Sister Valentina (1)
Because the chief priest was away, the morning Mass was kept brief.
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.”
The prayers in the chapel did not cease.
Even the nuns spoke their devotions with unusual solemnity that morning.
“For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”
With their hands folded together, they spent a moment in quiet reflection.
Just as Lawrence was a pilgrim and magician of the order, the nuns were not all mischief and chatter, either.
Their silent prayers made them look, quite simply, like lambs in the service of the goddess herself.
When Mass ended, the nuns left the chapel behind.
Sister Helen saw them off at the door.
“May your prayers reach the goddess.”
“And may the goddess’s blessing be with you as well, Sister.”
Lawrence slowly made his way out of the chapel.
Lunchtime was near.
On his way to the refectory, he ran into Angela.
“Lawrence.”
She lifted a hand as if pleased to see him.
Her shameless attitude made Lawrence frown.
“Why did you shout and run away this morning?”
“Pardon?”
“Have you already forgotten what happened just now?”
He couldn’t understand why she was pretending to know nothing.
It hadn’t even been long ago—just a few hours earlier.
“Ah. Ahh. Sorry. I was a little flustered because of morning Mass. It wasn’t on purpose. I sincerely apologize.”
Angela lowered her head.
It still felt suspicious. But since she had apologized, pressing the matter any further would have seemed strange.
“Forget it. You came about tonight, didn’t you?”
“That’s right. You’re sure you’re free, yes?”
“I’ve cleared my schedule properly, so you don’t need to worry.”
Lawrence followed her to the refectory.
It was packed with nuns who had just finished morning Mass.
As always, the monastery’s food was excellent.
There was stew packed with potatoes and meat, with no regard for expense.
Fresh vegetables had been sprinkled with some unidentified seasoning.
And the main dish was grilled fish, one he had seen before.
Herring from Frang Village.
Angela, sitting opposite him, took all the vegetables for herself.
She lifted the little handful of greens—hardly enough for one bite—and chewed them soundlessly.
“Are you a goat or something?”
He couldn’t help himself from speaking.
At Lawrence’s question, she swallowed the vegetables and answered, “A lady has to eat her vegetables if she wants to become beautiful.”
“That is, without exaggeration, the first time I’ve ever heard that.”
“Then now it’s not the first time anymore, so you know better.”
“……”
Lawrence took a large bite out of the herring.
The fishy smell that the seasoning hadn’t quite hidden rose up at once.
Compared to the herring he had eaten in Frang Village, where the dish had originated, it lacked a certain freshness.
“Will my room do for the meeting?”
“You’re inviting a lady into that tiny room?”
She snorted as if to say he shouldn’t be ridiculous.
“Then do you have some other good place in mind? This late in the day, I doubt there are many open spaces available.”
“Fine. I’ll arrange the place. You just make sure you’re on time and bring your bundle of stories.”
Angela twirled her fork as if keeping time to some private rhythm.
When Lawrence saw the seasoning scattering through the air, he leaned back.
“For some reason, this feels very unsettling.”
“Oh? Now you notice? Well, I suppose it makes sense that a beauty like me would leave your heart fluttering.”
“……”
At that moment, someone came to mind.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?”
“No, it’s just that I suddenly thought of something. Beautiful women all seem to know they’re beautiful.”
“Have you ever seen a knight march into battle without his sword? A lady’s looks are her weapon. She has to sharpen them carefully if she wants to catch a gentleman before the other ladies do.”
With a light snort, she resumed eating.
* * *
After the meal, Lawrence returned to his room.
He had taken care of the urgent matters, more or less.
Today, he planned to stay quietly indoors.
Fortunately, the hangover had mostly faded over the course of the morning and afternoon.
Sitting down, Lawrence took out his spellbook.
The spell he opened to was Warm.
He was already sick of hearing that he needed to prepare for the cold.
Before heading north, he had to master Warm as completely as possible.
It wasn’t as though he couldn’t use it now.
He had practiced the spell every single day since leaving the Magic Tower.
Still, it would be a lie to call him skilled.
Warm still required time to cast, and because it demanded concentration, it consumed mana more heavily than he would have liked.
“Warm.”
He tried the spell on everything in the room, one item at a time.
How long would it last?
How much warmth would it produce?
He checked the effect of Warm carefully, piece by piece.
The duration was roughly thirty minutes to an hour.
The pleasant warmth never became hot enough to make him sweat.
Depending on the object, the effect varied slightly.
Bulky objects, for example, had shorter durations.
Smaller objects lasted longer on the same amount of mana.
And for cold-weather gear like blankets, which were designed to preserve warmth, Warm was especially efficient.
As a trial, he draped himself in the robe he had enchanted with Warm.
The pleasant heat brought drowsiness with it.
Not bad.
Cold was cold, after all; it just depended on how you handled it.
If he used it flexibly to match the situation, it should serve him well enough.
He had no idea what dangers might be lurking in the north.
Warm wasn’t an attack spell with immediate battlefield value, but in the northern lands, where bitter cold itself could threaten survival, there was probably no more reliable magic than this.
The sun set beyond the window.
It felt as if only a moment had passed, yet the time had slipped by in an instant.
Lawrence closed the spellbook and stood.
He intended to bathe a little earlier than usual today.
After dinner, he would have to wait for Angela.
* * *
The knock came only when night had nearly fallen.
Angela stood outside, a veil draped over her head.
“You’re late.”
“This is fast for me. Do you think it’s easy sneaking out without getting caught by a Sister? Here—take this first.”
She handed him a strip of thin cloth.
When he looked at it, he saw that it was the veil nuns wore over their hair.
“What are you waiting for? Put it on already.”
“Would you at least tell me why?”
“Why do you have to question everything? I’ll explain on the way. Just put it on first.”
Angela placed the veil over Lawrence’s head.
“Oh. It suits you pretty well, maybe because your face is cute. Good. At least like this, you might fool someone once if you run into them.”
“Angela.”
“There’s no time. I’ll explain while we walk.”
Maybe he had chosen the wrong person.
Following behind Angela, Lawrence thought it over.
Could he really learn anything about noble society through her?
In a sense, she was noble enough, of course.
In both good ways and bad.
Wasn’t the essence of nobility precisely that they never had to mind anyone else’s opinion?
They were free—recklessly so. Noble by birth, they had never needed to care about the feelings of those beneath them.
Lawrence steadied himself.
This was a hard-won opportunity.
He had felt the same thing at the drinking table with Lionel.
The further he stepped into the world of magic, the more likely it was that one day he would come face-to-face with nobles.
And if he wanted to be ready for that, he needed to learn about noble society in advance.
Hadn’t they said the same thing at the Magic Tower?
People like them, with nothing to their name, had to set their sights on becoming domain mages.
No—this wasn’t only a matter of domain mages.
What was unknown was frightening.
What was unknown was terrifying.
He couldn’t keep avoiding it forever.
The more Lawrence aimed upward, the more often he would be entangled with nobles.
It might already have begun.
Now wasn’t the time to spout nonsense as if he had all the leisure in the world.
He had no reason to kick this rare opportunity away with his own foot.
Doing nothing when he knew better was foolish.
“We’re going to the convent. There isn’t really anywhere in the monastery where we can talk at this hour.”
“You mean that pure white building beyond the cloister?”
“That’s right. I should warn you in advance: it’s a men-only restricted area, so be careful. If we run into another sister, I’ll explain it, so don’t worry.”
“I think that’s not the issue here….”
Seeing Lawrence’s obvious reluctance, Angela went on, “It’s fine as long as we don’t run into Sister Helen. Nice as the name sounds, a few nuns even bring men they like inside.”
“...That wasn’t exactly the kind of story I was hoping to hear.”
He didn’t know how else to say it.
He had no desire to learn about the nuns’ licentious nighttime games.
“I’m not saying all of them do that. Usually it’s daughters from ruined houses, or from houses so minor they have no real name to speak of. Birds trapped in a cage, that’s all the convent is. No matter what happens, they can’t leave the cage.”
“I’m not sure I should believe that. If the women involved in those nighttime games all keep their mouths shut, then nobody knows the truth, do they?”
“Not quite. Why do you think the noble ladies of name and lineage look into conjuration magic? A lady who can’t preserve her virginity doesn’t even have the right to stand in society.”
Angela shrugged and knocked on the convent door.
“It’s me.”
“If you just say ‘it’s me,’ how am I supposed to know who that is?”
A pair of eyes appeared through the crack.
After confirming Angela’s face, the nun opened the door.
“Hurry up and open it already. I was nervous stiff, thinking someone might catch us.”
“Then I figured you’d handle it well enough. So who’s this?”
“Don’t go asking questions if you don’t want to get hurt. Here.”
“Oh my. You’re really giving me something like this?”
Angela handed the nun a pouch.
“Don’t need it? Then give it back.”
“Sister, can’t you even take a joke? Ohhh, may our goddess turn a blind eye to this. But what can I do? For this little lamb of the goddess to eat her daily bread, this money is absolutely necessary. Please forgive me.”
The nun put on an exaggerated display.
“Keep that up and you’ll be struck by heaven someday.”
“If there is heaven, I’d love to be struck by it for real. Then I’d become a nun who has witnessed a miracle, wouldn’t I? And if a stigmata were to be carved into me…. Wouldn’t they praise me as a saint that very day?”
“I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Go on in safely. And watch out for Sister Helen.”
The two of them left the nun watching the door behind them.
“Were you disappointed?”
“At what?”
“At, well, all of this. I heard from you before that you seemed to believe the songs of troubadours. But that’s a long way from a real nun’s life.”
Angela’s face was hidden beneath the veil.
Still, her voice trembled faintly, unlike the casual words she was trying to make them sound like.
“Do you know what I learned from traveling the pilgrim’s road?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been on one myself.”
“That people are the same everywhere. Enduring things in silence doesn’t solve everything. Sometimes you need to let the resentment that’s built up inside you burst out. I’ll admit the nuns’ lives are far different from what I had imagined. But I don’t think Angela has any reason to be ashamed of that.”
Lawrence continued in a calm voice.
“Isn’t what the goddess wants from us simply that we live as human beings?”
“……”
A beat later, she spoke.
“Lawrence, you’re not exactly ordinary either.”
“If I were an ordinary pilgrim, I wouldn’t have entered a convent that was off-limits to men.”
“Haha. Fair enough.”
Angela took out a key and opened the door.
When they stepped inside, the smell of paper greeted Lawrence.
“This place is….”
The room was packed with bookshelves.
Old volumes heavy with the weight of time, thick collections bound in worn covers.
Every shelf was crammed with dozens upon dozens of books.
It was the first time since the Magic Tower that he had seen so many books in one place.
It felt as though every book in the world had been gathered here.
“This is the convent library. No one comes in at this hour, so you can relax.”
Angela locked the library door behind them.
When she lit the lamp, the darkness inside the library scattered.
“I’ll lead the way.”
It seemed the place they meant to talk was deeper inside.
Lawrence followed after her.
The library was full of books without end.
There were so many volumes it almost felt as though this building was a library rather than a convent.
Faint lamplight glimmered from the far side of the stacks.
“Angela, you said you weren’t going anywhere tonight.”
A whining voice reached them.
Beyond the shelves stood a woman.
Long blond hair spilled down to her waist.
Surrounded by books and lamplight, she lifted her head.
“Eek! A man!”
A shrill scream rang out.
Startled, she darted behind the bookshelf.
She seemed to think she was hiding, but the hair that stuck out beside the shelves gave her away.
She cautiously peeked out, stealing a look at Lawrence.
That scream sounded strangely familiar.
And the face illuminated beneath the lamp, for some reason, looked familiar too.
“Introduce yourself. This is our cutest sister in the world, Francois.”
As it turned out, her face was exactly the same as Angela’s.