The Serpent of Paradise - Chapter 21

Several carriages and a crowd of people stood before the entrance. They were the carriages of village merchants Anastasia had occasionally seen passing along the road. Hiding behind a tree, Anastasia watched them. In front of the entrance, people were raising their voices while the butler and servants struggled desperately to hold them back.

‘Why are they doing that?’

Anastasia’s breathing quickened as she crouched there. This was Edenhurst. Lauderdale’s impregnable fortress. Her paradise. Never once had such a disturbance occurred here. So how had this happened? It felt as though a heavy weight had dropped inside her chest. The fallen weight cracked all her senses, and an eerie feeling spread through her entire body along those cracks.

Anastasia knew what this feeling was. She had felt the same way long ago when she saw her father prostrating himself on the church floor.

The people’s voices pierced sharply into Anastasia’s ears as she trembled.

“Let us see the countess!”

“It’s already been a month! When do you intend to repay us?”

“If you can’t pay us back, at least let us take some goods!”

Their ceaseless shouts continued to dig into her ears. Money. Pay it back. Lauderdale. Ruined. One statement pierced her ears more sharply than the others.

“I heard the marriage arrangement with Mikhail Sokolov fell through! Then how are you going to repay us?”

At those words, Anastasia raised her head in surprise from where she was crouching. They said Mikhail and Elizabeth were going to marry. Wasn’t that why Mikhail came here? Yet they said the marriage arrangement had fallen through.

The standoff between the people and the servants eventually erupted into a scuffle. Indifferent to their clothes being torn, they shoved the servants aside and entered the mansion. More unintelligible shouting rang out, and Anastasia covered her ears.

A long while later, she saw those who had entered the mansion come back out carrying things. They were treasured possessions the countess had refused to sell even when the mansion was struggling financially.

Precious objects that had never once left Edenhurst were being loaded roughly onto freight wagons and taken away.

***

Her meals stopped coming. Anastasia finally gathered enough courage to stop a maid and ask about her meal. The maid replied coldly.

“A meal?”

Her brief words were steeped in intense anger.

“Do you really think anyone has time to worry about that right now?”

The maids didn’t particularly like her, but they still called her “Miss” because she bore the Lauderdale name. Yet now she had called her “You.” Anastasia wasn’t offended. She was frightened. Something was changing drastically in a place she knew nothing about.

“Move!”

The maid shoved Anastasia aside and continued walking. Only then did Anastasia notice the large bag in the maid’s hand. Moreover, she wasn’t wearing the mansion’s maid uniform. She went outside and climbed into an old carriage with other maids carrying bags like hers.

“Is everyone aboard? Then we’re leaving.”

The carriage, loaded with so many people and so much luggage that it tilted to one side, departed the mansion with only two old horses to pull it. A short while later, another carriage arrived, picked up more servants who had emerged from the mansion, and departed as well.

People were leaving Edenhurst.

Anastasia hurried to the kitchen. More than food, she hungered for the servants’ conversations there. What is happening? What is going on? As Anastasia peered inside, she realized how different the kitchen looked from before.

‘What happened?’

The kitchen was always filled with maids. Water was always boiling over the stove, and every cooking utensil was neatly arranged and gleaming. The tableware for the masters was lined up tidily inside the cupboards, while ingredients were piled on the worktables and prepared for cooking.

But the only person visible in the kitchen was Emma, the head cook, asleep in a corner with a brown liquor bottle in her hand. Cooking utensils that looked as though they hadn’t been washed in ages were piled messily in the sink, and gnats swarmed over food scraps that no one had bothered to throw away on the worktables. Anastasia had never seen the kitchen in such a state since coming to this mansion. It hadn’t looked like this even last winter, when they said things were difficult.

Anastasia approached the table where the servants ate. Though mealtime had long since passed, the servants were gathered around their dining table with grave expressions.

“When are you leaving?”

“I was planning to leave next week, but….”

“What about your wages?”

“I don’t know. They say they’ll pay us, but… Oliver ended up leaving without receiving anything.”

“Damn it. Should I just leave now, then?”

One of the servants rubbed his face with both hands.

“What in the world is happening? Until recently, it seemed like everything was going to work out….”

“Exactly. They said our wages would be several times higher once we went to Sokolov, so I treated my friends to an expensive meal. Now look at me. I heard they’ve lost contact with Mikhail Sokolov.”

“That’s why the creditors caused an even greater uproar. They must have thought there would be no one left to recover their money from once the marriage arrangement fell through.”

Having dreamed of a rosy future, they were left utterly dejected now that their dreams had shattered.

“Enough. We should pack our things too. Let’s look around one last time and see whether there’s anything we can take instead of our wages.”

“Damn it. I’ll at least take some pickles from the kitchen.”

“The maids already packed them all into their bags this morning. I suppose I’ll take some gardening tools.”

At the sound of the servants getting up, Anastasia hurriedly turned around and returned to her room. She heard the sounds of them rummaging roughly through things outside. Even in her ignorance, she understood.

Edenhurst is ruined. Completely, to a degree incomparable to last winter. But something frightened Anastasia more than the fate of Edenhurst, which she had always valued above everything else.

They said they had lost contact with Mikhail. That was why everyone was leaving.

“No….”

Anastasia remembered what he had said. He asked her to wait just a little while. He said he would return soon.

***

The Edenhurst mansion emptied in an instant. With not only its possessions but even its people gone, a bleak silence hung over the mansion all day long.

Of course, some people remained. The countess, Elizabeth, Catherine, a few loyal servants who had spent their entire lives serving the Lauderdale family, and Anastasia. They were everyone left at Edenhurst.

The countess looked at Catherine, who had been sobbing since morning. Catherine had cried all day long since the creditors swarmed the mansion and tore away everything of value.

“Can’t you stop crying?”

The countess scolded her in a thoroughly hoarse voice, but Catherine only cried louder. Pressing her throbbing head, the countess said, “Sophie, bring me something for my headache….”

The countess was about to order her to bring medicine, but then she remembered that Sophie had left before anyone else and bit her lip.

The past few days had been an unparalleled nightmare for the countess. The creditors suddenly descended upon Edenhurst and shrieked like crows, demanding their money. Every one of them said the same thing.

They heard the marriage arrangement with Mikhail Sokolov had fallen through. While the creditors plundered Edenhurst, the countess ordered James to contact Sokolov immediately. When she was told it would cost a great deal of money, she frantically threw one of her cherished rings at him.

Three days later, the man who had gone returned and reported, “Lord Mikhail wasn’t in Sokolov. The subordinates who came with him last time were also away.”

“You should still have returned with some assistance! You should have brought back a check, at least!”

“Both the people at the mansion and the company employees said it would be absolutely impossible without Lord Mikhail’s authorization. What more could I say? I did explain the mansion’s circumstances and ask them to contact us as quickly as possible. But apparently, Lord Mikhail has gone far away to the Central Plains on a business inspection. They said that’s why his reply will be delayed.”

The hired man offered nothing but an insincere response before returning to the village. The countess grew increasingly anxious. Even in the meantime, Edenhurst continued to empty.

Absurdly enough, the first person to leave was Sophie. It seemed she had slipped among the departing maids and left in the first carriage. The countess discovered that several of the jewels she had held on to without selling even during the winter were missing.

She should have had Sophie seized and brought back for questioning immediately, but there were now few people left in the mansion who would obey her orders. James had also taken several items hidden deep in the storeroom and left. The relatives who had been contacting them so eagerly fell silent again. Even so, they ordinarily wouldn’t have ignored her this completely. It was as though they had severed ties with the stroke of a knife. They even returned her letters without opening them.

The way they were drawing such an excessively firm line was strange. They hadn’t gone this far before. Then why were they behaving this way now?

At that moment, someone crossed the countess’s mind.

Empress Dowager Ilina.

“It’s that woman….”

The countess gritted her teeth. She remembered what Mikhail said when he visited. The Empress Dowager found the marriage arrangement extremely displeasing. Because of that, his company was also being subjected to pressure from all sides.

At the time, the countess hadn’t given his words much thought. What could the Empress Dowager possibly do to her? She didn’t hold public office, nor was she active in the capital’s social circles. She therefore assumed there was no particular pressure that could be placed on her….

‘She dares humiliate me like this?’

What had recently happened at Edenhurst was an unprecedented humiliation in the countess’s life. Her insides burned with mortification, aggravating her chronic stomach ailment once more. But now she didn’t even have medicine to take.

The countess hurriedly investigated other marriage prospects for Elizabeth, only to receive an absurd reply. Wasn’t Miss Elizabeth already deeply involved with Mikhail Sokolov?

The countess realized the truth. There was now no one willing to take Elizabeth except Mikhail. Even if there were, she could only marry into a family incomparable to his, one that didn’t care what kind of woman they received. This half-formed marriage arrangement had branded her daughter.

“Madam.”

One of the remaining maids cautiously addressed the countess.

“What is it?”

“The grocer is here.”

“Tell him it will be difficult to pay him right now.”

“He says he knows that… and that he would like to take something else instead.”

“Something else?”

“Well….”

The maid hesitated before answering.

“He’s asking whether he may take Miss Anastasia.”