Chapter 9

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Translator: Harry Potta
Chapter: 9
Chapter Title: A Harsh Lesson
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The beautiful Isabella would never have sided with Maletta had she known what the maid had actually said. But Maletta had conveniently omitted her own actions, telling Isabella only that “Lady Ariadne struck me.” Unwilling to pass up the role of a righteous savior, Isabella immediately reported the incident to Lucrezia. Lucrezia, who had been looking for an excuse to punish Ariadne since the incident with the private tutor, seized the opportunity. With Maletta in tow, she stormed Ariadne’s quarters, full of righteous fury. The corridor leading to Ariadne’s small attic room in the corner of the third floor grew clamorous with the belligerent thumping of half a dozen pairs of feet, and then the old oak door was flung open.

“How dare a girl like you act with such abandon, raising your hand to another!”

It was Lucrezia, clad in her usual revealing, form-fitting dress, leading Isabella, Maletta, and her entourage of handmaids. Maletta presented her swollen cheek to Lucrezia, pleading her case with an air of injustice.

“I was organizing the young lady’s clothes when Lady Ariadne suddenly struck me for no reason.”

Lucrezia nodded emphatically at Maletta’s words and bellowed.

“It is the duty of a superior to rule their subordinates with virtue, yet you raise your hand without a thought. Your violent nature is a grave problem!”

*So, it has come to this.* Ariadne remained composed, bowing her head politely.

“Mother, a superior has the responsibility to correct the faults of their inferiors. Maletta insulted both Father and you, so I had no other choice.”

“What did you say?”

“Maletta said that because Father shamelessly raises his illegitimate children as if they were nobles, she saw no need to be polite to me, a mere bastard.”

Maletta’s face went white. She looked at Isabella, her eyes pleading for help. Isabella was simply dumbfounded. She had brought her mother here to take Ariadne’s side, believing she had been violent, but how could she have known Maletta had made such an explosive remark about Cardinal de Mare! Lucrezia, her face now pale, turned to Maletta.

“Is this true?”

“No! It isn’t! On the contrary, I told Lady Ariadne that she shouldn't try to be on the same level as the esteemed Lady Isabella and Lady Arabella!”

Ariadne threw out another piece of bait. Lying in her small attic room, she had run through this simulation more than ten times, anticipating what Maletta would tell Lucrezia and how she should counter it.

“To be precise, she said that Father’s blood is common and only Mother’s blood is noble. Therefore, my sisters Isabella and Arabella, who inherited your bloodline, are precious, but there was no need to treat me with respect, as my mother was nothing more than a common maid like herself.”

While this might have been inwardly pleasing for Lucrezia and Isabella to hear, it was something they could never publicly affirm. Cardinal de Mare’s origin—an orphan of unknown parentage, picked up and raised by the church, forced into the priesthood without a choice—was his greatest insecurity. If these words reached the Cardinal’s ears, there would be hell to pay. Ariadne played her trump card before the ashen-faced Lucrezia.

“She also said that if she were to catch Father’s eye and bear his child, that child would be of the same station as me, so she had no need to be deferential to me.”

Suddenly, fire erupted in Lucrezia’s eyes. This was a different matter entirely.

“What?”

Finally realizing the gravity of her situation, Maletta began to tremble like a leaf. Like a black panther, Lucrezia arrogantly turned her head to glare at Maletta. The moment wasn't long, but the time it took for that gaze to slowly shift onto her felt like an eternity, and Maletta collapsed to her knees.

“No, my lady! How could I ever do such a thing! It’s all lies from Lady Ariadne!”

Lucrezia scanned Maletta from head to toe, trying to decide whom to believe. The maid couldn’t be called a beauty, but she had a plump, voluptuous figure. Her torso was her most redeeming feature; her chest and arms were full and sensual, and her waist was cinched in, making her somewhat noticeable despite her short, thick limbs and plain face.

*What would my husband think if he saw this maid…?*

Maletta, well aware of her own assets, had tailored her maid’s uniform to be form-fitting. Its neckline was strikingly similar to the dress Lucrezia was wearing. Realizing this, Lucrezia’s eyes flashed, and she roared.

“How dare this lowly wench covet another’s husband!”

She whipped her head around and barked at the head maidservant standing behind her.

“Give this insolent wench ten lashes of the whip!”

It was an exceedingly harsh punishment for a slip of the tongue. Elderly servants sometimes died after twenty lashes.

“Yes, my lady!”

“Aah! No! It’s all a lie! Please spare me, my lady!”

The head maidservant and two or three of Lucrezia’s personal maids rushed Maletta, dragging the struggling girl away toward the servants’ quarters deeper inside the third floor. Maletta had once been Isabella’s personal maid, but Isabella didn't say a single word to help her. The matter seemed settled, but Lucrezia couldn't let Ariadne off so easily. It was a matter of her authority as the lady of the house.

“And you! If something like that happened, you should have come to me to handle it. How could you just strike a maid without a thought!”

She glared fiercely, scolding Ariadne.

“Violence is never acceptable, no matter the circumstances!”

—*Violence is never the answer, no matter the situation!*

The words Cesare had spoken to her in her past life after the teacup incident echoed in her ears. Ariadne smirked. It wasn’t that violence was never the answer; it was that those without the power to justify it were not allowed to use it. By that logic, was the violence committed by the margrave’s soldiers, whom Cesare had led to the capital, not violence? Was Cesare, who killed Prince Alfonso and hung his body from the city walls, pure as the driven snow? Was this Lucrezia pure? Was there a fundamental difference between a fist swung by one’s own hand and a whip swung by the hand of a maidservant? From Maletta’s perspective, wouldn’t a few slaps from Ariadne have been a hundred times better than being tied up in the cellar and receiving ten lashes? But Ariadne bowed her head respectfully and knelt on the floor.

“This daughter was short-sighted. I did not wish to burden you, Mother, so I handled it myself. I was wrong.”

Bowing her head again, she pleaded for forgiveness.

“As a sign of my repentance, I will go to the Rambouillet Almshouse. I will serve for three days and nights to atone for my mistake.”

The Rambouillet Almshouse had a notorious reputation. It was established by Queen Marguerite, Leo III’s wife, to help the poor of San Carlo. The intention was good, but the queen’s budget was woefully insufficient to feed and house all the city’s destitute. It was a place the poor entered only to come out as corpses.

“Maletta, too, is partly at fault due to my own lack of virtue in guiding her. I wish to take her with me and nurture her faith.”

Lucrezia looked slightly surprised. The Rambouillet Almshouse? She would willingly go to that hell on earth, flowing with blood and pus? But Isabella interjected from the side.

“Wouldn't five days be better?”

An angelic smile graced her face.

“The Holy Book says that Saint Asteia prayed for five days and nights after sinning to receive absolution. Wouldn’t adhering strictly to the example in the Holy Book yield a better result?”

Ariadne knew better than anyone that Isabella didn't have a single drop of faith in her. The woman who had bloodied her hands with her own sister’s to steal her man had no right to mention the Holy Book. Isabella was doing this purely to torment Ariadne. But whether it was three days or five made little difference to Ariadne. She was inured to filth, cold, and danger.

“My sister’s words are wise. I will repent for five days and then return.”

Isabella whispered in the ear of the bewildered Lucrezia. In front of her mother, her mask was off.

—*“Mother! When she comes back from the almshouse, we can just say she might have caught fleas or scabies and lock her in a small room for a month.”*

—*“If we lock Ariadne up for a month, do you think His Eminence will say nothing?”*

—*“What could Father possibly say if we tell him we’re quarantining her until she’s clean, just in case she brought back a disease from the Rambouillet Almshouse?”*

San Carlo was a city where the plague and cholera broke out periodically. The Rambouillet Almshouse was where the poorest and sickest people in all of San Carlo went. Isabella added another word.

—*“This new girl, she pretends to be obedient, but something about her rubs me the wrong way. She needs to be tamed. Let’s use this chance to show her who’s in charge.”*

Lucrezia nodded at her precious eldest daughter’s words. That very evening, Ariadne was made to pack her things and set off for the Rambouillet Almshouse early the next morning.

* * *

The de Mare family carriage heading to the almshouse was a simple one, painted black. There was a splendid silver carriage that the Cardinal mainly used, but she never imagined she would be allowed to ride in it. They wouldn’t have offered it, and even if they had, she would have refused. In a cramped corner of the carriage sat the maid Maletta, a wreck from the whipping, nervously glancing about. Ariadne smiled and broke the silence. She needed a loyal handmaid. Someone who was hers alone, uninfluenced by Lucrezia and Isabella.

“Maletta. For the next five days, it will be just the two of us.”

“…”

“During that time, my sister Isabella won’t be able to protect you. What will you do?”

Maletta’s shoulders began to tremble.

“Then again, will Sister Isabella even bother to look after you? Didn’t you see what happened when Mother called for ten lashes? If your sister had said just one word, you wouldn’t have been whipped.”

The ancient Latin general Theodosius said that one can rule through fear or through love. In her past life, Ariadne had failed at both. She was looked down upon by those around her and her subordinates, and she was not loved. This time, she would start with fear.

“Even at home, you spend most of your day with me, not with Sister Isabella.”

Ariadne leaned toward Maletta. Her tall frame and straight, square shoulders closed in menacingly, pressing down on the round, plump maid.

“You can make a mistake in judgment at first. Anyone can make a mistake. But once you realize you were wrong, shouldn’t you be quick to change your attitude?”

Maletta sucked in a breath.

“I am a generous mistress. I can forget what happened in the past.”

Just then, the carriage lurched violently.

*Neigh!*

“We’ve arrived.”

Fortunately for Maletta, the carriage had arrived at the almshouse in the nick of time. Ariadne clicked her tongue in annoyance and stepped out of the carriage. The Rambouillet Almshouse was one of the few charitable institutions on the continent run not by the Holy See, but by the state. Guided by one of the queen’s administrators to a cold room to unpack her belongings, Ariadne addressed the royal officials, who seemed unsure how to treat a cardinal’s illegitimate daughter. She simply asked them to treat her as any other young lady who had come to volunteer and to assign her work freely.

*I must go where the poor are gathered. That’s why I brought Maletta all the way here.*

* * *

“Form a line! One bowl per person!”

Ariadne was assigned to the soup line. The soup pot was heavy, but after ladling it out nearly 500 times a day, her arm felt like it would fall off. When the person she was looking for hadn't appeared by the first day, or even the second, Ariadne asked a junior official working alongside her.

“I thought there were far more poor people in the almshouse than this. Why are there so few people receiving food?”

“Those who are gravely ill don’t have the strength to stand in the distribution line.”

There was no separate staff assigned to bring food to the severely ill and feed them, which meant they were being starved.

*She must be in there, then.*

Ariadne resolved to go find her. Until that moment, she could never have imagined that she would meet someone here far more important than the person she was searching for.