Chapter 10
After washing his hands clean and riding on, the guards showed the same attitude. They did not scream, at least, but trembling and begging him to go at once was the same. Leaving the palace, Rafael shook his head, feeling somehow tired.
Before going to the mansion, Rafael stopped by a veterinarian who examined diseases in horses and cows. Of course, veterinarians always diagnose only animals that are worth money. A veterinarian who specialized in cows, horses, and pigs often went out on house calls. Whenever they did, they hung a small bell on the front door. It meant that no matter how much the bell rang, there was no one to come out.
Rafael waited blankly in front of the door. The silver fox he had brought in his arms was limp, and he thought it might die before he met the veterinarian, but if it had died, that would be one thing, and with it only possibly dying, it was awkward to leave from here.
“You’re here again?”
The veterinarian, who had returned before he knew it, looked at Rafael and shuddered.
“How many times do I have to tell you to just let dogs or cats, things like that, die. What on earth do you do, spending money on such things. If it guarded the house or caught rats, that would be one thing, but most of them end up crippled. What on earth is the point of that…”
The veterinarian, who had been muttering noisily, saw the silver fox Rafael took out and whistled.
“Now this one is quite something.”
The veterinarian unlocked the door with a key and pushed the door open with his house-call bag, jerking his chin.
“Come in.”
Rafael followed him in, as told.
While the veterinarian examined the silver fox, Rafael looked around the inside of the veterinarian’s house, which he had often visited. It was a room he had grown used to before he knew it, but he had a premonition that he might never come again. Premonition was one of the things he had gained from killing. The more lives you take, the sharper some sense becomes. Intuition develops. The more you are in danger, again and again, the more sensitive you become. What the guild instructor had said, that the more you kill, the closer you get to a ghost, might have meant this kind of sense.
“The bullet is big too. Its divine power must have been no ordinary thing.” Of course it would be. The other man was the king. The ruler with the greatest divine power in Hesus, no, in the world.
“Still, this one was lucky, wasn’t it? It wasn’t hurt much. It looks like it’ll be all better in about three days.”
“When should I come to pick it up?”
“Give it four days, to be safe. That should be fine for taking it. But you, what on earth do you do? I thought you were someone with money to burn, and now you bring in a silver fox that was shot…”
“How much?”
The veterinarian put the silver fox in an iron-barred cage, furrowing his brow.
“We’ve known each other for quite a while, but all I’ve ever heard from you is, when should I come to pick it up, how much is it, how long can it live? Things like that. I don’t know your name or your family name…” The veterinarian trailed off, looked at Rafael’s face, and clicked his tongue.
“Ah, fine. Do as you like. It was a tricky one, being a silver fox, but I’ll only take 500 herera.” Even as he named two months’ wages for an ordinary laborer, the veterinarian, not wanting to lose the good customer who promptly paid in cash, watched Rafael’s expression as he spoke, and Rafael obediently took out the money and placed it on the table.
“I’ll come in the afternoon, four days from now.”
When Rafael closed the door and left, the veterinarian looked back and forth between the silver fox and the money.
“Ah, he’s a good customer, but strangely ignorant of the ways of the world…” It was good that he paid without complaint even when overcharged, but it was a flaw that he was always expressionless, so you could not tell what he was thinking. The veterinarian thought for a moment, then put the money away after all. In any case, it paid better than seeing horses or cows, and it was enough that he was far more gentlemanly than the owners of horses or cows, who trembled lest the slightest scratch mar their property and were ready to eat the veterinarian alive.
A silver fox, after all, is only a variant of an ordinary fox. That is, even if it is a precious fox to people, from the veterinarian’s point of view, diagnosing a fox and diagnosing a silver fox were the same thing.
And yet, a customer who obediently paid even when charged more than four times as much because it was a little precious. Come to think of it, might he be the son of a noble or a great merchant, or a government official or something. The veterinarian kept up his endless fantasies, grinning to himself.
By the time Rafael arrived at the Shore family’s main house, it was already night. But the Shore family had the lights on brightly, as if it were daytime. With servants behind them, the whole Shore family had gathered in a corner of the inner garden, and their faces were all dark. A pit had already been dug deep, and beside it lay a top-quality coffin made of rosewood and mahogany. When the servants opened the coffin, Rafael put Marie into the coffin, blanket and all.
“I can’t send her off looking like that.” The Duchess spoke in a tearful voice.
“I can’t send her off like that. She was such a pretty child, such a kind child. I absolutely can’t send her off like that. I can’t send her off like that.”
The Duchess shook her head and wept. Her two sons held her from both sides, as if she might run to the corpse at any moment. The Duke put his hand on her shoulder and whispered, “Please, calm down,” several times.
“I can’t send her off like that. In the world, what is that state. To that poor child who married that bastard and died after suffering so much—”
“Shall I unwrap her?”
Rafael asked. With a cold face that showed no interest in whether others wept or not, Rafael unwrapped the blanket and carefully placed Marie’s corpse, which looked more like trash than a corpse, into the coffin lined with linen. The moment they saw the corpse, shock and horror flashed in people’s eyes, but Rafael placed Marie in carefully, tucked the linen over her body, and turned to look at them.
“If you’re not going to hold a funeral rite, may I bury her?” Knowing no one could touch this corpse, Rafael sealed the coffin and hoisted it onto his shoulder. It was not a weight one person could lift alone, and yet Rafael easily carried the coffin and jumped down into the pit. Setting the coffin down on the bottom of the fairly wide pit, Rafael clicked his tongue. What he had wanted to give Marie was earth. But if she was in such a thick coffin, it would take a very long time for her body to melt into the ground. But it was the other people, not Rafael, who had known Marie in life, so Rafael did not take her out of the coffin and climbed back up out of the pit.
When Rafael tried to take hold of the shovel, someone grabbed his wrist. It was Edward.
“You don’t need to do that much.”
No sooner had he spoken than several sturdy-looking servants stepped forward. The maids were weeping, leaning on each other. “To think Lady Marie would come to this…” Their weeping was as bitter as if they had lost a relative. It seemed she had not been surrounded only by cold-hearted people like her husband. Led by Edward’s words, Rafael handed the shovel to a servant who approached. He had expected them to shrink back like the royal guards, but though they trembled, they obediently took the shovel.
It took quite a long time to cover it all with earth. Listening to the sniffling grow louder, then gradually subside, Rafael wanted to go home soon. He wanted to go home to a house overflowing with swords and cats and dogs, and close his eyes. It was more exhausting than any job. It did not even pay. It was the first thing in Rafael’s life that he had done swept along by impulse. But in any case, he had buried Marie, and his chest felt quite relieved. Just as he was about to say he would be going, Edward, who was still holding his wrist, muttered, “Now, at last, the main point.” The main point? Rafael furrowed his brow. Not the conclusion, but the main point?
Led by Edward, Rafael went into the reception room. Not only Rafael and Edward, but Gerald, the Duke, and the Duchess came in together as well. When the servant closed the door and left, the Duchess collapsed into a chair.
“What are we to do about this?”
Her voice was full of distress. Rafael deftly twisted his wrist free of Edward’s grip and murmured, “If this has nothing to do with me, I’ll be going…” At that, everyone looked at him.
“It’s about you!”
The Duke shouted, and Rafael’s face stiffened slightly. Rafael was a man whose expression rarely changed, since he went about with a mostly blank face, but the people in the reception room easily caught the faint shift in his expression.
“What…”
“There was something we couldn’t tell you, but our family is in a bit of danger right now.” Gerald murmured. Edward tilted his head to one side. He looked a little weary, but his delicate beauty still shone. As he tilted his head, his supple neck was revealed.
“Do you know what a ‘Generous Command’ is?” At Edward’s words, Rafael shook his head.
“It’s a trifling command the royal family issues now and then. Simply put, it’s something like this. I was wrong, but you clean it up. If you can’t clean it up, that’s your fault. That’s the gist of the command. That’s what they call a generous command… We received that generous command a week ago.”
“It’s telling us to take responsibility for Marie’s suicide. That making a woman who would dare commit a grave sin queen consort is our responsibility. Without giving a thought to how he himself has been indulging in his love of men.”
Leave a Reply