cousin!”

Zanobi, who never knew when to keep his mouth shut, chimed in. He was angry at Isabella for casting him aside, but he was even angrier at Ariadne for looking down on him. Isabella was classically beautiful, renowned for that beauty, the daughter of his wealthy aunt, and a well-educated young lady of the capital; therefore, in Zanobi's mind, she was “superior” to him. Being treated poorly by a superior was something Zanobi could tolerate. But Ariadne—born of a maid, raised on a country farm not so different from himself, and only recently grown beautiful—was someone Zanobi believed should clearly be beneath him. Zanobi deeply resented someone he considered his inferior defying him. This was unbearable. The Cardinal glanced once at Ariadne with a look of disbelief, then looked back and forth between Zanobi and Isabella.

“Just how arrogant and insolent could my second daughter possibly be, what terrible wrong could she have committed, to make you cause a scene where she had to be rescued by an unrelated man in the Orte Forest! Imagine if she had spent the night in the woods—it would have been a fatal blow to her reputation! How could her attitude possibly justify doing such a thing to your own sister—no, to my child!”

Cardinal de Mare's voice was gradually rising. The direction of his anger was a bit strange, but anger it was nonetheless. He was a man who managed the Grand Basilica of Saint Ercole without ever raising his voice, yet lately, he found himself straining his neck in anger at home more and more often.

“My second daughter is a child who stays cooped up at home reading books all day. What terrible thing could she possibly do!”

“Father! She told me, ‘You fucking bitch, I’ll finish you’!”

“What?”

Cardinal de Mare couldn't believe his ears.

“Where did you learn such vulgar language!”

“Ariadne said it! Not me!”

Cardinal de Mare pressed his temples.

“Isabella. Are you now resorting to lies to slander your sister?”

This time, Isabella was truly aggrieved, but the countless lies she had told in the past were now coming back to haunt her. Cardinal de Mare believed that Isabella must have been the one to first ask Zanobi to “teach Ariadne a lesson.” This was a reasonable suspicion, born from Isabella's previous attempt to slander Ariadne at the débutante ball. The Cardinal reached his conclusion and delivered his sentence to Isabella.

“Until now, I have not interfered with your freedom outside this house. That is because I believed you were a child who could distinguish between what is important and what is not. No matter how much you dislike or hate her, your younger sister is a member of our family, a comrade with whom you must overcome hardships together!”

Reading the nuance in the Cardinal's tone, Isabella turned pale. The Cardinal paid her no mind and continued.

“How dare you go around slandering your own sister outside, even if it is to your maternal cousin! Your father has been watching you closely. This was not the first or second chance I have given you. But today! You have truly disappointed me.”

He looked at Isabella sternly and pronounced his sentence.

“For the time being, you will reflect on your actions within this house and refrain from going out. You are not to leave until you have finished reading ‘The Book of the City of Ladies’ and submitted a report on it to me.”

Considering how Arabella was often locked in her room and forced to subsist on dry bread and water, this was an incredibly lenient punishment. However, it was the first time in Isabella’s life that she had ever been disciplined or punished by Cardinal de Mare.

“Father!”

Despite the Cardinal’s exceedingly generous punishment, Isabella began to shed tears of indignation. But Cardinal de Mare showed no sign of reversing his decision. Turning his head from the weeping Isabella, he faced Zanobi and spoke gravely.

“And you. I have considered you human trash from the very beginning.”

Zanobi was stunned to hear such raw words from the mouth of Cardinal de Mare, whom he had only known as a generous uncle. This couldn't be happening. A knighthood was Zanobi's future, but his uncle's generosity was the sole present source of income for him and his family.

“Watching Lucrezia invest in you, I thought it was a foolish endeavor, but I considered it of no consequence if it brought her peace of mind. But you, it seems, are not merely useless, but harmful.”

The Cardinal scanned Zanobi with eyes that looked upon him as if he were an insect. Zanobi trembled under that cold gaze. The look of utter disgust from a man of high station whom he had considered “his equal” or at least “worthy of association” stung as much as the whip had earlier.

“They say you shot an arrow at my daughter’s back. I don’t believe you were aiming for the horse. At the very least, you must have fired thinking it wouldn't matter if you hit Ariadne.”

Zanobi flinched. *No, how did he know? Did he look inside my head?*

“A good-for-nothing like you, who neglects his practice and has pathetic skills, would never have fired an arrow with the confidence that he could hit a horse.”

It was an insight worthy of Ariadne’s own father. Shaking his head, Cardinal de Mare soon delivered a chilling verdict in a voice as sharp as frost.

“Drag that man out and sever the tendons in both his arms. That is the price for shooting a crossbow at my daughter. Once you have severed the tendons in his arms, sever the tendons in his ankles. That is the price for shooting at my daughter and then crawling into my house without a shred of shame. If the de Rossi family has any complaints, tell them not to utter a word until they have repaid all his living expenses on top of the blood price!”

With the tendons in his limbs severed, Zanobi would never be able to hold a crossbow again. He would not be able to walk properly or work. The butler, Niccolo, and the other able-bodied men of the household rushed toward the deathly pale Zanobi. Zanobi, who until that moment had been stiffly defiant, thinking he had weathered the worst of the storm after receiving the King’s punishment, suddenly became utterly servile.

“Uncle! Uncle! Please save me!”

“Who is your uncle! You insolent wretch!”

At Cardinal de Mare's roar, Niccolo the butler mercilessly struck Zanobi with a club for his master to see.

“Ugh!”

Leaving Zanobi to curl up like a shrimp, Cardinal de Mare issued another order.

“Wait! Before you drag him out, make him listen to this.”

“Yes, Your Eminence!”

Finally, he turned to Lucrezia. His voice was surprisingly gentle.

“My dear. You must understand how much I have overlooked for your sake until now.”

Lucrezia, who had been weeping endlessly upon hearing that Zanobi’s tendons were to be severed, raised her head toward Cardinal de Mare. She seemed to lack even the strength to protest. But Cardinal de Mare showed no sign of pity.

“I am a man of the cloth. I cannot have a family. Nor can I give you the rightful place of a legal wife. You don't know how hard I have tried to make it up to you, to treat you well out of guilt for that.”

His gentle, quiet way of speaking made it all the more terrifying.

“Though you are not my official wife, I was so grateful for how you led and managed my family. I believed you put our family first. Until today.”

Cardinal de Mare’s dark green eyes stared coldly at Lucrezia.