49. Stepmother and Illegitimate Child (1)

Lady Maude stared at me intently.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because there are rumors circulating that you were deeply involved in Barbarossa’s downfall.”

In truth, what people dared not speak of in Lady Maude’s presence wasn’t Barbarossa’s name.

What people really whispered about and wondered was whether the rumor was true that Lady Maude had sent a woman to ruin the life of the illegitimate child her husband had brought home.

“Barbarossa, Sir Percival’s illegitimate son, had one condition attached to his entry into the knight order. That was ‘never to marry for life.'”

It was the upper society’s disgust—they would let him join, but they didn’t want his tainted bloodline to continue.

“But Barbarossa, who agreed to that condition, didn’t exactly live a clean life after joining. Though the knight order demanded purity and chastity, Barbarossa knew they would overlook a certain amount of dalliance.”

That was indeed the case. Until a pregnant woman appeared before Barbarossa claiming to carry his child, everyone merely frowned but didn’t make an issue of it.

“Barbarossa, who thought he had managed his lower half well enough, was shocked and didn’t know what to do. There’s a clear difference between enjoying moderate pleasure and having a woman who would prove his infidelity through pregnancy in front of the knight order.”

Lady Maude listened in silence. There wasn’t a trace of emotion in her eyes.

“With his induction ceremony just around the corner, Barbarossa must have felt like the sky was falling. What about the expectations of his parents who had given him, an illegitimate child, a chance and pushed him this far… that is, you and Sir Percival. Above all, he thought his successful life was finally unfolding before him after all that humiliation. Oh my, he fell from there all the way down!”

I paused to catch my breath. It was for the twist that would follow.

“Yet surprisingly, Barbarossa, who had grown up being cursed as a fatherless bastard, was willing to give up his promising future and take responsibility by marrying the woman. The woman was touched.”

And she was so touched that…

“She confessed everything. Saying that since he’s being so good to her, she had to tell him the truth. That that child wasn’t Barbarossa’s, and that she had lied in front of people at the request of his stepmother.”

She exposed the true feelings of the legitimate wife who had been watching the illegitimate child quietly work hard and succeed for a long time.

Lady Maude, who had been praised for not hating her husband’s illegitimate child and raising him without discrimination, had actually harbored a chilling grudge all along.

She had endured. To topple Barbarossa when he had climbed the highest.

For a revenge more perfect than anything else.

“So how could I not care about your intentions? Is that answer enough?”

Now, only a deadly silence flowed between Lady Maude and me.

“Could you like your husband’s illegitimate child, my lady?”

“No. But I don’t think I could endure until being called a virtuous wife and then destroy a child’s life at the decisive moment.”

“That child was unpleasant from the moment I first saw him. He was an eyesore.”

The illegitimate child even had superior talent compared to her son, Donau. If he had become a knight as planned, Barbarossa would now be competing with Lucion for rank.

“It was a strange thing to hear. That I was virtuous. From what others said, I was so merciful that I raised my stepson and biological son without discrimination. It’s all nonsense. My child is the legitimate heir, and that child is merely my husband’s illegitimate son. How could I have treated him warmly?”

“But you tried to make him a knight. Even attaching the condition that he would vow never to commit infidelity for life when the knight order said an illegitimate child couldn’t join.”

While investigating the relationship between Barbarossa and Lady Maude, there was one thing I was curious about.

This story about how Barbarossa’s future was ruined by Lady Maude’s scheme just before he was to join the knight order.

‘If it’s a story that society keeps hushed up, why does everyone seem to know so much about Barbarossa’s love life? Especially for someone who supposedly had secret relationships because of his chastity vow.’

As if someone had deliberately spread the rumors.

“The day that child first held a wooden sword, he was relentlessly driving Donau back when our eyes met, and he immediately put down the wooden sword. How do you think I felt then?”

“An illegitimate child taking away even what your son was good at. Your heart must have been torn.”

Honestly, not many people would be unaffected by seeing that.

“I was born into a knight’s family and grew up watching knights wield swords all my life.”

Lady Maude’s breathing became uneven. Her entire body was trembling slightly.

“The day I told that child to prepare for sword lessons just like Donau, I had to pray at the temple all day. Asking for God to grant me a little mercy.”

At that moment, I deeply sympathized with Lady Maude.

Judging by her actions now, the prayer she made that day was not ‘May the illegitimate child accidentally cut his own neck while showing off with a sword’ or ‘May Sir Percival’s excellent martial prowess finally appear in our Donau.’

“Please, let me show at least minimal mercy as a believer in God! I have no intention of treating that child better or worse, so let me continue to treat him fairly!”

At first, Lady Maude did not transfer her hatred for her husband onto his illegitimate child. And she was saying even now that this was how it should have been.

Lady Maude wiped away the tears streaming down her cheeks.

“I have never seen a more devout and deep-hearted believer than you, my lady. Your benevolence toward Barbarossa seems such a waste when compared to his actions.”

“You say I’m devout?”

Lady Maude sneered.

“There was simply no better excuse to avoid Sir Percival. The thought of having to join flesh with that unclean man again was too horrifying. My goodness, to have marital relations with that man……”

Lady Maude had already given birth to the legitimate heir, Donau, for Sir Percival. She had fulfilled her duty in the arranged marriage.

So Sir Percival had nothing to say to a wife who, due to her suddenly deepened faith, declared she would no longer have marital relations with her husband.

“I hated having that illegitimate child sit at the table with my child, and I felt hatred when the servants called that bastard ‘young master’ just like they did Donau. To me, that child was an uninvited guest.”

Lady Maude gritted her teeth.

“And yet you say I’m a merciful lady because I gave that child a sword just like I did my son? Ha……”

She’s a woman who had been killing her emotions within herself for decades to maintain an emotionless calm.

“When Barbarossa…… When Barbarossa first saw Donau wielding a sword and picked up a sword himself……”

I imagined it. Young Donau and Barbarossa, holding wooden swords for the first time, sparring. And Lady Maude watching the scene with an expressionless face.

“There it was—Sir Percival’s talent that Donau had not inherited.”

Barbarossa, who had been suppressed ever since entering Sir Percival’s house, would have swung the sword frantically, finally discovering his own talent.

“I could tell at a glance that he was a child with outstanding aptitude.”

Seeing the shocked face of his stepmother, he would have realized something was wrong. That his talent shouldn’t surpass Donau’s.

“I……”

Self-loathing for making an innocent child feel self-conscious.

Yet the moment she let Barbarossa hold a sword, she could clearly see what would happen in the future.

“……I only allowed him sword lessons to be fair. So the claim that I was a loving stepmother who even permitted sword lessons is wrong.”

“But from what you’re saying, you still sound like a saint.”

“That child was a foreign element that drove my family to ruin. I just…… realized I couldn’t and didn’t need to love him, but judged that I could at least be his patron.”

Patron. As defined by Lady Maude, she and Barbarossa had a patronage relationship. This was to assert that Donau was her only biological child, and that she wasn’t narrow-minded enough to deny the illegitimate child’s outstanding talent.

That might be true. As might the claim that she discriminated between Donau and Barbarossa.

“Wait. Let’s go back to the beginning, Lady Maude. You sponsored Barbarossa with the intention of treating him fairly, so why are such rumors circulating now?”

But why…… after Barbarossa left the castle, did rumors spread that this was all Lady Maude’s scheme?

Based on our conversation so far, Lady Maude seemed like someone who would pierce her own thigh with a needle while pushing her husband’s illegitimate son to become a knight, rather than someone who would devise such a complicated scheme.

After a long silence, Lady Maude answered weakly.

“The woman Barbarossa was seeing at that time wasn’t only seeing Barbarossa.”

“What?”

“Where did he meet a woman like her. She was divorced but hadn’t completely separated from her ex-husband. That woman was seeing two men at the same time, so even she couldn’t be certain which of them was the father of her child.”

“You mean……”

“Anyway, for me, who had been sponsoring him all this time hoping he would become a knight, it was a bolt from the blue. An ex-husband she separated from after domestic troubles, and Barbarossa, an illegitimate son from a wealthy family. It was obvious which man that woman would name as her child’s father.”

And she did indeed claim it was Barbarossa’s child without hesitation, Lady Maude added.

“So, you intervened at that point?”

Gave her money to leave Barbarossa?

“I told her I would give her money if she went to Barbarossa and told him that she had named him as the father of her unborn child because I had ordered her to do so. More precisely, to say she had approached Barbarossa from the beginning because of me.”

“What?”