Chapter 175 — The Investigation

A somewhat plump tavern maid slammed a wooden cup down in front of the drinker with a thud. "Don't talk nonsense! The castle isn't your rickety thatch hut. Old George who delivers the vegetables was probably drunk and took the cold wind he caught in a mud puddle for the castle itself!"

The plump maid had told a joke that wasn't remotely funny, yet it set the whole table roaring.

"So it seems Victor really is a fine lord," Amber said, wagging her head. "I just wonder how the viscountess is."

At those words, an eerie silence fell over the room for an instant.

Some exchanged glances; some bent their heads to their cups; the older ones frowned, as though recalling something unpleasant. Seeing this, Amber at once sensed there was more beneath the surface, and asked with feigned curiosity, "What's wrong? Why are you all reacting like that?"

"You're an outsider—natural you wouldn't know," said the oldest man present. He looked to be a wealthy landowner or a retired craftsman; among the poor, few lived to such an age without succumbing to injury or illness, and such a man would know not only the life of the common folk but also something of the lord's affairs. "The viscountess... it must be decades now, hasn't it? When she died..."

"The viscountess is dead? Died decades ago?!" Amber was startled. "How did she die?"

"She was a poor woman, and the whole affair was miserable beyond words—the sort of thing that should never happen to a good person." The old man frowned. He seemed reluctant to say more, but the drink made his tongue hard to govern, and the younger folk around him, who knew little of the past, were urging him on. "Old man Sandro, tell us. I've heard people talk about it since I was a boy, but never the whole of it. You're old enough—you must know what really happened back then."

Amber glanced with considerable appreciation at the young man who had pressed him, and decided to spend some of the money Gao Yang had given her on another drink for him.

The old man, who seemed to have lived through those events, sighed, took a swallow of wine, and began slowly, "That was thirty... about thirty years ago, maybe a bit more. That same month, too, and raining—but the rain was uncommonly heavy, and it fell for days...

"Lord Victor was still young then, and even then he was the just, kind lord he is now. He was coming back from inspecting the granaries in the neighboring town, and the viscountess was with him, and their only son, young Master Belm. They drove the carriage back along the western road—heavy rain though there was, they took the road anyway... They really should have stayed another day in the neighboring town, ah.

"You can guess the rest without my telling. Such rain, such slipperiness—there was bound to be an accident. The carriage went off at Old Hill Slope. It overturned, slid from the highest point of the slope and dropped into the ravine, smashed to pieces... A whole night passed, and no one knew the lord's family had met with disaster out there, until the next day when the sun came out and the rain stopped, and the viscountess appeared in the town covered in blood... She all but crawled into the town, cut and bruised all over, weeping as though her heart would break. She said she had watched the lord and the young master flung from the carriage before her eyes, that they had fallen somewhere she could not tell, and she begged us to go and save them at once."

At this the old man could not help but sigh a while, and had to take another swallow before he could go on. "We escorted the lady back to the castle, and at once sent men to Old Hill Slope to search for the carriage and the whereabouts of the lord and the young master. But for three whole days, apart from some bloodstains and splinters of the carriage, all we found were the carcasses of two horses."

"The lady wept her eyes out in the castle every single day. Ah, she was a good, kind soul—she always looked after the poor folk on the estate. From the very day she married into this place, every winter she would hand out firewood and black bread to the poor. And yet this had to happen to her. For three whole days her husband and son were never found, and so in the end she went mad. According to what the servants working in the castle said after they came out, she locked herself in her room and screamed and shouted, then ran to every dark corner of the castle, talking to the husband and son she imagined were there, and at last she shut herself into the cellar of the castle's north tower, where she drank poison and put an end to her suffering.

"On the fourth day, Lord Victor and young Master Belm returned to the castle alive. They had not died."