Winter Bud - Chapter 31

“My name is Jerix Rotusi. Most people just call me Jerry….”

“Sir Rotusi.”

“Yes.”

“Is that what I should call you?”

“Ah, yes. That’s right. Please call me Rotusi.”

The man nodded quickly. Nanna studied him carefully. He wasn’t particularly tall or short, but his build was solid. His frame was sturdy, his physique firm and reliable, just as one would expect from a knight. His hair was black and cut short. His skin, bronzed from long years of training, had a healthy glow, and his eyes were a bright brown.

He wasn’t what one would call remarkably handsome, but he had a good-natured, pleasant look that would surely make him popular with women. Besides… he reminded her of someone. Someone she knew. No, not exactly, perhaps it was more accurate to say he seemed both similar and not. The bone structure, the solid build… it all felt familiar.

Still, Rotusi was Rotusi. A man utterly different from the Emperor. Yet somehow, like two paintings drawn by the same artist, there was a strange resemblance. Nanna stared at him blankly, then nodded.

“…Yes.”

“More importantly, you came to tend the garden, didn’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“A noble lady doing such work….”

“I’m not that noble.”

Nanna spoke lightly and walked toward the garden. Rotusi gave an awkward laugh at her cold reply and followed behind, careful to match his stride to keep an appropriate distance.

Nanna turned her head slightly as she walked toward the garden. Since coming to the Western Palace, she had put away all the elaborate gowns she used to wear to banquets or official ceremonies.

Some of them hadn’t even been hers. Of course, they didn’t belong to Stateira either, so there was nothing to return…. She now wore a simple tunic dress. The material was inexpensive, making her look very much like a woman of common birth, living outside the palace.

Jerix saw a woman crouched among the dry earth that could hardly be called a garden, busy planting something. Her thick, silvery hair shimmered in the sunlight, and she was stunningly beautiful. Ever since the first empress, Lady Everhardt, had fallen into her ‘deep sleep,’ the woman the Emperor had newly taken as his wife had been called the ‘Reclusive Empress,’ because she so rarely appeared in public.

Even when she did attend a ball, she would only show her face for a brief moment before leaving, as if merely passing by. She was so fleeting that one of her nicknames was ‘the summer shower’ because she never stayed long wherever she went.

Because of this, rumors about the new empress were not favorable. Especially since the previous empress, Lady Everhardt, had been renowned for her intellect, education, and wisdom.

During the Old Empire and the siege, she had even worn the same silver armor as her father and followed the Emperor around the battlefield to support him. Though she didn’t wield a sword herself, she had assisted in logistics and strategy, serving alongside her father as one of the Emperor’s advisors.

Because of that, she had earned deep respect not only from noble ladies but from bureaucrats as well. Her only flaw, if one could call it that, was her inability to bear heirs for many years. But those who knew of her frail health only worried for her rather than blamed her.

That woman had now fallen into a ‘deep sleep,’ a state not unlike death. Even the alchemists who had ‘put her to sleep’ admitted there was little hope of recovery. And so, a ‘successor’ had been brought in. The woman was….

“Are you going to stay like that forever?”

“…Pardon?”

The woman who had been steadily planting seeds lifted her head. Under her white linen bonnet, her small face was dazzlingly beautiful. Jerix stared for a moment before clearing his throat.

“Ahem… As I mentioned, I am a knight dispatched for your protection.”

“But I’m no longer someone who needs protecting.”

The Empress Consort—no, now a concubine—murmured softly. Her tone, much like before, was curt and faintly irritated. Jerix thought for a moment about what to say next, careful not to offend her.

That morning, the captain of the Imperial Guard had solemnly delivered the Emperor’s order to monitor the concubine in the Western Palace and report once a day.

So strictly speaking, it wasn’t ‘protection’ but ‘surveillance.’ But of course, he couldn’t tell the concubine that. She was right. She was no longer someone in need of protection. Even as a concubine, what other woman of her rank was confined to live like this, without a title or attendants? The moment Lady Everhardt awoke, the Emperor had cast her aside as if discarding useless baggage.

He pitied the woman. She was so beautiful…. No, there was something irresistibly endearing about her. Her sky-blue eyes shone like glass beads, and her lips, which pouted whenever displeased, reminded him of a sparrow. Her faintly flushed cheeks were like peaches, and her sulky expression carried a strangely childish charm. In other words….

“It’s His Majesty’s command.”

“I see. Then could you bring me a pickaxe from the nuns’ storeroom?”

“A pickaxe? What would you need that for?”

“I want to thin out the weeds here, but the soil’s too hard.”

The woman murmured. Jerix, who knew nothing about farming, wondered if such a tool was really necessary, but he was, after all, a knight. Though his status was humble and lowly, he had never worked the land. The woman, on the other hand, seemed quite used to it.

“She’s said to be from a farming family. No wonder they say she’s of low birth.”

“Yes, that’s what I’ve heard. A commoner by birth.”

“Right.”

He recalled the words of his vice-captain, spoken lazily through a puff of smoke. The concubine who had borne the heirs that Lady Everhardt could not had never been well received. In order to maintain his hold on power, Duke Everhardt had reluctantly adopted a girl and sent her into the palace, but she shared not a drop of Everhardt blood. She was a commoner.

If the duke had had another daughter or could have found a suitable girl among his relatives, he would have chosen one of them instead. But the Everhardt line was thin. His brother had died of illness, and his only sister had passed away young. Tracing the line further back, most descendants were male, and the few girls were either already married or too young.

There were said to be only a few toddlers crawling around, two or three at most. If the Emperor had already had a legitimate heir, perhaps one of those girls could have been engaged in a political marriage even at such a young age. But the Emperor needed an heir immediately, and Duke Everhardt had no intention of relinquishing his political influence.

So, in the end, the woman before him had been forced into the role. A woman with no ambition, no greed, and no connection to power. Jerix didn’t know much about her, but one thing was clear: she was innocent and pitiful.

Anyone who saw her would think the same. And yet….

“The storeroom… where is it?”

“Across from the Grain Room, behind the rusty green door.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Yes. Please.”

The woman spoke softly. Jerix nodded and turned away. Nanna watched him go, then straightened her legs from where she had been crouching. She brushed the dirt from her dress and left the garden, heading toward the monks’ prayer room. She wanted to be alone.

Whether she needed a guard or not wasn’t her decision, but the Emperor’s. So the Emperor must have had another purpose in assigning that man to her.

“…Why is he doing this?”

Having fled to the prayer room, Nanna quietly sat on the long pew and gazed up at the statue of the Virgin. She couldn’t understand the Emperor. Not now, not ever. Crude, fickle… a man like a calamity. She lowered her eyes.

She was told she would meet the children tomorrow evening. Sister Marcella said that was what the Emperor’s attendant had informed her. The nun was the middle-aged woman Nanna had met on her first day at the Western Palace. She was now the one in charge of managing the place. Nanna nodded.

Even so, a shadow fell over her heart. She hadn’t wanted to be apart from them for so long…. Even at the moment of parting, Stella had cried so hard she’d lost her senses, and Nanna had ended up hugging her young daughter, who had tripped and fallen while running down the stairs, and sat there crying with her. Slan, too, couldn’t hold back his tears.

“I’ll definitely become Emperor and bring you back to the imperial palace, Mother.”

Slan had whispered as he wrapped his arms around her neck. Stella had wept, asking why she had to leave. She said she couldn’t part with her… Nanna told her she wasn’t going far away. That it wasn’t as if they would never see each other again. And to Slan, who couldn’t cry, she only smiled.