IV. Chivalric Romance and the Bastards (9)
IV. Chivalric Romance and the Bastards (9)
People sought God whenever times grew hard.
And the Empire in which Keldric lived was an age of upheaval in the truest sense.
Whenever a territorial war broke out, knights would flash into view from nowhere, and the conscripted peasant levies would set off on a long journey from which they would never return.
Meanwhile, successive Holy Land Reconquest Campaigns had scraped together every last silver coin, pushing several domains’ finances to the brink of collapse and driving starving peasants and unpaid mercenaries into full-time banditry.
In such hard times, the yearning for God existed everywhere, regardless of era or continent.
That was no different for the nations of the continent including the Empire, or for the heathens across the sea.
Tragically, heresy was not permitted on Imperial soil.
If you were firmly established as a heretic and the matter was cleanly resolved, you got your back flayed with saltwater-soaked whips that they had the gall to call holy water, and if you proved utterly unreasonable, they simply threw you into a pyre.
Thanks to that, reporting a heretic in this age made an excellent pretext.
Simply reporting someone to the Church earned a suitable reward, which led to frequent cases of people falsely denouncing a neighbor they envied as a heretic.
With the situation being what it was, the Church did not blindly execute everyone who was reported but instead put them through proper classification and legal trial.
The good-natured peasant who had been dragged in by brute force was spared, and the apostate who had been seduced by the devil into believing heresy was sorted out.
It did not always work as intended, but by and large it was carried out under systematic classification and trial.
And if Anselm's daughter had been branded a heretic, there must at the very least have been solid grounds for it.
Since it was Anselm's daughter, who had ties to Sir Gebhard, it was highly likely that the nearby Heresy Tribunal had also put her through a rigorous classification.
If Anselm's daughter had been burned at the stake for being a heathen, it meant she had been stamped as a heretic despite all those advantageous conditions.
Setting aside how Anselm's daughter came to believe in heresy, Keldric tried to imagine the circumstances under which she would have been denounced as a heretic and roasted alive.
The fine Anselm paid for tax evasion could amount to a suitable grudge.
Yet it did not seem like a grudge deep enough to betray an entire city.
But a daughter burned alive was a different story.
As a rule, a penniless serf who owned nothing would buy and sell his own children like chattel, but once money grew plentiful enough, familial affection was bound to sprout.
If it was true that Anselm's daughter had been burned at the stake before Sir Herman rose to the governorship, then the man who carried out the sentence was Sir Gebhard.
If that were so, it became understandable that Anselm had nursed a grudge deep enough to betray the very city where he had built up his trading company.
But that did not resolve every question.
'What about the guild master of the Artisans' Guild?'
Keldric had constructed a plausible hypothesis, yet the Artisans' Guild master's clumsy confession of his own guilt still remained unexplained.
Even if Anselm and the Artisans' Guild master had cooperated, then the Artisans' Guild master had effectively saved Anselm at the cost of his own life.
Even Keldric, who thought it unlikely the Artisans' Guild master was the traitor, did not consider that plausible.
The son of a bitch who had betrayed Bellam and Baron Yaven was either Anselm or the Artisans' Guild master.
Keldric frowned and brooded for a long while.
Just as digging blindly in a parched desert would not make water gush forth, no meaningful answer emerged.
"Sir Keldric? What is the matter?"
Meanwhile, Alisa, who had been watching Keldric suddenly fall silent and grow grave all by himself, blinked with a baffled expression.
Keldric was, for a knight, a rather deep-thinking and merciful sort.
When he occasionally showed himself sunk in solitary thought, it meant he was genuinely pondering a serious problem.
"Alisa. Around you—."
"Yes?"
"...No, it's nothing."
Keldric had been about to press Alisa for more about Anselm's daughter but stopped himself.
As far as Keldric could tell, Alisa, who was gazing vacantly at him while munching her bread, did not seem to know anything more.
Keldric needed more information.
If this were a pointless matter he would not have reacted so sharply, but his instincts, which had been quiet, had stirred at the information Alisa had given him.
And so far as Keldric knew, there was exactly one person likely to be well-versed in such information and rumor.
"Where is the inn Jorgen is staying at?"
"If you mean the mercenary captain... he will be staying at the Silver Cup Inn."
"I'll step out for a moment."
Jorgen, as befitted a mercenary captain, had a wide network of contacts and had picked up a great deal of idle gossip.
Since he appeared to have been staying in Bellam for quite some time, he was bound to know the rumors about Anselm's daughter as well.
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"Uh... You mean Anselm's daughter?"
Summoned early in the morning, Jorgen was a wreck.
He must have spent the night with some intensity, for his haggard state, reeking of a sour, stale stench, made even Keldric involuntarily frown.
"Ugh, the smell really is..."
It was only natural that Alisa, who was unusually sensitive to odors, wrinkled her whole face in disgust.
When Alisa openly displayed her revulsion, Jorgen, now accustomed to the fastidious wizard's manner, scratched at his shaggy hair with an awkward expression.
The daily life of a mercenary without work was generally like this.
Drinking deep into the night as if there were no tomorrow, or, if the tavern had serving girls, clutching a woman and rolling about merrily.
There might be some who had started families, but anyone like that would long ago have given up the mercenary trade.
"My apologies, Sir Keldric. I was asleep and had to come down in a hurry, so I had no time to wash properly."
"Never mind that, just answer what I ask."
"Anselm's daughter, well... Yes. I have picked up a few rumors here and there."
It was a matter close to hearsay, yet also something that might actually have happened in the past.
If one meant to inquire, it would be more fitting to ask a Church clergyman, a minstrel who sang at an inn, or a merchant with a wide network here and there.
But a Church clergyman, being part of the city's upper hierarchy, was highly likely to produce distorted information.
Moreover, minstrels were the sort to twist a tale any way they pleased and recite it as song or verse, and asking a merchant would be about as efficient as asking Anselm himself.
Jorgen was reliable to a degree.
It had not been long since they arrived in the city together, and judging by how faithfully he seemed to live the mercenary life of thinking of nothing but drink and women, the chance that his information had been distorted was small.
"Most of it is not trustworthy information, but shall I tell you anyway?"
"That's fine. For now, tell me everything you know about Anselm. I'll sift through it myself."
"Ah, understood. Well then, hm..."
Jorgen, still racking his half-asleep brain, began haltingly to spill the information and rumors he had gathered so far.
That Anselm had frequently slipped in and out of the brothel quarter outside the castle, that his wife had been a prostitute, that he had coveted Sir Gebhard's wealth...
The greater part of what Jorgen said was pie-in-the-sky rumor.
Keldric let the things that needed filtering pass idly by. The information he wanted rarely appeared.
"I have also heard the rumor that Anselm's daughter was burned at the stake. There was much talk about the reason."
"What reasons were given?"
"Well, the usual story. Something about how, since she picked up things from the merchants, she was gradually won over by heresy and went over to that side..."
From what Jorgen had heard, Anselm's daughter, influenced by her father who met many people in the merchant trade, had opened her eyes to heresy.
Thereafter, Anselm's daughter had met and spoken with heathens in person and so on, becoming steadily more steeped in heresy until she finally converted outright.
And then, when she was caught red-handed by the Church and Sir Gebhard at a heathen-style worship service, that was the end of it.
"They say it was no small uproar. The daughter of a prominent guild master in the city had dared to commit the sin of apostasy, after all."
Keldric nodded.
Certainly, if she had committed apostasy, she could not complain about being burned at the stake.
"So Anselm's daughter was found out as a heathen and burned at the stake?"
"There are many stories, but the rumor that she was a heathen was the one I heard most."
"Hm..."
If so, it seemed Anselm had lost a daughter who had become a heathen without his knowing, and his resentment, having nowhere else to go, had turned toward Sir Gebhard.
Keldric's thoughts having reached that point, he felt something did not add up.
If it were his own daughter who was a heathen, no matter how strong his paternal love, the more commonsensical reaction would be to recoil in horror and hoist her onto the pyre himself on the spot.
It might seem strange to burn one's own child, but the people of the Empire in this age were all like that.
Even granted that Anselm had harbored resentment over his daughter's execution, setting aside the sin of his heresy-believing daughter and blindly hating House Kassel was unlike a calculating merchant.
"It doesn't fit together."
"Apologies. I think it's because I do not know very much."
"No, it was enough. Thanks to you, I've been able to gain some certainty."
At the very least, it did not seem that the rumor of Anselm's daughter being a heathen had simply appeared out of nowhere.
Seeing that even the approximate time and the punishment were circulating as rumor, it was highly likely to be not mere hearsay but fact.
Burning at the stake was generally a punishment carried out publicly before the people.
No matter how old the incident, there was no way that people who had vividly witnessed the execution at the time did not still exist.
Keldric laid out all the information he had gathered so far in his mind.
The Artisans' Guild master had been caught red-handed by Keldric for refusing to sell him goods without understanding the situation, and his act had been clumsy in the extreme.
Anselm, who had sent Joseph as a peddler to Carlton Village, had committed tax evasion and was consequently on poor terms with Sir Herman.
Moreover, his daughter had been burned at the stake on charges of apostasy.
Keldric's brow twitched.
'Why did he commit tax evasion?'
Had he done it as an act of revenge for his daughter's death?
He could not tell. The more he thought, the more tangled the circumstances grew.
"Was there no talk related to Anselm's tax evasion?"
"Tax evasion, you say? Tax evasion... Aha. You mean the tax evasion for which Sir Herman caught him by the scruff of the neck?"
Jorgen had also heard the rumors about Anselm's tax evasion piecemeal.
For whatever reason, Anselm had committed tax evasion after Sir Gebhard's death.
It had caught Sir Herman's eye, and he had only managed to save his own neck by paying an enormous fine—such was Jorgen's account.
"They say he paid a full hundred Florin gold coins. Whew... A guild master of a trading company certainly does have money, it seems."
"Of course. The Mormont Trading Company has many peddlers under it."
"Do you not also know many guild masters yourself, my lady wizard?"
While Alisa and Jorgen exchanged trivial talk, the shadow that had settled over Keldric's face deepened further.
Thinking long and hard did not mean an answer would pop out ready-made.
By this point, Keldric was beginning to grow irritated.
In any case, the Artisans' Guild master, with whom he had no acquaintance, would be dead within a day or two, and Keldric himself had only to depart from Bellam and go somewhere else.
If the real traitor survived unscathed like this, a great crisis might well descend upon Bellam, but coldly speaking, that was none of Keldric's business.
Yet by that same reasoning, Hilmer dropping dead was also none of Keldric's business.
Nevertheless, Keldric had saved Hilmer's life. He had done the same for Lady Bellaf.
If asked to give a clear reason, Keldric would hem and haw before offering the answer that he felt it would give him bad dreams.
This time was the same. Though Keldric felt himself sinking ever deeper into a labyrinth, he strove somehow to do his utmost to find the real traitor.
But all that came back to him were rumors that grasped at clouds or talk that was of hardly any help.
In the end, Keldric gave up thinking deeply.
Every sort of supposition was now meaningless.
There was a limit even to testing a stone bridge before crossing; this was like building a steel bridge beside it because the stone bridge looked unreliable.
'Should I just overturn the whole thing?'
Keldric was no monk. The limits of his patience had been reached.
Anselm's daughter had been a heathen. And so she had been burned at the stake. Keldric made up his mind to think so.
If that were the case, only one reason came to mind for why Anselm would bear a grudge over his daughter's death.
"Is there no possibility that Anselm himself is also a heathen?"
Alisa and Jorgen, who had been quietly chatting, fell silent at the same moment.
The two of them stared at Keldric with expressions that seemed to ask, 'Did I mishear?' and then, seeing the faint irritation on Keldric's face, swallowed dryly.
"Ah, you mean Guild Master Anselm? No, that is..."
"...He is a man who actively trades with heathens as well. But, Sir Keldric. Any merchant wishes to do business with moneyed heathens. They hate the heresy, but they do not hate the coin."
Spices, silk, jewels, coral, dates.
Every last one of them was merchandise over which merchants drooled and scrambled. And they were also things the heathens sold.
Yet Anselm's daughter had already been won over by heresy. Keldric decided for the moment to believe that.
But it was unlikely that Anselm's daughter had been won over by heresy for no reason. There had to have been some point of contact.
What if Anselm, who traded with heathens, had first converted to heresy and then influenced his daughter as well?
What if the daughter had followed suit and converted, and had been caught while trying to worship in the heathen manner?
What if Sir Gebhard, having seen this, had been unable to kill Anselm so easily because of Anselm's many contributions to the city, and had instead mounted his daughter on the pyre?
Anselm had barely managed to keep his life. Yet as a fellow apostate, he raged at his daughter's death.
Sir Gebhard commanded him to convert by force. Anselm, swallowing his tears, renounced heresy once more.
From that time onward, a rebellious Anselm no longer remained loyal to the city.
He wracked his cunning to embezzle taxes and was at last caught by Sir Herman.
To avoid exposing the fact that he had spared the apostate Anselm, Sir Gebhard told no one about the matter.
Because of that, Sir Herman did not know of Anselm's apostasy.
He imposed a fine. Anselm, who had once again kept his life, now carried out his schemes more boldly.
He sweet-talked the Artisans' Guild master. The greedy Artisans' Guild master, blinded by the prospect of earning more money and by Anselm's false information, found himself branded as the city's traitor.
Thus, the real traitor Anselm slipped away at his leisure.
'This is it.'
Keldric's mind flashed awake and he rose to his feet.
Alisa and Jorgen, who had been watching him with slightly tense expressions, also scrambled up after him.
Keldric intended to go and find Anselm at once.
No matter how plausible a hypothesis, a hypothesis was just a hypothesis.
That said, he had no time to leave the Artisans' Guild master, who was living on borrowed time, and spend days determining whether it was true.
In that case, it was better to go to the man himself and extract the desired answer by way of station and force.
Procedure, overstepping his bounds, and the principle of presumption of innocence which he had retained to some degree as a modern man?
To put it crudely, Keldric could say to hell with all that and act, and it would not matter.
So Keldric resolved that from now on, that was exactly what he would do.
Naturally, Sir Herman might be displeased.
But so what?
At this stage, the situation had grown far too convoluted to fuss over such things.
Anselm's attitude had been suspicious, so it would suffice to say he felt it would be dishonorable to let the matter pass as it was and had therefore acted.
On the contrary, Sir Herman, who did not look kindly upon Anselm, might even take the lead.
Everything else aside, frankly, if he fretted any deeper, he felt he would die of frustration from sheer pent-up aggravation.
"Jorgen."
"Er, yes. Sir Keldric."
"You stay here. My thanks for the information."
Two silver coins were pressed into Jorgen's hand.
A smile spread across Jorgen's face at having unexpectedly earned some money.
"Alisa, you come with me."
"Er... By any chance, where are we going?"
Keldric stroked the mace at his belt.
Knights were, for the most part, ferocious. It was not as though Keldric was any exception.
He was perfectly capable of becoming violent when the need arose.
"We're going to the Mormont Trading Company."
And as Keldric saw it, now was precisely such a time.