Chapter 71

“I could not do it.”

“You could not-. Or is it that you did not even attempt to?”

The Emperor was no stranger to Eugène’s martial prowess. He was a man who could even slaughter seven tramps at once if they sprang out at him without flinching. And yet, he hadn’t caught anything so far… The Emperor, not easily convinced, demanded a more detailed explanation.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Hunting competitions held during Ash Week were not simply about killing animals for fun. The animals hunted by the Emperor and nobles on this day were offered to the citizens at the second feast of fire, which took place on the last day of the festival, as an act of charity.

Since it was not just providing meat, but also revealing who hunted how many animals, aristocrats who value honor also tried to make their name known by hunting as many animals as possible.

In that sense, Eugène’s refusal to hunt was not merely indolence, but also a dereliction of a nobleman’s duties. Of course, there probably aren’t many people who would make such a big deal out of something as minor as this, but since the political world is a place where one would never know how a small issue can develop, it was not something that one could ignore.

After the servants had loaded the prey, the Emperor set his horse off. The glance he cast over his shoulder, as if to beckon him to follow, was sharp enough that Eugène obeyed without protest and rode after him.

“… Actually, I am not good at riding horses.”

“What? You cannot ride a horse?”

The Emperor looked back at Eugène in bewilderment, as if he had confessed that he could not walk or read.How can a man be unable to ride a horse? You expect Us to believe that?The Emperor was looking at him with eyes full of disbelief and pointed out one important fact to Eugène.

“But you are riding a horse this very moment, no?”

“I never said I cannot ride at all. I merely said that I am not good at it. I can manage at a walking pace, as now, but I am hardly capable of galloping after prey. I would have broken my neck if I had attempted it.”

Not to make excuses, but he truly was bad at riding a horse. He had been too poor as a child, and when he grew up, he had no opportunity to learn because he had only lived at sea. Even so, the emperor still looked as though he could not quite grasp what Eugène was trying to say. Eugène smiled wryly and offered a more direct explanation, so that he could understand.

“Horses are very expensive animals, Your Majesty.”

Ebroin V was a very clever man, but to him, poverty was just a dictionary concept. He could plan a national program to relieve the poor, but he had only a passing knowledge rather than a concrete understanding of their lives.

If such was the case even for common citizens, then what of a fallen noble whose life had come to resemble that of the destitute? It was clear His Majesty had never imagined such a life, even in its most abstract form.

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“I was a noble, but a fallen noble. I spent my childhood in deep poverty.”

“Is that why the little noble boy could not even have his own foal?”

“I do not remember ever owning any kind of animal throughout my childhood, let alone a foul. To be more specific, my environment did not allow me to. I was having a hard enough time taking care of my sick father and supporting myself.”

Eugène spoke the truth as it was calmly. It was a hard and difficult time, even looking back on it now, but fortunately, it was all in the past. He had made a life for himself solely on his own strength and merit and was not the least bit ashamed of it.

It would be terribly rude to show pity to someone with such pride. The Emperor, who could not be ignorant of it, showed his deep curiosity first instead of offering cheap sympathy.

Eugène was now the only person he knew personally who had actually experienced poverty. Through a background investigation, the Emperor knew that his life had not been as easy as other nobles, but was unsure of the level of disparity. Only now was he able to get a first glimpse into Eugène’s childhood.

“It is hard to imagine that you have never owned an animal. Even if you have never owned a horse, have you never raised at least a small animal? Even poor farmers raise dogs and pressmen keep cats.”

“Farmers have dogs because they have to herd livestock. Pressmen keep cats to keep mice from nibbling on expensive paper. The poor usually keep animals mainly out of necessity. But if one cannot even afford to feed oneself properly, such things are simply out of reach.”

“Was it to the level that you could not even afford a proper meal?”

“It was not uncommon where I grew up.”

“What did you do if you were unable to eat on time? How could a person move without eating?”

“If I did not work, I would have to starve myself for the next meal. There is no motive stronger than hunger for a human being.”

Upon hearing his answer, the Emperor quietly furrowed his eyebrows and pondered.

Could such words stir something in the heart of a ruler? Eugène held his silence so as not to intrude upon the Emperor’s thoughts, quietly guiding his horse forward, and his gaze happened to fall on the hounds trotting ahead of them.

Just earlier, when delivering the killing blow to the stag, those beasts had looked every bit the ferocious predators they were trained to be. Now, they seemed so docile with their tails wagging gently. In order to track the scent of prey, their snouts pressed to the ground, hindquarters raised, but should they catch a person’s gaze brushing over them, they would perk up their ears, subtly aware of the attention.

Though well-trained and rarely distracted, they still glanced back now and then, as if to check whether they were being watched, so tame in their demeanor now that Eugène could not help but let out a quiet, amused breath.

“… Come to think of it, my life had not been completely devoid of animals. I have never raised one myself, but I did live with one. As a child, I used to be acquainted with a stray dog.”

A dog, no matter how fierce, was still a dog. Domesticated by humans, embedded with humanity deeper than their own instincts.

Eugène spoke as he smiled faintly at the sudden memory of the old days.

“That is a rather strange way to put it. You say you were acquainted with a dog?”

The Emperor, who had been immersed in other thoughts for some time, looked puzzled by Eugène’s sudden change of topic.

“As I mentioned, I did not raise him. He and I met each other on the way, so we were simply acquainted with each other.”

The dog was a stray that wandered the streets of a boarding house near the university town where Eugène rented. It was a ubiquitous hybrid that had a golden coat and white fur on its chest, but the fur was always tangled because it was poorly groomed.

“I never knew his real name, but everyone called him Trileg. He had a limp in his right hind leg, likely from some cruel person’s mistreatment. Even so, he could outrun any other dog on just three legs. Not even the mischievous children’s stones ever seemed to strike it.”

He remembered clearly the way Trileg always stood at a distance, keeping well away from people.

He hardly trusted people. Sometimes kind-hearted people would offer him food, but he would not approach until they had placed it on the ground and stepped away. Even when he did approach, he would sniff it, examine it suspiciously for a while, and only then, when he was sure it was safe, would he take a bite.

But Eugène had never fed him that way. Being sympathetic to a street dog in a situation where there was barely anything to feed himself was a luxury he couldn’t afford.

“How did you tame a dog like that?”

It was the first time Eugène had ever spoken of something so personal. The Emperor didn’t interrupt him, despite finding it interestingly unusual.

“I could not tame it, not even in the slightest.”

“But you said you lived together?”

“To be precise, we only lived together in winter. When it snowed outside, he would come to me. When the ground cleared, he would leave.”

In response to the Emperor’s repeated questions, Eugène slowly revealed the story of the strange relationship between Trileg and himself.

Eugène first learned about the dog when he was nine years old, but it wasn’t until three years later that the two connected. When they first arrived in the capital, they could still afford to rent someone else’s home, or so he had heard. Though Eugène had no memory of that house at all.

By the time he began to vaguely grasp the circumstances, he had already been pushed into a boarding house in the university town, and he was relegated to the attic because he couldn’t afford it. Even with the family’s financial status in such a terrible state, his father was still unable to come to his senses. Eugène was left to fend for himself while his father wandered the streets, drunk on vain dreams.

“In poor neighborhoods, even young children have to earn what they eat on their own. That didn’t make it difficult to get a job even at a young age, but the wages were low and the work was terribly difficult.”

For Eugène at that time, a kind-hearted owner meant a person who would not take part of the promised wage after work.

“To find work was not difficult, but to find good work was another matter. To learn a skilled trade, you must become an apprentice, but you cannot even dream of such a position without connections. Even errand boys and chimney sweepers have their own guilds. So, since I did not have a plausible letter of introduction, I was little more than a drifter, called in only when extra hands were needed. Even if I worked hard from dawn to dusk, it was hard to put food on the table once rent was paid. In the spring or summer, it was fine, but when winter came around, all that could be felt was utter despair. No matter how cold it was, I could not afford firewood.”

Until he was sixteen, the attic room Eugène lived in had not even a proper fireplace. There was a small cast-iron stove that served in its place, but it was far too small to warm the room in any meaningful way.

“… Interesting. Keep going.”

The Emperor said so, even as he felt his mood gradually decline. The speaker was as casual as if he were telling someone else’s story, but the listener was in no position to do so.

He said that at a young age, he worked hard to earn a living, yet he was exploited to the point of starvation. Rather than living properly after working all day to make ends meet, he lived in a freezing room in the winter because he couldn’t afford firewood.

Ebroin V, who had recently begun to recognize his feelings for Eugène with increasing clarity, had a hard time managing his cold and stiff expression. Eugène was only setting the background for the story to come, but what the Emperor actually heard was a confession of a miserable childhood.

It was not a vague story that could only be found in a book. It was a memory of a life lived by a person who was alive in front of his eyes, and by someone for whom he had just realized his desire and infatuation.

“I met him while I was living like that. It was late winter, the year I turned twelve.”

It was an exceptionally snowy day. He thought there would be no work due to the bad weather, but the old woman who ran the boarding house called him downstairs. She was unpleasant, but not so unkind as to throw a child with nowhere to go out on the street, and she took pity on him, often giving him food instead of money and sending him on errands.

As he remembers it, it was one of those days. The elderly woman with gout and arthritis offered to give him a bowl of hot onion soup and two pieces of dark bread if he cleared the frozen snow so she could move about her house.

“It was the perfect job to fill my hungry stomach, so I immediately grabbed a shovel and went out. I broke apart the packed snow and pushed it to the side of the road. Where the path had iced over from too many passing feet, I scattered ashes from the fireplace. I was at it for a while when I noticed him by the wall. Truth be told, I thought he was dead at first. He was so still as if he had frozen to death.”

As a child, Eugène was glad that the dog was dead. He would never kill a living dog, but he considered himself lucky to have found it dead.