Chapter 71

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 71
Chapter Title: The Price of a Rash Provocation
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Lady Camelia de Castiglione, daughter of a baron, looked down at Isabella and spoke triumphantly.

“Right now, the only thing you have to lean on, Lady Isabella, is your father’s authority. But a Cardinal of the capital… there’s a clear difference between that and a high noble.”

The word Camelia omitted was ‘bastard.’ Another word she left out would have been ‘commoner.’

“I hear Gabriele Dellatore will soon be engaged to the eldest son of the Marquis of Montefeltro. A match arranged by her family. I wonder, was Count Cesare the best match your parents could have arranged for you? How terrible for you to have lost him to your younger sister.”

Isabella couldn’t collect her thoughts. Camelia was not only rubbing salt in Isabella’s wounds right to her face, but also implying that a bastard could only end up with another bastard. *That… that girl who used to lick my toes at my feet, has she gone mad?*

“If only you’d secured a dependable fiancé early on, you’d have solid backing at a time like this.”

She was implying that she had Ottavio behind her. Isabella was so dumbfounded that her true feelings slipped out.

“Has she lost her mind?”

Camelia seemed angered at being so openly insulted. Her face reddened for a moment before she primly corrected her posture, as if to say, *I, a graceful lady, am different from the vulgar Isabella.*

“Lady de Mare. You must use proper, refined words. That is how you will be respected as a fine marriage prospect. Given your birth, your conduct should at least be noble.”

“What?!”

*This is it. I’m landing a blow.* A chaste and flawless lady like me versus the promiscuous, illegitimate Isabella. With this, no matter how beautiful Isabella was, I am the superior match. Drunk on this sweet sense of victory, Camelia unknowingly crossed a line with Isabella.

“Ah, that’s right. You didn’t fail to find a match, Lady Isabella, you simply chose not to. You were too busy selling your smiles to this man and that to have time to settle down with a respectable one.”

Normally, Isabella would have handled this by emphasizing how hurt she was, pitifully lamenting her sorrow, and then meeting with her friends to tear Camelia apart for being such a wicked girl. But today, having lost Prince Alfonso and Count Cesare in quick succession, Isabella lost her reason at such a provocation from someone she considered so far beneath her. Isabella’s beautiful face contorted viciously as she retorted with a sneer.

“A respectable man? Do you mean a dependable fiancé like the young Lord Ottavio de Contarini?”

She radiated fury from her small, slender frame, glaring directly at Camelia.

“Camelia de Castiglione. If you managed to snag a match beyond your station because of your half-decent face, you should learn to live quietly instead of getting ahead of yourself.”

Isabella unleashed a day’s worth of pent-up stress on the wrong person. The lashing of her tongue was nothing short of a fireworks display.

“Your fiancé is the kind of man who would bark like a dog if I told him to and lick the heels of my shoes from the floor if I commanded it. Do you think taking someone like Ottavio from you would be difficult for me?”

Isabella looked down at Camelia with a chilling expression. She was, indeed, overwhelmingly beautiful. Camelia, who had been the prettiest girl in the capital until Isabella’s arrival, looked plain next to her—her eyes too dark, her nose too upturned, her lips too thick, her waist too wide, and the arrangement of her features excessively haphazard. Isabella thrust her own sculpturally perfect features right in front of Camelia’s face and laughed mockingly.

“Have you ever seen the way your man’s eyes wander over me?”

Camelia’s gaze wavered. Because it was true that Isabella could steal any man’s attention, from anyone.

“Ottavio would fall for me with a single crook of my finger. It’s only natural, seeing as he’s with someone who looks like you.”

“What did you say?!”

Camelia cried out in shock. Isabella continued her assault, undeterred.

“If one looks closely, you look like a little piggy. If I looked like you, I wouldn’t be able to eat, I’d be too worried about my fat growing every time I looked in the mirror.”

Isabella slapped away Camelia’s hand, which had been supporting her.

“Get your trotter off me. You witless pig.”

Isabella spat out the words, her eyes raking over the stunned and frozen Camelia.

“How dare you try to climb so high. Even filth has a pecking order. You’d do well to remember your place.”

As Isabella turned on her heel and strode back to the de Mare family carriage, Camelia de Castiglione stood trembling with uncontrollable rage.

“That girl! That girl!”

To be sure, no one could say Camelia had been kind. But she had only prodded. Even if she had crossed a line, it was by a hair’s breadth at most. It was Isabella who had lost all sense of proportion, flying off the handle and ramming into her at full speed.

*Ugly? You can steal my man whenever you want? Not just vulgar words, but curses too?!*

Camelia stomped her foot, but it did nothing to soothe her temper. Her hands, clenched into tight fists, had turned white from the lack of blood.

“Isabella de Mare, I won’t let you get away with this! I won’t let you get away with this!”

A reddish hue colored Camelia’s brown eyes, a sign of burst capillaries from her sheer fury. Having picked a small fight only to be utterly humiliated, she trembled as she vowed revenge. Isabella de Mare would pay the price for her words!

***

None of the people who had accused Ariadne of being Marquis Campa’s secret lover apologized. It was only natural, given human nature. But the public, as a collective, balanced the scales in a different way.

“Did you hear? The story about the second de Mare daughter?”

“They say Count Cesare is head over heels for her!”

“My goodness, how romantic!”

“I knew there was something charming about her. Men certainly have a good eye.”

“But really, the prince said he was protecting the honor of the woman his half-brother was courting, but why did he take her away by himself?”

“So they were in the garden, just the two of them? If that’s not a secret meeting, what is?”

“It’s not like Prince Alfonso and Count Cesare are on such good terms that he’d help him out, right?”

“You’re right, you’re right. He’s interested in her too.”

In an instant, Ariadne became the most famous woman in San Carlo, the lady who had captured the hearts of two of the king’s illegitimate sons.

“Isn’t this the first time Count Cesare has ever pursued someone so desperately?”

“Indeed! He’s always been the type to not turn away women who come to him, but chasing after one is a first, a definite first!”

“I heard that since the de Mare lady won’t accept him, Count Cesare is drowning his sorrows in drink and gambling!”

Cesare’s usual drinking and gambling were now repurposed as ingredients to highlight Ariadne’s allure.

“But isn’t Prince Alfonso supposed to have a political marriage with the daughter of the Duke of Valois?”

“Tsk, tsk. His mother is a Gallican woman, and now he’ll take a Gallican woman as his spouse. Wouldn’t their child be three-quarters Gallican and one-quarter Etruscan? Is that a king of Etruscan, or a king of Gallico?”

“It would be nice to have a queen of Etruscan origin…”

And then, another rumor began to circulate in San Carlo. It was said that Marquis Campa’s mistress was indeed Cardinal de Mare’s daughter, but not the second daughter, Ariadne, but the eldest, Isabella.

“I’m telling you, I saw it with my own eyes. Isabella de Mare had the red ruby that fell from Marquis Campa’s bracelet!”

The person who desperately spread that story was Camelia de Castiglione.

“What? Why would the elder de Mare daughter have that?”

“Marquis Campa gave her the bracelet, but she threw it aside to avoid being caught! They said a woman ran away, but no one saw who she was, right? And Isabella came from the direction the woman fled!”

As people put their heads together, a series of very plausible hypotheses began to emerge. They were far from the actual truth, but no one cared about such minor details.

“That makes sense… Isabella de Mare was in that clearing from the very beginning.”

“What noble lady could possibly escape so nimbly? Perhaps she didn’t run away at all but just stood there, pretending it wasn’t her?”

The shocking rumor spread like wildfire on its own, but Camelia de Castiglione’s passionate efforts certainly contributed. For once, the ever-cautious lady didn’t care whether word of her gossiping reached Isabella’s ears. Camelia told the story to everyone she met, and whenever someone expressed doubt, she would declare with confidence.

“I’m telling you, I saw Marquis Campa’s ruby in Isabella’s handbag with my own two eyes!”

In the process of this story becoming established fact, Isabella’s usual conduct became a spear turned against her.

“Isabella de Mare’s behavior has always been a bit… questionable, hasn’t it?”

“You put it so elegantly. To be precise, she had all the men in the capital wrapped around her little finger.”

Camelia was not the only young lady who had suffered at Isabella’s hands. There were at least a dozen others whose fiancés’ gazes and attention had been stolen. On top of that, young ladies whose crushes had chased after Isabella now rose up like a swarm of bees. The latter case might have been unfair to Isabella, but karma does not measure with precision. The misdeeds she had accumulated over time ignited like wildfire, becoming fuel for the attacks against her.

“And weren’t the dresses she wore so vulgar?”

“Frankly, one cannot ignore her birth. In the end, her mother is a mistress, isn’t she?”

“It’s the limit of a bastard. That’s all she’s seen and learned. Her mother also wears dresses with ridiculously low necklines.”

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

If the women’s attacks on Isabella stemmed from jealousy, conflicts of interest, and a sense of victimization, the men’s attacks were more for amusement, and far more base.

“Why on earth would Isabella de Mare fool around with that Marquis Campa? Money? Attention?”

“Doesn’t she just not care who it is, as long as he’s wearing pants?”

“Wow, if she did it with Marquis Campa, does that mean she’ll do it with me too?”

The rumor spread far and wide throughout the capital. But as is always the case with such rumors, the subject was the last to hear it. And unfortunately for Isabella, it was not she who heard the rumor first, but Cardinal de Mare. He had gone to the royal palace for a meeting and returned home trembling with such rage that his goatee quivered.

“I-sa-bel-la!!!!!!!!”

***

“Your Eminence, Cardinal de Mare.”

The meeting had just ended when Cardinal de Mare turned at the sound of his name. It was Marquis Valdesal, one of the King’s confidants and a member of the *curia regis*, the council that functioned as a cabinet, responsible for general administration and the stockpiling of strategic goods.

“Your Excellency, Marquis Valdesal. There were so many people at the meeting, I didn’t get a chance to greet you. I trust you’ve been well?”

Cardinal de Mare and Marquis Valdesal were two of the capital’s most powerful men and often shared afternoon tea. Their conversations were a useful exchange of information. Having stopped the Cardinal in the hallway, Marquis Valdesal glanced around before lowering his voice.

“Your Eminence, there is something you need to hear.”

“Yes? What is it… Is it about the Apostle of Acereto?”

After declaring the Apostle of Acereto a heretic, the Holy See had dispatched inquisitors everywhere to round up his followers. Both the innocent and the guilty were being arrested. The inquisitors were mostly focused on Acereto, and things were still quiet in San Carlo, but when Pope Ludovico’s minions appeared in the capital to hunt for followers of Acereto, there was a high probability that the target would be Cardinal de Mare himself. Thus, the Cardinal always kept his ears open. If a request from Pope Ludovico came through the Etruscan administration, Marquis Valdesal was the one who could give him a heads-up. But Marquis Valdesal shook his head.

“It is a story circulating among the ladies in high society…”

He let out a dry laugh, as if embarrassed to be relaying such information.

“Gossip from high society is usually something to be ignored, but I took the liberty of meddling, thinking Your Eminence might not have another channel to hear such things.”

He was referring to the fact that Cardinal de Mare’s mistress, Lucrezia, had utterly failed to find her footing in high society. The Cardinal couldn’t fathom what sort of society gossip he needed to hear, as it was usually filled with the alliances and rivalries of noble families or someone’s affair. He was a man devoted to his household and rarely caused any scandal, and as far as he knew, the de Mare family had no significant marriage proposals or major offers on the table. However, Marquis Valdesal was not a man to speak of trivial matters. The Cardinal suppressed a flicker of anxiety and asked.

“Then what on earth is the matter…”

Marquis Valdesal lowered his voice and began to whisper in the Cardinal’s ear. Cardinal de Mare’s eyes widened in shock.

“…What, what is this!”