Wajikkeun!
There was, as expected, a space behind the wooden wall that had collapsed with a powerful axe blow. But Ariadne stuck out the corner of her mouth.
“There’s a safe.”
The expectation that hidden slush funds would come out as soon as one wall was broken down was probably too premature.
What emerged from behind the wall was a huge safe that took up an entire wall surface.
The door was designed so that when you input the alphabetic code, the handle would turn, and you could open the door by turning the handle that looked like a cartwheel.
Clank, clank.
She shook the handle roughly, but it didn't budge.
“Giuseppe. Bring in the Albani office manager.”
Ariadne thought that the Albany office manager would know something.
But it was the first time that the Albany office manager had seen the safe.
The Rambouillet Relief Center was built with the direct involvement of Queen Marguerite from the design stage, and he was later drafted from the Queen's palace to join the organization, so this was the first time he had heard of it.
In the end, she had no choice but to send him away, leaving only the order to bring all the diaries, notes, and memos that Her Majesty the Queen had left behind at the relief home.
The level of surveillance on the Albany office manager, who learned more about the secret, only increased.
“...Should I go into the palace?”
The Queen's notes left at the Rambouillet Relief Center were not very interesting.
Not only were there only a few of them, but most of them were written in such bad handwriting that it was difficult to read them, so there weren't even any meaningful sentences.
'Alfonso's bad handwriting resembles his mother's.'
Ariadne smiled briefly at that thought but soon became depressed again.
She had already written and sent more than four letters to Alfonso.
The only regular ship leaving for Yesak was a military ship operated by the Republic of Porto.
Ariadne initially sent the letter through the regular reception window, but later, thinking that it might have been lost, she sent it by paying extra money and also entrusted it to a merchant who was a business partner of CEO Caruso.
But there was still no answer from Alfonso.
'I wonder if he doesn't want to see me anymore.'
Perhaps he is in love with a noble lady from Gallico or is seeking solace in a beautiful dancer from Yesak.
Her thoughts reached that point and she shook her head vigorously.
The Prince Alfonso she knew was a man who was very indifferent to temptation. He was a man of integrity, and he had never done anything to break her trust.
'But he's weak-hearted, so if someone had appealed to his sympathy...'
Ariadne shook her head again. When thoughts are this intertwined, the answer is not to think at all.
'Yeah, the safe.'
The immediate task was the safe. What would Queen Marguerite have chosen as the password for that safe?
Fortunately, the safe wasn't the type of lock that would lock automatically after several failed attempts. You just had to keep turning it until you got it right.
'But the password is too long...'
The lock had a whopping 17 alphabet letters. It was by no means something that could be easily unlocked like a four-digit lock.
She decided to give up the humanistic approach of guessing the password setter's mind and opening the safe by guessing the word and taking a technical approach.
She got some graphite and sprinkled it over the alphabet letters on the lock and saw where it stuck more.
This is because she thought that frequently used alphabets would have more grease stains.
Of course, there were some results.
'The first letter is 'A'.'
A smile appeared on her lips. But not all the locks were worn.
She could roughly make out that the fifth letter was 'N' and the seventh letter was 'O', but nothing else stood out.
'I guess 'ALFONSO' is the first seven letters?'
That's it. And Ariadne was half convinced.
Queen Marguerite kept this slush fund secretly from her husband for her only son.
'Did you ever foresee a day like today coming?'
She laughed. When you live together as a couple for over 20 years, you may develop a kind of foresight about your spouse's behavior.
Ariadne could not have imagined that Leo III would not send troops or military funds to his own children, but Queen Marguerite had known about this for ten years.
'You must have been really unhappy to have to live your whole life with a man like that...'
She kept trying to unlock the lock, her ears perked up at the various noises coming from the lock as her mind wandered.
She was so focused that she didn't even realize how quickly time had passed.
She kept trying, turning the alphabet to the sound of 'click, click' and jotting down her failed word combinations on paper.
''ALFONSO DE CARLO'' does not have the right number of letters.'
My beloved Alfonso, Alfonso son of Carlo, Alfonso the Golden Prince...
They were all failures.
After a while of matching, she too was starting to get a little tired.
Knock knock
"Miss."
Giuseppe came in.
“It’s already past five o’clock. If you’re planning on eating at home, I think it’s about time you went home.”
"Ah."
She was so absorbed that only then did she let go of her hands that were fiddling with the lock.
“Giuseppe, don’t you eat at home too?”
“Yes. Actually, I don’t really care where I eat. My mother is always waiting for me.”
Giuseppe smiled innocently.
After rising from the youngest groom to Ariadne's closest confidant in charge of the household men, he became quite respectable and dignified, but when talking about his mother, he was the youngest son who was naturally loved.
Although he was not a man of many words, he opened up when talking about his family.
“But seeing that you come home regularly, I guess your mother is a good cook.”
Ariadne smiled a little.
"Of course."
The gossip and bragging about Giuseppe's mother continued.
“She still says, ‘Our baby, our baby.’ I think I’m twice my mother's age.”
The moment she heard those words, something flashed in Ariadne's mind.
She left Giuseppe behind and approached the lock as if in a trance, matching the words.
'Our baby...'
ALFONSO, MIO BAMBINO. (Alfonso, my child.)
Click.
The sound of the last alphabet being placed sounded softer than usual.
Ariadne naturally grabbed the wheel-shaped handle and turned it to the right.
Dddd...
There was a clicking sound as the mechanical mechanism engaged, the wheels turned to the side, and the door opened smoothly.
“Oh my God!”
As soon as the sight inside the safe came into view, Giuseppe's exclamation struck her ears.
“Miss, this is...!”
“Giuseppe, shush.”
It was a tremendous amount of gold. It was packed in a white burlap bag, full of gold coins, all of which were ducats, the highest content of pure gold.
Ariadne went into the vault, picked up a gold coin, and bit into it.
Aduk.
Sure enough, it hit the jackpot.
“Miss, there’s something here!”
Giuseppe, who had been standing behind her and looking around, called out to Ariadne. She turned around.
On the front of the safe door, in a pocket made like a pouch, there was a letter.
Ariadne picked up the letter and asked Giuseppe for a favor.
“Giuseppe, go forward and stand guard. Don’t let anyone enter this room.”
"Yes!"
After sending Giuseppe away with a strong answer, Ariadne opened the letter and began to read its contents.
"My beloved son Alfonso."
It was a letter left by Queen Marguerite to her son.
"I hope you never see this letter, that I can hand you this money with my own hands, or rather, that these funds will never be spent.
This mother is a sinner. She is blind to the well-being of her children and has decided to starve the sick and the weak to death.
It may be a decision that an ordinary mother might be shaken by, but it is a decision that a mother of a nation should never make.
But at the end of the day, what I see are the innocent eyes of my child."
There was more writing behind it, but it was illegible due to the rough ink marks. It seemed like two lines had been drawn and then erased.
'Is this a description of a specific event that happened at that time?'
Ariadne tilted her head and continued reading.
"I didn't have your younger sibling on purpose. If the second child were a girl, I don't even know where my husband would sell her, and if the second child were a boy, judging by Leo's nature, only one of the two would survive. Competition, endless competition, unconventional means...."
The writing behind this was erased once again, making it difficult to read.
It seems that she considered it inappropriate as the content of a letter to her son.
Ariadne frowned as she read the faint letters beneath the two lines.
"He doesn't care about anything but himself. I used to think it was just his innate indifference, that he didn't know much because he was a man, but today I've come to see it clearly. He..."
The rest of the text was completely unreadable, probably because it had been dipped in ink again and erased.
“I don’t care what happens to my life… Replace the people in charge of meals with those brought from Gallico... My husband is blinded by love... There will be no investigation...”
There was so much erased content that the erasing ink was so thick that Ariadne could only vaguely see the content behind it.
There had been an assassination attempt on Queen Marguerite at that time, probably by Countess Rubina, and the young Queen was afraid that she might be killed.
And she was struggling with feelings of betrayal towards her husband.
'So. 'My child' Alfonso.'
My own child.
I must have felt alone in the world, except for my young children. I was weak and helpless, but I had children to protect.
Even Queen Marguerite, who always said that a monarch has a duty and that she must do her duty, turned her back and did something she shouldn't have done. No, it was her maternal love. No, it was her ultimate survival instinct.
A person who can maintain morality even when she is about to die is a great person.
And most people aren't great. Ariadne looked back at the choices she had made in her past life.
Slap.
The image of Prince Alfonso collapsing after eating the pudding she gave him. The royal guards were suppressed and killed during the coup d'état launched by Cesare.
The shepherd who was hung dead on a tree... And Greta in this life. The heaviness of blood was engraved on her left hand.
Ariadne simply did not feel like reprimanding Queen Margaret harshly.
But the fact that the dead Queen was a sinner is unchangeable.
'...I will atone for the people on your behalf.'
Ariadne could not condemn the Queen, both because she had been greatly indebted to her and because she too was a sinner.
Instead, she decided not to abandon the Rambouillet Center, which the King had imposed on her, and which she could have considered a temporary stopover.
In fact, it was a position given to an unmarried woman, so if she had resigned to 'focus on her family life' after getting married, there would have been no excuse to keep her.
But Ariadne will transform the Rambouillet Relief Center into an institution that can truly help the poor.
She had ample resources to put it there.
And deep in her heart, she fervently hoped that this would be an atonement not only for the sins of the Queen but also for her own.
'Raphael said that there is no one who does not sin...'
And because the human species is human, it cannot remain pure forever.
But isn't it the constant striving for purity that separates humans from beasts, Ariadne thought?
Even if it's meaningless, just one more step. Just a little closer to goodness.
'And this money...'
She looked around at the astonishing amount of gold Ducato coins that filled the vault.
She'll have to count the exact amount to know, but it was definitely an absurdly large sum, close to an entire year's worth of national budget.
'I will send it to the intended purpose.'
She had more than enough to provide relief for the Rambouillet Center. Prince Alfonso would have military funds. And a very large one at that.
There was, as expected, a space behind the wooden wall that had collapsed with a powerful axe blow. But Ariadne stuck out the corner of her mouth.
“There’s a safe.”
The expectation that hidden slush funds would come out as soon as one wall was broken down was probably too premature.
What emerged from behind the wall was a huge safe that took up an entire wall surface.
The door was designed so that when you input the alphabetic code, the handle would turn, and you could open the door by turning the handle that looked like a cartwheel.
Clank, clank.
She shook the handle roughly, but it didn't budge.
“Giuseppe. Bring in the Albani office manager.”
Ariadne thought that the Albany office manager would know something.
But it was the first time that the Albany office manager had seen the safe.
The Rambouillet Relief Center was built with the direct involvement of Queen Marguerite from the design stage, and he was later drafted from the Queen's palace to join the organization, so this was the first time he had heard of it.
In the end, she had no choice but to send him away, leaving only the order to bring all the diaries, notes, and memos that Her Majesty the Queen had left behind at the relief home.
The level of surveillance on the Albany office manager, who learned more about the secret, only increased.
“...Should I go into the palace?”
The Queen's notes left at the Rambouillet Relief Center were not very interesting.
Not only were there only a few of them, but most of them were written in such bad handwriting that it was difficult to read them, so there weren't even any meaningful sentences.
'Alfonso's bad handwriting resembles his mother's.'
Ariadne smiled briefly at that thought but soon became depressed again.
She had already written and sent more than four letters to Alfonso.
The only regular ship leaving for Yesak was a military ship operated by the Republic of Porto.
Ariadne initially sent the letter through the regular reception window, but later, thinking that it might have been lost, she sent it by paying extra money and also entrusted it to a merchant who was a business partner of CEO Caruso.
But there was still no answer from Alfonso.
'I wonder if he doesn't want to see me anymore.'
Perhaps he is in love with a noble lady from Gallico or is seeking solace in a beautiful dancer from Yesak.
Her thoughts reached that point and she shook her head vigorously.
The Prince Alfonso she knew was a man who was very indifferent to temptation. He was a man of integrity, and he had never done anything to break her trust.
'But he's weak-hearted, so if someone had appealed to his sympathy...'
Ariadne shook her head again. When thoughts are this intertwined, the answer is not to think at all.
'Yeah, the safe.'
The immediate task was the safe. What would Queen Marguerite have chosen as the password for that safe?
Fortunately, the safe wasn't the type of lock that would lock automatically after several failed attempts. You just had to keep turning it until you got it right.
'But the password is too long...'
The lock had a whopping 17 alphabet letters. It was by no means something that could be easily unlocked like a four-digit lock.
She decided to give up the humanistic approach of guessing the password setter's mind and opening the safe by guessing the word and taking a technical approach.
She got some graphite and sprinkled it over the alphabet letters on the lock and saw where it stuck more.
This is because she thought that frequently used alphabets would have more grease stains.
Of course, there were some results.
'The first letter is 'A'.'
A smile appeared on her lips. But not all the locks were worn.
She could roughly make out that the fifth letter was 'N' and the seventh letter was 'O', but nothing else stood out.
'I guess 'ALFONSO' is the first seven letters?'
That's it. And Ariadne was half convinced.
Queen Marguerite kept this slush fund secretly from her husband for her only son.
'Did you ever foresee a day like today coming?'
She laughed. When you live together as a couple for over 20 years, you may develop a kind of foresight about your spouse's behavior.
Ariadne could not have imagined that Leo III would not send troops or military funds to his own children, but Queen Marguerite had known about this for ten years.
'You must have been really unhappy to have to live your whole life with a man like that...'
She kept trying to unlock the lock, her ears perked up at the various noises coming from the lock as her mind wandered.
She was so focused that she didn't even realize how quickly time had passed.
She kept trying, turning the alphabet to the sound of 'click, click' and jotting down her failed word combinations on paper.
''ALFONSO DE CARLO'' does not have the right number of letters.'
My beloved Alfonso, Alfonso son of Carlo, Alfonso the Golden Prince...
They were all failures.
After a while of matching, she too was starting to get a little tired.
Knock knock
"Miss."
Giuseppe came in.
“It’s already past five o’clock. If you’re planning on eating at home, I think it’s about time you went home.”
"Ah."
She was so absorbed that only then did she let go of her hands that were fiddling with the lock.
“Giuseppe, don’t you eat at home too?”
“Yes. Actually, I don’t really care where I eat. My mother is always waiting for me.”
Giuseppe smiled innocently.
After rising from the youngest groom to Ariadne's closest confidant in charge of the household men, he became quite respectable and dignified, but when talking about his mother, he was the youngest son who was naturally loved.
Although he was not a man of many words, he opened up when talking about his family.
“But seeing that you come home regularly, I guess your mother is a good cook.”
“Haha, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is a secret from my mom.”
"Of course."
The gossip and bragging about Giuseppe's mother continued.
“She still says, ‘Our baby, our baby.’ I think I’m twice my mother's age.”
The moment she heard those words, something flashed in Ariadne's mind.
She left Giuseppe behind and approached the lock as if in a trance, matching the words.
'Our baby...'
ALFONSO, MIO BAMBINO. (Alfonso, my child.)
Click.
The sound of the last alphabet being placed sounded softer than usual.
Ariadne naturally grabbed the wheel-shaped handle and turned it to the right.
Dddd...
There was a clicking sound as the mechanical mechanism engaged, the wheels turned to the side, and the door opened smoothly.
“Oh my God!”
As soon as the sight inside the safe came into view, Giuseppe's exclamation struck her ears.
“Miss, this is...!”
“Giuseppe, shush.”
It was a tremendous amount of gold. It was packed in a white burlap bag, full of gold coins, all of which were ducats, the highest content of pure gold.
Ariadne went into the vault, picked up a gold coin, and bit into it.
Aduk.
Sure enough, it hit the jackpot.
“Miss, there’s something here!”
Giuseppe, who had been standing behind her and looking around, called out to Ariadne. She turned around.
On the front of the safe door, in a pocket made like a pouch, there was a letter.
Ariadne picked up the letter and asked Giuseppe for a favor.
“Giuseppe, go forward and stand guard. Don’t let anyone enter this room.”
"Yes!"
After sending Giuseppe away with a strong answer, Ariadne opened the letter and began to read its contents.
"My beloved son Alfonso."
It was a letter left by Queen Marguerite to her son.
"I hope you never see this letter, that I can hand you this money with my own hands, or rather, that these funds will never be spent.
This mother is a sinner. She is blind to the well-being of her children and has decided to starve the sick and the weak to death.
It may be a decision that an ordinary mother might be shaken by, but it is a decision that a mother of a nation should never make.
But at the end of the day, what I see are the innocent eyes of my child."
There was more writing behind it, but it was illegible due to the rough ink marks. It seemed like two lines had been drawn and then erased.
'Is this a description of a specific event that happened at that time?'
Ariadne tilted her head and continued reading.
"I didn't have your younger sibling on purpose. If the second child were a girl, I don't even know where my husband would sell her, and if the second child were a boy, judging by Leo's nature, only one of the two would survive. Competition, endless competition, unconventional means...."
The writing behind this was erased once again, making it difficult to read.
It seems that she considered it inappropriate as the content of a letter to her son.
Ariadne frowned as she read the faint letters beneath the two lines.
"He doesn't care about anything but himself. I used to think it was just his innate indifference, that he didn't know much because he was a man, but today I've come to see it clearly. He..."
The rest of the text was completely unreadable, probably because it had been dipped in ink again and erased.
“I don’t care what happens to my life… Replace the people in charge of meals with those brought from Gallico... My husband is blinded by love... There will be no investigation...”
There was so much erased content that the erasing ink was so thick that Ariadne could only vaguely see the content behind it.
There had been an assassination attempt on Queen Marguerite at that time, probably by Countess Rubina, and the young Queen was afraid that she might be killed.
And she was struggling with feelings of betrayal towards her husband.
'So. 'My child' Alfonso.'
My own child.
I must have felt alone in the world, except for my young children. I was weak and helpless, but I had children to protect.
Even Queen Marguerite, who always said that a monarch has a duty and that she must do her duty, turned her back and did something she shouldn't have done. No, it was her maternal love. No, it was her ultimate survival instinct.
A person who can maintain morality even when she is about to die is a great person.
And most people aren't great. Ariadne looked back at the choices she had made in her past life.
Slap.
The image of Prince Alfonso collapsing after eating the pudding she gave him. The royal guards were suppressed and killed during the coup d'état launched by Cesare.
The shepherd who was hung dead on a tree... And Greta in this life. The heaviness of blood was engraved on her left hand.
Ariadne simply did not feel like reprimanding Queen Margaret harshly.
But the fact that the dead Queen was a sinner is unchangeable.
'...I will atone for the people on your behalf.'
Ariadne could not condemn the Queen, both because she had been greatly indebted to her and because she too was a sinner.
Instead, she decided not to abandon the Rambouillet Center, which the King had imposed on her, and which she could have considered a temporary stopover.
In fact, it was a position given to an unmarried woman, so if she had resigned to 'focus on her family life' after getting married, there would have been no excuse to keep her.
But Ariadne will transform the Rambouillet Relief Center into an institution that can truly help the poor.
She had ample resources to put it there.
And deep in her heart, she fervently hoped that this would be an atonement not only for the sins of the Queen but also for her own.
'Raphael said that there is no one who does not sin...'
And because the human species is human, it cannot remain pure forever.
But isn't it the constant striving for purity that separates humans from beasts, Ariadne thought?
Even if it's meaningless, just one more step. Just a little closer to goodness.
'And this money...'
She looked around at the astonishing amount of gold Ducato coins that filled the vault.
She'll have to count the exact amount to know, but it was definitely an absurdly large sum, close to an entire year's worth of national budget.
'I will send it to the intended purpose.'
She had more than enough to provide relief for the Rambouillet Center. Prince Alfonso would have military funds. And a very large one at that.
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