IDIBC SS 4

Walter Shaw Chaplin’s Circumstances (2) 

Judith and the noblewomen took advantage of Ricardo’s summons to the Emperor and herded Lienne toward the lakeside, nearly surrounding her in the process.

This lake, said to have been created by an emperor centuries ago for his empress, was renowned for its breathtaking scenery.

It was also a place shrouded in grim legend — countless souls who had met with despair within the imperial palace were said to have thrown themselves into its waters.

Walter had a fundamental dislike of water.

Even so, as though bewitched, he had followed Lienne to the lakeside and found himself swept up into the noblewomen’s boat excursion before he knew what was happening.

It had been a reflexive decision, born from worry that the women might do Lienne some harm, but it was already too late to pretend otherwise.

When Walter appeared claiming he wished to join the outing, the women present greeted him with gleaming eyes. Only two among them did not turn their gazes toward him — Judith and Lienne.

Among those sending him ardent looks were daughters of families who had sent marriage proposals to the Chaplin house on the principle that they had nothing to lose, and even those who had not sent proposals harbored dreams of marrying him without exception.

Sure enough, a silent war of nerves broke out among them over who would board the same boat as him. Included among the contenders were some of the very women he had placed on his list of prospective brides.

He pressed a hand to his throbbing head and stole a glance toward where Lienne stood. Judith, undeterred by Walter’s interference, kept steering the atmosphere so that the surrounding women would draw Lienne into a particular group.

Walter calmly observed the situation, then eased himself naturally into that group.

He told himself it was unlikely anyone planned to push her overboard — but given the murderous glint he had glimpsed in Judith’s eyes, he could not rule out the possibility entirely.

Judith bit hard into her lower lip at his move. Walter, without even realizing what he was doing, was wholly occupied with keeping watch over Lienne among the women.

He simply thought of it that way.

That as a nobleman, he could not simply stand by and watch conduct that damaged one’s dignity.

That if the woman who would become his wife was among them, he could not allow her to be subjected to such petty behavior.

Several boats were set upon the tranquil lake. Aboard them, the women’s vivid dresses in every color of the rainbow each seemed to cry out to be admired.

Above, brilliantly white clouds drifted here and there across the sky, and the forest encircling the lake was thick and deeply green.

It was, in every sense of the word, a scene as beautiful as a painting.

Even so, Walter could not ease his vigilance.

The women who had boarded the same boat as Walter flushed crimson with delight at their unexpected fortune and fidgeted restlessly. Only one among them cast anxious glances, again and again, toward the boat carrying Judith.

While Walter answered the women’s attempts to engage him in conversation with sincerity, he sent occasional glances toward Lienne, seated at the bow.

Lienne was silent from first to last. Yet seeing how she gripped the side of the boat until her knuckles turned white, it was clear she understood perfectly how precarious her situation was.

The sight of it gave Walter an unpleasant, hollow ache somewhere in his chest.

And just as he was furrowing his fine brows, the boat rocked once — and Walter saw it exactly.

Lienne, whose impression was ordinarily as calm as a watercolor painting, biting down hard on her lip and soundlessly mouthing a crude curse.

Walter, momentarily dumbstruck, burst out laughing before he could stop himself.

It was precisely then that it happened. One of the women leapt abruptly to her feet; the boat lurched with the motion; and the woman who had been anxious all along used the opportunity to stumble — and shoved Lienne overboard.

Walter moved fast. He caught the woman who had pushed Lienne and pressed her back into her seat, then flung himself toward Lienne’s side.

He thought he met her ice-blue eyes for just an instant — but Lienne was already toppling over the edge, her balance lost. He reached out to stop her and instead tumbled into the water himself.

“Aaaaaah!”

“Oh no — Young Duke Chaplin!”

At the sight of him falling in, many of the women clung to the side of the boat, but to Walter’s eyes every last one of them — screaming and flailing helplessly — looked like wicked spirits.

They were plainly grimacing and distressed, yet somehow they seemed to be laughing as they waited for him to die.

The women who, only moments ago, had acted as though they would offer him anything he desired — not one of them so much as extended a hand to save him.

At that, Walter stopped seeking help and tried to swim his way out of the lake. But then came the sensation of being dragged toward the bottom, and he realized something was terribly wrong.

He looked down. There was a great chest — it should have been on the boat, containing the women’s belongings — sinking beneath him, and a rope connected to it was coiled tight around his ankle.

Well, this is a problem.

Women had many necessities even during a brief excursion on the water. He had never thought that strange — but he had never imagined that such things would become the shackles that killed him.

Still, a chest and rope that should have been fastened to the boat could not have wound themselves around his ankle like irons on their own. Someone had deliberately set a trap.

Even as Walter sank deeper into the water, his eyes were not on the other women shrieking and carrying on above — they were on Lienne, who was still and silent.

Her face held bewilderment, but it hardened quickly into something resolute, as though she had made up her mind.

He saw her rise to her feet on the boat — and then the black water swallowed him whole.

How much time had passed?

In the darkness where he could not see a single inch ahead, Walter saw a pale white hand reaching toward him — reaching precisely for him.

He had thought his end had come. Then he understood that that hand would be his salvation. When it finally clasped his, with breath running out and death drawing near, he could still tell — it was a woman’s hand, not a man’s.

Lienne?

Lienne had bravely leapt in and succeeded in seizing him. But for a woman alone to pull a man weighted with a heavy chest out of the water was no simple feat.

On the verge of losing consciousness as his lungs failed, Walter saw the surface of the water — where pale light filtered through — shudder once more, disturbed by someone else. In the next instant, his body was hauled upward all at once.

He emerged onto solid ground, coughing violently, and took in his surroundings.

The one who had lost consciousness from the water was not Walter — it was Lienne. Even without awareness, she was still holding his hand.

“Lienne! Wake up!”

The one holding her tightly in his arms was Ricardo. In that moment, Walter clearly saw the fear written in Ricardo’s eyes.

Both Ricardo and Walter rarely let their inner feelings show in ordinary life, yet their natures differed somewhat. Walter hid his emotions behind a guise of gentlemanliness, but Ricardo was impassive in a way that made it seem as though he genuinely felt nothing.

Yet that very Ricardo could not contain the fury and terror rising to the very crown of his head, and was calling her name again and again.

Then — a heave — Lienne expelled water from her lungs and broke into coughing, and Ricardo gently patted her back before carefully laying her down on the ground.

The sudden commotion had thrown everything into chaos all around, yet no one could easily approach the place where Walter and Ricardo stood.

“Young Duke, I’m all right.”

When time had passed and Lienne had regained consciousness, managing at last to speak, Ricardo moved to lift her into his arms — and then he saw it. That Lienne was still holding Walter’s hand.

At the sight, Ricardo hissed a low curse between his teeth, then wrenched Lienne’s hand away from Walter’s as though reclaiming something stolen.

Walter watched Ricardo’s retreating back as he carried Lienne away, and felt a daze settle over him.

What… is this?

Walter stared for a long while at his empty hand.

The wretched feeling of something being taken that should have remained his.

A sense of loss he had never once felt in his life descended upon him.

Once Ricardo was out of sight, the women rushed toward him without exception — including those who had looked down at him from the boat as he drowned.

“Urgh—”

Walter clapped a hand over his mouth as sudden nausea surged up. The women who had been drawing close halted their steps. When he barely managed to suppress the retching and compose himself, the women advanced another step.

“Uuurgh — enough! Do not come any closer!”

The moment they were close enough that their perfume reached him, the revulsion became unbearable. Walter shot to his feet and fled the spot as though running for his life.

With the assistance of his attendants, Walter reached a space where he could be alone, and looked at his hand. It was plainly empty — and yet he felt as though her touch still lingered there.

The pale hand reaching through the pitch-black dark, that lingering image of salvation — it did not leave his mind for the remainder of the banquet.

Even then, Walter did not know. That he would suffer over that lingering image for quite a long time.

Nor did he know that the nausea he had attributed to swallowing too much lake water would torment him for quite a long while to come.

++++

Ricardo and Lienne spent the night reading through the letters Stuart had left behind, until at last dawn broke in the distance. The two looked at one another at the same moment, neither one first.

“So you were the one who dragged me to every single banquet.”

“That’s right — he says he kept you right at his side, as plain as day. The nerve of him, and an Emperor at that.”

Lienne gave a small laugh at Ricardo’s words. Both of them had eyes heavy with drowsiness, yet sleep did not feel as though it would come.

Reading through the journals Stuart had left made them feel less as though they had attended his funeral and more as though they had spent the whole night in conversation with him. Now, at last, they understood why Mariette had found her footing again more quickly than one might have expected.

It was hard to imagine a woman who had been loved like this allowing herself to fall apart.

“I’m glad there are no engagements today.”

“Surely this too was the Empress’s thoughtfulness, wasn’t it? She knew in advance that we would stay up all night reading these letters.”

“And yet there is still something I don’t understand.”

“What is it?”

He drew her closer with an arm around her waist and asked softly.

“Why did you jump into the water to save Young Duke Chaplin? You’re not even a good swimmer. If the contents of these letters are accurate, that would have been the first day you two ever met.”

“Us two?”