The Man She Never Knew
There was nothing to say.
Even after Valter withdrew, Elise remained seated in the same place for a long time. She ought to have been furious. How dare he ignore a summons from the Grand Duchy without so much as a single word. The woman she had been two months ago would have raged, and while the anger burned, the pain would not have reached her. But she felt no anger. Because his statement—that there was nothing to convey—had been perfectly accurate. And that precision was exactly like him.
In ten years he had never once been imprecise. Orders were either carried out or a reason for their impossibility was reported. Empty phrases and evasions belonged to her world, not his. The space in which there was nothing to convey—that was the distance he had measured between them. And his measurements had never once been wrong.
After dawn broke, Elise summoned Valter once more.
“Did you sleep?”
“…Three hours, Your Highness. Though I suspect you slept even less.”
“I called you because I have questions.”
Elise laced her fingers together on the desk. She had spent the night thinking and had decided to conduct an examination. The subject was herself.
“What is Kael’s favorite food?”
“…Pardon?”
“You spent ten years at his side. It’s impossible that you wouldn’t know. Yet I don’t. That is why I am asking. Do you?”
Valter searched his memory with a troubled expression.
“…He likes sweets. Roasted chestnuts, honey bread—that sort of thing. When the youngest knights peeled them for him behind the training grounds, he never refused. He claims not to like them, but the tips of his ears twitch when he accepts one.”
“His birthday.”
“I don’t know it. He was an orphan and says he never knew it himself. So the youngest knights arbitrarily decided it was the day of the first snowfall. On that day they would pass a cup of liquor around in the corner of the training yard… It is only natural that Your Highness would not have known. It was not something that required a report.”
“Where did he sleep while traveling or on night duty?”
“In the loft above the stables or in the antechamber. He always took the empty spot closest to Your Highness’s quarters. Once, in the dead of winter, I found him curled up in the corridor and asked if he had lost his mind. He said the guard rotation near Your Highness’s rooms had been sloppy that night.”
The more questions she asked, the longer Valter’s answers grew, and the deeper Elise’s silence became. Valter knew everything—the ears that twitched at the offer of something sweet, the birthday chosen on a whim, the way he slept curled in a hallway. She had known none of it.
For ten years she had known only his duty. What time he stood watch, when he was relieved, the pattern of his escort route. She had used the man without knowing the person. Use something until it wears out, then discard it. Only now, two months later, was she opening the dictionary of her own words to discover what they truly meant.
“Injuries. Serious ones.”
“Three that I know of. At fifteen, during a demonic beast subjugation—flank. At seventeen, while clearing bandits—shoulder. Both times he blocked an attack meant for Your Highness’s carriage. The reports would have listed them as minor. He insisted on it.”
“…Why?”
“Because a serious injury would have meant reassignment. Article Fourteen of the escort regulations.”
Elise knew Article Fourteen. She had no memory of approving it. Minor injury reports never reached the Grand Duke’s daughter’s desk. Twice, without her knowledge, he had stood between her carriage and a blade, paid for it with his own flesh, and left no record in the ledger.
“The third?”
“…Frostbite. Two winters ago, while standing sentry on the outer wall. He mentioned only once, while drinking, that the tip of his left little finger had lost sensation. He laughed and said it didn’t interfere with holding a sword.”
Valter did not say who had issued the punishment that sent him to that post. The silence spoke louder than any name.
“His swordsmanship—who taught him?”
“I don’t know. He never answered that question in ten years. Only that it was a wandering swordsman. But Your Highness, doesn’t it strike you as strange? A man of that age reaching such a level must have had an extraordinary master, yet he guarded the name until the end… almost as if he were protecting it.”
“Final question.”
“Yes.”
“What did that boy… know about me?”
This time Valter did not need to think long.
“Everything.”
“…”
“The habits in Your Highness’s sword form—the way your left shoulder opens first. How you take only three spoonfuls of soup when you have no appetite. How you walk two full circuits of the garden on days when troublesome documents await your seal. He taught all of it to us in the training yard. He said that if we were to serve you, we needed to know. Half of what we understand about Your Highness… we learned from him.”
Elise slowly closed her eyes. One side had known everything. The other had known nothing. That was the arithmetic of ten years. She had placed a man behind her back and believed she had simply added a backrest.
“…I see. Go and rest.”
Valter rose, then paused and added, “Your Highness. May I ask the result of your examination?”
“…Failure. Every subject.”
“…”
“Laugh if you wish. I would laugh at myself.”
“I will not laugh. Only… this is the first time I have seen a failing student prepare for a retake.”
Valter stopped himself from saying more, offered a crisp salute, and left. Consolation was not his duty.
That afternoon Elise descended to the kitchens. It was the first time in the history of the household that the Grand Duke’s daughter had appeared there; two maids nearly dropped the trays they were carrying.
“W-what may we prepare for you, Your Highness?”
“I have a question. For roughly the last ten years, someone must have been purchasing roasted chestnuts every winter.”
An elderly kitchen maid came forward, wiping her hands. She was the woman the apprentices called the Kitchen Hag, the one who knew half the castle’s workings by heart.
“You mean Sir Kael.”
“…Did he buy them? Not simply take them from the kitchen?”
“In the first year we gave him the leftovers. The poor boy loved sweets so much, yet he had never even seen them at the orphanage. But from the following year onward he insisted on paying. Even when his apprentice wage was little more than a mouse’s tail. Every winter, without fail, one bag.”
“…You never asked why?”
“I did. And do you know what he said?”
The old woman smiled with wrinkled eyes.
“He said that sweetness obtained for free cannot be given with a clear conscience. I thought it was quite a thing for a boy to say… When I asked who he was giving them to, he never answered. Not once in ten years.”
The teacup on the tray rattled. Elise realized only then that her hand was shaking and withdrew it.
At twelve she had believed the roasted chestnuts behind the greenhouse had been pilfered from the kitchen. She had believed it for ten years. Because they were stolen, she could accept them lightly. But they had been bought with an apprentice’s wage. Because sweetness obtained for free cannot be given with a clear conscience.
For ten years she had accepted with the lightest heart the one thing the boy had obtained with the clearest conscience of all.
“Your Highness? Your complexion…”
“…You have my thanks.”
Leaving the kitchen, Elise went to the accounting office. It was an impulse—the miserable realization that the only place left where she might come to know him was in the ledgers.
Escort Knight Kael. The salary disbursement records for ten years were neatly arranged. And in the column for authorized expenditures, Elise discovered the same line repeated for an entire decade.
Border village of Trent, in front of St. Michaela Orphanage. Half his salary. Every month. Without missing a single one. From his apprentice days onward.
“What… is this authorization?”
The accountant peered at the ledger and answered.
“It is a remittance authorization. I understand it is the orphanage where he himself was raised. He has sent half his pay there for ten years, so in effect Sir Kael has been feeding that orphanage. Ah, now that I think of it, the remittances stopped last month and we received an inquiry from them…”
“…I see. That will be all.”
As she moved to close the ledger, the accountant added one more thing.
“Ah, Your Highness. There is another bundle of Sir Kael’s documents in the steward’s office, separate from the accounting files. They concern personnel and petitions, so they are not under our jurisdiction—but the stack for ten years is rather thick. If you need them, Steward Rolf…”
“…No. It is fine.”
Elise had a vague idea what that bundle contained. More precisely, she did not want to face it. Roughly half of its thickness had passed through her own hands. Whatever it had blocked, whatever it had buried—opening it now would only add another count to her sins. It was a bundle she would have to open someday. Just not today.
Half his salary to the orphanage. From what remained, one bag of roasted chestnuts every winter. Clothing issued by the duchy, a room in the corner of the annex, possessions that fit in a single bag. That was the entire inventory of a man who had lived there for ten years. And even within that meager list, a handful of sweetness had been set aside for her without fail.
Elise closed the ledger.
As she walked the corridor, her feet turned of their own accord. The garden. Snow lay thick. Behind the greenhouse, the stone steps where a boy had once spread his outer coat for a twelve-year-old girl were now buried beneath it. Elise sat down on them without hesitation. She let her dress grow damp, let her feet freeze. The boy had once told her that frozen feet made noise when she walked. What did it matter now? Who was there left to notice?
The tears came without sound. She no longer needed to cover her face with her hands as she had at twelve. There was no one left in the castle who would pretend not to see.
At twelve she had cried because she feared being discovered. At twenty-one she cried because there was no one left to discover her. After nine years she had returned to the same stone steps, yet she was poorer than before. She counted, one by one, the things she had not known then.
That the hands which had spread the coat for her had later taken two blades in her place. That the roasted chestnuts had been bought with an apprentice’s wage. That half that wage had gone to an orphanage. That a man who owned nothing but a single bag had given her the sweetest part of what little he possessed for nine years. And that what she had given him in return was ten years in which she had begrudged even learning his name.
At dusk, the sound of boots crunching through snow came from behind her. Elise held her breath. She knew that gait—heavy, long-striding, unhurried. It was her father.
Gregor stood silently beside his daughter and gazed for a long time at the sunset reflected in the greenhouse glass. Then he removed his coat, spread it over the snow-covered steps, and sat down.
“…Father.”
“Sit and finish crying. It is better than weeping while standing.”
“I was not crying.”
“Of course. The snow simply melted only on your face.”
Elise could not answer. Gregor drew a bottle from his coat, took a swallow, and spoke abruptly.
“The recommendation for knighthood three years ago.”
Her heart plummeted.
“You blocked the one the Knight Commander submitted. You told him not to record the reason.”
“…You knew.”
“There is no approval made in my castle that I do not know. I knew and allowed it. That sin is mine.”
“Why did you allow it?”
“Because I understood why you blocked it.”
Gregor drove the bottle into the snow to stand it upright. For the first time he looked his daughter squarely in the eyes.
“If that boy became a knight, he would leave your personal service. If he left, another house would claim him or another woman would take him. That was what you feared. Binding him as a commoner escort was the only way you knew to keep him near you.”
“Father—”
“I knew and pretended I did not. I thought you would pretend not to know your own heart for the rest of your life. That is how heirs of the Grand Duchy live. I lived that way myself.”
“…You speak of Mother.”
Gregor took another swallow. He always did when his wife’s name arose. The liquor answered before he did.
“Your mother was a southerner. You know that much. But you do not know how I met her. No one ever speaks of it.”
“…”
“That story is not for today. I will say only this. I, too, performed the calculation. Which came first—the family or the person? Before the sum was finished, your mother left, and I have lived the rest of my life without knowing the answer to that equation.”
The bottle tilted in the snow.
“I once told you that the habit of counting after loss is hard to break. Let me correct myself. It is not hard to break. It is impossible. So stop counting, go to him, and hear the answer. Whatever it is, it is better than living your whole life without knowing.”
The sunset cooled to the color of blood on the greenhouse glass.
“And yet that boy threw his resignation at you. After ten years, of his own will. And for two months now you have not slept, have not eaten, and have ended up sitting in the snow crying.”
Gregor looked at his daughter’s wet eyes and asked slowly.
“Elise. What do you feel for that boy?”
“…”
“Have you finally realized it?”