Chapter 425 - Something I never expected

Ariadne's eyes were blank as she heard the shout that the next pope would be 'Justinian VIII'.

'Not Simon I?'

No, that would not be the case. There were many people who did not use the Pope's name as their baptismal name.

The previous Pope, Louis, was a strange man; usually, when a Pope ascended the throne, he chose a new name for himself.

It may have been too ordinary a name to be Simon I, so he may have changed it at the last minute out of embarrassment. That's true.

Ariadne bit her lip as she tried to convince herself otherwise. But a suspicion began to creep into her mind that the elected Pope was not her father.

Her father never once told her that he would choose a new papal name.

A small cardinal stepped out from a high balcony and raised its hand. Thunderous cheers filled the square.

“Wow!!!”

Thump, Ariadne's heart sank once more.

Cardinal de Mare was a small man, but the man standing on the balcony now was an old man, hunched over and short.

He looked fifteen years older than her father.

-“Our venerable new Pope, under the Eminence of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgona, Archdiocese of Castelo Real, Kingdom of Credo....”

The words were heard in her ears but not in her head. Ariadne was dizzy. A familiar silhouette appeared behind the new Pope, standing on the balcony.

It was Cardinal de Mare who was wearing the white cardinal's robe that he always wore, rather than the golden vestments of the Pope.

- “The unanimously elected Cardinal Borgona has chosen his new name as Justinian...”

Ariadne closed her eyes after hearing this. Her father had failed to ascend to the throne. The banquet had already been prepared. Where on earth did it all go wrong?

***

The items that Ippolito, who had hired Aunt Louisa, asked her to bring from home were raw materials for black magic that might have remained in her mother's residence, letters that her mother had exchanged with others, and some precious metals that might have remained in her own residence.

Louisa searched Madame Lucrezia's old room, which had now been turned into a completely different room, to find what her master had asked her to do, but found nothing.

Because Ariadne had already scraped it all up and burned it.

The blood of the dead frog, the glass flask, and the suspicious bottle of myrrh, which was supposed to be used for good fortune, had long since been reduced to ashes in the hottest furnace, pounded in a mortar, and buried in the ground.

Lucrezia's letters had also disappeared. Ariadne had put everything that seemed useful in her safe.

It was an impregnable fortress. Not even Aunt Louisa or the butler Niccolo could touch it.

'What should I do...?'

Louisa searched Ippolito's room to complete another mission, but she couldn't find even a shadow of the precious metals the lord had promised.

This is not because Ariadne took it away, but because it wasn't there in the first place.

But Louisa was anxious that Ippolito might think that she was incompetent and couldn't find anything. Then, suddenly, a good idea struck her.

'Ah! Madam's diary!'

It was a diary whose existence she learned about from her husband.

If the dead madam left a letter, she would have written it in her diary, too. I can bring this to him instead!

Louisa was eagerly awaiting the opportunity to get her hands on Lucrezia's diary, which was in the Cardinal's residence, but this too was not easy.

This time, it was the Cardinal who was the problem. He threw the diary in a corner of his room, saying he would 'read it later.'

If he weren't going to read it right away, he should have kept it in the closet or somewhere within sight and gone in and out every day. If she had taken this whole thing out, the Cardinal would have found out right away when he said he wanted to read it again.

All Aunt Louisa could take for Master Ippolito was a couple of sets of clothes hanging in his room.

As the weather got colder, the best she could do was to be considerate of a woman in her 50s and tell him to wear thick clothes.

Then suddenly, a flash of thought crossed Louisa's mind.

'That red-haired maid!'

There used to be a maid that the master used to hang around with.

The reason she can't remember it right away is because of her fading memory. It was a big incident that even blew away Madame Lucrezia.

'The name is... Malena, I think.'

Although she couldn't remember the name clearly, she clearly remembered that she tried to sit down, and it didn't end well.

Usually, when a maid disappears like that, the other maid children swarm like maggots and steal the dead girl's belongings.

Even if she is not a very good maid, the maid who caught the eye of the master of the house clearly has more value than the maids who do menial work.

In the process, the dead person's belongings were often completely lost, leaving behind not even a single handkerchief or shoe.

But, unfortunately, that maid happened to be the older sister of Sancha, who is now the head maid.

Aunt Louisa remembered that at that time, the maids were so concerned about the maid Sancha's mood that they could not touch the maid's belongings.

'Did the maid take it?'

She started searching through the room where Maleta had last been, feeling nervous.

It was a small, plain room filled with expensive items that didn't fit in the room.

Even if they were expensive, valuables like jewels and precious metals had all long since disappeared, and dust had settled on things like out-of-style industrial hats, high-heeled shoes that were much larger than the average woman's size and had never found a new owner, and frequently worn lace underwear that no one had touched.

Judging by the fact that such odd items were left behind, it seems that Ariadne's head maid had not collected the belongings of her older sister, who had been her enemy.

The servants were careful not to steal expensive items, but they could not openly steal them, because they had to be careful about the maid's eyes. Aunt Louisa's hands were sweaty.

'There has to be something useful...'

In her sweaty palm caught something like tough paper from a silk pouch.

“...!”

Inside the silk pouch was a bundle of letters. To be exact, it was 'trash that was a letter.'

Dead Maleta couldn't read, but she had animal instincts.

She later stole and collected things like Ippolito's letters and records, intending to use them as leverage against him or, if that didn't work out, sell them to others.

However, Ippolito was not a man who wrote letters or diaries in detail.

What Ippolito wrote were receipts for things like borrowing money for gambling from friends. There were also graffiti and things like insults directed at random people.

Maleta, who couldn't distinguish the contents, collected them all equally and treasured them.

It was funny and sad that there was also a note with self-abusive writing inside.

But besides all that useless stuff, there was also a letter addressed to Ippolito, and it contained something important.

"To my beloved son Ippolito,

My beloved son whom I always miss... (omitted)..."

It was a letter written by Lucrezia. Louisa's eyes scanned the contents quickly.

“Something bad happened to Mom. Your father got really angry... (omitted)... It’s not like Mom did anything weird. I just asked a Moorish gypsy to tell my fortune and made a small ritual. I just drew a small pentagram in the house and made a few offerings. Just praying for good luck. (omitted)”

It was a letter sent to Ippolito asking for help due to the black magic incident. Louisa's pupils dilated when she saw the word 'pentagram'.

"It was really nothing. The energy of the jewel called the Blue Deep Sea Heart in our house is said to be incompatible with you and me.

Instead of killing people, let's do it the simple way. Mix the blood of dead frogs, the nectar of a toad, myrrh and frankincense, and gold melted like lead, and draw a pentagram. If you offer a sacrifice and press the energy of the precious stone, everything will go well for you and us, and the luck of marriage with the blue blood that was flowing to that damned girl will return to Isabella!

I didn't mean to hurt anyone or curse anyone! I just wanted to take back what was rightfully ours.

Moreover, the opponent is Ariadne, the lover of our family... (omitted)... Your father was driven out to the Bergamo fiefdom because of his rampage.

...(omitted)...

It’s almost vacation time, so why don’t you do something about it while you're back...(omitted)...”

'This is it!'

***

When Ippolito received the results that Aunt Louisa had brought in a hurry, he got angry.

“This is all there is? The black magician’s lamp? A poison made from the blood of a virgin?”

The calculations were already done in his head.

When Louisa brings a bunch of evidence, he hands over a few scraps of evidence to Bishop Bevich and keeps the most important one for himself.

And then when she brings him the valuables from his room, he'll have a blast drinking them. It was a perfect plan. But...

“Take that piece of clothing and put it where it belongs!”

Instead of a gold bar, Aunt Louisa brought in a couple of old clothes, and instead of a pagan god who would make the whole continent tremble, she brought in a letter her mother had written to him.

It's so disappointing.

“Oh my, Master. Please don’t do that.”

Instead, Louisa handed over a piece of paper she had copied. It was Lucrezia's diary, copied here and there in the form of notes.

“I brought an excerpt from Madam’s diary.”

It was an important story, but it only made Ippolito even angrier.

“If you’re going to bring it, you should bring the whole diary. Where am I going to write down the writing that some old lady wrote?”

Even if you show it to the heretic judge, it won't be of any use as evidence.

Louisa was taken aback, thinking that she might have forged evidence of black magic. She thought that the young master would like it.

“No, that’s because His Eminence the Cardinal always carries her diary with him and never lets it go...”

“Oh, that’s okay, I don’t need that!”

Ippolito got angry without even looking at the contents of the paper that Aunt Louisa had copied.

“Get out of here! Get out of here now!”

***

'The only useful thing Louisa brought today was my mother's letter.'

Ippolito wrapped himself in the winter coat that Aunt Louisa had brought him and thought about that.

He decided then to divide the evidence into two.

Ippolito spread out the letter his mother had received from Aunt Louisa next to him and began to copy its contents.

He didn't write everything down, but he wrote in detail about the parts where his father appeared, such as Cardinal de Mare encouraging black magic, and he omitted the parts where his mother committed the act on her own.

Ippolito's bizarrely developed handwriting was perfect for this task.

The material prepared in this way was delivered to the Cardinals just before the conclave.

“Simon de Mare is not fit to be the leader of the Church of Jesus.”

It was with the confirmation of Bishop Bevich.

Instead of twisting Ippolito's wrist to secure concrete evidence, he stood surety in his own name and reported the black magic of Cardinal de Mare.

It was the limit of someone who was not good at their job. However, the material was too good to be ruined entirely by bad handling of the job.

'The more you make excuses, the more evidence will come out. How can you bury the black magic?'

Ippolito de Mare was very active.

He said he was willing to testify himself, and if his testimony was deemed unreliable because his father had driven him out of the family, he could supplement it with the testimony of other people who had worked in the family for a long time and with written evidence.

“Instead, you must give me a fair price.”

Of course, he was an annoying guy.

Bishop Bevich passed on the information he had obtained from his dealings with this annoying and idiotic fellow to two of the Cardinals who were eligible for the conclave.

It couldn't be given to just anyone. First of all, there had to be a connection with Bishop Bevich himself, and there had to be a reason to bring down Cardinal dr Mare.

Bishop Bevich's first opponent was Cardinal Wittelbausen of the Diocese of Anheim, on the side of the North Sea Union.

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