Chapter 192: When the clock rings multiple times (3)

“My goodness.”

Vice Captain Élisabeth gasped. It was because the person was a face we recognized.

The night of the Harvest Festival parade, one of the old ladies selling goods in the narrow alley…

The kind old lady who handed me an apple…

She was Old lady Pomme, who supposedly passed away after being hit by a carriage, ‘Madame Victoire.’

However, this old lady had been questioned along with the other old ladies and was released.

The Imperial Crown Prince scowled. I too was surprised as I did not know that she was Old lady Pomme.

“It is not that precious young lady’s fault. It is not your subordinates’ faults either. Cough! It’s just that I am old…”

The woman coughed and laughed as she spoke.

The moonlight shone down on her and I could see that her hair was not the typical brown.

Her head, full of thin white hair, fluttered in the breeze.

Christelle blankly looked at her.

“Marquis Jesse did say that he thought you might be alive, Old lady Pomme. But how…”

“Nobody suspects you for anything when you get to my age. Nobody sees you as suspicious. That is the secret.”

Cough cough! The old woman coughed as if her body would break apart. Some blood gathered at the corner of her thin lips.

I quickly pulled out a handkerchief but Old lady Pomme waved her hand.

“They pity me and don’t even charge me for riding the carriage a lot of the time… They believe me when I tell them I am basically blind and when I say that I can barely walk. Nobody treats it as weird even if I am roaming around the walls early in the morning. An old woman over seventy years old, cough!”

Her body convulsed for a moment. We flinched and took one step toward her.

However, the old lady placed both hands on her knees and managed to remain standing.

Her deep eyes were glowing just as bright as the moon.

“Danger… Who would think of me as dangerous? Who would think that I am an acrobat running across roofs…”

“You were great at vocal mimicry as well.”

I added on. She chuckled as if she was amused.

The way her face lit up for a moment made her look like a seven year old child.

She looked extremely pure and full of joy.

“The events of that night… I’m sorry about what happened. But I was able to have fun thanks to you. After playing two roles and using up every ounce of strength in my body, I was sick for quite a bit. When our little ball of talent told me to retire…

I should have listened to him.” She whispered that last part before she started falling down.

I didn’t care about anything and ran to catch the old woman.

“Your highness!” Sir Johann’s voice trying to dissuade me became distant.

Plop. The body that fell into my arms felt extremely light and small. Her bones felt sturdy but that was it.

My instincts told me that she was on her last few breaths.

The old woman looked up at me and continued to speak.

“What a nice young man. How could someone so important… Look at someone like me with such eyes?”

I couldn’t help but clench my teeth.

“Did the House of Andresy cast away their children? Is that how you ended up alone as well, Old lady Pomme?”

“Henriette was angry about it. As for me, I just lived my life forgetting the reason to be angry…”

Her lips twitched.

Christelle cautiously approached before sitting down across from me to listen to the woman’s story.

I looked into the main character’s warm gaze.

“I don’t even remember. Was it the Count from two generations ago who threw me away… Why would that be important? It is something that happens all the time. I was just a common orphan. As for Henriette… She is a child the current Count Andresy threw away.”

This was shocking information. I looked at crown prince Cédric.

His orange eyes were burning with rage.

The old woman’s story continued, despite sounding as if she might be unable to talk at any moment.

25 years ago.

She was traveling and performing with the troupe as usual. They were camping out in a forest near the Andresy Lord’s Castle when she saw someone throwing a basket away.

It was a servant from the Count’s House who had come to see the show.

The fact that he was out at such a late time and avoiding people’s gazes to leave this basket in such a sketchy place felt weird.

Old lady Pomme checked the basket once he left.

There was a kid, about two years old, asleep in silk clothes. That was Henriette.

“Why? Why are they throwing away these innocent babies?”

An upset Christelle asked. Old lady Pomme made some gurgling noises before spitting out some blood.

I was worried that the blood would get stuck in her airway and quickly supported her head.

Her deep wrinkles looked full of pain.

“Cough. Because they were sick… That’s all I knew. All of the illegitimate children who were thrown away were sick… I was weak over here…”

She lifted her shaking finger to point at her lungs.

Her palm had dried blood and was dark red from new blood as well.

“Henriette… Needed to sleep a lot. I guess to those fancy nobles, that was a terrible illness as well… Hehehe.”

She made a face that made it hard to tell whether she was laughing or crying. The young Countess was grinding her teeth.

“The Count’s House of Andresy is famous for their indecisiveness. Maybe… It is possible they were trying to get rid of existences that might be a stain on the family name.”

“…”

The crown prince was as silent as the calm before the storm.

The reason that Henriette, who was thrown away in Andresy, was believed to have come from the Bellang Barony, was because there were not many territory lords who accepted orphans into their territory.

However, Baron Bellang was not the type of person to see someone in need and not help them.

Within two years of roaming the Empire with the circus troupe, Henriette became a child who called the poor Barony of the south her home.

Old lady Pomme’s gaze looked past the stars.

“Last spring, after we saw the Great Clearance of Demonic Beasts together, I… told her the truth on our way back to the inn. Where I picked her up, who her real family was… Even now, I have no idea why I did that.”

We had no idea at all.

On that spring day when light pink flower petals were filling the air, the two women were in the stands watching us.

“Seeing an important person who came to this Empire by himself as a diplomatic hostage being so amazing… What is our Henriette lacking that she needs to live as an acrobat in the streets? I must have had an arrogant thought like that. I didn’t know my place.”

The old lady mocked herself. Percy, who had been quietly sitting on my shoulder, nodded his head.

I quietly responded.

“Baron Savanier, whose territory is next to Andresy County, was Victoire’s first victim. That was in May. That must have been Henriette’s first crime.”

“Ah ah, that was not her first…”

Her hand twitched.

She seemed to want to reach into her pocket, but she had no strength to even lift up her robe.

Christelle couldn’t watch anymore and helped the old lady open her inner pocket.

What her rough hand pulled out was an old notebook, and…

“My goodness.”

…An extremely splendid diamond necklace. Christelle and my jaws dropped.

The old lady chuckled after seeing our reactions.

“Kill… Henriette went to kill the Count but, cough! She only stole this necklace. She said that she couldn’t get herself to kill someone… Of course she couldn’t. How could she kill, kill a person! Cough, cough!”

She could not stop coughing for a while. I bit down on my lips.

I knew she was at a point that I could not heal her, but I wanted to at least try.

“I am going to open a healing circle.”

“No, no. That’s not right… The excitement will be broken if the phantom thief is caught. A clown should go while playing on the stage.”

Gulp, she forced down something that was coming up her throat.

She then looked at me and whispered.

‘Feeling unnecessary guilt is not a profitable business, Marquis-nim.’

“That is why she changed her mind. She chose to steal instead of to kill.”

The crown prince mumbled in a low voice. The old lady shushed him and chuckled.

“That’s right, your Royal Highness. That’s right… And that child became as hot as a ball of fire with this feeling of revenge. She said something about how she was going to smudge the name of the family that made this old granny suffer or something… As for me, I forgot how to even get angry. It wasn’t that big of a deal. Why did she feel so wronged that she was thrown away… There are orphans everywhere in this world.”

She then closed her mouth. A thick stream of blood trailed down her cheek.

I could tell that she was suppressing intense sorrow.

Sir Johann, who had been quietly listening, chimed in.

“Then the one who was hit by the carriage must have been Henriette.”

“He…”

The old lady scowled. Christelle used a handkerchief to dab at the old lady’s eyes.

The tears did not stop and the main character’s hand did not stop either.

“Andresy. She was hit by one of their carriages…”

“Oh Almighty God.”

Vice Captain Élisabeth looked up into the air. I blinked a few times as I was at a loss for words.

This was unexpected. We had been too half-baked to expect such a tragedy.

“After performing at your palace, Marquis-nim, we were rewarded handsomely and all that was left was for us to get even more famous… There are so many things she has yet to do because she’s so young. Food she had yet to try, places she had yet to see… But the coachman of the Count’s House gave me a gold coin.”

Crackle! A flame finally crackled at the crown prince’s feet.

I immediately opened up my Holy Land and placed him within it.

I was releasing my ether for him to calm down, but the young man could not easily calm himself.

He didn’t reject me, but his flame fiercely crackled with rage.

On the other hand, the old lady’s voice became extremely quiet.

“They’ll give me enough money so I should go get the body cremated… And for me not to go around saying useless things. That was all. The noble inside the carriage didn’t even come out to look.”

I looked at her scowling forehead and her cheekbone with a blank gaze. How could they do that?

How could things be like this?

“That is why I decided to carry on in her place. The things that child did not manage to gain, manage to do, manage to pay back…… I wanted to do it for her. But I didn’t have time.”

‘Time…’ She sounded as if she was lamenting or singing. It was as my friends and I expected.

The reason Victoire suddenly said that she would steal me was because she did not have time.

The woman wanted something that would have the greatest impact before she passed, making people talk about the name of Andresy.

However, she did not have any plans of really aiming for me.

She was planning on using the commotion from the abduction to keep all attention on the Imperial Capital while she infiltrated my territory and stole the portrait.

What she was looking to do through this was to get the attention of the Imperial family.

It was not for her own satisfaction but for revenge.

“Marquis-nim, you smiled so beautifully. At your age, most people find acrobatics to be boring… It was a smart move to come to the tavern to draw me out. I wanted to play to my heart’s content with you, cough!”

She gasped to breathe. Dark red blood dripped down her chin.

I tightly grabbed her shaking hands. The crown prince silently walked up and stood behind me.

His rage made him warm, making it feel as if the tension was calming down a bit.

“Cough. All I managed to do was leave a will-like card… It was a boring act.”

“No, it was wonderful. We struggled so much because we couldn’t decipher the tarot card. We only figured it out thanks to this little guy.”

I smiled brightly and pointed to Percy. Thankfully, my voice came out normal.

Old lady Pomme’s eyes curled up.

“Thank you, even if they are just empty words. I had no strength to even pick up a canvas… I’m basically a living corpse.”

She slowly turned her head.

Christelle moved to allow the old lady to see past her.

The large white moon was filling the dark sky and the clear lake.

The two lights that were as bright as the eyes of the Almighty God faced the thief.

“At least this moon seems to belong to that child. It is not the full moon nor is it a new moon… This moon that’s nothing special seems to be our stolen goods.”

I could barely hear the end of it. The woman’s breathing became weaker.

I was unable to say anything when Sir Johann knelt down on one knee next to me.

“Your highness. You must do it even if it is painful. That is the only way to help the two of them.”

His voice was not shaking at all. His mint-colored eyes sparkled resolutely.

I clenched my mouth.

[Oh Almighty God, please forgive the lies she has confessed to me.]

I called for the Divine Oracle.

I needed to know. We needed confirmation, with everybody here as witnesses, that what the old lady said was the truth.

It had to happen before she left.

“…”

Our surroundings were silent. All we heard were the cries of geese.

There were no reactions at all to my circle. I urgently explained.

[I’m sorry for this, Old lady Pomme. I did not do this because I did not trust what you said. That you told the truth-]

“I know… I know. I know you are not someone who would do something like that, Marquis-nim.”

She looked at me and smiled benignly.

“Who, tell me, who in the Imperial Palace…… Would buy items from an old peddler in the streets?”

“…”

“Will you forgive me?”

That was the old lady’s last question.

It was hard not to know what she meant. My throat felt as if it was clenching up.

I clenched my teeth and bowed down so that she could hear me well.

I then proclaimed with full sincerity by her tired ears.

[I forgive you. The Almighty God will also forgive you.]

– Shaaaaaaa……!

Golden ether burst out of my Holy Land.

Victoire D’Andresy met her eternal rest with a peaceful look on her face.

—

Translator’s Comments

My eyes…who cut the onions?!