Chapter 25: Haunted House of the Marquis of Comona part 5

According to the Marquis of Comona, there are about three public cemeteries around the Marquis’ mansion, and even though they are called public cemeteries, it does not mean that the dead are buried there without anyone’s permission. The Marquis of Comona’s estate is well managed in that respect, and has a caretaker.

The plots are decided according to age of death, and the identities of everyone buried are kept in records.

Because people don’t like the idea of impurity in such a place, they always ask a priest to pray at the time of burial.

Since this is a main part of where the lord’s house is located, it is especially well managed, and if it is the burial of an unidentified person, a record is always kept. And if a person is buried under a false name, there is a way to check if he or she is buried under a false name. You can check it by comparing the records of deaths and births, which are always kept by the priests.

Each fiefdom will always have a branch of the temple. In the larger territories, there will be several.

Priests, as messengers of the gods, swear an oath to the gods in a magical contract. As a priest, if they lie, they will be burned by the fire of the gods. Well, that would be a metaphor, but the point is, you can’t lie.

In this case, we almost know the date of the event, so we can just focus on that, and the name of one of those public cemeteries came up early on.

There were several people buried in each of the three communal cemeteries in that month of the year, but only one of them, in that one cemetery, had a burial of an unidentified person.

It was recorded that he was a thief, beaten to death by the Marquis’ private army, and the former Marquis had provided proof of his identity. Hmm, suspicious…

For the time being, all of us from yesterday went to that public cemetery to check the records.

It seems that the Comona territory had put a lot of effort into the maintenance of public facilities, and neatly lined up palm-sized stone grave marker plates were embedded in the ground, with the date of death and the name engraved on each of them.

In Elementia, the common people are cremated. They don’t bury the dead because they don’t like the idea of plague.

After cremation, the bones are placed in a pottery box and buried in the ground.

The source of these expenses was determined in detail by the village, town, or fiefdom, and so on.

The body was in the custody of the lord and the lord paid the expenses.

The burial method is different between the common people and the nobility. The nobles are magically treated and placed in a coffin, and buried in graveyards for generations, while the common people are cremated. However, since they were buried in the ground until it was standardized in Elementia, sometimes such a place that used to be a cemetery brought trouble, and the request for purification would come to the castle.

Now, this unidentified person’s grave was purged of impurity and buried by a priest as an unknown person, so Fiara didn’t feel anything special when she stood in that place. The same was true of Helena who was with her.

The remains of the unidentified person in the public cemetery were to be taken out of the container they were buried in, and transported to the summer villa. The Marquis of Comona and two of his guards were asked to oversee that procedure.

The remaining five members of the magic order returned to the villa and prepared to go to Villaha again.

“Oh, wait a minute…”

As the five of them walked towards the entrance to the public cemetery, Fiara spotted something shiny on the ground.

A small, dull silvery ring had fallen between the grasses. She picked it up with her right index finger and thumb and looked at it towards the sun. The silver was corroded and dirty, but it was definitely a ring. How could it reflect light like that when it was so dull in color?

I was sure it was a silver wedding ring exchanged between thee common people. If you are a nobleman, you can use gold or platinum, but the common people make their rings out of silver which is cheaper.

“A wedding ring, how did it end up here…”

Wilt tilts his head in wonder. The wedding ring, both noblemen and commoners take their wedding vows in front of a priest with it, then put them on each other’s fingers which remains on when they are cremated. Unless there is something special about it, it is never removed.

The ring is engraved with the name of the recipient inside. “To Juliana, my dearest. From Zeo.”

“““ Zeo!?”””

Everyone shouts in harmony.

“Hmmm, this…this was the ring that was supposed to be given to her…the young lady’s name was Juliana Amanthus Comona, I believe…did he want to give it to her?”

After a few moments of silence, everyone looked back at the cemetery and headed for the exit in a hurry.

That day, we spent the night at a villa of a neighboring town in the village of Villaha, and early the next morning, we hurried to the summer villa with the same eight people as before, riding on our horses.

When we arrived at the mansion in the still of the morning mist, we tied up our horses and looked around to see if there was anything around, but nothing seemed to be going on.

We all went back to the front of the house and were talking about each others’ successes, when Hemmings suddenly pointed to the lake.

A small boat was leaving the pier in front of the mansion. It’s funny, the pier was in tatters when I checked it…and not in a usable condition, but now it looks like a brand new pier.

The small boat leaving the pier had a red blonde woman on it, with very thoughtful eyes…

The Marquis of Comona was watching the event taking place before him with an expression of disbelief. Perhaps the sister from his childhood memories is right in front of him.

As the boat, visible through the morning mist, proceeded to the middle of the lake, she stood up on top of the boat and jumped out of it and into the lake.

“Ahh…”

Whose voice was it, or my own, we all couldn’t help but wonder at the time if we could somehow stop it.

It was definitely an image from the past twenty-two years ago. There was no way to stop it…oh, would she be waiting for him at the bottom of this lake…?

Suddenly, I grabbed the ring I’d brought with me in my pocket. I must give this to her.

I swung wide in the direction of the boat’s disappearance, clothed the ring in my own magic power, and made a wish for it to reach her.

The ring drew a parabolic line, emitting a twinkle as it went off to a distant place…indeed, it was delivered.

The morning mist that covered the surface of the lake disappeared and the morning sun was shining, as if to dispel the haze that was once there. And the pier, which had been there until a few minutes ago, was now back to a decaying wreck.

Those of us who had seen the images from the past looked as if they had been pinched by a fox, but they seemed to sense that the event was over.

When I returned to my residence that day, after purifying the lake with Helena just to be sure, I found a journal from the family home of Miss Juliana’s maid, which had been delivered to the Marquis’ house.

The present Marquis of Comona, who had heard that his sister had ended her maid’s job and returned to her parents’ house, where she had died of mental illness and suicide, had afterwards sent a large amount of money for tribute. Along with a letter of thanks, he apparently sent me the diary she kept from the time when she had returned to her parents’ home until her death.

However, the key to that diary was lost, and if I wanted to read it, I would have to break the lock or have a specialist open it.

As we were talking about this, something fell out of my pocket with a chirping sound.

“…”

Hmmm, what is this? The gold key that I had completely forgotten existed.

I was picking it up with my fingers and peering at it when Judy called out to me.

“What’s that, a key?”

“Hmm, yeah, that’s right, but it’s a magic tool, right?”

“What, did Fisaris give you that?”

“No, it’s not him, but…”

“Is it possible to use it here? Were you waiting for your turn?”

“Let’s see if you can open it.”

Suddenly, Judy looks at the diary from earlier.

“Umm, I’m not sure, but let me just try it…”

“Oh, wait a minute. Let’s purify it just in case.”

Helena handed me the diary given by the Marquis of Comona, purifying it and handing it to me.

I slowly brought the gold key close to the keyhole of the diary and it snapped into the keyhole as it should, and when I turned it to the right, I heard the sound of the key opening with a click.

“Oh!’ Wow, that’s a great magic tool.”

Maybe this is a specification that’s not available to everyone else. Other people can’t use them because it chooses its owner.

“Oh, yeah, let me see.”

As soon as Hemmings put his hand in my direction, the key disappeared.

“What is with those specifications…?”

“Look, I’m not entirely sure about that either…”

“Okay, well, I’m interested in the magic tools, but I can’t even look at these.”

It was Hemmings who surprisingly looked disappointed.

“Please ask the Marquis of Comona to check the contents of the diary book. For now, I believe the purification itself has been completed, so the only thing left to do is work on the circumstances of the Marquis’ sister’s death, but there may be something written in the diary.”

Wilt put it all together properly. Now we were ready for the clean-up.

Later that same day, we received word that a body had emerged from the lake in Villaha village.

The corroding body was caught in the villagers’ fishing nets. It’s head had traces of red-blond hair, and on the fingers was a shiny silver ring, which hadn’t been corroded for some reason.

Afterwards, we learned from the diary of the maid, who was always helping the Marquis of Comona. It seems that the maid was always planning to cooperate with the daughter of Marquis Comona and the gardener Zeo, and to follow her escape from the mansion.

They had planned to meet up later at the summer villa, but Zeo was captured early on by the lord’s private soldiers, who were watching their movements, and the maid couldn’t even leave the house. Moreover, the daughter threw herself into the lake where she was staying while being tracked down to be brought back.

The young lady, pessimistic about the future, secretly took a boat out to the lake in the morning and threw herself in. Perhaps she learned of Zeo’s murder, but there is no way of knowing now.

Her body had been searched for for a long period of time by someone employed by the duke’s family at the time, but no matter how hard they searched, they were unable to find it.

The maid may not have known that Zeo was killed, but she may have had an inkling of it. She was sick with regret and fear.

The former Marquis of Comona, fearing that he would have to pay a huge penalty if the engaged   Countess of her daughter Juliana found out about this, issued a gag order and said that she had died of a nasty epidemic. This seems to have been the summary of what happened.

Later, the Marquis of Comona dismantled the summerhouse.

Then he built two graves and buried them side by side in the public cemetery.

It is said that there have been no reports of strange phenomena since the purification of the lake.

If they could be reincarnated, I hoped that this time they would be happy together.

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T/N: Honestly happy that I’m done with this arc because I’m a wimp who can’t even watch horror movies without blocking my ears the entire time (⁄ ⁄•⁄ω⁄•⁄ ⁄)

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