Hyde Expels the Ghost from a Woman's Body! #3
Lucy Emma.
Her body collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut.
But the chapel was already ablaze, and we had no choice but to flee outside.
"Heehee! Fire! Fire! It's Lord Rust's flame! Burn brighter! Lord Rust, this foremost maid Galatea shall burn this building to the ground! Hiiiiiik!"
"Galatea! You crazy bitch!"
"Somebody stop that woman!"
Galatea the knight, whom I had heard was still recovering in solitary confinement, had somehow gotten free and was pouring oil on the flames. Psyche sprinted toward her, seizing her in a fierce embrace to pin her down, but the fire was already beyond control.
In the end, it took less than half a day for the nunnery on the rocky island and all its facilities to burn to the ground.
"Fuck yeah! Grande Nunnery burned down! That means I'm free now! Nobody can stop Lady Milione Archibold!"
While everyone else stood stricken with grief, Milione flung both arms skyward in pure delight. I, who had been so pleased at the thought of locking her up in this nunnery for a full year of reflection, could only feel crushing despair.
What a nightmare.
"Our nunnery…"
"Sob…"
The panicking nuns either sank to the ground in a daze or wept openly. Only Galatea's deranged laughter cut through the noise.
Then Abbess Midnar drew a long pipe from her robes and held it to a still-smoldering ember until it caught. She took a deep pull, then exhaled a long breath.
"Perhaps it was only right that it burned. A fitting end for all the tragedies that took place inside these walls. You lot burned that Emma, didn't you?"
Midnar asked the nuns.
They flinched—startled.
While they scrambled for composure, Midnar pressed on.
"When I first brought Emma to this nunnery, her mind was certainly not whole. But she was not so mad that she would douse herself in oil and leap into the flames, the way your reports claimed."
The abbess's eyes grew deeper, darker. Flames seemed to dance inside them.
From those flames I could roughly piece together the past that had unfolded in this place. I could even begin to understand the reason for Lucy Emma's dissociative identity disorder.
"So it was you who burned her. Because she was a witch? Because she was prettier than you? Or simply because she got on your nerves? I don't know the reason—but."
To burn a living person to death.
No matter the excuse, I believed it should never be done. I have said it many times: no one has the right to kill another human being. We are all precious beings made in the image of God.
But the nuns of this place had done exactly that.
Lucy Emma.
She must still have been a baby, yet I suspected she had watched her mother burn. That sight would have dealt a catastrophic blow to her young mind. The defense mechanism that rose from it was probably the second "personality"—Emma—sleeping deep inside her.
Did my hypnosis actually work?
"B-but we did drive the ghost out, didn't we?"
"Emma's ghost! We definitely drove it out! Priest Hyde from the mainland did it!"
The past seemed to matter little to the nuns. They were convinced that the ghost of Emma possessing Lucy's body had fled because of me, and they believed it without a shred of doubt.
To an outsider, it would certainly have looked that way.
I spoke with a faintly bitter heart.
"This incident seems too large for the nunnery on this rocky island to handle alone. I believe the matter should be resolved at the courts and chapel of Veneto."
The scale of this case is far too big.
And with the Pope's illegitimate child involved, I could not simply bury it by myself. There were too many witnesses. Better to bring it to a proper trial.
"I will formally charge Lucy Emma for arson of the chapel, as well as every person who once burned Miss Emma, before the Veneto Chapel and the tribunal."
"Hyde, the ship is scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning. Tomorrow we can finally leave this island and head for the mainland."
"Excellent."
Softly—
Psyche rested her hand on my back. Her hand was warm, and her heart was surely warmer still.
"Hyde, you don't look well."
"Grande Nunnery has burned down, has it not? Lady Milione was supposed to spend at least a year here in repentance and reflection, yet that place no longer exists."
"Haha! I'm free!"
Milione Archibold was practically dancing around the blackened ruins of the buildings, utterly thrilled. The sight alone made me sigh.
Psyche spoke gently, as if to comfort me.
"Is that really all?"
Is there something else that should be souring my mood?
While I pondered, Psyche sat beside me and gazed out at the dark horizon.
"Hyde, you are going to become extremely famous. The priest who drove out a ghost! An achievement worthy of being recorded in the Order's history books. Wouldn't it be all right to feel a little happier?"
"Psyche, as I said earlier, what I drove out was not a ghost. It was merely a fragment of a mental illness. I don't even know whether she is fully cured."
"Is that so? I don't know much about illness, but if you say so, then it must be true. Still… it seems to be eating away at your heart a little, Hyde."
"My heart?"
"Hyde, have you ever heard God's voice? Have you ever met Him personally? Spoken with Him?"
I did not answer.
Because I never had.
Understanding my silence, Psyche continued.
"Does God truly exist—? Anyone who holds faith must carry that question in their heart at least once. If God exists, why is the world so full of misery—? Why must the innocent be sacrificed and die unjustly—?"
The questions Psyche voiced were vivid and real. Many people, seeing the world's injustice, had come to doubt God's existence.
If a truly just and righteous God existed in this world, why was it overflowing with injustice and corruption?
What kind of being was God?
Was He truly just?
Theodicy.
In the twenty-first century it was a worn-out, endlessly debated topic, but in this medieval world where theology remained underdeveloped, such thoughts might be considered rather radical.
Psyche soon grew hesitant.
"It's a little embarrassing to say this, but… there was a time I thought the same. When my younger brother fell ill, when the estate grew poorer by the day, when men only eyed the family's renown and my body… I wondered whether God truly existed, and I wanted clear proof."
"Psyche, you thought such things?"
It was astonishing.
The Psyche I had known was a woman of such unshakable faith that she did not even fear death.
She seemed deeply ashamed of the confession she had just made; her face flushed and she fidgeted restlessly.
"But Hyde, watching you has made me believe even more firmly that He exists. I can't express it well in words, but when I see you keep your center even in the midst of hardship…"
Her words were a little clumsy, yet I understood perfectly what she wanted to say.
I, too, had once been certain of God's existence while looking at Psyche.
During the invasion of the royal capital, when everyone was falling into corruption and racing toward ruin, Psyche endured every hardship and torment from the heretics yet never lost her faith. She shone brighter and grew harder still.
I had found that radiance dazzling.
Back then I stood opposite her under the name of Rust, yet even then Psyche had already been my pride—my only sanctuary of the heart, if I may put it that way.
It seemed Psyche had felt the same while looking at me, Hyde.
"Psyche, we truly are a pair joined by God, just like Adam and Eve."
"Is that so? Come to think of it, when we return to the Agarpe estate, there is something I wanted to tell you, Hyde—"
Psyche hesitated, fumbling for words.
At that moment Milione Archibold shoved herself between us.
"Hey! You two! It's past six in the afternoon! According to nunnery rules, men and women aren't allowed to talk from now on! Rules are rules, huh?"
The nunnery is gone—what rules?
But Psyche was a devout woman who knew how to respect regulations. She closed her mouth in accordance with the six-o'clock rule, and our conversation ended there.
Milione, you wicked little—
You're going to interrupt a conversation between husband and wife like this?
When I shot her a glare, Milione slapped me hard on the back.
"Hyde, you did pretty well this time. When that crazy Lucy got possessed, I figured you'd piss yourself and run. Then again, after driving that powerful demon Rust out of your own body, it wouldn't make sense if you couldn't handle one witch's soul."
Milione's evaluation of me seemed to have risen. Being recognized by others was usually a good thing, yet being recognized by Milione still filled me with nothing but an ominous feeling, then and now.
"But that Rust guy is still incredible. He controlled Galatea from this far away and even made her commit arson? That man is a real devil among devils! First the Grand Cathedral, now a nunnery!"
What the hell are you burning, you lunatic!
A dizzying wave of vertigo washed over me in more ways than one.
Booooom—
With the blast of the ship's horn, the vessel set sail.
Leaving the burned island behind left me with a bittersweet feeling.
"The mainland! I've never been to the mainland before!"
Lucy, still wearing wooden handcuffs, looked delighted even though she was a criminal who had set fire to the nunnery. Simply leaving the island and heading toward a mainland city—even as a defendant—seemed to make her happy.
"I told you, Miss Lucy. I would get you off this island. Though the circumstances are not quite as positive as I had hoped."
"Mm-hmm! This is more than enough! I've never left the island this far before! Hyde! Thank you so, so much for keeping your promise!"
"So, can you still use magic?"
Lucy.
She had burned the chapel through mana. Magic was a truly mysterious art—almost like a gift or miracle bestowed by God. I wondered whether she could use it again, but Lucy shook her head.
"No, I can't. I don't know how!"
I see.
Had the mana awakened together with the second personality that had been sleeping in her unconscious?
Well, I had heard that was how magic worked. Once it manifested, you had to polish it diligently. Controlling it was difficult, too. That was why mages all ended up so eccentric.
"Hyde, am I going to be locked in a prison?"
Lucy asked me in a small voice. The freedom she had only just gained—she seemed terrified of losing it again to a cell.
Of course, I already knew the answer.
"You will not. Lucy, your sins are not truly that great. The people who must pay the real price are elsewhere."
Lucy's father.
Pope Arud Gregory.
If one looked carefully, every problem had begun when he dumped Lucy and her mother Emma into the nunnery. And a priest who never married yet fathered an illegitimate child—if rape or coercion had been involved, it could never be overlooked.
I will confront him about this matter without flinching.
As I thought that, Lucy thrust her cuffed hands toward me with a sharp pat-pat.
"Fireball!"
She seemed to be trying to cast magic, but it was not working.
Magic—come to think of it, Lucy possessed a talent as astonishing as magic itself.
"Miss Lucy, back when you were locked in solitary. When I came with the key to free you, we spoke, did we not? At that time you pretended to be asleep."
"Huh?"
"You acted so perfectly asleep that I was completely fooled. How did you do it?"
I had some expertise in acting. After all, I could flawlessly pull off a one-man dual role. Even to my eyes, Lucy's performance that day had been remarkable.
When she acted out tics, Tourette's, or possession, the acting was honestly a bit obvious. But what happened in that solitary cell had not felt like acting at all.
It was time to ask about the secret.
"Did that happen? I don't know."
She doesn't know?
Is she lying?
No—what reason would she have to lie now? And Lucy truly seemed not to remember.
"Still, Hyde, I know you worked hard to free me! Thank you so much!"
Suddenly—!
Lucy threw her arms around me. Her strength was greater than expected, and she smelled of peaches.
Then she pulled away again.
"As thanks, I'll tell you something good! I don't remember clearly, but when I set the fire, bits and pieces came back! You asked me what your name was, right?"
"I did."
"If you really want the answer to that question, I know someone who can tell you! Go look for the center of the six horns!"
"The center of the six horns?"
"When I was very little. I can't tell if it was a dream or reality, but my mother told me. The person who lives at the center of the six horns knows everything. They'll tell you anything!"
The person who lives at the center of the six horns…
Just empty talk?
As I considered it, Lucy grew embarrassed.
"Weird, right? I only saw my mother when I was one year old, yet I remember her talking to me. You don't have to believe it… Honestly, even I can't believe the memory…"
"No, I believe you. The center of the six horns. I don't know what it is, but I will remember it."
No harm in memorizing it.
Even if it's a lie it doesn't matter, but if the story is true—
—then I have to eliminate the human who sits at that center.
If they truly know everything, they'll know my identity is both Hyde and Rust!
Whether she sensed my thoughts or not, Lucy spoke again.
"Hyde believes what I say! I've never met anyone like you! I'm so glad I'm alive! I'm really, really happy I met you, Hyde!"