Chapter 86 Hope Blue Diamond (Part 3)
◎Guess◎
In the city of Beser, Raphael and Leshert chose an inn as their place to stay. It had convenient transportation and a mixed crowd, making it the best place to hide their identities. More importantly, Raphael liked a room with a window that faced a river outside, and from the corridor one could reach the opposite room - under the window of that room was a bustling market that never stopped day and night.
Anyway, after deciding that this place would be convenient for their escape, the two paid a deposit for four days' stay. It wasn't that Leshert couldn't afford more, but Raphael didn't want him to show off too much wealth.
They deliberately dressed up as impoverished minor nobles because they had outstanding looks and revealed a life of luxury, so they could not pretend to be poor. Otherwise, Raphael would rather dress up as a pauper - he was very experienced in this role, and people who came to search them would never have thought that they would be so "self-degrading".
It’s a pity that the well-proportioned figure and smooth skin developed from years of wealthy life cannot be hidden overnight. Once such disguise is discovered, it will appear even more suspicious.
So Raphael had to settle for the next best thing and disguise himself as a down-and-out noble lady. Such a gender change was enough to confuse the soldiers.
"Miss Eulalia" watched her brother "Mr. Leslie" holding the book, awkwardly and anxiously turning around the room twice, then opening the window and throwing the book into the river. There was a crisp "plop" sound, and soon they both heard the voices of children calling their friends from the other side of the river, and the sound of children jumping into the river.
Leshert: ...
Raphael propped his chin with one hand, with a smile in his eyes: "You should have thrown it away at night. Those children like to squat by the river and try to fish out the things in it."
Leshert stared at the dirty river with a shocked expression. The river was flowing slowly, and the gray-green water was extremely polluted. There were large clumps of suspicious filth floating on the water, but the children jumped in without hesitation.
This river supplies daily water to thousands of poor residents in the lower city of Besser. Excrement goes directly into the river, and laundry, cooking and even drinking water are all drawn directly from the river. Of course, there is no filtering or disinfection measures.
"You've stood by the window long enough." Raphael reminded.
Leshert took one last look at the children—some of them had already sunk into the water, with only the tops of their round heads sticking out—and closed the window.
In addition to intelligence, the Knight Commander also brought back some food. The meal sent by the innkeeper's wife was included in the room rate. The cheap room rate naturally could not provide very delicious food. The black bread was dry and mixed with bran, which would easily scratch your throat if you were not careful. The milk had been filtered several times, but there were still hay crumbs floating on it. The fishy smell was so strong that it sounded like drinking milk directly from a cow's rump. The biscuits were only two finger-length pieces, and they were so hard that they could be used as weapons to stab people to death. There was no need to think about jam.
The only available set meal was to replace the milk with a glass of butter beer. This specialty drink of Besser was mixed with hot butter. The sufficient amount of fat and alcohol made it very popular among the lower-class working people. As for its taste, it could only be described as novel.
Raphael refused the butter beer in a manner consistent with his status and chose the fishy milk. The proprietress even filled up the greasy cup that had a strange smell and felt as if it had not been washed for a long time to show her kindness to the noble lady, and gave Raphael the booklet as a gift.
"Please don't read books like this anymore. They are too..." The Knight Commander thought for a while, then mustered up the courage to squeeze out a less harsh adjective from between his teeth, "...explicit. If, if you are interested in this kind of knowledge, I will find a suitable book for you after returning to Florence."
Raphael looked at him in surprise, and after a while, he fell on the quilt laughing so hard.
Why didn't he know before that this Knight Commander was so interesting? !
"Okay, okay," facing Leshert's forest green eyes, even the most hard-hearted person would be shaken, and Raphael never minded giving in on small things to show his tolerance, "Thank you for your advice, my upright Knight Commander, I accept it. But I need to say that the advice of that 'kind' lady may be exactly what we need now. No, no, no, please don't look at me like that, it makes me feel like I've done something heinous, I mean..."
Raphael paused, calmly avoiding eye contact with Lesherte, and explained, "Look, we all know that my eyes are too recognizable. Even if I disguise and confuse my gender, it is only temporary. I can use it to walk freely in the city, but if I want to leave Berser, the soldiers at the door will recognize faces one by one, and I can't avoid this inspection."
Raphael's words made sense. The color of his pupils was rare and beautiful. Now such beauty became a shackle. He could not hide the color of his eyes, and this would prevent him from leaving Bertha. When the search scope gradually narrowed, there would always be a day when he would be found. Besides, he could not passively wait here to accept the judgment of fate - Florence was still eagerly waiting to welcome its Holy Throne back.
The Pope's travel is a secret. If he is away for too long without any news, this secret will become a bomb that will detonate the Papal States.
Raphael would never allow the Papal States to be in turmoil again.
He had to get back to Florence before Francis did anything to the Papal States.
So he said: "I can't walk up to the soldiers and let them check me, so the only way is to make them unable, or dare not, to check me."
The implication of his words was clear, and Leshert, who was also of noble birth, understood it instantly.
The only people who could make the soldiers afraid to check and unable to check were the nobles.
But they cannot pretend to be down-and-out nobles. They must be real nobles, or even nobles with certain power who can resist such large-scale censorship, or simply senior officers in the army.
Leshert thought for a while, and suddenly noticed the Pope's relaxed expression and calm attitude, and immediately understood: "...You already have an idea?"
Raphael raised his face and smiled at him, denying briskly: "No."
"That……"
To be honest, Raphael's current state does not seem to be at a loss. He is too calm, as if everything is under his control.
But Raphael really hasn't made a decision yet. It's just a vague prototype. He is just used to being Dinghaishen.
He is just the person who can calm people's hearts like a needle.
"Compared to this matter, I am actually more concerned about another issue. As a border city of Calais, there is no reason for Ferrante to ignore Besser. Why can't we find any trace of the 'Holy Raven' here?" Raphael put his fingertips together, his eyes fell on his hands, and fell into deep thought.
"This shouldn't happen. Ferrante is not such a careless person." The Pope muttered to himself.
"perhaps……"
"perhaps……"
Raphael and Lesherte were silent for a moment before speaking at the same time, then looked at each other in surprise and stopped at the same time.
Raphael raised his eyes and raised his hand, signaling Lesherte to speak first. The leader of the Knights Templar, who was always calm and resolute as a rock, hesitated again, and then said slowly: "Perhaps... they have been discovered?"
His voice was low, and the words seemed to amuse the Pope, for he heard His Holiness utter a short laugh.
"There's no need to be so cautious about it. I'm not a kid who would be scared by a single sentence. You can just say they were eliminated." Although he said this in a light tone, there was no smile in Raphael's eyes. When he said the word "eliminated", his teeth knocked against each other lightly, as if he was biting the enemy's flesh and blood, grinding it slowly and forcefully.
"It's a very, very likely guess," Raphael said. "I think so, too."
However, the implications of this speculation are more terrifying than its own meaning.
The Holy Raven controlled by Ferrante is an extremely large group. The internal members with the Arbitration Bureau as the core are the backbone of maintaining this system, while the periphery is composed of various complex groups. In order to extend the tentacles of the Papal State to the farthest place in the shortest time, the Holy Raven is not strict in selecting peripheral members. Merchants, craftsmen, servants, sailors and even vagrants may be the targets of the Holy Raven.
Of course, the crows will not fully trust these people whose loyalty is questionable, but will focus on financial relationships.
But as long as everything exists, there must be traces. Raphael never expected that the Holy Crow would hide until the day it was willing to stand out. Perhaps many countries have already discovered its traces, but just as Calais had planted many spies in the Papal States, in this chaotic era, it was very common for countries to plant spies on each other. All diplomats were spies, and even most nobles and religious personnel had the identity of spies. This allowed them to easily enter upper-class social places to obtain secrets without dying silently when their identities were discovered.
The disappearance of the Holy Raven in the city of Beser gave Raphael a very bad feeling.
Under what circumstances does a country need to go against its norm and start clearing its own spies?
Raphael could only think of one situation, before the war.
If François knew Queen Amenra's will, found a way to trap him in Besser, and cleared out the Vatican's influence in the border city... this series of actions all pointed to an answer that Raphael could not believe.
Leshert's sense of war was sharper than his. The Knight Commander's face had changed. Without Raphael's reminder, he skipped all logical reasoning and reached the same result by relying on intuition and crisis warning.
"He's crazy," the Knight Commander whispered.
"That is the Papal State, the Holy City," he said, "the city-state of the Lord of Lords, the kingdom of the Holy Lord on earth, the ultimate place of faith for hundreds of millions of people. He could not do such a thing."
"Is it really impossible?" Raphael muttered to himself sarcastically, "The Lord of Kings is now trapped in Bethel by him."
"He wants to be the second Marlowe III?" Leshert responded quickly.
In the twenty years after the demise of the Knights Templar, the Papal States fell into a situation of being bullied by others. The once majestic and magnificent country disappeared overnight, and the glory left behind only attracted covetous people. After losing the sharpest spear and the strongest shield, everything fell apart.
As the greatest force in destroying the Knights Templar at the time, Malot III, the monarch of Calais, naturally reaped the most fruitful results - he forced the Pope to move the holy city and moved the center of the Holy See to Calais, thus actually controlling the entire Holy See. This incident became a shame for Florence, and even the Pope at that time was denounced by the Holy See as a heretic who usurped the throne.
The Papal States existed in name only during those years. Florence, which had been looted countless times, became a deserted, empty city. Most of the Vatican's buildings were destroyed by the looting soldiers, and all the residents were fleeing frantically, wanting to get as far away from Florence as possible.
After losing control of Florence, independent city-states gradually emerged within the Papal States. These self-proclaimed independent city-states split and merged, and eventually became thirteen. In the long evolution, the Council of Thirteen headed by the Portia Family was formed, which controlled the actual power of the Papal States' territories outside Florence, until Saint Sistine I used the Great Plague of Florence to completely cleanse this alliance that had existed for more than a hundred years.
The little emperor nicknamed the Mad Emperor, the moody and unpredictable emperor who was blinded by lust in the eyes of outsiders...did he have a dream of becoming the second Marlowe III?
Raphael's expression twisted when he recalled what the little emperor had said to him at Sanxia's engagement ceremony.
He refused to recall those moments again, as it would make him feel physically nauseous, as if a snake had entangled him, with its cold and sticky scales scraping and sliding against his warm skin. That texture was enough to turn off anyone who didn't have a particular hobby.
Raphael took a deep breath and said, "Put this question aside for now. If this speculation is true, we need to rush back to Florence as soon as possible. If it is false... we also need to return to Florence and take the initiative in this matter."
"I hate the feeling of being controlled," the pope said in a whisper.
Anthony walked in the town hall, stroking his carefully trimmed mustache, and watched the servants busying around in the dance floor below with a happy mood. The mayor of Bethel had a conspicuous big belly, and his brown hair was curled and draped over his shoulders. The curve of each curl had been carefully corrected. His hair was covered with thick hair oil, and under the light, there was a circle of white circles like an angel's halo. If a fly stood on it, it would slip and fall.
He put one hand on his waist, looked around proudly, inspecting his territory, like a big-bellied teapot, his face flushed with excitement, and from time to time he gave instructions to the servants passing by.
"Turn that vase around."
"Change the blanket to green."
A few minutes later, he would give completely different orders again.
"Turn that vase around."
"Change the blanket to red."
In short, he is the biggest troublemaker in this busy yet orderly occasion.
But even the Holy Lord could not bear his excitement and loss of composure at the moment. After Anthony ordered the servant to turn the vase for the third time, the servant thought viciously in his heart, I hope that the officer will not vomit the overnight meal because of the mayor's hair oil.
Anthony is going to host a banquet for a high-ranking military officer at the City Hall tonight. It was that officer who led the people to blockade Bather. The mayor does not care how long Bather will be blocked. He only cares about his own future. He sees the possibility of returning to Dudley in this officer.
"Where are the ladies?" Anthony suddenly remembered this and hurriedly grabbed the secretary who was passing by.
In many cases, the city hall is almost equivalent to the mayor's personal world, and the staff there are of course regarded by him as his personal servants and service providers. The staff who receive salaries from the city hall have no room for refusal.
The secretary replied: "The carriage was sent out half an hour ago and will probably be back soon."
Mayor Boser stroked his beard, which pleased him greatly, and announced with great satisfaction, "Very good, we will give that gentleman an absolutely unforgettable night."
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