Homeward

“What…?”
“Answer me, Ria. You said you’re Cedric’s real wife, didn’t you.”

The question blindsided me, and I bit down hard on my lip.

Was there a scar on his thigh? Which side was it, even? Left? Right?

No matter how I racked my brain, no answer came. Cedric and I had not been together in a long while, and even then it had come to no more than a handful of times, in a darkened room by grace of the moonlight. There was no chance I’d have committed some trivial scar to memory.

“…I don’t know.”

I mumbled it like a woman out of her senses.

Behind me, the servants’ voices beat against my ears, murmuring that they’d known all along it would come to this. Looks that fell somewhere between contempt and pity settled on my face.

“B-but there’s one more thing that can prove who I am.”

Prodded on by their stares, I dredged up something that had happened not long before, and in my haste the words spilled out in a disordered tangle.

“On our wedding anniversary, after dinner, I went back alone to the dining hall, and the maids I met there — their names…”
“Haah.”

But my desperate proof was cut short by Gloria’s long sigh.

“Ria, how long must we keep up this absurd tug-of-war over the truth before you’ll admit it? I only say so because I feel I’ll give out before you ever do.”
“Don’t cut me off — hear me out to the end. The ones I met that day were Celly and Rina—”
“And if I do hear you out? It’s all one lie piled on another anyway. You’ve only done what you used to as a child — sneaking looks at my diary, playing me behind everyone’s backs.”
“I am not making this up. Celly and Rina are sure to remember seeing me that day.”

I searched the clustered servants for Celly and Rina, but the two of them kept their eyes stubbornly on the floor, avoiding mine.

“Celly! Rina!”

I called to them piteously, but it did no good.

After the two earlier quarrels, everyone gathered there had already reached their verdict: I was ‘Gloria Ernst.’

“…”

Before I could lift a finger to stop it, it was over. There was nothing more I could do.

“…Don’t you feel even a little sorry for your dead husband?”

I asked, dazed and hollow.

“My husband is right here. What on earth are you talking about?”

Gloria abruptly linked her arm through Cedric’s. On the ring finger of her left hand, my wedding ring glittered.

My wedding ring.

One radiant spring, amid the blessings of a great crowd of guests, we had promised each other forever.

That however life carried us, we would be good companions to one another.

That through hardship and sorrow alike, we would be each other’s support.

That, with a faith that never wavered, we would spend all our lives together.

The proof of that resplendent vow now shone on Gloria’s finger.

Then something snapped. The last thread of reason still left in me gave way.

“Give it back.”
“Hm?”
“My ring, my dress, my hair ornaments — give every last bit of it back…!”
“Kyaaaah!”

Past all shame, I tore at Gloria’s hair and clawed at her fingers. Even as she loosed a shrill scream, she meekly surrendered her hair to me, and I hadn’t the presence of mind to find it strange. That was how far gone I was; all I wanted was to reclaim every last thing from her.

“Let go of her, madam!”

Cedric wrenched me away with a powerful grip. The servants closed in and pinned my limbs, but I would not stop.

“How can you all do this to me! How!”

— Splash.

In that instant, something warm splashed across my face: the black tea Cedric and Gloria had been sharing so cozily before I came.

“You shameless creature.”

Father stood there with the teacup still in his hand, breathing hard.

I froze where I stood. In all my life, my father had never once raised his voice at me. And yet now…

“Just how far do you mean to drag our family’s name through the mud?”
“Father, but—”
“Enough. Hold your tongue. Say one more word and I’ll no longer count you as my daughter.”

My father’s face was dark with fury, and my vision blurred and swam. The servants were one thing, but now even my own parents would not believe me. Only then did I understand. I had fallen into a cunningly laid trap.

“Count Drake, I’ve no face to show you, on account of my grown daughter. She seems out of her mind with the grief of losing her husband — I beg your understanding.”

Father bowed his head toward Cedric.

“It’s quite all right, Marquis.”
“I know it’s shameless of me, but I’ll leave keeping the servants’ mouths shut in your hands.”

Having exchanged a few brief words with Cedric to settle the matter, Father turned and shouted at the servants.

“You there — all of you. Don’t just stand about gawking; go up at once and gather Duchess Ernst’s things. The moment it’s ready, she leaves straight for the ducal castle.”
“Father!”

The ducal castle, of all places. Why in the world did it have to be me who was sent there? My father’s handling of it left me reeling, and I could not hold back a cry.

“And you — stop your fuss now and get ready to go home. You there: keep Gloria shut in her bedchamber in the meantime.”

Before I could so much as signal my refusal, I was hauled off just as I was.

“You can’t do this! Someone, please!”

In the midst of it Gloria drew close, studying me with tender concern, wearing the most pitying face in all the world. When I glared back, my eyes brimming with bitter rage, she whispered, faint enough that no one else could hear.

“Go live in that dreary ducal castle, clinging to a husband in name only. Herman Ernst — come to think of it, he was originally yours anyway, wasn’t he?”

As I was dragged off, step by scraping step, my anguished, desperate cry stretched on and on.

The cramped carriage was like a prison cell. The whole way, forced inside and hauled toward the ducal castle, I kept trying to prove to my parents that I was Marienne.

“Please, Mother. How can you fail to recognize your own daughter?”

But none of it did any good. However much I poured out my grievance, my parents showed not the slightest reaction. To them I was already nothing more than ‘a madwoman who had lost her own husband and coveted her sister’s.’

“Don’t you remember what you told me on my wedding day, when I said I was nervous? You said I’d do just fine — that you weren’t the least bit worried, because I was ‘Marienne.’”
“…You’ve been reading Mari’s diary again, haven’t you? You started sneaking looks at it as a child, and you still haven’t broken the habit.”
“Dear.”

When Mother’s scolding dragged on, Father cut her off in a domineering voice.

“The physician told us to respond to her as little as possible. Don’t answer her. It only works her up more.”
“Arthur, my heart aches too much — I can’t do this any longer. Did they say this illness of hers can even be cured? What are we to do if she lives like this her whole life, our poor Gloria.”

I cannot describe how maddening it was to be treated as though I did not exist. Undeterred, I clung to my father.

“Father — the cufflinks I gave you for your birthday when I was fifteen. You were so very pleased with them, remember?”

“Ahem. Ahem.”

Father cleared his throat a few times with an uncomfortable look, then turned his gaze to the window.

“I really am Marienne.”

“…”

“You who were forever calling me ‘our proud Marienne’!”
“Will you be quiet!”

In the end Father flew into a rage, as though he could bear no more.

“It’s because you’re so addled that every right and interest of the Ernst dukedom has slipped away to a collateral branch! I ought to have known the day I let myself covet a station too far above us!”
“Father…”
“If you meant to covet Mari’s place like this, you’d have done better to marry into House Drake yourself from the start. You’ve no idea how I regret writing your name into Duke Ernst’s proposal of marriage that day, at Marienne’s request.”

You really should have.

My heart torn to shreds, I buried my face in my hands.

Along with my resentment toward Father came a flood of regret.

Why on earth did I do it, back then?

“Mari, please. Won’t you put my name on the Duke’s proposal instead?”
“Hm?”
“Duke Herman Ernst — he was the most magnificent man at the debutante ball that day. To fall for him at first sight was destiny, I tell you. Do you know how splendidly the Duke smiled when he looked at me?”
“Ria. But this isn’t some outing — it’s marriage—”
“I’m begging you. Please, Mari? I don’t think it can be anyone but the Duke for me. No — if it’s not the Duke, I won’t marry at all.”

Where did it all first go wrong? If I hadn’t given up the duchess’s seat to you that day, might I have been spared this nightmare?

For your sake I fought so hard to bring Father round, when he had been so set on marrying me to the Duke himself, come what may. And now all that effort had come to nothing.

I truly hate you, Gloria.

Regret it as I might, there was no turning back the clock. I could not return to the past, and so I could not change the present either. It felt as though every scrap of my will had been crushed.

Is there any point now in reclaiming my name? Even if I became Marienne Drake again, I could never live as I once did.

I could only weep, the tears pouring down, at the bare fact that everything had been stolen from me, everything denied.

“…Hng.”
“Good heavens, Ria. My poor child. What in the world has all this come to.”

Mother gathered me, sobbing bitterly, into her arms and patted my back.

“Don’t be like this — let’s find you a new match. I’ll be sure to find you a fine, upstanding groom.”

I had grown sick of all of it. With my very self stolen from me, what use was there in a ‘new marriage,’ in ‘a husband’?

I gave a faint shake of my head to show I wanted none of it, and Mother only held me the tighter.

A ship, its prow set toward the Empire of Balter, drove on, cleaving through the waves. Aboard it, the last stragglers of the war on the Central Continent were making their way home to the Empire.

“In a few hours we’ll reach the Empire.”
“Hurraaaah!”

At the navigator’s cry, the deck erupted into an uproar.

Five whole years. That was how long it had taken them to win their way back to the families and homes they longed for, back to their native soil. The eyes of the young men in their threadbare uniforms brimmed with tears of joy.

“That we could come back alive like this is all thanks to the Commander — who, to the very last, never gave up, and did everything he could to bring every straggler home!”

When enemy shelling sent their warship to the bottom, the Commander had ordered them to abandon everything and flee. They had made a home under his command on a nearby uninhabited island, endured some two years of hardship, and at last come through it alive.

“Say a word for us, Commander!”
“Please — we beg you, a few words!”
“Your Excellency, a speech is a must on a joyous day like this!”

The men aboard took up a chant of the Commander’s name.

“Excellency Ernst!”
“Excellency Herman Ernst!”

At their clamor, someone stepped at last to the front of the deck. With the vast ocean at his back, the sunlight beat straight down and lit his head. Through every trial and hardship, he had never once bowed to surrender.

Studying each man’s face one by one, as though looking back over the days gone by, he broke at last into a smile as bright as the blazing sun.

“I won’t be tactless and drone on. Men — you’ve done well, all this while.”

This was Herman Ernst, the man everyone had believed dead.

In a voice weighty and deep, he called out the words every one of them most longed to hear.

“Now — let us go home.”

No one had longed for it more than Herman himself.