Chapter 82

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 82
Chapter Title: The Moment Affection Fades
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Ariadne tensed, half-expecting Lucrezia to attempt an excuse like, ‘I was just trying to clean something in Ariadne’s room and got caught up in this.’ Outside, the accusations and blades of inquisitors ran rampant. And this house was the residence of a Cardinal, one of the highest-ranking clergymen of the Holy See, who oversaw the grand Cathedral of Saint Ercole and the San Carlo diocese. To be entangled in this, even in the slightest, would not end well. But the foolish Lucrezia failed to offer any excuse. Strictly speaking, it wasn't just because Lucrezia was slow-witted. She had been caught so red-handed that there was no room for excuses.

“When Niccolo gave me a hint, I thought he was playing a sick joke!”

Giada, Lucrezia’s head maid and confidante, had been the one to egg Lucrezia on, but when the time came for Lucrezia to actually perform black magic in the house, she grew fearful. So, feigning a need for advice, she went to her younger sister’s husband, the butler Niccolo. She beat around the bush a few times, but as the day of Lucrezia's ritual approached, she finally spilled everything. Just before Lucrezia was to begin her black magic, she confessed everything to Niccolo, conveniently omitting her own role in the affair. Hearing the full story, Niccolo decided it was not something he could keep to himself. He immediately reported what he had heard to Cardinal de Mare. Had the Cardinal confiscated the related items from Lucrezia’s chambers before the black magic was actually performed and put a stop to it all, everyone would have been at peace. Lucrezia’s use of dark sorcery would have remained an attempt, and the frog’s blood would have stayed unused in its flask. The ivory carpet in the young lady’s room would not have been sullied with rotten blood, and perhaps the whole thing could have been dismissed as a ridiculous incident and buried. But Head Maid Giada’s decision came too late. By the time Cardinal de Mare rushed to find Lucrezia, she had already begun. What Cardinal de Mare discovered was a reckless, foolish, and unbelievable pentagram drawn on the floor of the Cardinal’s residence, and his wife squatting beside it.

“Do you have a single thought in your head?”

For Cardinal de Mare, the situation was so absurd that he didn’t even feel anger at first. The dominant emotion that gripped him was sheer astonishment.

“This is the house of a Cardinal. One of the highest-ranking clergymen who serves God. I am the spiritual leader of San Carlo, the foremost diocese in Etruscan, and one of the thirteen apostles directly beneath His Holiness the Pope.”

He jabbed a finger toward the bloody pentagram on the floor.

“And something like *that* appears in my house? Do you wish for our entire family to be crucified and burned at the stake before an inquisitor?”

Finally realizing what she had done and what was about to happen, Lucrezia began to tremble like a leaf.

“That was not my intention, Your Eminence…”

Lucrezia wasn't entirely without a defense. The reason she had been caught so clumsily drawing a giant pentagram on the floor was that the gypsy fortune teller hadn't given her proper, detailed instructions. The gypsy had told Lucrezia to ‘place the object requiring a purification ritual in the very center of a pentagram, draw the pentagram with frog’s blood, then place burners at each point of the star and burn frankincense and myrrh to dispel the evil energy.’ The gypsy had naturally assumed that Lucrezia would ‘draw’ the pentagram very large, placing its points outside the building. One burner in front of the stables, a second in a corner of the rear garden, a third in a patch of the servants’ vegetable garden—such an arrangement would have reduced the risk of being caught. The points did not need to be physically connected by blood. This was common sense among practitioners of black magic. Besides, the so-called ‘cursed gemstone’ had never been cursed in the first place. There was no need for the pentagram to be drawn with precision. It was obvious that it didn't matter if it was crooked, slanted, or even a hexagram instead of a pentagram, so she hadn't felt the need to explain the method of drawing it in careful detail. But Lucrezia, a complete novice in black magic, firmly believed she had to arrange a small pentagram drawn in blood centered on the safe. Lucrezia had been watching for an opportunity when Ariadne’s room was empty, but she hadn’t been able to find one. Today was the last day of the Ophiuchus constellation. So, seizing a moment when Ariadne’s study was briefly empty, she had recklessly proceeded with her plan, leading to this disaster. It was a situation born from a massive miscommunication, but not only was she unable to properly explain this to Cardinal de Mare, it didn't seem like an explanation would quell his fury. The Cardinal's anger, now kindled, was only just beginning.

“We would die, of course, but what would become of my honor!”

Cardinal de Mare had spent arduous years climbing the ladder of the class structure, from his days as an orphan boy in a seaside village. It was enough time for a skinny boy of twelve to become a middle-aged man with fine lines around his eyes and thinning hair.

“What would become of Simon de Mare, the renowned theologian…!”

Cardinal de Mare had fought his way through this world with nothing but his two hands. The strongest driving force behind his fame was his reputation as a scholar and researcher. Though his mind had dulled with age, in his youth, the tip of his pen was sharp. He advocated for a主神 accepted through reason and theological theory, and persuaded the clergy that witch hunts, black magic, sorcery, and inquisitions were the result of misguided emotions, and that one should reach God through logic and reason. And now, a devil’s pentagram had been found in the house of Cardinal Simon de Mare.

“Does this not negate all my writings, my works, everything I have done!”

The man known to possess the highest intellect was, in fact, a devil worshipper in secret.

“People will say it. That the only reason Cardinal Simon de Mare ever opposed the inquisitors was because he didn't want to be dragged away himself!”

He could not understand his wife.

“What on earth were you thinking, doing something like this!”

Lucrezia, who had begun to stream tears, mumbled haltingly.

“...for our family.”

“What?”

“Our family… I did it because I wanted things to go well for all of us…”

Ariadne was not included in Lucrezia’s ‘family,’ but Cardinal de Mare didn't bother to reprimand her for it. Lucrezia continued, sobbing.

“The fortune teller… said Isabella is like this because an evil energy has possessed her… that a purification ritual would make everything right…”

“And you believed that, you foolish woman!”

Cardinal de Mare shouted, half in disbelief, half in a fit of rage. It was simply too difficult to have a conversation with someone who had no brain. He had no idea where to even begin to convince Lucrezia that her actions were not rational. At the same time, the immovable fact that this woman, with whom he had shared a bed for over twenty years, was truly, hopelessly stupid, crashed down upon him.

“You didn’t know it would come to this? You didn't know what would happen if an inquisitor found this!”

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”

A montage of the past twenty-odd years, during which he had single-handedly struggled to lead the family, flashed through Cardinal de Mare’s mind. He had always thought Lucrezia stood firmly behind him, caring for the family and supporting him, but on second thought, this woman was, in fact, a colossal burden. She had been riding on his back, sucking his blood like a leech. And that wasn't all; her family came as a set. He had thought Lucrezia was faithful to him, but for Lucrezia, her birth family always came first. He had felt it once before during the incident with that Zanobi fellow. To him, his own illegitimate daughter was far more important than his half-wit nephew-in-law. And his faithful other half, his wife, should have felt the same. But when the time for choosing came, Lucrezia had coldly cast Ariadne aside and chosen Zanobi. Cardinal de Mare’s blood seemed to turn to ice.

“Listen, Lucrezia. I believe I have given you enough chances.”

The term Cardinal de Mare used to address Lucrezia had subtly changed. He always called her ‘you’ in a familiar tone, or ‘my dear,’ but now he was using a more distant form of ‘you.’

“You are a liability to the de Mare family. You contribute nothing.”

Lucrezia’s purple eyes widened. She knew her husband very well.

“No, you can’t…”

“I suppose this is the end.”

CRASH! The sound of shattering porcelain echoed loudly through Ariadne’s chambers. Arabella, who had secretly followed them and hidden at the entrance to Ariadne’s study, had dropped the porcelain doll she was holding onto the marble floor. Spotting young Arabella, Lucrezia scrambled toward her on her knees as if she had found a lifeline. She clung to her youngest daughter, pulling her into an embrace. Arabella flinched, startled by her mother’s desperate hug while covered in rotten frog’s blood, but Lucrezia paid no mind, pulling Arabella deeper into her arms.

“Your Eminence, Your Eminence! I am the mother who bore your children from this very womb!”

Lucrezia, who instinctively knew Cardinal de Mare’s true nature, cried out with all her might. Her husband had decided to cast her out today. If she was thrown out of here, it was all over.

“Three children from my womb…! Three! I have lived with Your Eminence for twenty-two years! You cannot cast me aside like this! Think of the children!”

Cardinal de Mare remained utterly unmoved.

“I am doing this *for* the children.”

He looked at Lucrezia with his lifeless, glossy, dark green eyes. He stared for a long, long time into the woman’s purple eyes, which he had once found endlessly captivating but had never once understood.

“It is better to have no mother at all than to have an uncontrollable woman like you sitting in the house, claiming to be one. Isabella? Marriage? Do you think she can possibly make a good match with a mother who dabbles in black magic!”

He stared intently at Lucrezia, spewing the words in his heart without restraint.

“You want Ippolito to become a great man and succeed? A fine chance of that! With a mother of such poor judgment, will he become a brilliant official, a renowned soldier, or a devout clergyman?”

Caught like a cushion between her two parents in their tense standoff, Arabella struggled to break free from Lucrezia’s embrace. But neither Cardinal de Mare nor Lucrezia cared about their daughter’s well-being.

“A mother like you. Is better off gone.”

Cardinal de Mare rose and looked at the butler, Niccolo, who was cowering in the corner with Ariadne, at a loss for what to do.

“You there. Send this woman to the Bergamo estate at once. Confine her to a small room on the Bergamo estate and forbid her from seeing anyone.”

The butler, Niccolo, bowed deeply.

“As you command, Your Eminence!”

Hearing this, Lucrezia screamed, shaking Arabella in her arms.

“Say something to your father!”

Pale as a sheet, Arabella was frozen, able to do nothing but tremble.

“You’re my daughter! The child I bore from my own womb! Say something, take your mother’s side!”

Lucrezia’s shrieks pierced the air, and Cardinal de Mare shook his head, approaching her.

“Stop this disgraceful display in front of the child on your way out.”

He took Lucrezia’s left hand. Seizing the opportunity while Cardinal de Mare held her mother’s hand, Arabella scrambled out of Lucrezia’s suffocating embrace. Cardinal de Mare forcibly pulled a large gold ring from Lucrezia’s left hand. The ring he took was the de Mare family ring, used as the signet of the lady of the house. It was the mistress’s ring he had commissioned when he, the nameless orphan boy Simon, had become a friar, then a priest, and then, as his station gradually rose to that of a bishop, had taken ‘de Mare,’ meaning ‘from the sea,’ as his surname. Since its creation, this ring had been worn solely on Lucrezia’s hand. After retrieving the ring, he commanded the butler, Niccolo.

“Take her away.”

Niccolo bowed to Lucrezia with a lingering sense of unease and guided her.

“Let us go. You must go.”

Lucrezia wailed, looking at her husband.

“I won’t go!”

But Cardinal de Mare acted as if he had already erased Lucrezia from his memory. He turned his head, deliberately avoiding her gaze. It was the poor subordinate who was left in distress. The butler, Niccolo, practically danced on the spot, trying to soothe Lucrezia while ensuring his respectful tone didn't quite reach Cardinal de Mare’s ears.

“My lady, you know the Cardinal’s temper! It is not wise to defy him now. His Eminence will surely reconsider once he has calmed down. For now, you must go.”

Niccolo practically had to drag Lucrezia out of the room. Lucrezia kept looking back as she was pulled away by him. Cardinal de Mare wiped the mistress’s signet on the hem of his cassock, then held it out to Ariadne.

“Here. Take it.”

Ariadne’s eyes widened as she received the gleaming golden signet. This was the mistress’s ring, necessary for all financial transactions of the de Mare household.

“I always thought I would pass this to a daughter-in-law someday. I never imagined I would give it to my daughter.”

Cardinal de Mare’s expression was stiff. In truth, even he hadn't fully grasped what had just happened. Like his illegitimate daughter, he was a man who acted with reason when a crisis struck; emotion was a latecomer that would overwhelm him afterward.

“Seeing how you handle matters, it seems fitting for this to be in your hands for the time being.”

Having entrusted the mistress’s signet to Ariadne, Cardinal de Mare was suddenly overcome with fatigue. He staggered as he left Ariadne’s study.

“You take care of the aftermath of this damned mess. I need to rest for a while.”

Ariadne bowed her head dutifully at her father’s departing back.

“Yes, Father.”

Ariadne was experiencing firsthand, with a chilling clarity, the saying that it is not the strong who win, but the one who survives to the end who is strong. She had done nothing, yet Lucrezia had dug her own grave.

“…”

Ariadne slipped the golden signet onto her left index finger. The large, sallow gold chunk gleamed brilliantly. Lucrezia had worn the ring on her fourth finger, but Ariadne’s own fingers were so slender that the ring barely stayed put on her index finger.

“Arabella.”

Ariadne called to her younger sister, who was trembling in a corner of the room, and placed a kiss on her forehead.

“Go to your room for now. Don’t tell anyone what you saw today. I’ll come to your room in a little while.”

After sending Arabella away, it was Giada’s turn.

“Giada. It seems you’ll have to clean up this mess by yourself.”

Giada, who had been at a loss in the corner, brightened at finally having a use, and nodded her head. The state of the Cardinal’s residence, with a pentagram drawn in the blood of a dead animal, could not be shown to just any maid. It was only right that Giada, who had already witnessed it, handle the cleanup. But Ariadne had no intention of letting Giada off so easily.

“And when the room is all clean, you and I will have a little talk.”