10 - The Time of the Blind Beast (15+ Revised Edition)
Chapter 10
“Rose, move to the first floor immediately today. Stop doing other chores around the mansion and attend only to the Master.”
Though it was only a single sentence, the arrangement proceeded with the speed of someone who had been waiting for it.
Madam Serva even designated the adjoining room, connected to Ezekiel’s bedroom by a rope, as Rose’s new quarters. It was a location just a door away.
In a single day, her status changed from a maid in the laundry room to the exclusive attendant of the mansion’s master.
“Then I’ll have to find a new person to take over the laundry room in Rose’s place.”
Madam Serva placed her hands on her knees and struggled to rise. As Rose instinctively stepped forward to help her with her heavy, arduous steps, Madam Serva lightly pushed her arm away.
“Rose, I will no longer give you any instructions. You also should not pay unnecessary attention to me or the other employees of the mansion. The only person who has the right to give you orders, and the only person you need to pay attention to, is the Master.”
The sound of Madam Serva’s cane receded with a click-clack.
Rose looked back at Ezekiel, who was standing awkwardly. Merely by sending him a glance, Ezekiel nodded with his chin as if he could see her.
“Read the mail.”
It was the first instruction. Rose replied in a slightly awkward tone.
“Yes, Master.”
Upon hearing her reply, he immediately corrected her title.
“Major. Call me Major.”
As if reading Rose’s bewildered thoughts, Ezekiel added.
“The title ‘Master’ doesn’t suit your tone.”
When Rose, recalling the battlefield memories from a moment ago, addressed him as Major in a low, neat voice, Ezekiel felt a chilling sensation race down his spine. It was a feeling similar to the day he first drank wine made with Rhodanum.
It was either shock or a thrill.
Moreover, perhaps because she had only attended school for her studies, Rose showed no sign of ever having worked for someone. She had a tendency to pronounce the word ‘Master’ somewhat awkwardly.
Rose repeated herself with the title he had corrected her to.
“Yes, Major.”
It sounded much better. Ezekiel nodded.
The large envelope lay alone where Madam Serva had left it. As she picked up the envelope, a sudden worry arose.
“Is it alright for a civilian like me to read mail sent by someone related to the military?”
Ezekiel let out a snort at her question.
“If it were military secrets, they wouldn’t have let it pass through anyone else’s hands in the first place.”
Ah, that made sense. If it were a truly important matter, the person involved would have come in person for a private meeting with Ezekiel.
“Check the seal first,” Ezekiel instructed. Rose placed his finger on the wax that sealed the envelope’s opening. His thumb, extended in a well-shaped manner, carefully felt the texture of the wax. His touch, tracing the pattern, was quite delicate.
“It is indeed from Moncam.”
The name Moncam alone was enough for Ezekiel to declare it a search report.
Search. Rose mulled over the word.
What kind of search could it be?
A corner of her heart suddenly turned cold. Suppressing a subtle premonition, she broke the seal.
“This is Moncam.”
The letter, which began with a brief greeting, moved on to the main topic from the next paragraph.
“……We are investigating the ‘beautiful woman in her late teens to early twenties with chestnut hair and hazel eyes’ that you mentioned. I secretly contacted employees of the Valdemara mansion and described her appearance, but while three or four employees working at the mansion matched the description, they all have clear alibis for that day.”
The ominous premonition had been exactly right.
The letter was an interim report from subordinates tracking her movements.
“However, we have secured testimony from an employee in charge of the kitchen that a strange woman entered the mansion that day and helped with the work. Because she kept her gaze lowered and blended in quietly among people, it’s difficult to be certain if her appearance matches, but they thought a pretty newcomer had arrived at first glance. However, it seems the woman in question has disappeared since that day.”
It was a passage that described her precisely. For a moment, her heart sank.
Fearing that her agitation might show, Rose paused for a moment to catch her breath.
“What’s wrong?”
Ezekiel was quick-witted. He was a man who had honed his instincts through his experiences on the battlefield.
Rose deliberately coughed.
“I’m sorry. My throat is a bit hoarse.”
If I told you the woman you’re looking for is standing right in front of you, reading this letter…
“Continue.”
What would happen?
“They assumed she was taken away after catching the eye of Achenaus Valdemara. In fact, such things are common within the mansion. Women who deliberately enter as maids with the intention of gaining wealth by becoming his mistress.”
“You assumed she caught Achenaus’s eye… Yes, she was that kind of woman. Exactly.”
Tightening her grip on the trembling fingertips, she finished reading the letter.
“……Therefore, we plan to start by examining the women Achenaus Valdemara has recently contacted. This concludes the report. Additionally, I am sending you four or five bottles of Rhodanum through the army doctor. You never looked for a painkiller even when shot on the battlefield… According to the army doctor who prescribed it, the dosage is already at a dangerous level. Why don’t you call a doctor for a diagnosis?”
“Nonsense.”
Ezekiel replied curtly, as if his direct subordinate were standing before him.
“The medicine?”
Rose tilted the envelope. Small medicine bottles, about the length of her finger, rolled out. As she carefully placed the five bottles of Rhodanum into his palm, her fingers brushed lightly against his skin.
“Your hands are cold.”
It was due to her considerable nervousness. Rose clasped her hands together.
“Yes.”
“They’re almost like ice.”
“I’m naturally a bit cold-blooded.”
At Rose’s reply, Ezekiel recalled a fragment from a past night.
Under suspicion that she might have smuggled poison into the mansion, he had torn her clothes off and searched her thoroughly. The body he had touched then was indeed cold. The memory of her slender, well-aligned bones, her faint body temperature, and her faint scent flickered hazily.
Ah, yes. As he downed the bitter liquor, he had also inhaled the scent of her skin that clung to his fingers.
Looking back, it must have been quite harsh for Rose.
Ezekiel had encountered countless women during the war. Some were still alive, and some were already dead. The only commonality among them was that they all remained in their homes.
When war broke out, husbands and sons were conscripted. Leaving one child to carry on the family line was a privilege reserved only for prestigious families like the Valdemaras. Commoners, except for infants and infirm elderly, were all mobilized as soldiers.
Women who had sent their beloved family members off to war, though terrified, could not abandon their homes, waiting for their families to return. This was the same for the women of Astria as it was for the women of Dabis. Knowing full well that strange and menacing soldiers might do them harm, they defended their homes.
And most of the women who encountered soldiers were exploited and then shot and killed. Soldiers who had left their own wives and daughters behind would lust after other men’s wives and daughters. There was even a town Ezekiel found while moving along the front lines where all the women were rounded up and massacred at once. Their ages varied, from girls around ten years old to the elderly.
Neither the chivalry of knights nor the code of gentlemen existed on the battlefield.
Even men raised in good families with excellent education were not much different. Or, even if they themselves behaved nobly without so much as a glance at women, they turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the ‘hunting games’ or ‘parties’ of the common soldiers behind the lines. In fact, they even encouraged them, thinking that appropriate diversions helped relieve the fatigue and excitement of the battlefield.
But one day, when a woman who discovered the approaching army began to weep, hiding her daughter, who looked about five or six years old, behind her back,
When he witnessed women who had spotted the marching troops indiscriminately ending their own lives without distinguishing between friend or foe,
Ezekiel issued a strong order to his subordinates: never to touch the women of occupied territories. He took special care to ensure they were not to have their bodies or property plundered as they passed.
He had no intention of making excuses, but Rose was the first woman he had plundered. In other words, no other employee besides Rose had entered his bedroom for personal reasons. Because he was afraid of the consequences.
But Rose entered his bedroom, which others shied away from, and was plundered.
Plunder does not necessarily mean only the body. Affecting a part of the mind, touching feelings of humiliation, self-esteem, or fear, is also a form of plunder.
Rose, the woman who appeared with the scent of damp rain and comforting laundry soap, repeatedly tried to control her ragged breaths while lying on her stiff body and undergoing a body search. She did not cry, but it would have been perfectly understandable if she had run away the very next day.
Yet, she remained at the mansion, enduring the humiliation. Moreover, according to Madam Serva, she was a diligent and truly good employee.
Because of this, Ezekiel surmised. This woman must be extremely poor, he thought.
It was an era when the impoverished, made so by war, were as numerous as grains of sand. The northern, northeastern, and eastern regions, in particular, had been severely scarred by the war.
However, Rose testified at Milena Girls’ School that he had saved the lives of students. It was an unexpected motive.
“Major.”
She was a woman who remembered the title he himself sometimes forgot.
She was a woman who tickled his scars.
And so.
“How old are you?”
He blurted out the question.
