Ariadne was in a bad mood. Her head hurt, and her hands and feet were numb. Her whole body felt strangely swollen.
'Even my father was sick in bed...'
Ariadne guessed that Cardinal de Mare's visit to see Isabella was the cause of the trouble. Isabella, whom she had seen a few days ago at Cesare's investiture, was smiling brightly. She was standing right behind Leo III, and she looked as if nothing had happened, and she was the happiest person in the world.
Anger surged again. However, Ariadne's guess that Isabella was the cause was only half right.
“No, I didn’t tell you at the time because I was afraid you would be upset...”
Sancha cautiously spoke, keeping an eye on things. She was worried that it might have been presumptuous of her to hide the information from the young lady.
“I asked the palace staff, and they said that the audience request was rejected. He never got to see her at all...”
Fortunately, Ariadne didn't care at all about that. If someone had been maliciously deceiving her, she would have been angry. But Sancha's consideration was purely for her, and she felt it. Sancha, relieved by Ariadne's reaction, added,
“Isabella would not have said anything bad to his father directly.”
It may not have been pleasant for Cardinal de Mare to be treated so coldly, but it was better than Isabella's shoe-nailing. Ariadne fully agreed with that. But the fact that her father had been treated so coldly by Isabella infuriated her.
“How dare you.”
As the blood rushed to her head, her lower abdomen started to hurt at the same time. Sancha continued.
“And... what’s worse... the Cardinal didn’t say anything, but according to Grandpa Niccolo, who he brought with him...”
Cardinal de Mare is said to have gone straight to the western provinces after being driven out by Isabella, where the Contarini family held their lands.
“They say he went to see Count Contarini to bring Giovanna too.”
"Hmm."
“Grandpa Niccolo was also outside, so he didn’t hear the whole story... He heard that Cardinal Ottavio de Contarini was extremely angry and said to His Eminence, ‘If you were going to help me, you should have helped me a long time ago. Why are you trying to take my child away now?”
She could imagine the tense atmosphere. Ottavio was a healthy young man, and Ariadne closed her eyes in despair as she thought about how helpless her little father must have been in front of him.
Without saying a word, she headed to the Cardinal's room, where her father was laid to rest.
The study and inner room of Cardinal de Mare, which had always been so huge, now empty with all the furniture gone, looked strangely dry. The inner room had lost its former luster, and her father looked even smaller in the empty room.
After even the mattresses had been disposed of, the pale-faced Cardinal was lying on a cot covered with linen on a pile of rags.
“Father, are you okay?”
In response to Ariadne’s question, the Cardinal only groaned and groaned. His fever was boiling like fire. With a complicated mind, Ariadne soaked a towel in cold water and wiped her father’s forehead.
At the touch, the Cardinal mumbled in a half-asleep state. Ariadne thought it was her father calling her.
“...Hey.”
"Yes?"
But their gazes were vaguely misaligned. The Cardinal muttered, looking at the empty space next to Ariadne instead of where she was standing.
“It was all my fault.”
It wasn't said to Ariadne. Her father doesn't apologize to her.
“Please come back, child.”
Her body grew cold. But Ariadne held on to her last hope.
No, no. No, no. He's not talking about my sister. He still can't love a daughter who treats her father like that. It can't be.
Yes, among the people her father lost were Arabella, Giovanna, whom he would never mind loving, and even Ippolito and Lucrezia, who are dead.
Then the Cardinal clearly recited the name of the object.
“Oh my, Isabella.”
“...!”
Ariadne's last mental victory was shattered. In that moment, she was filled with anger at Cardinal de Mare.
'What did you say...!'
Her blood was rushing to her head, and she was dizzy. Perhaps it was because of the cold early winter weather, but her anger was hot enough to fight against the endless drowsiness.
But Ariadne could not express her anger to her father. The sense of crisis that if she were to express her anger honestly, she would be pushed down in her father's priority list immediately ate away at her. This was not a thought. It was an instinctive fear. Instead, her anger spilled over to Isabella.
“Fuck!”
Ariadne growled. She gave orders to the Sancha standing beside her.
“Prepare the carriage immediately. We are going to Palagio Carlo.”
As the Prince's wife, Ariadne had the right to enter the Palazzo Carlo. No matter how much Leo III resisted the title of Princess, he could not prevent his son's wife from coming to the house. Unlike Cardinal de Mare, she was free to move around the palace.
Even Ariadne, as the director of the Rambouillet hospice, had the right of audience with the King. Her request for an audience could be refused, but once she exercised it, she was granted safe passage to the King's reception room.
If Isabella had known that Ariadne was coming with such ferocity, she would have avoided it somehow. However, Isabella had no idea that Ariadne was coming. It was a kind of surprise attack.
The timing was not good. Today, Leo III was away from the palace. This was a very rare occurrence, and he had gone to his villa in the Forest of Orte to take a bath for his health.
Isabella did not think much about the King's trip. She only asked formally if she could go with him. Leo III, who enjoyed being with Isabella, surprisingly declined her offer.
'I'm just going to go and come back, so why are you doing that?'
Isabella had no intention of following him seriously, so she just shed a few tears, wondering who would support His Majesty without her. It was bad luck. She should have followed him then.
“Isabella de Mare!”
Boom!
Isabella was enjoying lunch at the Grande Sala da Franzo, the largest restaurant in Palagio Carlo, when she dropped her fork. It was due to the sudden attack of an intruder. Annoyed, Isabella snapped.
“Hey, who is this? Isn’t that our lovely little sister? You're coming in like a wild boar.”
It was a quiet hall, with no eyes to see. In fact, there were eyes and ears everywhere in the palace, but Isabella paid little attention to them. The opinions of servants were of no importance to her, and the official government of the King was not interested in praise except that of the King.
Ariadne was furious at the sight of her sister paying attention to the fork that had fallen on her skirt.
“What did you say to your father!”
As for Ariadne, she was so angry that she couldn't even see anything. She even threw away the title of 'sister'. All the regret and sorrow she had for her father were condensed into every word she spat out to Isabella.
“What the hell did you say that made your father turn out like that!”
Isabella answered, blinking her pretty eyes.
“Why? I didn’t say anything.”
But Isabella was also aware of what she had done.
“Did he jump out of shock?”
But that didn't mean she was concerned about her actions or regretted them. She spoke as if it were someone else's business.
“A priest shouldn’t do that.”
Isabella added kindly in a cuckoo-like voice.
“I don’t know about Father’s reincarnation, but then he wouldn’t be able to show his face.”
"Hey!"
Ariadne stomped her feet in anger. A faint but unpleasant pain shot from her rolled left foot down her thigh and into her lower abdomen.
“My father fell ill after meeting you!”
“I really didn’t say anything.”
Isabella spoke affectionately, as if she were speaking to her own sister.
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t meet.”
“Oh my, is this how you say things like you treated your own father badly? You loser of character!”
Isabella's eyes hardened as she heard the accusation.
“I just paid back what I received! Who was the one who abandoned me first?”
“If you were abandoned, he would have left you to be raised by a dog. Your father raised you with such care!”
Isabella laughed vulgarly.
“You raised it with a dog, right? It’s a wild dog that grew up on a farm.”
Ariadne was secretly surprised by Isabella's ability to recall her nickname from her previous life. However, she did not back down even once.
“You are raising your own child like a dog, so how can you tell others what to do now?”
Giovanna's upbringing was objectively poor.
“Your daughter can’t even eat corn porridge properly!”
All the rent from the Contarini estate was used to pay off the debt and its interest. After seizing the Contarini mansion, Raphael had not charged interest at Ariadne's request, but he had to give Clemente and pay back the bride price he had received from Count Bartolini.
Count Bartolini originally had no intention of receiving the bride's price. It was the last bit of affection he had for Clemente. However, when Duchess Rubina demanded that the Count pay the 4,000 ducats that Clemente owed her because of Isabella's blackmail, he changed his attitude.
Clemente's debt was a debt of the Bartolini family. The unit of economic activity was the family, and a woman could not take out a debt in her own name. In principle, this was true.
But even if it is true, some words make you want to hit someone. The old Count Bartolini, who was furious, was going on and on about not giving Ottavio a single penny. But Isabella answered proudly without wavering at all.
“That’s Ottavio’s daughter. Why is she my daughter?”
Ariadne glared at Isabella.
“This thing is worse than a beast!”
Even a stable mare cherishes her own foal. When she is sold away, she cries bitterly. Isabella was truly worse than an animal.
“My father told Ottavio de Contarini that he would take Giovanna away if she was difficult to raise, and he was verbally abused to the point of being beaten!”
Isabella made a joke.
“Oh, dear. He should have done better earlier. If he had said he would help me when I was here, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“Similar things meet similar things!”
Isabella, who showed no sign of regret, looked like a monster to Ariadne. The pretty monster refuted her sister's words point by point.
“That’s not something I want to hear from a wild boar raised by dogs. You’re a total rascal. You even forced your way into the palace without any authority? His Majesty the King is in a bad mood.”
“Don’t get involved in things that have nothing to do with you!”
“Do you want to be my maid? Then, you can live in the palace legally.”
Ariadne looked down at Isabella with contempt.
“You’ve finally gone mad!”
She looked down at her older sister. It wasn't just that she was tall enough to look down on her.
The two were very different, yet strangely similar. They had similar pieces in essence, but they chose very different paths in life. Ariadne took the right path. The results were very different from each other.
As someone who took a risk and chose only the right path, Ariadne did not hide her contempt.
“How dare you, the King’s whore, ask the Prince’s wife to become your maid?”
This really hit Isabella on the spot.
“The King’s Whore...?
'Even my father was sick in bed...'
Ariadne guessed that Cardinal de Mare's visit to see Isabella was the cause of the trouble. Isabella, whom she had seen a few days ago at Cesare's investiture, was smiling brightly. She was standing right behind Leo III, and she looked as if nothing had happened, and she was the happiest person in the world.
Anger surged again. However, Ariadne's guess that Isabella was the cause was only half right.
“No, I didn’t tell you at the time because I was afraid you would be upset...”
Sancha cautiously spoke, keeping an eye on things. She was worried that it might have been presumptuous of her to hide the information from the young lady.
“I asked the palace staff, and they said that the audience request was rejected. He never got to see her at all...”
Fortunately, Ariadne didn't care at all about that. If someone had been maliciously deceiving her, she would have been angry. But Sancha's consideration was purely for her, and she felt it. Sancha, relieved by Ariadne's reaction, added,
“Isabella would not have said anything bad to his father directly.”
It may not have been pleasant for Cardinal de Mare to be treated so coldly, but it was better than Isabella's shoe-nailing. Ariadne fully agreed with that. But the fact that her father had been treated so coldly by Isabella infuriated her.
“How dare you.”
As the blood rushed to her head, her lower abdomen started to hurt at the same time. Sancha continued.
“And... what’s worse... the Cardinal didn’t say anything, but according to Grandpa Niccolo, who he brought with him...”
Cardinal de Mare is said to have gone straight to the western provinces after being driven out by Isabella, where the Contarini family held their lands.
“They say he went to see Count Contarini to bring Giovanna too.”
"Hmm."
“Grandpa Niccolo was also outside, so he didn’t hear the whole story... He heard that Cardinal Ottavio de Contarini was extremely angry and said to His Eminence, ‘If you were going to help me, you should have helped me a long time ago. Why are you trying to take my child away now?”
She could imagine the tense atmosphere. Ottavio was a healthy young man, and Ariadne closed her eyes in despair as she thought about how helpless her little father must have been in front of him.
Without saying a word, she headed to the Cardinal's room, where her father was laid to rest.
The study and inner room of Cardinal de Mare, which had always been so huge, now empty with all the furniture gone, looked strangely dry. The inner room had lost its former luster, and her father looked even smaller in the empty room.
After even the mattresses had been disposed of, the pale-faced Cardinal was lying on a cot covered with linen on a pile of rags.
“Father, are you okay?”
In response to Ariadne’s question, the Cardinal only groaned and groaned. His fever was boiling like fire. With a complicated mind, Ariadne soaked a towel in cold water and wiped her father’s forehead.
At the touch, the Cardinal mumbled in a half-asleep state. Ariadne thought it was her father calling her.
“...Hey.”
"Yes?"
But their gazes were vaguely misaligned. The Cardinal muttered, looking at the empty space next to Ariadne instead of where she was standing.
“It was all my fault.”
It wasn't said to Ariadne. Her father doesn't apologize to her.
“Please come back, child.”
Her body grew cold. But Ariadne held on to her last hope.
No, no. No, no. He's not talking about my sister. He still can't love a daughter who treats her father like that. It can't be.
Yes, among the people her father lost were Arabella, Giovanna, whom he would never mind loving, and even Ippolito and Lucrezia, who are dead.
Then the Cardinal clearly recited the name of the object.
“Oh my, Isabella.”
“...!”
Ariadne's last mental victory was shattered. In that moment, she was filled with anger at Cardinal de Mare.
'What did you say...!'
Her blood was rushing to her head, and she was dizzy. Perhaps it was because of the cold early winter weather, but her anger was hot enough to fight against the endless drowsiness.
But Ariadne could not express her anger to her father. The sense of crisis that if she were to express her anger honestly, she would be pushed down in her father's priority list immediately ate away at her. This was not a thought. It was an instinctive fear. Instead, her anger spilled over to Isabella.
“Fuck!”
Ariadne growled. She gave orders to the Sancha standing beside her.
“Prepare the carriage immediately. We are going to Palagio Carlo.”
***
As the Prince's wife, Ariadne had the right to enter the Palazzo Carlo. No matter how much Leo III resisted the title of Princess, he could not prevent his son's wife from coming to the house. Unlike Cardinal de Mare, she was free to move around the palace.
Even Ariadne, as the director of the Rambouillet hospice, had the right of audience with the King. Her request for an audience could be refused, but once she exercised it, she was granted safe passage to the King's reception room.
If Isabella had known that Ariadne was coming with such ferocity, she would have avoided it somehow. However, Isabella had no idea that Ariadne was coming. It was a kind of surprise attack.
The timing was not good. Today, Leo III was away from the palace. This was a very rare occurrence, and he had gone to his villa in the Forest of Orte to take a bath for his health.
Isabella did not think much about the King's trip. She only asked formally if she could go with him. Leo III, who enjoyed being with Isabella, surprisingly declined her offer.
'I'm just going to go and come back, so why are you doing that?'
Isabella had no intention of following him seriously, so she just shed a few tears, wondering who would support His Majesty without her. It was bad luck. She should have followed him then.
“Isabella de Mare!”
Boom!
Isabella was enjoying lunch at the Grande Sala da Franzo, the largest restaurant in Palagio Carlo, when she dropped her fork. It was due to the sudden attack of an intruder. Annoyed, Isabella snapped.
“Hey, who is this? Isn’t that our lovely little sister? You're coming in like a wild boar.”
It was a quiet hall, with no eyes to see. In fact, there were eyes and ears everywhere in the palace, but Isabella paid little attention to them. The opinions of servants were of no importance to her, and the official government of the King was not interested in praise except that of the King.
Ariadne was furious at the sight of her sister paying attention to the fork that had fallen on her skirt.
“What did you say to your father!”
As for Ariadne, she was so angry that she couldn't even see anything. She even threw away the title of 'sister'. All the regret and sorrow she had for her father were condensed into every word she spat out to Isabella.
“What the hell did you say that made your father turn out like that!”
Isabella answered, blinking her pretty eyes.
“Why? I didn’t say anything.”
But Isabella was also aware of what she had done.
“Did he jump out of shock?”
But that didn't mean she was concerned about her actions or regretted them. She spoke as if it were someone else's business.
“A priest shouldn’t do that.”
Isabella added kindly in a cuckoo-like voice.
“I don’t know about Father’s reincarnation, but then he wouldn’t be able to show his face.”
"Hey!"
Ariadne stomped her feet in anger. A faint but unpleasant pain shot from her rolled left foot down her thigh and into her lower abdomen.
“My father fell ill after meeting you!”
“I really didn’t say anything.”
Isabella spoke affectionately, as if she were speaking to her own sister.
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t meet.”
“Oh my, is this how you say things like you treated your own father badly? You loser of character!”
Isabella's eyes hardened as she heard the accusation.
“I just paid back what I received! Who was the one who abandoned me first?”
“If you were abandoned, he would have left you to be raised by a dog. Your father raised you with such care!”
Isabella laughed vulgarly.
“You raised it with a dog, right? It’s a wild dog that grew up on a farm.”
Ariadne was secretly surprised by Isabella's ability to recall her nickname from her previous life. However, she did not back down even once.
“You are raising your own child like a dog, so how can you tell others what to do now?”
Giovanna's upbringing was objectively poor.
“Your daughter can’t even eat corn porridge properly!”
All the rent from the Contarini estate was used to pay off the debt and its interest. After seizing the Contarini mansion, Raphael had not charged interest at Ariadne's request, but he had to give Clemente and pay back the bride price he had received from Count Bartolini.
Count Bartolini originally had no intention of receiving the bride's price. It was the last bit of affection he had for Clemente. However, when Duchess Rubina demanded that the Count pay the 4,000 ducats that Clemente owed her because of Isabella's blackmail, he changed his attitude.
Clemente's debt was a debt of the Bartolini family. The unit of economic activity was the family, and a woman could not take out a debt in her own name. In principle, this was true.
But even if it is true, some words make you want to hit someone. The old Count Bartolini, who was furious, was going on and on about not giving Ottavio a single penny. But Isabella answered proudly without wavering at all.
“That’s Ottavio’s daughter. Why is she my daughter?”
Ariadne glared at Isabella.
“This thing is worse than a beast!”
Even a stable mare cherishes her own foal. When she is sold away, she cries bitterly. Isabella was truly worse than an animal.
“My father told Ottavio de Contarini that he would take Giovanna away if she was difficult to raise, and he was verbally abused to the point of being beaten!”
Isabella made a joke.
“Oh, dear. He should have done better earlier. If he had said he would help me when I was here, this wouldn’t have happened.”
“Similar things meet similar things!”
Isabella, who showed no sign of regret, looked like a monster to Ariadne. The pretty monster refuted her sister's words point by point.
“That’s not something I want to hear from a wild boar raised by dogs. You’re a total rascal. You even forced your way into the palace without any authority? His Majesty the King is in a bad mood.”
“Don’t get involved in things that have nothing to do with you!”
“Do you want to be my maid? Then, you can live in the palace legally.”
Ariadne looked down at Isabella with contempt.
“You’ve finally gone mad!”
She looked down at her older sister. It wasn't just that she was tall enough to look down on her.
The two were very different, yet strangely similar. They had similar pieces in essence, but they chose very different paths in life. Ariadne took the right path. The results were very different from each other.
As someone who took a risk and chose only the right path, Ariadne did not hide her contempt.
“How dare you, the King’s whore, ask the Prince’s wife to become your maid?”
This really hit Isabella on the spot.
“The King’s Whore...?
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