Illegitimate children of noble blood are more common than you’d think.
When a nobleman or noblewoman commits adultery and a child is born, that child is usually sent off to a monastery or an orphanage. If the affair partner is of low birth, the child is more often than not abandoned in the streets, left to starve or to grow up into a bandit.
If anything, the Duchy of Beren treats illegitimate children ’relatively’ generously. In the empire’s east and in France, the word for bastard doubles as a curse, and across the sea in England, bastards are treated no differently from violent criminals.
When England conscripts men for its navy, they are the first to be taken.
The reason illegitimate children came to be treated this way is simple. A child not born to a proper couple joined under the Lord’s blessing is scorned for having come into the world without it.
The revulsion is deeply religious in nature, and the belief that an illegitimate child can never enter heaven upon death is absolute. In some ways, they may be treated worse than executioners.
For that reason, it is exceedingly rare for an illegitimate child to be recognized as a family’s rightful heir.
Unless only daughters remain in the line of succession, as with Elsheimer, or the family stands on the brink of extinction, recognition is all but impossible. There are special cases like Grand Duke Karlus, but he is the exception among exceptions.
Illegitimate children are a common sight in the streets, but ones of heir caliber like this are extremely rare. Having witnessed a secret of birth from closer up than anyone else, I found the whole thing simply unbelievable.
Vermeer spoke.
"Through our cooperative relationship with the Shadows, we came to observe the power struggle surrounding the Reinfeldt family up close. At first we intended to stand back and watch, but the situation began to take a strange turn."
That strange turn was most likely Bodo’s kidnapping.
After all, it was the act that recklessly provoked a prince.
"Sir Streit, as you know, my salon sits close to the slums."
"You deliberately set up your salon in a crime-ridden district?"
"To avoid prying eyes. Count Palatine Dumarck, the man you were hunting, was one of my better regulars as well. Though these days he’s grown quite friendly with the sewer rats behind his underground bars."
That man, who had backed Prince Louis and gone around spreading the rumor that the crown prince was illegitimate, was now serving a prison sentence on top of a massive fine. So Mühe’s salon was where men like him were sifted out.
"My attendant noticed people from the Elsheimer family asking around the slums for someone. In such an unsettled and delicate political climate, I wondered: why would Elsheimer be making a move?"
"So the first to move wasn’t Neunil but Elsheimer."
"That’s why we made contact with the viscountess, under the pretext of offering our help."
Mühe won the viscountess over, and the viscountess, impressed by Mühe’s information network, shared what she knew. She had learned of the illegitimate child’s existence from a journal left behind by Viscount Elsheimer.
The typical response would have been to treat it as a family disgrace and either eliminate the child or bury the matter entirely, but the viscountess was desperate to find him. Why was she so determined to track him down?
"The viscountess despised her husband."
"I’d heard the marriage wasn’t a happy one, but it went that far?"
"Sir Streit, the viscountess was in love with Adelbert."
Adelbert had said he’d watched over the Elsheimer sisters since they were children. He had grieved bitterly over the viscountess’s death, and it was clear he thought of her as family. But the viscountess saw things differently.
It was Adelbert who had arranged the marriage between Mort and Amalia.
So it was mismatched feelings that ultimately brought about the catastrophe.
If I had married Amalia as the Finance Minister wanted, I might have met a tragic end of my own. One way or another, I would have ended up miserable or tormented.
Running away back then was truly the right call.
"But unfortunately, the viscountess trusted her chamberlain far too much."
"...The chamberlain reported to Mort."
"Mort was far too cunning an opponent for the viscountess. He had her under watch, starting with the chamberlain. I had no idea until Mort sent me a warning to stay out of it."
"That’s when Neunil stepped in."
Vermeer, who had been silent until then, added his piece.
Mort had Neunil deliberately approach the viscountess so that she would come to rely on them. Since Adelbert was of no practical help to her, she had walked straight into the middle of the scheme.
The result: told by Neunil that they had found the illegitimate child, the viscountess went into the slums, walked into a trap, and was murdered. It was Mühe who found her first. Mühe went on.
"As a woman myself, I found the viscountess’s death tragic and heartbreaking. Sir Streit, can you imagine how it feels to be trampled by filthy men without ever once being held by the one you love?"
"...I can only pray she finds rest."
"If only that girl had gone to you for help, Sir Streit, since she had at least a small connection with you, a different ending would have been waiting for her. By the time we found her, she had already frozen to death in the cold."
Whatever else happened, I could not let the men who caused the viscountess’s death go unpunished. It was impossible not to pity such a tragic end. As Mühe said, if only she had come to me for help...
It was hindsight, nothing more, but had she done so, Bodo would have been recognized by the Elsheimer family through peaceful means, and Mort would never have dared to act so rashly.
"Was there a reason you didn’t inform Adelbert?"
"It took us some time to piece things together ourselves. The Shadows were focused on external affairs rather than internal ones at the time. We failed to realize just how far Mort was willing to go."
Since they had stumbled onto the matter by chance, neither Mühe nor the Shadows had realized it would spiral this far. And before they could uncover the full truth, major incidents erupted one after another.
Vermeer spoke.
"Not long after we agreed with Adelbert to say she had died of illness, in order to protect the viscountess’s honor, the Finance Minister was poisoned, and Adelbert himself was nearly assassinated by Mort."
To drag the Finance Minister down for good, Mort had proposed the scheme to Adelbert, and Adelbert had accepted. They even brought in Neunil and helped the Finance Minister make contact with Heinlein.
Once he had succeeded in borrowing Heinlein’s funds, the Finance Minister began plotting Adelbert’s assassination, and the plan was to use that attempt as the justification for finishing the Finance Minister off. Then the viscountess affair suddenly blew up.
"If Bodo were recognized as a member of the Elsheimer family, Mort would lose his standing entirely. And he must have realized the viscountess was in love with Adelbert..."
"He must have believed Adelbert and the viscountess had betrayed him."
With searing rage and hatred in his heart.
At last, I felt I understood Mort’s motive.
As Adelbert’s confidant, and as the man Adelbert had raised to his position, Mort must have held a certain loyalty toward him, and marrying the Elsheimer viscountess would have cemented that trust.
But as the viscountess went searching for the hidden illegitimate child, a rift opened between Mort and his wife. If you ask me, it doesn’t seem like the viscountess’s love was entirely one-sided either.
Perhaps Adelbert and the viscountess had even shared secret rendezvous. It felt awkward to dig into Adelbert’s shame, so I hadn’t pressed him about it at the time, but it was more than enough reason for Mort to burn with rage.
He must have believed his master and his wife had been treating him like a puppet. He was of a scheming, devious disposition to begin with, and with rage and hatred piled on top, the plan veered wildly off its original course.
The terror and cruelty of scheming made me shudder.
"Adelbert, Mort, Neunil, the Judicial Department, even the court clergy, all of them were holding one another in a taut balance within this whirlpool of schemes. And then..."
Vermeer’s gaze fixed on me.