Engagement Period (2)
There's a famous saying.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
So when it came to educating the maid, the point wasn't for me to do the educating myself. It was to teach Elizabeth how to educate.
"All right, Your Highness. Try scolding her yourself. Are you really going to spend the rest of your life just taking it?"
"S-scold her, just like that…?"
"Your Highness. You know this as well as I do. This is deliberate harassment."
Anyone who wasn't a complete fool could see it. And Princess Elizabeth was no fool.
"Ugh… I know that. Of course I know. But how am I supposed to… I've never done it before."
"Then this is exactly when you try. If it's truly too much, I can handle it for you."
Elizabeth hesitated, then nodded. Her eyes hardened with resolve.
"No. I can't live like this forever. I'll do it myself."
"That's the spirit."
She steeled herself and took her place in front of the door—wearing the strangest expression I had ever seen.
What is that supposed to be.
Surely she didn't think that was a scary face. She just looked like a golden retriever wrinkling its nose a little.
"Your Highness. Just keep your face blank."
"Huh? Oh—yes."
Elizabeth fixed her expression. Much better. When someone who always smiled like sunshine went completely still, it actually was intimidating. That was exactly the look she had now.
Good. With momentum on our side, this was a fight we couldn't lose. Her rank was higher, and the justice of the situation was hers as well.
Ah—and one more thing.
"Do you normally use polite speech with the servants?"
"Ah, yes. Father always told me to treat the staff with respect."
Well. Cultural difference. Now and then, refined ladies and young misses would issue orders to servants in full polite register, as if to prove how refined they were. Worth correcting eventually—but not essential right now.
Then, a presence outside the door.
Knock, knock.
"Come—"
"You called for me?"
Of course. The maid walked in before Elizabeth could even finish telling her to enter. The same maid as before—young, with a small mouth and slightly slanted eyes. An overall sharp, spiteful sort of face.
"I hadn't given you permission to come in yet."
"Pardon?"
"I said I hadn't told you to enter. Isn't it basic manners to wait for permission?"
The maid looked thoroughly thrown by Elizabeth speaking up for once. She recovered her expression quickly, though, sliding right back into that spiteful look as she opened her mouth.
"Your Highness did call for me, didn't you? I came quickly in case it was urgent."
"Even so, you should have waited until I allowed you in."
The maid muttered under her breath—loud enough to be heard.
"Ha. What's gotten into her all of a sudden."
"W-what did you just say?"
"Nothing. Next time I'll wait for permission before coming in."
Elizabeth glared at her.
"Not that. What did you just mutter to yourself?"
"Mutter? I didn't say anything."
"Nothing? I heard you! Don't lie to me!"
Her voice rose a notch.
"Well, I truly didn't say a word."
The maid answered with complete composure. Elizabeth went red in the face, flabbergasted.
"What kind of attitude is this—"
"By the way, Your Highness."
The maid cut her off and took a step closer. She was tall for a woman, enough that she was looking down at Elizabeth.
"This tower is high, but if you keep raising your voice like that…"
She bent her head and whispered against Elizabeth's ear.
"Her Majesty might hear you."
"…!"
Elizabeth flushed scarlet and glared at the maid—but that was all she managed. It was painfully obvious she had already lost the battle of wills.
With such a vast gap in status, and with a princess who never lost her temper suddenly losing it, I had expected the maid to falter. But she was a far tougher opponent than I'd thought. Well—you'd have to be that unhinged to bully a princess in the first place.
Time for me to step in.
"Your Highness."
"Y-yes."
"Step back for a moment."
I ushered the princess behind me and took her place. The engagement was still so recent that the maid clearly had no idea who I was. She eyed me with a look that said, And who the hell are you?
"And who might you be, to be standing in Her Highness's chambers?"
Revealing my identity and crushing her with rank would have been one way—but that wouldn't have been a lesson.
I glanced back just long enough to confirm Elizabeth was watching, then moved my hand.
"Kya—kyaaah!"
I seized the maid by the hair and dragged her. Destination: the window.
"W-wait—what are you—"
I hauled the panicking maid straight over and shoved her out through the window—until she was hanging halfway over the sill.
"H-hwaaagh—!"
Dangling half out of a window at the top of a tower, the view alone was apparently enough to wring gasps out of her. This place really was absurdly high.
"H-Henry! What on earth are you doing?!"
"Your Highness. Just watch."
I pushed aside the princess trying to stop me and focused on the maid again. She had finally collected herself enough to speak.
"P-pull me up this instant! Do you think you'll get away with something like this?!"
I didn't answer. I simply shoved her a little farther out.
"W-wait! Think carefully! If you do this, Her Majesty will—hrrk—hwaaagh!"
She kept spouting nonsense, so I pushed a little more. A proper scream tore free.
"I'm sorry—I'm sorry!"
There it was. The answer I'd been waiting for.
"Sorry? To whom?"
"To Her Highness! To the princess!"
"You should be sorry to me, too."
Forcing that flavorless sludge of a tea on me, of all things.
"To both of you! I'm sorry to both of you!"
I gave her one more slight push, and the apology expanded to cover the two of us.
"Your Highness. Feeling any better? Shall we forgive her?"
At my question, the princess, who had been fretting anxiously behind me, nodded so hard I thought her head might come off.
"Yes! Quickly—please pull her up!"
I hauled the maid back inside.
"Hwaa… hwaah…"
Her legs had given out completely. She collapsed forward onto the floor, unable to stand.
"You should thank Her Highness for forgiving you."
"Y-yes! Your Highness—th-thank you for forgiving me!"
"…Yes."
The princess looked at me with an expression that asked whether she could dismiss the girl now. I nodded.
"You may go."
The maid scrambled through a bow and fled down the tower. As she went, I caught a glimpse of the back of her skirt—stained. She must have wet herself.
Don't you ever look down on the princess again.
The education felt like a success.
I turned to Elizabeth.
"Well? Do you understand how to educate someone now?"
"Is the method hanging them out a window and threatening to drop them?"
A touch of frost in her tone. Apparently my technique had not entirely met with her approval.
"As you just saw, that is a method. But it's not the core of it."
"The core?"
"Yes. The important thing is violence."
A servant and people of our station can trade words all day long. We cannot actually fight. Because if it came to a real fight, the servant would simply be executed. That is what the difference in status means.
Elizabeth nodded slowly at my explanation.
"I… see. But I was taught that violence is wrong…"
"Then you must become frightening enough that you never need to use it. Frightening enough that they crawl on their own. At the very least, you cannot lose a war of words the way you just did."
"Fear, then…"
She seemed to turn the word over in her mind several times. A long while passed before she spoke again.
"Honestly, I still don't fully understand. I'm not sure that's the best way. But, Sir Henry—"
Elizabeth smiled.
"Honestly… it felt good. I don't even know how many years it's been since I felt something like this."
It wasn't the silly, beaming grin I'd seen a few times before. Something wistful lived in it—and something adult.
"Thank you. Sir Henry. Truly."
"For something this small?"
I smiled back at her.
The maid fled down the tower at a run.
That crazy bastard. Just you wait.
An ordinary servant would have submitted after that much violence. But she had a card to play.
Her Majesty. I have to tell Her Majesty.
The Queen she had served for years. Her Majesty would set this right—reassert the princess's place, and have that man of unknown origin executed for good measure.
"Your Majesty!"
"Hmm? Rucha. What is it?"
"Someone in the palace tried to kill me!"
"Tried to kill you? Tell me everything."
Rucha launched into the story with relish—how she had gone to the princess, how an argument had broken out, how some man had tried to throw her out the window. For the sake of revenge, she even described his appearance in careful detail.
"Black hair, and a man you'd never seen before today?"
"Yes! That's right."
"Sharp features?"
"Yes, my lady!"
You're both finished now. Her Majesty will have him dragged off and executed.
An attempted murder inside the royal palace was a capital crime.
"I see. So that's who it was."
Rucha stared at the Queen's mouth with shining anticipation—waiting for Bring the guards, or I'll deal with him myself.
But the Queen's lips did not open for a long time.
"…Your Majesty?"
She was simply staring at Rucha. Not with her usual gentle eyes. With the eyes of someone looking at an object.
"Haa, Rucha."
"Y-yes, my lady."
"How could you leave such a terrible impression on him?"
"Pardon? On him?"
Who on earth was Her Majesty referring to with that kind of respect? There was no one in this palace the Queen addressed that way.
"Well. Fine. I needed another offering lately anyway."
"W-wait a moment, Your Majesty—what are you—"
From the Queen's mouth spilled an evil prayer—the kind of words no human being was meant to understand.
"What—stay back—what are those things—Your Majesty! Your Majesty!"
Kyaaaaaaah—!
That day, one maid vanished from the royal palace. The guards made a show of searching. It was a common enough occurrence.