The Nameless Marchioness

The unsteady breath goes still. Into the green eyes that had clouded and dulled, a keen edge begins to return.

In the history of Fala, at least, the age of kings ended a hundred years ago. This is an era in which citizens choose their nation's representatives with their own hands, and yet Fala still keeps its kings and its nobles, those anachronistic figures of a vanished world. If one were asked to name the most influential among them—preserved, like emblems of an older age—the Marquis of Baldwin would stand alone.

A history nearly as long as the royal house itself, and wealth with no end in sight. From a seat in the Senate to the highest offices of government, he had spent the last several decades fashioning a reputation as a respected pillar of society. In a country where not even the king reigned, he alone still ruled as his ancestors had.

As if to prove that influence, the marquis's name turned up all through the papers, whatever the subject. At the peace conference of the First Three Nations War, held in Saarbourg, he was mentioned briefly as Fala's representative; and when the central bank raised interest rates some ten years past, he had contributed a long column of his own, giving voice to his misgivings about the economic policy of the government then in power.

Sebastian Baldwin.

Elliot lets his gaze pass slowly over the face of the stubborn-looking gentleman of middle years in a faded black-and-white photograph of the king and queen. This is Anna's maternal grandfather. The very man who has abused her all this while, and who has kept her secret sealed tight from the eyes of the world.

The papers now reach forty years back. As the stack in the box thins toward the bottom, a quiet anxiety stirs in him. If what remains yields no clue, he will have to find another library that keeps its newspapers whole. But he is the one who must protect Anna, and he has not the leisure to go hunting through the library in the next town.

The green eyes skimming the crudely printed old newsprint come to a sudden stop. Elliot, who had been staring at a corner of the page, slowly draws himself up from his slump, and his widened eyes race down the article.

The obituary, barely tucked into a corner of the paper, held not so much as an ordinary photograph. Not even a name. To the very end the dead marchioness was called only "the marchioness"; of her given name, or of her maiden surname, there was not a trace to be found.

A small suspicion took root there. A paper of the Castleigh Times' standing could not fail to know how discourteous such treatment was. Even outside an obituary, to use the halfway title of "marchioness" in place of a real name was thoroughly unprofessional.

So the reporter doesn't know. Not the marchioness's name. And, going further, not even a photograph of her was ever let out into the world.

"Excuse me…… The library will be closing soon."

A librarian who had hurried over speaks to him. Startled, Elliot glances up at the clock at once. Five-fifty in the afternoon. Through the window the sun can be glimpsed sliding west, low and slow.

He sends the librarian off with a promise to tidy up quickly, then begins returning the newspapers spread across the desk to their box, one after another. Even so, his eyes remain fixed on the marchioness's obituary.

The piece was not long. Only that the daughter who lost her mother the moment she was born was named Sophia, and that the marquis, bereft of his wife, had shut himself away in grief and would see no one.

It is the obituary of a grandmother Anna has never so much as seen, and yet he cannot shake an uneasy feeling, as if some important clue lay hidden in those lines. Scanning the article once more, his eye catches on St. Scavia Monastery, the place where the marchioness was said to have been born and raised. He sounds the monastery's name quietly in his mouth. He will have to begin there.

Early morning, just as the birds are waking.

An old priest sweeping the leaves that had fallen overnight across the churchyard senses a presence and lifts his head. A bright smile rises on a face webbed with wrinkles.

"Elliot!"

Elliot comes forward hesitantly and bends at the waist, thoroughly sheepish.

"Hello, Father."

"It really is you, Elliot!"

The priest flings down his broom and hurries over.

"Yes—a face the very image of Judith's, so it has to be Elliot! Only the eyes, just those eyes, were different from hers. To think that little child has grown so tall!"

"I'm sorry. This greeting comes far too late, doesn't it?"

"Sorry? There's no call for that! I only heard you'd come back, and when I didn't see hide nor hair of you, I took it for an idle rumor."

The priest laughs heartily and pats Elliot's forearm. Elliot has the wit to recognize a joke with a point in it, and he finds it harder and harder to lift his head.

"So you've come back for good?"

"No. I'll have to head back up before long."

"Where? You aren't going back to the army, are you?"

The priest's face, bright with the pleasure of seeing him, darkens. Elliot smiles quietly and shakes his head.

"Now that is welcome news. You've given up soldiering altogether, then?"

"Yes, well…… And how have you been, Father?"

"Me? The same as ever. I've grown more forgetful with age, but still—there are days like this, when I get to see you again. There's some worth in having lived so long."

The priest, who had been looking at Elliot with a faraway gaze, leads him into the church.

Elliot, who turned his back on the church long ago, pauses and looks up at the cross rising high overhead. For a while his bleak eyes circle the cross, bleaching white as it seems to crumble in the sun.

"Your sibling?"

Elliot, frowning at the heavy scent peculiar to a church, puts on a smile by reflex.

"Ah, yes. A distant younger cousin."

"Mr. Munro said you'd married and come down to your hometown for good."

"……I have to wonder how a Mr. Munro I've never even met knows so much about me."

"Well, he always was a man given to tall tales."

The priest chuckles and pats Elliot's shoulder.

"Bring that child to church sometime. I'd like to see the face, at least."

"If the chance comes, later."

Hedging his answer, Elliot watches the priest's expression and carefully sets down his teacup.

"Father. There's something I'd like to ask you, in private."

"Well, now. Fancy you having something to ask this old man. I doubt you're about to question me on doctrine—you, who always dozed through Bible study."

Recalling those distant days, the priest strokes his salt-and-pepper beard. Embarrassed by a past he can scarcely remember, Elliot rubs the back of his neck, awkward.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have."

"Enough of that. I've not the least speck of desire to forgive you now. Anyway, just tell me what it is you want to ask."

The priest turns his head aside with a show of huffiness and presses him. Elliot begins, his face quite serious.

"Do you happen to know much about the Scavia Order?"

"The Scavia Order……?"

It seems the name is not a familiar one even to a priest who has given his whole life to the Church; he tilts his head again and again.

"Hard to say. It feels as if it might come to me, and then it doesn't…… Where did you hear that name?"

"In a newspaper. The Marquis of Baldwin seems to have a deep connection with them."

Letting the end of the sentence trail off, Elliot quietly studies the priest's face. The man may have lived his whole life buried in seclusion, but there is no harm in caution.

"Baldwin, you say……"

As if something had struck him all at once, the priest crosses to the bookcase opposite. A fingertip running along the spines stops at a certain thick volume.

"Here we are."

He hauls the book out with some effort, turns a few pages, and comes slowly back to Elliot. Pushing his reading glasses up, he points to print no bigger than grains of sand in the corner of the page.

"Here—it does say the Scavia Order, doesn't it? My eyes have grown so dim lately. Old age, I suppose."

"Yes. That's right."

A low hum escapes him, and the priest sets the book on the desk. Stamped in gold leaf on the worn leather cover is the title A Dictionary of Sects.

Elliot's expression hardens before he knows it.

"So it really was a true order."

"What? Of course it truly exists. This isn't just anyone—it's an order under the patronage of the Marquis of Baldwin."

"Patronage?"

At news he is hearing for the first time, a slight crease forms between his brows.

The Church comprises any number of sects. In a backwater like Winsmore, where a village has exactly one church, it might be otherwise, but most people have the right to choose their sect freely.

"Doesn't a distinguished house on the order of the Baldwins usually patronize a famous order? The Maxellenda Order, say, or the Ante Order. There must be any number of well-known, influential sects besides."

"That's true. Houses of deep tradition, the royal family among them, belong to the Ante Order as well."

The priest strokes his beard, as is his habit.

"Young people wouldn't know, but to those of us who are older, it's quite a famous story. When the Marquis of Baldwin suddenly announced he was changing sects, it caused quite an uproar in our religious circles."

"He changed sects?"

"Yes. Up through the previous marquis, the House of Baldwin followed the royal family and belonged to the Ante Order. Then, once the present marquis succeeded, they moved their affiliation to the Scavia Order."

"Why?"

"That, I wouldn't know. I'm a priest, my boy, not a detective."

The priest shrugs, as if brushing the matter off. Elliot sinks into thought, his face serious.

Changing one's sect is not so rare a thing. But for a house as distinguished as the Baldwins to leave a popular order for some small one whose very name is unfamiliar—that is a deeply suspicious circumstance. The Church's influence may have shrunk a great deal, yet the Church is still the Church, and the line binding politics to it remains firmly in place.

"What sort of sect is the Scavia Order, exactly?"

"Hm. About that."

At this rare show of holding his words back, Elliot's brow pinches slightly.

"Is there something that doesn't sit right with you?"

"Whether I ought to call it that…… I wonder if you've ever heard of Saint Basolo."