Recently, Elaine had been staying in the library looking up information about witches.
She had forgotten for a long time that her mother Mariel was a witch, but she became interested in the story of a witch that came out while researching about Lancers.
‘Lancer Aquinal is right. Even though they have the same magical powers, why are men treated preferentially as wizards and women criticized as witches?’
It was displeasing that he betrayed Rabes, but it was admirable that he tried to defend the witch, whom everyone rejected, and help them.
Elaine could get a glimpse of his humanity from the fact that Lancer used his magic power to solve people’s problems in the first place.
When Elaine first heard about Lancer, it seemed like he was greedy for wealth and power, but the more she learned about him, the more she realized that Lancer was more concerned about helping the weak than accumulating his own wealth and power.
‘Although it was questionable why such a good person betrayed his old friend, Rabes.’
Elaine, who attended the library again today, deliberately placed books on her desk that had a negative view of witches.
‘If I mix some books about witch hunts and witch trials, they won’t look at me too strangely.’
There was a risk that by studying the witch in a temple, she would look quite bad.
Although it was a long time ago, the temple was once an institution that identified and punished witches, and because of that, it was a place that had a negative attitude toward witches for longer than any other place in the empire.
Even though the perception of witches has improved a lot, people are still cautious about bringing up the topic of witches in temples.
Elaine looked into a book about witches by pretending to study Lancer Aquinal.
「For a woman to be born with magical powers, when she is supposed to be obedient to her husband and devoted to the defense of her family, is in itself a violation of the order of this world. This is why witches are called the devil’s servants. The devil has given women magic powers that are only allowed to men to disturb the balance of the world that Lord Bara has established.」
「Women easily fall into envy, jealousy, and foolish thoughts, so it is quite dangerous for them to have magical powers.」
It was a book I picked up without thinking, but perhaps because it was written a long time ago, it was quite demeaning to women.
Elaine had to grit her molars because the book seemed to be insulting her mother.
‘What on earth did witches do that you hate them so much?’
Elaine picked up a book about the witch trials and flipped through the pages.
「In the early 780s of the New Empire, crimes committed by witches included: Killing her husband’s mistress or her husband, withering a neighbor’s crops, turning a beautiful neighbor’s face into an ugly one, preparing and selling unidentified medicine…」
Several crimes were listed, but when she looked at each case, most of the evidence was the testimony of the villagers.
At that time, if a witch was caught by the villagers using magic, she could be immediately burned at the stake without a priest’s judgment and later reported to the temple.
Isn’t it too biased to say that the testimony of the ‘villagers’ was evidence?
‘Were any of the witches who died innocent?’
It couldn’t have been there.
Elaine could know because she suffered from all kinds of slander while living in a temple.
It took less than a day for the ridiculous rumor to turn into truth, and no one listened to Elaine’s excuses.
Elaine was blamed for something she didn’t do, and no one helped her.
To those who criticized Elaine, the truth was not important. They just needed the thrill of being in a group and trampling on someone, the feeling of superiority that they were better than her, the relief that they weren’t in that situation.
The tips of her fingers trembled as she traced the lines of the book.
‘You’re saying that she should be burned at the stake for killing her husband, who beat her to death. Are you saying she should be beaten to death by her husband?
‘Burned at the stake for fighting off a man who tried to rape her? Burned at the stake for killing a neighbor’s horse that ran at her child?’
The more Elaine read about the witch, the more ridiculous and heartbreaking it became. She felt like there was a fire burning inside her, and she felt like she was going to cry.
‘Lancer knew the circumstances of these witches.’
Anyone who thinks normally and has compassion for the weak would be sorry for the witches’ situation.
But questions remained.
‘How did Lancer, a man and a wizard, even worry about the witch’s situation?’
Unlike witches, wizards have long been treated as useful manpower.
Even one of the most hostile groups to witches was a group of wizards.
She was a bit puzzled as to how Lancers, who was the greatest of the wizards, could feel sorry for the witches.
Rabes seemed to hope that Elaine wouldn’t worry, saying, ‘There were circumstances like that,’
but that made her think that there must be a secret that wasn’t mentioned in the history books.
Then, suddenly, another question came into Elaine’s mind.
‘If magical power is inherited and innate magical power does not disappear,…doesn’t that mean that there are still countless witches out there?’
The magical power was not 100% passed down from generation to generation.
However, the magical power mixed in the blood does not disappear completely, and some say it can be passed down as long as four generations.
‘But if you, who are born with magical powers, keep it a secret, who would know?’
Even now, when the persecution of witches almost disappeared, the perception of witches was not very good. To the point of avoiding marriage to the family where the witch was born.
However, in the following era, after the frenzy of identifying, judging, and executing witches subsided, as long as the person kept quiet and was careful, no one would know that the person was a witch.
There were cases where magical power was detected at a temple during baptism, but this was also imperfect because not all priests were able to detect magic power.
‘There may be quite a few witches among the nobles. She probably doesn’t know that she’s born with magical powers, or she’s just hiding it.’
Elaine thought the whole thing was absurd
‘Why should a women live like a sinner when she didn’t even want to be born as a witch? Men with the same magic live well…’
‘If Lancers hadn’t disappeared, the witches’ situation would have been better than it is now.’
‘Aside from betraying Rabes, Lancer’s disappearance was regrettable. If he had been recognized for his work in sealing Rabes, the witches could have been treated better. My mother wouldn’t have had to live in a poor witch village worrying about food and she Didn’t have to be sold to the Newt family.’
‘When will someone like Lancer appear again?’
Elaine smiled bitterly and closed the book.
* * *
The warmest, cleanest, and most fragrant place in the imperial palace was Princess Anais’ room.
However, Anais, who was sitting in the middle of the crowd and receiving something from someone, looked down at what she was holding in her hand for a long time with a cold, stiff face.
In the end, it was the person who handed over the item who spoke first.
“I checked several times, but I don’t think the herbalist is lying.”
“I guess so. What good would that person gain by telling lies?”
Anais let out a long sigh and dropped the paper in her hand on the table.
It was a picture of someone’s face and the ledger selling medicinal herbs in medicinal shops in the back alley used by commoners.
On the page displayed on the ledger, the medicine was sold one day two years ago and its prices were meticulously recorded.
At first glance, the listed medicinal ingredients seemed ordinary, but it was a serious problem that only those medicinal ingredients were listed.
This is because mixing and boiling the medicinal ingredients turned it into a deadly poison, and the Empress had been poisoned by it two years ago.
And along with the ledger, the picture in Anais’s hand depicted a pretty familiar face.
‘The same medicinal ingredients used to make the tea that poisoned my mother, and the person who bought them was a close associate of the Marquise of Hebron…’
Even though she had strong suspicions about Sasha, Anais hoped not.
Because if Sasha was the culprit, she could not help but suspect her father, the Emperor, or even Abel, whom she had treated like her biological brother.
But now the evidence had piled up to the point where she could no longer deny it.
“Do you think this….could have fallen into the hands of Marquise Hebron?”
“Seeing that the herbalist is alive, I guess she hadn’t thought about it until now.”
“Maybe she didn’t think it would matter if she got caught.”
After the Empress was poisoned, Sasha’s greed gradually surfaced.
Until then, she had humbled herself by asking Abel to be regarded as the empress’s son, but she suddenly began to engage in foreign activities with Abel, and tried to act as the empress by sticking to the emperor’s side.
Abel, who had been considered young until then, showed his true colors and became a socialite with a skillful demeanor that surpassed his age.
Of course, the emperor was unable to raise Sasha’s status because of the empress’ history. Marquis Orlov, the Empress’s cousin harshly criticized Sasha’s behavior, but everyone could easily see where the emperor’s affections were currently directed.
That was what bothered Anais the most.
‘My father, who I believed would fulfill his responsibility to my dead mother and me, was acting as if he had been waiting for my mother’s death.…’
* * *
