Episode 10
Upon entering the room, Marie jumped up in surprise from her seat. Perhaps she had been nursing Seril all this time, as she held a wet towel in her hand. I reproached Marie with a voice deliberately mixed with dissatisfaction.
“Why didn’t you take her to the side room? If someone sees, there might be a misunderstanding.”
Marie, with a face turned ashen, opened her eyes wide and cautiously gauged my reaction. Her face, pale blue, looked whiter than if powdered with white lead.
I pretended not to notice such Marie’s expression and walked to the corner of the room with nonchalance. Then, I opened the lid of the plain-shaped coffer in a deep brown color and dumped all the miscellaneous items inside onto the floor.
The coffer, large enough for one person to easily fit inside, was one of the household items my mother and I brought to the Wischwaltz family. This box, usually used as a chest for clothes, was something my mother inherited from my grandmother, and it was said to have been covered with red velvet with fringes in the past.
It was an item my grandmother brought when she married into the viscount family. It was a relic of the past that she couldn’t give up even when selling the viscount title due to debt.
Perhaps because of that, the coffer, layered with the grime of time, was very dirty with stains accumulated from the many hands it passed through. But my mother sometimes wept while looking at this coffer, reminiscing the nostalgia of past years, and sang a melancholic song as if recalling the glory of the past.
I couldn’t understand such a mother. Rather than stroking that and sobbing, I felt like selling it to a second-hand shop to get even one more copper coin.
At that time, I was always hungry. The thin soup with a bit of vegetables and the hard black bread soaked in it were insufficient to fill my growing stomach.
So, although plain, I wanted to sell the coffer exuding aristocratic elegance to buy more diverse ingredients. I hated wearing old clothes with no more surface to patch. If I could exchange the coffer for money to live a bit better, I thought I would gladly do so.
Therefore, we often argued over the issue of selling the coffer. I couldn’t understand my mother’s sentiment at all, and she thought my hunger was at a level that could be endured to some extent.
Our fights never led to an agreement. My angry mother implied she was deeply hurt by calling me ‘a fierce beast with an ice heart’. But that was all. She wasn’t as fierce as me.
If we hadn’t entered the Wischwaltz family, surely this coffer would have been turned into a few copper coins by my hand. As always, my mother wouldn’t win against me and would collapse from exhaustion on her own.
Anyway, my mother, who luckily managed to keep the coffer, wanted to express her love for her child with this old chest, just as her own mother did.
So, she bequeathed it to me. With an expression full of longing, my mother whispered in a soft voice, ‘You will someday know the use of this. So, keep it well.’
But the past me didn’t know the use of this coffer at all. I was dissatisfied with why I had to keep this old and even dirty thing in the room.
So, I wanted to remove it from my sight. I covered it with purple velvet and left it shoved in the corner without using it even once.
When my mother came to visit my room, she quickly noticed that the thing covered with cloth, its shape unrecognizable, was the coffer and let out a small sigh. She inwardly suppressed her disappointment without scolding her daughter who didn’t understand her feelings.
At such times, I would feign ignorance and deliberately avoid my mother’s face. At the same time, I thought my mother was quite old-fashioned. I dismissed her as a rustic person who didn’t know the latest trends.
But the current me knows. How useful this coffer is to me. It’s really ridiculous that I only now realized why it was made large enough for one person to easily fit, unlike ordinary chests.
Of course, it’s a realization that runs completely counter to my mother’s girlish sentiment. Still, it’s something that I’m not shoving it away like in the past. As long as I use it somehow, isn’t that fine.
I kicked the miscellaneous items piled on the floor with my foot, pushing them to one corner, and then said to Marie.
“Bring her here.”
“Seril?”
“Yes.”
Seril was bigger than Marie. Compared to Marie with a thin frame, Seril had thick forearms and thighs, and her back was a bit broad like a man’s. With thread-like thin eyes and a hooked nose slightly curved to the right, she had a mature flavor more like a married woman who had given birth than a maiden.
When Seril and Marie stood together, there was about a head’s difference. Marie was weaker and younger than Seril. So, it was impossible for Marie alone to bring Cyril to my side.
But Marie was extremely mindful of my reaction, knowing that if she didn’t act swiftly like a flying squirrel, she would be severely scolded. So, she put all her strength, inserted her hands under Cyril’s armpits, and barely walked toward me, dragging more than half of the body on the floor.
It was less than thirty steps from the center of the room to where I was, but Marie’s face was soaked with sweat. Moreover, she looked exhausted.
I comforted her labor with short words.
“Good work. Now put Seril in here.”
Marie’s pupils shook greatly with shock. As if forgetting to breathe, she asked me in a quick tone.
“Put Seril in the coffer?”
“Yes. Just as you heard.”
“Oh my God! Lady Sisse, what on earth are you doing? How can you put an injured person in a coffer?”
“Don’t worry. It’s big enough for Seril to stretch her legs and fit. She can rest comfortably inside. Are you defying me now?”
Despite my order, Marie hesitated severely. She seemed to be conflicting between her moral conscience and her fear of me.
Needing a beast that obeys better than a person with reason, I couldn’t endure the momentary gap and grabbed Marie’s hair, growling deeply.
“Why are you hesitating? I didn’t give you time to think. It’s literally an order. Didn’t you say you’d help me? If you’re hesitating because you want to work in the laundry room, you can let go. There are many maids.”
The laundry room is a workplace harder than the kitchen. That place, smeared with lye and fermented urine collected, was always hot and noisy because laundry was constantly boiled.
Therefore, no matter how young and energetic a maiden, after a day in the laundry room, she became as frail as an old woman.
And rightly so, repeating the process of beating the mountain-high piled laundry in the lowest part of the mansion with a bat, boiling, and drying all day, one becomes exhausted to the point where no energy can be found.
It was the worst job that maids trained to serve the upper floors like Marie couldn’t endure at all.
Perhaps fearing going to the laundry room, Marie quickly succumbed to my threat. She tried her best not to sob and grabbed Seril’s shoulder.
She struggled with grunts to put Seril, who was limply drooping and groaning in pain, into the coffer. Her tightly clenched lips were trembling thinly due to deep sorrow.
Had about ten minutes passed like that? After a hard struggle, Marie, who succeeded in putting Seril’s body into the coffer, collapsed on the spot and exhaled rough breaths. Her sweat-soaked face was shaking with deep guilt. I hugged such Marie and whispered softly.
“Good work. It’s really fortunate to have you, Marie.”
For a noble lady who considers noble honor the highest virtue, disposing of a maid she punished would be a problem difficult to solve easily. So, they took interest in the ‘coffer’ which has a lid, easy to conceal, and no one would suspect what’s inside, and came to modify it.
In the past, I heard from one noble lady how she used the ‘coffer’. She said she whipped the maid who sneaked into her husband’s bedroom, locked her in the coffer, and starved her for three days. At the same time, she endlessly kicked the chest and mocked her.
It was a simple yet sadistic torture. The maid who had to listen to the noble lady’s mockery all three days while locked in the dark chest eventually went mad.
Her pupils, with almost no black visible, were so terrified that even after escaping the coffer, she curled her body deeply like a worm and trembled.
When people tried to drag her out of the room, she flailed madly and let out beast-like howls. Then, not only the noble lady but even her husband said they couldn’t keep a mad person in the mansion and drove her out.
‘After that, I don’t know what happened to that girl. She might have crawled into a brothel and sold her body.’
Finishing her words there, she lifted her fan to the tip of her nose and giggled. The surrounding ladies all praised her wise handling in unison. As those who had similar experiences, they thought her actions were justified.
This chest, elegantly patterned with silver decorations, is in effect a legal ‘prison’ that noble women can personally own.
I folded a piece of cloth several times and inserted it between the coffer’s lid. I lowered the lid as much as possible to block light from entering maximally while adjusting the angle so that breathing wouldn’t be difficult.
Having finished the work, I pulled a table to a place where the coffer was visible and took out paper, quill pen, and ink, placing them on it. I prepared everything so that I could react as quickly as possible when Seril wakes up.
Next, I told Marie to prepare a blue dress and a hat with a feather.
I planned to change clothes and go to the general store to buy elegant patterned paper. The paper I had now was too shabby for writing a letter.
The blue dress with a design of several layers of ruffled decorations was made of silk, muslin, or thin cotton fabric, so it wrinkled easily. So, once you intend to wear it, you have to meticulously iron each wrinkle with an iron.
But it was easy to get scorched by the iron and often got soot, so even dexterous maids found it tricky.
However, since you don’t need to wear a pannier, it’s that much lighter and convenient for activities, so not only noble young ladies but I also often wore dresses of such materials. The waistband loosely tied at the waist with a large ribbon was an escape from the stuffy dress.
Since it takes about an hour for Marie to prepare the dress, I dismissed her and sat on the chair. I dipped the quill pen fully in ink, spread the paper, and wrote down in the most elegant handwriting I could. This was work to catch a person who could be the biggest card I know.
《I dare to inquire after the health of Lady Marianne de Châteauroux, the mistress of the Rose Palace and the model for all young ladies and noble women living in the empire.
The girl is the stepdaughter of Count Wischwaltz, ‘Sisse de Wischwaltz’, and has long admired the high reputation of Lady Marianne de Châteauroux.
Thus, it would be proper to visit first and pay respects, but since I am not yet of age to enter the palace, is this not sad?
Therefore, unable to overcome the admiring heart, I send this letter imprudently, so please forgive the girl’s imprudence with generous magnanimity. (abridged)》
Lady Marianne de Châteauroux is a seductress known to hold more power than the empress as the emperor’s mistress. She captivated the old emperor with her beautiful appearance and witty speech, and was a fox who wrapped him in her skirt using various bedroom arts.
Châteauroux, with transparent skin and rosy cheeks so lovely, was a woman who loved power and luxury, and enjoyed confronting the empress by fully using her charm.
