Chapter 16
#16
“Well. We don’t know what kind of power the woman accompanying the Grand General has, so I think it’s too early to decide yet.”
Rutherford, who entered the conference room, skillfully parried the words and took a seat. The Duke, who followed her in, glanced at her with a bitter smile and then sat down opposite her with an elegant attitude.
Unlike yesterday, when it was packed without a gap, today there were empty seats scattered everywhere.
Looking around, the Marquis discovered the commonality of the empty seats and smiled wryly. Other lords also seemed to have noticed this, exchanging glances with troubled faces.
About ten minutes later.
“Lady Arsinoe has arrived.”
The protagonist who caused a stir entered the conference room, where a quiet but strange excitement was floating.
Should I get up or not?
After much deliberation, Rutherford finished her contemplation after seeing Walter standing upright behind the woman. She concluded that it would be better to show respect to the Grand General, even if she put aside the etiquette for the woman.
As Rutherford rose from her seat and paid her respects, other lords, including Duke Whitten, also stood up and bowed their heads slightly.
“It’s good to see you again.”
Lucy responded to the greeting with a light nod and sat down.
Dressed in a wine-colored dress, she exuded a much more coercive and mature atmosphere than yesterday, whether it was because of her clothes or her cool expression.
“I guess the owner of the Twin Mountains can’t recognize me as king.”
Lucy, sitting in the chair of the chairperson, tapped the armrest and opened her mouth in a cheerful tone.
The owner of the Twin Mountains.
It was a nickname attached to the owner of Duke Kill's residence. The empty seats were also the seats of nobles with strong ties to Kill. Lucy smiled as she looked at the empty seats.
“As I said yesterday, those who have left their seats will be designated as traitors and will be punished accordingly. I believe that those who remain will support me and will be regarded as loyal subjects. If anyone has any objections to this, speak now.”
“I have a question.”
Surprisingly, Rutherford raised her hand with a nonchalant look. In the midst of gazes full of surprise, Lucy silently nodded.
“What are you curious about, Duke Rutherford?”
“We met Your Majesty just yesterday. Your Majesty may know us well, but we do not know what kind of person Your Majesty is. Even a political marriage has three meetings, so I would like to ask if it is right to talk about loyalty to Your Majesty in this state.”
Duke Whitten clicked his tongue with a surprised expression at the blatant opportunistic remarks. On the other hand, Lucy pulled up the corners of her mouth with an interesting face.
If you let me know you, I will also be loyal.
It was a golden opportunity for the nobles who did not know Lucy to find out about her, and it was also a question that allowed Lucy to naturally explain herself.
Lucy opened her mouth with a friendly smile.
“I believe everyone knows who I am the offspring of… I was in the detached palace until I was twelve, and I entered the academy because I thought it would be helpful to the country, and after graduating, I briefly belonged to Pomnos.”
Rutherford's eyes lit up at the word academy. She was curious about where Lucy and Walter met, and she thought that the point of contact was the academy.
The academy.
Suddenly, she thought of the child of the Marquis family she was a godmother to. She had the same age and the commonality of graduating from the academy, so she thought that maybe that child and Lucy might be alumni.
“Isn’t Pomnos the city of Lafi? May I ask why you went so far?”
She had heard rumors that the concubine and her daughter had run away somewhere, but it was the first time she had heard that they had drifted to Pomnos.
Lucy smiled bitterly at Rutherford's question and replied.
“It’s embarrassing for me to say it myself, but the late king’s obsession with my mother was so unusual that she ran away to Pomnos. That was the only way to get out of the palace and live. After that, I thought I would never set foot in Parnassus again… but I had no choice but to stand here at the request of the Grand General.”
There was not a single point of greed for the throne on Lucy’s face as she muttered as if she was disappointed. Rutherford’s gaze towards her also softened.
When she thought about it, she was just a fresh young lady who had just passed adulthood.
She had not been educated as a king from the beginning, and her mother was secretly oppressed in the royal family.
A young lady who had not been tainted by the world became a soldier for the sake of the country, ran away from the royal family for the sake of her mother, and was forcibly dragged to this position because there was no one to inherit the throne….
Perhaps, the authoritarian appearance she showed yesterday was her struggle to survive in this place where there was no one to protect her.
Even now, she was acting like an unsuited king and trying to look dignified, which reminded her of her eldest daughter lying in bed.
“How is Your Majesty’s mother?”
Someone asked from the end of the table. Lucy maintained a smiling expression and replied.
“My mother is still in Pomnos. She is taking care of the Lafi children.”
“Why did Your Majesty come alone?”
“I advised her to come with me, but she refused to return, saying that if she came with me, there would be misunderstandings and she didn’t want to be seen as a wicked person. Now that I think about it, I think it was a wise decision.”
The nobleman who asked the question closed his mouth with an embarrassed face.
The speculation that a concubine with only a pretty face was using her daughter to control the country quietly disappeared as if old dust had been swept away.
“Even after saying that, I feel embarrassed that I seem to be a very poor person. It would have been great if the Crown Prince were still alive… but as long as we are born of the same blood, I will try to think and act as a person worthy of the throne.”
As she humbly concluded her words, the nobles’ cold gazes all disappeared. All that remained was an expression of pity for the young lady who would bear the heavy burden.
“Has your question been answered, Duke Rutherford?”
“…It is more than enough.”
“Let’s stop reminiscing about me and get down to business.”
As Lucy pointed to the table and nodded, Walter approached the door and instructed the soldiers to do something.
A moment later, the soldiers came in with several small silver trays and placed them in front of the lords one by one.
On the tray were six or seven herbs and dried fruits arranged side by side. Next to it was a recipe written on a palm-sized piece of paper with the names of the herbs and the mixing ratio.
“Duke Rutherford.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“I heard that your eldest daughter has a particularly severe illness, do you remember what the initial symptoms were?”
Rutherford chewed on her lips and replied with a dark face.
“The very first thing was… tremors in her hands. She doesn’t drink alcohol at all, so I wondered why she was like that and called a doctor. After that, she was diagnosed with a nervous disorder and sent to a sanatorium….”
“What’s next?”
“Blisters started to appear on her skin and her hair started to fall out. Now she is lying down because she can’t move.”
“Everyone must have started with similar symptoms. After that, their fingernails and toenails will fall out, they will stutter, and their memories will become blurred.”
Lucy, who was carefully examining the herbs on the tray, picked up the recipe and shook it slightly.
“But your daughter’s condition is not severe, so if you prepare the medicine as it is, she will get better soon.”
Rutherford, who realized what the tray was, stopped breathing with her eyes wide open.
She touched the herbs with trembling hands and quickly looked back and forth between the recipe and the faces of the other nobles. Other nobles also muttered to themselves in a tone that seemed unbelievable.
“This really cures the disease….”
“Can we really suppress the epidemic with just these herbs?”
“I think it would be better to eat it and decide….”
“How do you know what it is and blindly eat it?”
Doubt and joy, worry and happiness crossed each other and burst out. Rutherford, who was swallowing her breath and reading the recipe, opened her mouth and barely spat out the words.
“Really, if I make the medicine like this… can I save my daughter?”
“If you are suspicious, go out right now and feed her the medicine. It will take some time, but that level of illness will be cured in a couple of months. And the most important thing to keep in mind is.”
Lucy put her hand into her arms and took out a finger-sized glass bottle.
What was contained in the glass bottle was a silver liquid that showed off a bright reflection. Lucy, who was staring at the glass bottle, raised the glass bottle high above the table.
The viscous liquid splashed back and forth according to her gesture. The faces of the lords who were looking at it slowly turned leaden.
“Some of you seem to be familiar with it, but to put it simply, this liquid is the cause of the disease, so don’t use it at all from now on.”
⚜ ⚜ ⚜
More than ten minutes had already passed since the meeting ended, but Vanessa Rutherford was staring blankly at the air without thinking of getting up.
She was not the only strange person. Through the gaps where people had left their seats sporadically, there were many nobles who were staring at the herbs or scanning the recipes with a dazed look like her.
Comte Elizabeth Comte, unable to watch any longer, grabbed Rutherford and spoke to her.
“Duke Rutherford. What are you thinking about so much?”
“……Ah, yes. The meeting is already over. Yes. Let’s get up.”
“You seem to be out of your mind. Shall I bring you some water?”
Rutherford said she was okay and got up from her seat. Nevertheless, she staggered and barely got up, looking like she was not okay at all.
Comte put her back in her seat and continued to speak soothingly.
“You must be surprised. It was a medicine that was rumored to be very good for beauty. I used it a lot as a cosmetic… I really can’t believe that such an expensive item was a medicine that caused the disease.”
The liquid that Lucy showed was a famous medicine that was rumored to be good for beauty and health.
It was said to be very difficult to extract, so it was sold in small quantities, and the price was sky-high. Nevertheless, it spread like a trend among the nobles, thanks to the rumor that it would make them white and beautiful if they applied it.
“Come to think of it, the late King also used to drink that medicine often… could that have been the cause of his death?”
“He even drank the liquid that causes the disease just by touching it. He was so obsessed with it, calling it a medicine for immortality… later, he brought a raw material called cinnabar and burned it whole to breathe in the steam.”
There was no way the royal family would miss the rumors about the medicine. In the first place, the person who made a fuss about how the skin would turn white if you applied it was the 1st Queen.
Was it because the King’s concubine had particularly white skin?
The queens were strangely obsessed with white skin. They made the young princesses and princes drink and apply the silver liquid, and encouraged them to drink it even more as the disease worsened.
And that was….
