403 - Jean-Jacques's Perspective, The Gardener Boy and Augusta Castle 1
Cody was gathering information while doing business at the market, and in the meantime either Jimmy or I would accompany him as guards, with the one left out gathering information elsewhere.
It was basically a rotation system, and today while I was away, apparently there had been one person who showed a strange reaction. We had been deliberately spreading rumors about the Sedovara Church, hoping it might smoke out whoever kidnapped Tina, but when the description of the kidnapped girl from the Sedovara Church was mentioned, his voice had gone stiff, supposedly.
...Man, but really, he is still just a kid.
The man we had found based on the description I got from Jimmy was technically an adult, but his face still had that boyish look. His job as a gardener seemed to have given him a fair amount of muscle, but he did not have the physique of a grown man.
"Ah, right. It is Teo, is it? You."
"Huh? How do you know my name...?"
"That kind of thing, I just asked around about a guy who just became an adult and works at the castle, and they spilled it easy as anything."
Instead of saying "with the power of money," I made a circle with my fingers. The moment I heard from Jimmy that there was someone who had shown a strange reaction, I had started looking into things. I had already finished checking the easily learnable stuff, name, family makeup, and for that matter, the location of his house.
"So, yours truly has a little something he would like to ask you, Teo boy?"
"I do not have anything to... tell you."
He was cowering at the unfamiliar man. The emotion I could read from Teo's tense demeanor was that, but his eyes were moving busily. He was desperately searching for an opening, trying to escape the moment he saw a chance.
...Come to think of it, Tina kid had a friend named Teo too, did she not.
It was a name that was not particularly unusual, one you would find anywhere. I felt like one of the familiar prostitutes' kids had the same name too, but the Teo in front of me looked a little like that 'Teo' who was Tina's friend. Same black hair, black eyes, and the shabby clothes were the same too.
"Now, now. If you answer what I wanna ask, I will let you go right away."
The moment I said "what I wanna ask," Teo's expression stiffened. Like Jimmy said, it was definitely a strange reaction. I could not rule out the possibility that he was just spooked by my intimidating face, but while a noble's son raised in a sheltered environment might be afraid of a scary face, a commoner raised in the streets, surrounded by all sorts of people, would not be scared by a mug like mine at this point.
"Ah... the Sedovara Church."
I observed Teo carefully, determined not to miss even the smallest reaction. The moment I brought up the words 'Sedovara Church,' hoping he would let something slip, Teo flinched.
...Easy to read!
He was glancing around nervously, but this time it was not to look for an opening in me. There was something he did not want to say but knew would satisfy me if he did, and he could not meet my eyes because of it.
"What? You got something to do with the Sedovara Church? Come to think of it, I heard you had a sick mother."
"Th-that is none of your business."
...'Mother' is irrelevant, huh.
His voice was shaking a bit, but not like when I had said 'Sedovara Church.' More than anything, the topic of his mother did not seem to be something Teo minded being asked about. The fact that he had responded immediately was proof of that. This easy-to-read boy showed reactions like his shoulders trembling when he did not want to answer, but he kept his mouth shut and did not say anything.
"So it is not about your mother... then the one kidnapped from the Sedovara Church"
"I do not know! I do not know anything, alright!"
This was where the real question started, but it seemed Teo could not stand the awkward atmosphere anymore. He slipped past my side and ran off at full speed.
"...Man, that is way too easy to read."
He was running at full speed, his back quickly growing smaller. I could have caught him when he slipped past my side, but I deliberately did not. I had already heard where his house was, so I figured I could just follow him and confirm the location, and pushing him too hard might also make him clam up. If he knew something about Tina, I would need to get it out of him by any means necessary, but I still had enough leeway to choose my methods.
I walked along the roads I had been told about and confirmed Teo's house. Since I had just scared him earlier, visiting at night did not seem like a great idea, so I waited for the sun to fully set and only observed the house's exterior from outside.
...Looks like the family makeup I heard about was right.
Just the two of them, mother and son. No siblings besides Teo, and no father either. I could hear a woman coughing occasionally, so that was probably the sick mother. I could hear Teo's voice explaining the medicine to her, saying he had had it compounded by the castle pharmacist.
...So there is a pharmacist at the castle, huh.
Given that the Sedovara Church pharmacists were being pulled back from within the Zugall Empire one after another, I wondered what the situation was with a pharmacist at a castle. When Alf had discussed the Sedovara Church and this retaliation, he should have hammered in that pharmacists should not be withdrawn from lands ruled by good noble lords and lands where pharmacists were regularly needed due to endemic diseases. If there was a pharmacist in a castle in a territory that met neither condition, they were either retained by a noble or had stayed of their own volition out of conviction. Given that they seemed to have compounded medicine for Teo's mother, the latter seemed likely.
...Come to think of it, is that bastard Jasper gone too, along with Tina kid?
Speaking of Jasper, he was a pharmacist I had also been indebted to. I did not think he had the kind of personality to go against the Sedovara Church's intentions out of conviction, but if it really was Jasper, it might also be a way to kill time while confined to the castle. If he was one of the culprits who kidnapped Tina, then just as they could not let Tina's face be seen, Jasper's existence should not be known either.
Confirming that the information I had gathered was correct, I checked the location of the house and returned to the wagon. On the way back, I entered a tavern I found and casually looked into Teo's family. It seemed to be the only tavern in the small town, so having information sources gather from all over town was convenient. Perhaps because it was a single-mother household, the townspeople seemed to keep a fair eye on Teo's family, and with just a little prompting, I was able to hear various stories.
...He reacted to the Sedovara Church because of his mother's medicine? No, did he have someone lined up as a pharmacist?
He had probably been worried that with the pharmacists withdrawing from Sedovara Churches in various places, his mother might not be able to get her medicine compounded anymore. But apparently he had come to buy plant stems, ingredients for medicine, from Cody's wagon, so he must have had a pharmacist lined up. Probably the castle pharmacist was that contact. Which meant Teo did not need to worry that much about his mother's medicine.
"...Come to think of it, that Teo kid. He has gotten oddly quiet since he started working at the castle."
"Must be because of the work inside the castle. There are things you cannot talk about outside."
After all, it was a noble's castle. Just a little displeasure could get your head chopped off, so to avoid that, it was better not to shoot the breeze. In that respect, the drinkers praised Teo one after another, saying he was smart. He had become quiet and less sociable, but it was the right choice to serve at a noble's castle and earn money for his mother's medicine.
"He just became an adult, you said? Working at a castle at that age... That is impressive."
"Teo just got lucky. The previous gardener quit suddenly, so he was hired temporarily and then just... stayed on."
I added another drink in front of the man who laughed, saying Teo's hard work must have been recognized. The story about the previous gardener quitting suddenly was something I had not gotten much of yet.
"Why did the previous gardener quit? It was castle work. The pay must have been good, right?"
"Well, it should have been, but... you know how it is, right? When someone employed by a noble lord suddenly quits..."
Even though he was drunk, talking about nobles loudly was apparently something to be wary of, and his voice dropped somewhat. As he took small sips from the cup placed before him, the face of the man who had been drinking cheerfully until then showed a hint of fear.
"It is not unusual in castle service."
"Maybe he fell out of favor with the lord or something?"
"He was a good guy, got cheerful when he drank too..."
The previous gardener had apparently lived in the gardener's shed at the castle, but he had occasionally come into town to drink. Which meant he had been a drinking buddy of the drunks in front of me.
"Come to think of it, he said something weird before he disappeared, that guy."
To the man who started thinking, "What was it now," I said to let me hear it again if he remembered, and added another drink. I wanted him to drink comfortably, remember comfortably, and talk comfortably. It was a small investment for that purpose. We had planned to leave town as soon as we looked into the west-facing Adorutoru crest, but it seemed we would be staying a bit longer.
The castle where Teo worked was obvious without even investigating. It was Augusta Castle, which we had originally had as our next destination. Augusta Castle was an extremely close castle, one you could find just by climbing the hill in the town where we were staying during the day.
Leaving the wagon with Cody and the others in town, I walked along the highway toward the city where Augusta Castle was located. From the town to the city took less than an hour on foot. Just before the city gate leading into the city, I veered off onto an animal trail, bypassed the city gate, and circled around to the back of Augusta Castle. Since I wanted to investigate the castle this time, I could not leave an impression on the gatekeepers at the city gate.
...It is a big castle, but small as castles go.
Maybe that was why it had a woman's name. It was an elegant, petite-looking castle, equipped with vast forests and gardens. I climbed the mountain that guarded the castle's rear, searching for possible entry points, and committed the general appearance and the floor plan I could infer from it into my head. I had heard there were differences in castle construction between the Kingdom of Ivizia and the Zugall Empire, but the biggest difference was probably how the underground was handled. Kitchens in the Kingdom of Ivizia were above ground, but kitchens in the Zugall Empire were underground. Not just kitchens, either, laundry rooms, servants' dining halls, all the sections where menial workers toiled were built underground. On our journey here, I had had a chance to peek at abandoned castles, but in the Zugall Empire, there was space even further below the floor where servants worked. There was only one staircase leading to that space, and the ones working there were purchased slaves.
...Even a pretty castle like that probably has slaves swarming underground.
That was the country called the Zugall Empire. The parts visible to the eye were nicely arranged, but what lay beneath was like a muddy swamp. At the feet of nobles who indulged in every luxury, hundreds of starving people lay fallen, yet the emperor, who was king, did not even try to change the laws. As long as he could live comfortably, he did not care about the lives of his people.
...Quite a difference from our country.
Finding a tree branch that extended just conveniently over the castle wall to the other side, I infiltrated into the castle grounds. Moving while evading the eyes of the gatekeepers and guards, as I explored the surroundings of Augusta Castle, I discovered a gardener's shed at the edge of the back garden. This was probably the shed where the previous gardener had lived. Currently, Teo should be using it.
...Hiding here and startling Teo would be pretty fun, would it not.
It would be fun, but doing something like that would just be a perfect opportunity to call the guards on me as a trespasser, so I refrained. I did not want to startle Teo, I wanted to gather information about Tina. Personal enjoyment came after that.
...If there is something behind the previous gardener's disappearance... then the something is in the garden?
A gardener's workplace was the garden, after all. The previous gardener must have been disposed of because of something he learned in the garden. Since Teo's workplace was also the garden, if I looked into the garden, there might be something there.
...Beyond here is probably the residential area of the lord's family.
As I moved through the forest in the garden, looking for anything, I found a wall made of iron bars. Comparing the castle's exterior from the mountain behind to the position of the iron grating, this southern section seemed to be the residential quarter containing the lord's family's bedrooms and private chambers. That was probably why the garden was covered with iron grating, to guard against intruders.
...This one, even I cannot get into, huh.
As if it had caught the scent of an intruder (me), a black-furred dog appeared on the other side of the iron grating. It was staring fixedly at me, probably because it could not decide whether I was an enemy. If I forced my way over the iron grating and entered, it would surely attack me immediately.
...Dogs are more troublesome than humans, after all. If it was just one, maybe, but there is no way a castle this size only has one guard dog.
I felt like I could manage one, but I did not think I could win against several trained dogs attacking me at once. I was curious about what was beyond the iron grating, but I still lacked a bit of information on whether it was worth the risk to investigate.
...Better head back for now.
While I was thinking, the guard dogs on the other side of the grating had increased to three. Since I could not see the value in pushing my luck, there was nothing to do but withdraw for now.
Will fix typos and errors at a later date.