Chapter 44
Gesle’s face had already gone pale. He pleaded desperately.
“Miss Eli has received the grace of the Mother! She possesses the power of healing!”
“Ha, so you’re saying that woman from the rumors is the saint?”
The moment the bishop mentioned the saint, Gesle’s widened eyes turned toward Dietrich once again.
He had struggled over the clues Eliza had given him, but with Gesle’s abilities, searching the entire country was impossible. So, hoping there might be a way, he had asked Dietrich for help, never expecting him to leak the information so quickly.
“……No. Miss Eli said that the saint was someone else. But she certainly possesses a special blessing—”
“How dare she mention the saint and deceive a priest. You said her name was Eli? We cannot rule out the possibility that this woman is an evil witch.”
“Bishop!”
“How dare you raise your voice at me!”
The bishop glared at Gesle. At his gesture, the Holy Knights placed their hands on the pommels of their swords, producing a sharp click.
“As a priest, how dare you become embroiled in such a scandal. You should devote yourself to spiritual discipline.”
“Bishop, I swear before the Great Mother that I have never committed anything shameful, not even by an inch.”
“But Priest Gesle has spent time alone with her far too often.”
Dietrich interjected and added to the accusation. Gesle squeezed his eyes shut, regretting that he had trusted him.
“There is a reason for that.”
“What is it?”
Gesle’s lips pressed tightly together. Even though the precious clue about the saint was at risk of being tainted, he could not reveal her other secret as well.
When Gesle gave no answer, the bishop openly clicked his tongue.
“I know well how faithful you are. For several years now, your donations have even begun to surpass those of the other parishes, and you have remained diligent in your continued volunteer work.”
The bishop had indeed been keeping an eye on this temple lately. He had found it suspicious how this village, where there seemed to be no source of wealth, had somehow grown so much.
That was why he had personally come all the way here. He intended to inspect whether any secular forces had become involved in the village’s growth.
If he happened to discover a hidden witch in the process, it would add even greater glory to his achievements.
“Therefore, only God can judge which of your words is the truth.”
Gesle lowered his head. And he prayed that his own recklessness would not cause her harm, and that God had left some divine arrangement in store for her.
***
Eliza knocked on the wooden door. A woman’s voice could be heard from inside, and she gathered her thoughts for a moment while waiting for her to come out.
As the very person at the center of the rumors, Eliza could not infiltrate a society that had made her its common enemy. The only one who could do so was Jenia, who was both close to Eliza and born and raised in Ruben.
‘For five years, I thought my presence had at least become familiar to them.’
The rumor itself was simple, but there were people who hated her to an unusual degree.
Among them was a woman who had been particularly zealous about spreading the rumors, and Eliza had stopped Jenia from going to confront her, so she had come herself instead.
“Who is it…… Oh my.”
The person who emerged was a woman named Fabienne. Eliza had come wearing glasses instead of a veil so that she could make eye contact.
Eliza stepped forward with a bright smile in her eyes.
“I’m coming in, all right? There’s something I’d like to talk about.”
“Why are you suddenly showing up—hey! I never told you to come in!”
Eliza ducked beneath Fabienne’s arm as she braced it against the doorway and entered. Fabienne frowned at her shameless behavior.
“Can’t you get out right now?”
“Why?”
“Ha, this is my house!”
“You have a nice house.”
“The owner of the house is telling you to leave!”
“I’m sorry, but I’ve always been the type who doesn’t listen.”
As Eliza nonchalantly looked around the house and moved farther inside, Fabienne stomped over and firmly grabbed her shoulder from behind.
“But you didn’t listen to me either, did you?”
Eliza quickly crouched down and slipped free of Fabienne’s grasp. She stood back up, brushed off her shoulders, and wiped the expression from her face.
“I heard you’ve been working hard to spread things about me.”
“Ha, what are you talking about?”
“Are you going to deny it?”
When Eliza tapped her button twice, the voices Jenia had recorded began to echo. The voices ended with the statement that they had heard the rumors from Fabienne.
Startled by the sudden voices ringing through the air, Fabienne frantically looked around. When she realized it was a magical device, her face became blank.
Then she soon began spitting out vicious curses.
“That bitch Jenia, sucking up to an outsider and kissing her ass.”
“Huh.”
Eliza admired how skillfully she changed her attitude. Fabienne crossed her arms and looked Eliza up and down.
“What’s so good about a bitch like this? This is why virgins are no good.”
“A virgin?”
“Oh, are you not a virgin either?”
Eliza let out a hollow laugh. This was not the first time she had encountered someone who disliked her, but encountering such inexplicable malice after so long felt strangely refreshing.
“Let me ask you first. Where did you hear that rumor?”
“What, does it hit a nerve? Then why do you go around behaving so disgustingly? A priest, of all people? Isn’t that ridiculous? You’re embarrassing us women.”
“Or did you make the rumor up in the first place?”
“What do you mean, make it up? I only passed along what I heard. I felt sorry for the villagers who accepted someone like you into their community without knowing anything!”
Fabienne snickered, trying to mock Eliza. However, Eliza showed little reaction.
As Fabienne’s laughter faded, the silence it created was filled by Eliza’s calm voice.
“Fact? I’ve never done such a thing.”
Her head became cold and clear in the face of such simple hostility. Her unshaken pride stood tall behind her elegant pronunciation, making the woman standing before her shrink back.
“If you weren’t the source, then where was it from? Where did they make up such slander? Tell me.”
“……Hmph! Slander? I heard it too, you know? And from someone very, very close to the temple. The people at the temple wouldn’t lie, would they? So someone like you…….”
Fabienne, who had instinctively tensed at the feeling of facing someone of high status, instead began to act even more brazenly. Yet Eliza remained completely unmoved by her attitude.
“The temple?”
At the unexpected source, Eliza unconsciously asked again. Fabienne became heated at her innocent-sounding voice.
“Do you know how sick the children in our village are because of you right now?!”
“What?”
“If you were born a woman, you should have quietly gotten married and had children, but instead you wander all over the place. Huh? You bring some filthy thing back with you and spread it around!”
Fabienne glared fiercely at Eliza and shouted. But Eliza was merely flustered by information she had not known before.
“The children are sick?”
“Yes! Of course you don’t know. Do you have any idea how hard it is to raise even one child, and now you’ve made them sick too? I’m going through hell raising just one daughter, while you’re over there pretending to live so comfortably…….”
Fabienne envied Eliza. The high-quality fabric of her clothes, even if they were modest in appearance; her voice untouched by the wear of time; her soundless footsteps; and the aloof atmosphere with which she kept her distance.
A pitiful woman who had been driven all the way to this small village alone. A woman like that, who clearly had some sort of story behind her, should have been more miserable than herself, but she was not.
Even her carefree attitude, as though she considered everything insignificant, made Fabienne envious of everything Eliza possessed in her youth and made her want to tear her down somehow.
“You filthy bitch! You’re the one who came into our village and spread the disease! Evil witch! Hurry up and get hunted down as a witch and die!”
Even at this moment, Eliza merely stood there quietly, showing no sign of being affected by her words in the slightest.
However, a little anger was beginning to rise inside Eliza. Even though she had been digging into the rumors, this was the first time she had heard that the children were sick.
‘The people who are supposed to be taking care of their children are too busy tearing into just one person, me?’
Since the Bennett Trading Company had begun distributing Luo, more trading companies had started visiting Ruben, making trade the village’s main business.
Because of that, the parents had to hide their sick children so that rumors would not spread that the children’s illness was contagious.
That had caused their sense of injustice to erupt even more strongly as hostility toward Eliza, but Eliza had no reason to care about those circumstances.
