Chapter 58 - Isabella's Injustice
Sister, I'm The Queen In This Life
The punishment of 40 lashes was not so harsh that a strong adult man could die, but it was also not severe enough to allow him to walk home on his own. After being stripped of his upper body and whipped, his entire upper body was torn apart, and Zanobi, who was unable to sit or lie down due to the whippings that ripped off his buttocks, was brought to Cardinal de Mare's residence in the early morning, face down on a stretcher, after causing such a fuss.
Also in that house was Lucrezia, who had been brought in early in the evening after fainting. It was an evening scene that made Cardinal de Marais go crazy and jump when he arrived home after a long day at work. Cardinal de Mare summoned the entire family to the living room on the first floor. This included Zanobi, who was suffering. He gritted his teeth and asked Zanobi.
"I have provided you with shelter, clothing, and food for the past 22 years. But what on earth were you thinking when you banned my daughter today?"
Zanobi, who had completely sobered up after being whipped 40 times gave a human-like excuse, unlike before in front of Leo III.
"I did it because Isabella asked me to."
His plan was to use Isabella as an umbrella to protect him from the wind and rain since the Cardinal seemed to care most about his eldest daughter. On the other hand, Isabella's beautiful eyes became the size of a lantern with astonishment. Is that crazy!
"When did I do that?"
Isabella had no intention of breaking out in front of her father to help someone like Zanobi.
"It's a blatant lie, Dad! Zonobi, you lied to His Majesty the King and said you never shot Ariadne, and then you dare come home and use me as an excuse?"
Isabella kept calling him brother in a honey-drenched voice, completely forgetting the past of making fun of Ariadne in front of Zanobi, and forcibly yelling at him as if he were her subordinate and cutting off his tail. Zanobi was taken aback by the development, which was different from what he had imagined, and questioned Isabella.
"You said, 'I want you to scold that girl!"
This was a correction within Zanobi's brain. Strictly speaking, it was Zanobi who first suggested that he would give that girl a real beating. Although Isabella was very happy, she only passively confirmed it anyway. Clever Isabella pointed this out right away.
"You said it first. 'I'm going to scold her, '
Isabella felt it was so unfair that she went crazy and jumped up and down. This time, there was definitely something that Isabella could be upset about.
"No, and even if I tried to scold Ariadne, I thought I would end up yelling at her or causing trouble at home. Who knew you could shoot a crossbow at someone in a hunting field!"
"You shot the horse?"
It was a crossbow. Thinking it wouldn't matter if it hit a person, but as expected, Zanobi had already completed his own rationalization in this regard, Isabella must have decided that she could not get along with this man, so she turned to Cardinal de Mare and apologized to her father.
"Dad, Dad, I swear I didn't make him do it in the first place. I may have made a mistake for not stopping him, but I'm not a crazy kid who instigated him to shoot my sister with that crossbow."
Cardinal de Mare had a slightly different kind of question.
"Isabella, what on earth did you do to hate Ariadne so much? Do you hate being seen as a half-sister?"
Isabella hastily denied this, fearing that she would be labeled as a friendless child. To ostracize one of her sisters because her mother was different was one of the acts considered vulgar in the Etruscan kingdom. In fact, the reason Isabella hated Ariadne was because Ariadne was a threat to her own glory, not because their mother was different. Even if she were her real sister, she would have behaved the same way.
"Ariadne behaves arrogantly in everything!"
"Arrogant? Ariadne?"
"How arrogant and irreverent she is! I wanted it back! "
"I didn't know that my cousin was scary!"
Zanobi, who couldn't tell what to do and what not to do, helped out. He hated Isabella for her pouting, but even more than that, he hated Ariadne for ignoring him. Isabella was classically beautiful, her beauty made her famous, and she was the daughter of his rich aunt and a well-educated monastic daughter. She was, in Zanobi's opinion, superior to her own self. Being treated poorly by his superior opponent was something Zanobi could handle.
But Ariadne came out of the maid's womb and grew up on the country farm, not much different from him. And Ariadne, who had only recently become pretty, was, in Zanobi's opinion, a child who should definitely be below him. Zanobi was greatly resentful of that child, who was below him, confronting him. This was unbearable.
Cardinal de Mare looked at Ariadne once with an expression of bewilderment, then looked at Zanobi and Isabella in turn.
"How arrogant was my second daughter? How big of a mistake did she make that she had to be rescued by a man outside the Orte forest! Even if she spends the night in the forest, it's a fatal blow to our reputation! What a mistake her attitude to do, so you do something like that to your own sister, no, to my own child!"
Cardinal de Mare's voice was slowly getting louder. The direction of the anger was a little strange, but the anger was anger anyway. Although he manages the Imperial Palace of St. Ercole, he handles all tasks without raising his voice once. However, in those days, the blood in his neck has become more and more frequent in the house.
"The second child is a child who stays at home all the time and reads books, but she can do incredibly bad things."
"Dad! He said to me, "You fucking bastard, I'm going to soak it!"
"What?"
Cardinal de Mare couldn't believe his ears
"Where did you learn such foul language!"
"That's what Ariadne said! Not me!"
Cardinal de Mare placed his hand on his temple.
"Isabella. Now you are going to lie and disparage your sister?"
This time, Isabella was truly wronged, but the countless lies she had told so far were holding her back. Cardinal de Mare thought that Isabella would have asked Zanobi first to scourge Ariadne. This was a reasonable suspicion because Isabella had previously tried to disparage Ariadne at the debutante ball. Cardinal de Mare reached his conclusion and sentenced Isabella.
"Until now, I haven't touched whatever you want or doing outside. Because I thought you were a child who could determine what was important and what was not. No matter how much you dislike or hate her, your sister is a member of our family and a comrade who must go through difficult times together!"
Isabella turned pale after reading Cardinal de Mares's nuance, Cardinal de Mare continued speaking without heeding anything.
"You go around gossiping about your younger sister, no matter where you go, even to your maternal cousin! Your father has been keeping a close eye on you. It's not like I gave you one or two chances. But today! You really let me down."
He looked sternly at Isabella and pronounced his sentence.
"You should stay at home for the time being and refrain from going out. You can't go out until you finish reading 'Ladies in the City' and write a book report for me."
This was an extremely generous treatment considering that Arabella was often confined to her room and suffered from forced fasting, eating only dry bread and water. However, this was the first discipline that Isabella received from Cardinal de Mare in her life.
"Dad!"
Despite Cardinal de Mare's generous disposition, Isabella began to shed tears of resentment. But Cardinal de Mare seemed to have no intention of going back on her decision once she had made it. Turning his head from Isabella, who was crying, he looked at Zanobi and opened his mouth sternly.
"And you. I considered you human trash from the beginning."
Zanobi was surprised to hear such explicit words come out of the mouth of Cardinal de Mare, whom he had thought to be a generous uncle. It couldn't be like this. His knighthood was in Zanobi's future, but his uncle's generosity was Zanobi's and the Zanobi family's only current source of income.
"When I saw Lucrezia investing in you, I thought it was stupid, but I thought it didn't matter as long as it made her feel at ease. But you are not only useless but also harmful."
Cardinal de Mare glanced at Zanobi as if he were looking at an insect. Zanobi trembled under that cold gaze. The look of disgust from a high-ranking person whom he thought was 'on the same level as him' or 'good enough to interact with was as painful as the whip he had received earlier.
"You fired an arrow at my daughter's back? I don't believe you were trying to talk. At least you probably thought it wouldn't matter if you got hit by Ariadne and shot her."
Zanobi trembled. No, how did he know? Has he looked inside his head?
"There's no way a guy like you who neglected practice and had poor skills would have shot a bow with the confidence that you would hit the target."
It was an insight worthy of Ariadne's own father. Cardinal de Mare, who was shaking his head, soon issued a frosty decision in his abstract voice.
"Take that guy away and cut off the tendons in both his arms and cut off the tendons in both ankles. This is the price you pay for shooting my daughter with a crossbow and crawling into my house without shame. If the de Rossi family is dissatisfied, tell them not to open their mouths until they spit out not only the blood price but also their living expenses!"
If the tendons in his limbs were severed, Zanobi would never be able to hold a crossbow. He could not walk properly or work.
The men of the house, including the butler Nicolo, rushed towards Zanobi, who was looking pale. Up until then, Zanobi had thought that he had received all the punishment from the King and that he had escaped the harsh rain and wind well, but his stiff attitude changed to a very servile one.
"Uncle! Uncle! Help me!"
"Who is your uncle!"
In response to Cardinal de Mare's scolding, deacon Niccolo mercilessly beat Zanobi with a club to see that his master would get better. Leaving behind Zanobi, who was curled up like a shrimp, Cardinal de Mare gave one more instruction.
"Wait a minute before I drag you out! Tell that guy to listen to this and get out."
"Yes! Your Eminence the Cardinal"
He turned to Lucrezia one last time. His voice was quite kind.
"Honey. You should know how much I have cared for you."
Lucrezia, who was shedding tears after hearing that Zanobi had severed the tendons in his limbs, looked up at Cardinal de Mare. She didn't even seem to have the energy to protest. But Cardinal de Mare seemed to show no signs of pity.
"I am a priest. I can't start a family. I can't give you the honorable position of wife. You don't know how much I tried to be nice to you because I felt sorry for that."
Lucrezia was more scared because he spoke sweetly and quietly.
"Even though you are not my official wife, I cannot tell you how grateful I am for you for leading and raising my family. I thought you put our family first. Until today."
Cardinal de Mare's dark green eyes looked coldly at Lucrezia.
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