The Albany office manager of the Rambouillet Relief Home faithfully complied with the demands of Ariadne de Mare.
From the very day the grain was delivered, the relief center closed its doors and stopped all outside access.
Inside, they began isolating people with fever or muscle pain and managing their meals and hygiene.
As expected, the day after the relief center closed, a patient with a high fever showed up.
Patient 1 began suffering from a high fever and 24 hours later complained of severe pain in the area of newly swollen lymph nodes.
“...It’s the Black Death.”
Ariadne sighed deeply after receiving the message that had been delivered only in writing without any face-to-face contact between people.
It was a sigh of half worry, half relief. That patient was going to die now.
There was no cure for the Black Death. The initial spread was stopped, but the epidemic had already begun.
She picked up the quill and wrote the letter as if it were flying away.
"The Rambouillet Relief Home is a place where it is difficult to enter from the outside.
If the disease was spreading there, it would have originated in recently admitted inmates or staff."
Sancha, who was standing behind Ariadne as she wrote the letter, lamented.
“What you say, young lady...”
“Yes... The Black Death was already rampant within the walls of San Carlo.”
In a way, the Rambouillet Relief Home of the previous life may have been nothing more than a place to be abused.
The slums are a perfect place for angry citizens to blame the plague that has spread throughout the city.
Ariadne shook her head after thinking for a moment that if the Black Death was destined to spread throughout the city anyway, why did she get involved in the relief work?
The Golden Rule must have led her there for a purpose.
That wasn't all. Ariadne had already studied ways to improve the Rambouillet Home during her time as Acting Regent.
The current Rambouillet Relief Home, no matter how good its founding intentions were, has ultimately become a place where people go to die.
The city's poor are herded together like garbage cans and are given minimal rations in extremely densely populated facilities.
Periodically, all sorts of diseases would break out and corpses would be carried away.
As soon as space becomes available in such poor facilities, new poor people are brought in to fill the vacant space.
The streets of San Carlo were clean and pretty, but the corpses continued to pile up in the Rambouillet relief home.
It was a terrible way to clean up the city.
'If you cut wood, you can at least get some warmth. Killing people uselessly like that is truly the worst of the worst.'
Of course, the mindset of the de Mare family members also further fueled the desire for structural improvement.
Why kill the working population in vain?
'In this life, I definitely...'
Ariadne's plan to reform the Rambouillet Home, which she had established in her previous life, was aborted when she failed to ascend to the throne as Queen.
Of course, the reform proposals were neatly laid out in a meticulous document on the desk of the Acting Princess Regent, but it was hard to imagine that the new Queen Isabella would have accepted her sister's policy proposals that she had thrown away with her own hands.
Ariadne finished writing the letter in deep thought and handed it to Sancha.
“Disinfect the letter with the smoke from burning mugwort, then give it to Anna and send it to the relief home.”
“Yes, Miss.”
“What about our people in the annex?”
“Fortunately, it seems that no one has become ill yet.”
Ariadne nodded with a relieved expression.
Both she and Sancha, who had visited the relief home with her, were in good health. It was a stroke of luck.
“Let’s hold out for the rest of the week and not run into our family.”
"Yes!"
“Tell my family members to refrain from going outside, and if they must go outside, to always wear a face towel.”
“I will do so, Miss. Don’t worry.”
In the midst of all this, the prices of grain, beeswax, linen, and mugwort, as well as other supplies to prepare for the plague, were skyrocketing.
***
Ariadne's guess that the plague was already raging in San Carlo proved correct.
Three days later, Leo III received a disturbing report.
“Patients with swollen armpits and blackened hands and feet have started appearing in the capital city?”
“I am sorry, but yes, Your Majesty the King...”
The Marquis Baldessar bowed.
“How are you coping with it? How are you coping with it? Is there any medicine?”
“As the plague spread from the south, doctors tried everything they could, but nothing worked. If you catch it, you’re dead...”
"Ha!"
Leo III turned pale.
“Has it spread to the palace as well?”
“No, Your Majesty. It is spreading mainly in the Campo de Spezia district.”
Campo de Spezia was a district where gypsies lived.
“Like dirty Moors!”
Leo III immediately started cursing foreigners.
Among the inhabitants of Campo de Spezia, there were a few who came from the Moorish Empire, but most were Gypsies from the Central Continent.
If they consider nationality by birth, then they are an Etruscan citizen.
However, they had different cultures, races, and religions. When something like today happens, they are usually the first to become scapegoats.
“That’s because the Moorish bastards don’t wash!”
The Marquis of Baldessar thought that if he had to find a reason for the high number of infected people in the Campo de Spezia district, it would first have to be the many merchants there and their frequent contact with the outside world, but he said nothing in front of Leo III.
There is nothing to gain from correcting your superior's wrong perception. It is best to keep your mouth shut.
“Marquis Baldessar.”
He just answered flatly.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Those guys, throw them all out of the city!”
Marquis Baldessar lowered his head to hide his expression.
He knew it. It was exactly the kind of idea Leo III would come up with.
In fact, it was an unbecoming action for a King of a country and a father who should embrace all his people, but it was also the most common prescription given by provincial cities that had been attacked by the Black Death.
“You foreigners, I let you live in San Carlo, but now you’re spreading the plague! You’re useless!”
“What are the criteria for expulsion? Darkened skin, high fever, swelling of the groin or armpits, cough, muscle pain. The symptoms that patients present are very diverse.”
The Marquis Baldessar deliberately cited examples of the severity of the symptoms.
This was because he was afraid that the King would say, 'If you are a foreigner, even if you are healthy, throw all of them out of the city.'
In San Carlo, there were several industries practiced exclusively by Gypsies.
Of course, some were purely for fun or entertainment, such as fortune telling, but there were also essential ones, such as special forms of slaughter, alchemy, and waxwork.
If an entire industrial complex were to disappear, the city would fall into economic chaos.
Leo III fell for the gentle enticement of the Marquis Baldessar.
“Most strictly! If you even sneeze, I’ll kick you out!”
But he added, without forgetting,
“Especially foreigners!”
Leo III looked at the Marquis Baldessar with a face that seemed angry but was actually filled with fear.
“If the plague spreads to the Royal Guard troops, we’re finished.”
A division of heavy cavalry and infantry from the Kingdom of Gallico still had no intention of leaving the province of Gaeta.
No, recently, on the contrary, they have been actively moving.
They established a garrison in a strategic location in the Gaeta region, then raided the surrounding areas, attacking peasants and plundering food.
Meanwhile, Leo III had been worried about the health of Prince Alfonso, who was being held captive and had been unable to lodge a strong protest with the Kingdom of Gallico.
But now things have changed.
Not only had Prince Alfonso escaped on his own, but the pillaging of Gallico's army, which had previously been dismissed as a personal aberration, was becoming more and more blatant.
Leo III intended to send troops to stop Gallico's division.
However, the only decent standing army the Etruscan kingdom had was the capital's praetorian guard.
If that capital's guard falls to the Black Death, the kingdom's last spear and last line of defense will disappear.
Count Contarini, who knew of the King's plans, asked cautiously.
“Your Majesty, if you would please send the Royal Guard to the north, why...”
“How can we get the Knights out of the capital in this situation?”
Leo III suddenly lost his temper.
“If a large cavalry force moves and they get sick, will you be responsible?”
In this era, the medical cause of the plague was thought to be a 'bad smell'.
The idea that the disease was transmitted from the smell of sweat from unclean sheets and the putrid smell of corpses that died from the Black Death was not an observation that was far from the truth.
The sweaty, filthy marching tents of the army were the perfect environment for the Black Death to break out.
“Huh...”
Count Baldessar sighed involuntarily. The King has no intention of deploying the capital's cavalry forward at the moment.
This meant that one of Gallico's divisions could continue to freely trample the Etruscan border.
It was now time to harvest the wheat that had been sown in the spring.
The south, a traditional granary, is in turmoil due to an epidemic, so a normal harvest cannot be expected.
All that remains is the north, whose wheat fields are being swept by Gallico's army.
Grain prices are already rising steeply, and there is no breakthrough in terms of what to do next year.
“Your Majesty, the royal army alone is not the answer.”
Count Marquez opened his mouth slowly.
“It is necessary to conscript a private army of nobles.”
Leo III looked up at the ceiling with a stuffy expression.
Feudalism was originally a political system in which local lords shared responsibility for national defense.
The King would lead an army provided by the local lords to wage war, but the soldiers could only be borrowed for a set period, and when the war was over, he had to return and return the army to the lords.
Under the feudal system, royal power was structurally weak, and the King always had to watch out for the nobles.
Leo III, whose royal authority was solid as the only legitimate Prince in terms of bloodline, was not pleased with it.
'You bastards. Who dares to give orders to anyone?'
He gradually reduced the power of local lords by making good use of the situation of the noble families whose inheritance was tangled and the taxes.
Leo III's reign was long. Like a drizzle, the power of the nobles was soon cut in half.
Now, there were only a handful of great nobles left who had the authority to command private armies.
However, although Leo III was very enthusiastic about reducing the power of the great nobles during his reign, he did not pay much attention to raising a central army that required fixed costs.
And the price for this was the current situation. The Etruscan kingdom had no proper army, except for the capital guard.
“Who... can come?”
The Marquis Baldesar responded as moderately as possible to the Count of Marquez's urging.
“The Duchy of Taranto, once the strongest sword of the kingdom, is now led by a thirteen-year-old girl.”
In fact, it would be correct to assume that the only noble family that was willing but unable to come was the Duke of Taranto, and the rest did not come because they did not want to.
Besides the Duke of Taranto, nobles who have the power to raise private armies—Duke, Marquis, and Count with local lands—may come, but will not.
Although there was still no family that openly threw their gloves at the King, there was no end to the excuses: they were sick, they were ill, they were old, they were attacked by a plague, etc.
“Your Majesty the King.”
The door behind the King's office slid open and a soft female voice was heard.
The door led to the King's inner chambers.
The one who opened the door and came out was Duchess Rubina. The three ministers all stood up from their seats and bowed.
“The Duchess of Pisano.”
“The Duchess has arrived!”
“What happened so far..."
It was a treatment Rubina could not have even dreamed of while Queen Marguerite was alive.
She was now acting as the de facto hostess.
Entering the office through the inner chamber was something a concubine would never dare do and something that Queen Marguerite, who refrained from getting involved in politics, would never do.
But Rubina was undaunted.
“Your Majesty, what are you worried about?”
She whispered, clinging to Leo III's back.
“Your Majesty, there is the Duke of Pisano.”
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