Chapter 75

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 75
Chapter Title: The Weight of the Crown
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After hearing Sir Delpianosa's belated report in its entirety, Leo III picked up a paperweight and slammed it roughly onto his desk. - Thud!

“Do I look like a joke to you?”

Queen Marguerite, startled by the impact of the heavy paperweight, trembled. Sir Delpianosa, accustomed to Leo III's behavior, bowed deeply and calmly replied.

“How could that be, Your Majesty?”

“Then! If I'm not a joke to you, why wasn't this reported to me?”

He said, slamming the paperweight down again and again.

“Is this how you handle things? Dealing with matters in my own court like a rat, right under my nose? Who were you covering for? Alfonso?”

Leo III glared at Sir Delpianosa with blazing eyes.

“‘The King is getting old, it's time to side with the prince.’ Is that it, Cipriano?”

Hearing this, Sir Cipriano Delpianosa threw himself down in prostration before Leo III, who was standing beside the desk.

“Never, Your Majesty! This Delpianosa is your loyal servant!”

He carefully chose his words to avoid further enraging the king, who was past fifty and nearing sixty.

“How could anyone speak of the next king when Your Majesty is so hale and hearty! There cannot be two suns in the sky. Besides, by Your Majesty's boundless grace, I, Delpianosa, have been granted the honor of serving you up close, despite my meager abilities. Would I be mad enough to seek out the next king?”

Sir Delpianosa pleaded desperately.

“The next king will have his old confidants who have been with him since childhood. If I were to go to him, I would be nothing but an outsider! Where else could I possibly go but by Your Majesty's side! I implore you to see the truth, Your Majesty!”

Apparently pleased by Sir Delpianosa's desperate plea, Leo III's blade turned to the next person. The next target was Queen Marguerite, who was standing beside him like a statue being punished. The king stood straight, glared at the queen, and began his fearsome interrogation.

“How on earth did you raise that child!”

The king's fury continued.

“Your son was always your pride and joy. 'Alfonso, Alfonso, our brilliant son.' Yes, even I acknowledged that! 'Our good boy, so well-rounded and without a single sharp edge!' 'Our diligent son, who does everything he's told so well!' But now this son of yours, at such a critical moment, eh? He causes trouble over a woman, of all things?”

Leo III glared at Queen Marguerite.

“The Grand Duchess of Gallico is visiting, and he spends time alone with the Cardinal's illegitimate daughter right in front of her? It's a good thing Cesare covered for him, otherwise, even you can imagine how it would have looked! He abandoned the Grand Duchess to have a secret rendezvous with another woman! How could he not restrain himself while the Grand Duchess was here? Do you have any idea how important the negotiations with the Kingdom of Gallico are right now?!”

He shouted, shaking the bundle of documents in his hand.

“What is the point of your existence? You can't please your man, you're not loved by the people, and you can't even bring in substantial aid from your family!”

Queen Marguerite simply listened with her head bowed, not saying a single word.

“The only thing you were doing right was raising the heir, and you've ruined even that? Your precious son, whom you boasted of raising so well—does he not know his place, throwing a wrench in the works of state affairs at such a critical juncture?”

The king's anger continued to mount, finally crossing a line.

“Who knows if they were fooling around, hiding in the garden! Is that what a well-raised son does?!”

At these words from Leo III, Queen Marguerite lifted her head and glared resolutely at the king. Until now, she had silently endured her husband's verbal abuse, but this she could not tolerate. She opened her mouth to speak, her Etruscan laced with a thick Gallico accent.

“I believe in my son.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“I did not raise my son to be so shameless.”

Queen Marguerite stared directly at her husband, her blue-gray eyes blazing with a cold fury.

“Whatever misunderstanding there may have been, what's done is done. The Grand Duchess herself may not have realized it yet, but her attendants will soon grasp the situation, so we must prepare. The external matters will have to be handled by you, Your Majesty. But I assure you, what you are imagining did not happen.”

Queen Marguerite was unwavering.

“How could you, his own father, say such things without even trying to find out what happened!”

“What?!”

“I will speak with my son to handle the aftermath. I guarantee you, our son will navigate this wisely.”

Having said her piece, Queen Marguerite left the king's office without waiting for Leo III's permission. Leo III stomped his foot furiously.

“Hah!”

Leaving the king's private chambers, Queen Marguerite returned to her own palace. There, waiting for her in her private rooms instead of returning to his own, was her one and only son. As soon as Alfonso saw his mother's pale face, he approached her and asked.

“Mother. Was Father very angry? You weren't treated harshly, were you?”

Alfonso looked at his mother with pity, regretting, *Even though she told me to stay behind, I should have followed her in to protect her.* Queen Marguerite, in turn, gazed intently at her son.

“Mother. Yesterday, I had a small argument with Grand Duchess Lariesa, and she went out into the garden. I was looking for her when I happened to meet Ariadne. That's all.”

The prince was certain that his suspicious father had already concocted a sordid drama in his mind, starring himself and Ariadne, with his half-brother and the Grand Duchess in supporting roles. That was the kind of man his father was.

“The story is complicated, but I did nothing that went against etiquette.”

The king's misunderstanding was a problem, but his mother thinking ill of him was something else entirely. It was nothing new for his father to have strange ideas, but if even his mother didn't believe him, he would be truly sad. The prince looked up at his mother's face, anxious. The queen nodded.

“I know. My son, I believe you would not do anything improper.”

Alfonso's face brightened. But this was not a matter of trust between mother and son. Queen Marguerite continued.

“However, let us look into your heart. Can you swear that your soul is truly pure before Grand Duchess Lariesa?”

Prince Alfonso could not answer this question. Was he truly without shame before Grand Duchess Lariesa? Even if he did not love this woman he had just met, was there not another woman in his heart right now? The son's silence was as good as a denial. Queen Marguerite asked gently.

“The one you care for is Ariadne, Cardinal de Mare's second daughter, is it not?”

Momentarily speechless, Alfonso eventually nodded, affirming his mother's words. The queen pulled her armchair closer to the fireplace and sat down. She patted her lap, and her son—a grown man in body but still tender of heart—sank onto the rug at the foot of the armchair and buried his head in his mother's lap.

“She is a good child. Smart, and composed. She has a strong will. She grew up in a difficult environment without being broken by it.”

Queen Marguerite said, stroking her son's hair.

“But this is not a matter of that sort. Let me tell you a story from when I was young.”

As she stroked her son's hair, the queen's gaze drifted to a faraway place.

“I once had a lover.”

Alfonso, utterly shocked, lifted his head and stared at his mother with wide eyes. For a queen to have a lover was a grave crime, punishable as treason against the king. Seeing her son's startled face, Queen Marguerite smiled faintly.

“Don't look so shocked. It was before I was married.”

Then she added another word.

“Though to call him my lover might be an overstatement on my part. Brother Bertrand never did accept my heart.”

Alfonso let out a sigh of relief. Looking down at her son with pitying eyes, Queen Marguerite heaved a deep sigh.

“This will be a rather long story. Listen carefully.”

Queen Marguerite's eyes grew distant. She seemed to become a sixteen-year-old maiden once more, running through the halls of the Montpellier Palace.

“Brother Bertrand was the priest assigned to the princess's quarters. As a young girl, I fell for his smiling face, his earnest smile, and his sincere faith, and I suffered from the fever of love. It was around the time marriage talks with your father were underway. I saw a portrait of your father, and I disliked him at first sight. It wasn't about whether he was handsome or not; I just hated the look in his eyes. It is not something a proper wife should say, and it disqualifies me as a good mother, but the truth is, I still do not care for your father very much. Beyond not loving him, I do not even like him as a person. Oh, I've strayed from the story. So, I ran to Brother Bertrand and confessed my lovesickness. I asked him if we couldn't run away together, to live on the wide plains, farming and herding sheep. I was so naive. Brother Bertrand told me then, 'The princess has a calling from God.' He said that he, too, had a calling. His calling was to guide the princess of the Kingdom of Gallico onto the right path, and my calling was to devote myself to my homeland. A calling, a duty, a responsibility to marry the man chosen for me for the glory of my country, to rule his palace, to bear his children, and to continue his bloodline.”

Having finished this part of her story, Queen Marguerite's expression seemed strangely calm. It was the look of someone who had accepted her duty as her destiny. It was different from despair or resignation. It was a serene, peaceful attitude of someone who simply did her best every day, right where she stood.

“The truth is, I don't know how to farm, nor how to herd sheep. I don't know how to foster commerce, nor how to lead an army. I create no added value, yet I live off the people's taxes—spending a sum that, in the past as a princess and now as a queen, amounts to no less than 2,000 ducats a year, and sometimes more than 5,000. Why on earth did the palace—no, the people—support someone like me? How can the rich food I eat and the luxurious clothes I wear possibly be justified?”

She gazed into the air with unfocused eyes. She wasn't looking at any particular space. Beyond it, she was thinking of her duty, of her former people, and of the responsibilities she had to fulfill.

“I had a duty to give back as much as I had received from my homeland. Brother Bertrand told me that fulfilling the calling God gives us is the purpose of our birth, and that true, holy sacrifice is to never give up, no matter how much you hate it, no matter how hard or difficult it is, but to keep striving. I still hold that teaching deep in my heart. Every time I share a luncheon with your father, every time I run into Rubina in the palace, every time I hear the gossip about the foreign queen who can't fix her Gallico accent—no, perhaps every morning when I open my eyes in bed, I always reflect on Brother Bertrand's teaching. *Endure what you hate, and persevere even when you think you can't.*”

- *'Daily endurance builds eternity. The unbreakable fighting spirit of a human is what is truly noble.'* It was as if the proverb from the apocryphal gospels was ringing in Queen Marguerite's ears. The words of the proverb echoed in Brother Bertrand's voice—always the vibrant, lively voice of the man in his early twenties, the last way she remembered seeing him.

“In the end, I married into the Kingdom of Etruscan, bringing with me the territorial rights to the Gaeta region as my dowry. In return, as my bride price, the Etruscan court sent the Kingdom of Gallico 20,000 gold ducats and lent them an additional 80,000. That 100,000 gold ducats became the war fund that allowed the Brienne dynasty to defeat the remnants of the Capetians they had been fighting for forty years, end the civil war, and establish a unified Kingdom of Gallico by uniting the entire region. My father became the king of the unified Kingdom of Gallico, my brother and nephew inherited it after him, and my former people were able to farm and raise children in peace on fertile land, free from the ravages of war. I cannot say that I am very happy personally, but I have fulfilled my calling for my country. Now, my only happiness is watching you grow.”

She calmly recounted what had become of the man she had loved. She could speak of it now in a placid, even voice, coated with the dust of time, but when she first heard the news, she surely could not have been so serene.

“Just before I married and left for Etruscan, Brother Bertrand volunteered for the Crusades as a military chaplain. He had been scheduled to be assigned to the great central cathedral in Montpellier after his deployment to the princess's quarters ended. The unit he joined was said to have been wiped out by endemic disease and starvation before they even got near Yesak. They say he died somewhere in the eastern wilderness of the Ratgalin region. Was he happy? I don't know. Did he die feeling relieved that he had fulfilled his calling? I choose to believe he did. May he be happy, in the arms of God.”

Making the sign of the cross, Queen Marguerite's story of the past began to don the clothes of the present.

“Ariadne is a good child. She is clever and composed. But she is not the one who can walk with you on the path of your calling.”

Queen Marguerite continued in a calm tone.

“The Grand Duchess of Valois, I hear, comes with cannon technology. To be precise, her dowry is twenty finished cannons and forty-five libras of gunpowder.”

These were the numbers that Count Marquez had secured after a hard-fought struggle against Duke Mireille and Count Levien. Forty-five libras of gunpowder was enough for a year of artillery training, or for a single real battle.

“We couldn't secure the technology to manufacture gunpowder in the end. Instead, for every year the marriage lasts, we will receive an additional forty-five libras of gunpowder annually, for a maximum of three years. If you have children together, we get a lump sum of one hundred eighty libras for each son, and ninety libras for each daughter. According to Count Marquez, these were good terms. The Kingdom of Gallico intends to secure an Etruscan heir from the womb of the Grand Duchess of Valois, I imagine.”

As Prince Alfonso began to grasp the true meaning of his mother's story, the color drained further from his face.

“Etruscan is a nation advanced in commerce and culture, not a military power. For too long, we have been lost in idle pursuits, unaware of the passage of time. We dismantled the private armies of the feudal lords, but we failed to build up the central government's own military strength. We are now paying the price for having outsourced our national defense to the *condottieri*. We are very wealthy, and at the same time, extremely vulnerable. Perfect prey for a pack of wolves.”

His mother did not spare him. Even as she looked at her son with immense pity, she was nonetheless forcing him to face reality with resolve.

“This country needs a strong army and advanced technology. Can you lead the next generation of this nation to strength without obtaining Gallico's cannons? Do you have that ability?”