༺ 𓆩 Chapter 53 — An Awkward Conversation 𓆪 ༻
「Translator — Creator」
᠃ ⚘᠂ ⚘ ˚ ⚘ ᠂ ⚘ ᠃
"…And so I had taken him in to draw out an earnest conversation."
Isaac's tale was set forth at length.
Isaac, having grown to the taste of drink in Vinfeldt, had gone to an inn at Bern and had been provoked into a quarrel. The cause had been that a rcenary, gone in his cups, had spread about the words the eldest son of Goethe has been made a cripple by so strange disease. And so Isaac had set Carlson to seizing the man and bringing him in, and was, by torture, drawing out by whose hand the rumor had been put about.
"Are you telling to believe this now?"
The Margrave took the pipe from his mouth and let the smoke out as a man lets out a sigh. The sharp smoke covered over the foul reek upon him. For days he had neither washed nor known a bed, sleeping under the open sky as he pressed the campaign. Yet for the doings of Isaac, he had co at once to his private study. He was a man who, until what was to be done was done, would neither eat nor sleep nor rest.
"There is nothing to believe or not to believe. It is the truth."
"The truth."
The Margrave's voice, which had rung full of anger within the underground prison, was now a thing from which nothing could be read upon his face. At least, so it looked to Isaac.
The Margrave Isaac knew was a man stubborn and plain of make. A man who acted by what he believed, and who, having given his heart, could not easily draw that heart back. A nobleman who, as a principled man, set hard standards by which he held himself. From such a father, the road Isaac had to walk ran clean apart.
For the Margrave, Isaac thought, he had best remain only a wastrel, only a wanting son. Then, of itself, the father would turn his thought and his strength upon Jonas, and Goethe, at least in the matter of the successor, would have nothing to creak upon.
"You do not, it seems, want for the making of errors. Vinfeldt is your land. What you do there is no matter of mine. But this is my fief. In the manse, you are not to go out without my leave. For any chance you are not to set foot into a populous city, and to stir up commotion there, less still. Why this is so, no one knows better than yourself."
"Ah, indeed. Tasting freedom in Vinfeldt, I let it slip my mind. I bear a strange constitution that puts the fear of into others."
For all that the Margrave was bringing him to account, Isaac's bearing was poor.
"More than that, by what Schiller has told , more than half the strength of arms in Vinfeldt was lost in fighting with demonic beasts. By what was passed to , you provoked the Hellwolves and brought on the fighting. Is it so?"
"It is not, it seems, an account untrue."
Isaac gave a shrug.
"Had you called upon for aid, the lives of far more n might have been saved. You, however, as the lord of that place, sacrificed those many lives in keeping the standing of an independent rule."
"It is less the matter of sacrifice than that they died because they were weak. They paid the price of having gone slack in their training. The word sacrifice is too grand a word for it."
Crash—!!!
The Margrave's fist ca down upon the desk. His voice rose by degrees.
"Scores of n are dead. In a place where the swelling of arms is limited and the purse is limited besides. Do you know, that you wag your tongue so, what those deaths an?"
"What was to be done? I am the lord of Vinfeldt. I had to keep my fief, and I put to use what had been given . And the land, the seat, were laid in my hand by my father. So those soldiers were, before they were Goethe's, mine."
So Isaac answered, tilting at his father with the words.
The Margrave shook his head, slowly. He set the pipe back to his lips and drew a deep breath. A thick smoke poured from his mouth. He turned his eye to the window. The night outside was dark, and yet the stars were shining.
"What is it, now, that I am to do?"
At the Margrave's word, Isaac, who had been looking at the floor, raised his face.
"Am I to seize you by the collar and throw you out the window? Am I to strike you across the face? Or am I to choose words that shall wound you, speak them out, and bid you be gone?"
"I do not know what you an." Isaac tilted his head.
But the Margrave did not look as though he had a mind to answer Isaac's doubt.
"Do you still not see what your fault is?"
"That would be, well, that I have a way of picking only such acts as run counter to my father's will…"
"No. Your fault is that you are not honest with . How long do you an to keep up that clumsy playacting before ?"
"……!"
Isaac's eyes widened at the Margrave's word.
"You take , it seems, for a fool. I know that it was you who turned aside the bishop's foul plan. The reason you did not call upon for aid from Vinfeldt was so that the soldiers of that place might form an attachnt to that land, and a bond of solidarity. Was it not so?"
"……"
"You quickened the spirit of your n, won the battle with the Hellwolves, and put down even the King of Wolves. Did you think that such a man, by setting his lips to drink for a few days here and torturing a man, would be taken for a wastrel or a mad dog? Isaac. Answer . Did I look so foolish a father to you as that?"
The Margrave took his eye from the window. His blue gaze bored, as if to pierce through, into Isaac's blue gaze. Isaac's lips moved, but nothing ca of them.
This was a turn Isaac had not foreseen.
"You did not deceive . Now, then, speak. Why do you carry yourself as a ne'er-do-well?"
"……"
A heavy silence fell upon the study. The Margrave, his eye fixed upon Isaac, did not so much as stir.
The Margrave was plain and stubborn. Where he had once placed his certainty, he did not change it before a reason fit to persuade him had co. Isaac felt a need to and his plan in a small part.
"Because there is need of it."
So Isaac at last spoke.
There was no need to set the whole of it out. He had only to choose such reasons as the Margrave could find his way to accept. What the Margrave himself knew was, also, only a part.
The political setting in which Goethe had been held for nearly a century by reason of Sieg von Goethe. The presence, sowhere within the fief, of an agent of the royal court watching Goethe. The strife between the vassals and the cadet branches that would co the very mont Isaac began to be acknowledged as the legitimate heir.
That much was enough.
"…And so you an to hide your true face and live as a madman?"
"Aye."
"Do you speak this knowing what it ans?"
"He who fits the heir of Goethe is not I but Jonas. That there are no other choices in this, Father, no man knows better than yourself."
"……"
The Margrave gave a low sound from his throat.
He knew it better than any. The head of the house must hold every line of the forebears' records in his head. The inheritance Sieg von Goethe had left. That inheritance, that blood Isaac had not wished for, had passed to him.
Isaac's judgnt was right.
"And who is the man being put to torture in the prison?"
"As I have said, one who spread foul rumors of …"
"Isaac."
The Margrave's brow drew down.
Isaac let out a soft breath.
"A swordsman of Weissmann."
"Weissmann, you say? The new gang risen in Bern?"
"Yes."
"And why that swordsman?"
As Isaac had foreseen, the Margrave did not know of the cord that ran between the Marquis and the mayor and Weissmann. Of course, he could not know of the dealings they were laying together.
‘Father had best not know.’
The trouble in Bern was deeply tied to the matter of comrce. By Sieg von Goethe's burning of the royal city, comrce and the swelling of arms had been forbidden to Goethe. If the Margrave were to set his hand into the matters of Bern, the Marquis would, by one way or another, catch hold of it as a fault. He might even draw the eyes of other nobles, crying that the limits set by the royal court had been broken. Should that co to pass, Goethe would be drawn into a still greater political peril. Should things, by the slightest mischance, run awry, it must end with Isaac alone bearing the price. Without the Margrave's knowing it, apart from him, the matter had to be carried.
"I an to commit cris. I would show myself to be a man unfit for the seat of heir, and do such things as may strike the na of Goethe from my own."
"……"
“Do not worry. I will not harm any innocent people. You may simply view this as a skirmish between petty villains. Then, at the appropriate mont, you need only revoke my claim to the family na.”
"Do you, in truth, an to take up that burden and walk on?"
"I shall not be a good son to you, Father, nor to my mother. But I am the eldest son of Goethe. That alone, I shall not let change."
The tobacco leaf in the pipe was burning slowly through. The Margrave felt a tightness in his chest. He drew the ashen smoke into his lungs and let it out, again and again, but the tightness would not pass.
“Do you rember what I said on the way back from Randolph’s funeral? I told you that it was okay to remain a child a little longer.”
"Yes. So you did."
“It seems you didn’t heed those words at all.”
“I apologize.”
“I need to rest now. Let’s talk again later.”
"You ought to rest now. We shall speak of this again, later."
The Margrave tapped out the ash and spoke. Isaac bowed slightly and turned for the door.
The Margrave opened and closed his mouth several tis without voicing anything, and at last brought out the words.
“How is your health?”
“It is still the sa, but at least I can now predict when an explosion will occur. So, at least there will be no more innocent casualties in the future.”
Isaac answered without turning, his step halted.
It was not that of which the Margrave had been asking. Yet he did not and the question.
"Yes. I understand. If there is anything you have need of, na it."
"My thanks."
"Is there nothing else to say?"
"Of what, Father?"
"……"
"……?"
A brief silence ran between them. Isaac wished the Margrave would say more plainly what he ant, but the Margrave only waited for Isaac's answer.
"…If there is not, then go."
"As you say."
Creak—!!!
Thump—!!!
Isaac stepped from the study, and the door closed.
The Margrave had words he would have said, feelings he would have set into speech. Yet those words, never put into shape, were carried away with the last of the smoke.
"You have grown much in stature, in so short a ti."
The bitter taste of the tobacco sat in his mouth. Only after Isaac had gone did the Margrave rember what he had wanted to say.
How glad he had been when Schiller had told him of the part Isaac had played.
How he had wished to see him.
How he was proud of him.
Whether any wound had been left upon him.
Whether the after-marks of a first battle were upon him.
Whether there were supplies the boy had need of.
What might be done by way of a feast to mark the victory.
The words ca back to him, one after another, late.
Above all, he had wished to ask of magic. By Schiller's report, Isaac had worked magic in Vinfeldt. Not to the eye-catching degree, but there had been a clear stirring of mana, and Isaac, it was said, had owned it. Was that not, perhaps, a thread by which Mana Rampage might be overco?
The Margrave had wished to ask. But Isaac had run himself so deep in thought as to play the madman for the house's sake. He had no wish to press such a son for an answer. He had his own reasons, no doubt. He would wait until the boy spoke of it first.
"Hh."
The Margrave gnawed at the mouthpiece of his pipe. Only the taste of spent ash ca to him.
It had been said that Isaac's playacting was clumsy.
Clumsy in his own way, the Margrave was as well.
His thought went, of itself, to his wife, Adele. Had she been here, she might have dealt with the boy in a far warr manner. The seat of the head, the authority of a father, she would have told him to put aside such things, and chided him sharply. What manner of father is that? she would have said.
Where in the wide world was she wandering now?
The Margrave packed fresh leaf into the chamber of the pipe once again.
END σϝ CHAPTER
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