1. Anneliese
Letter to Versailles
Noble Duchess.
Thanks to your kind care, my health is much better than it was on Christmas Day.
I received a letter from you a few days ago, asking me how I was doing, and I am grateful for it. I thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to look after me at the banquet of France, and I ask you to be assured that all is well at the château and that I can walk and do some simple work, so I have taken the liberty of sending away your servant, for which your ladyship will not blame me.
I hope that your ladyship is well in Versailles and will return to the old castle soon. Your black cat eats and drinks, as usual, every day, your home is spotless and your lamps are as bright as new.
I'll be waiting at the Château for news from the Duchess. May you have a good time in Paris!
Yours faithfully, Anneliese Jo
February 3, Lister's Old Castle Book
It's been a month since I stayed at Lister Castle and I have to admit that I am now in love with this empty and silent castle. The early morning sun hits my room just in time to wake up my daily sleepiness and the forest air is fresh and the winter is even colder, but I love the waking temperature.
The snow had stopped, the snow that had fallen a few days before had not yet melted, and even with the sun high in the sky, the cold temperatures of midwinter would not allow it to melt into the water so quickly. Everything was white, pure white, and flawless.
I held my heated milk inside the fortress and gazed out the window at the white earth, such a silent winter allowed me to quietly contemplate my next plans, only it was a pity that my body had not yet fully recovered and I was afraid it could not withstand such temperatures outside the house, or perhaps I had developed a lazy mind and thought of setting out after the winter. But I understand that it is necessary to wait, that the warrior who is well prepared has a chance to win, and that God favors the well-prepared one, does he not? If even the heavens can't pick a thorn in the side, where is the reason for not succeeding?
Letter to Lister's Castle
Noble Duchess.
Thank you for the invitation, I will be arriving at Lister Castle by February 6.
The request in your ladyship's letter, I will certainly do what I can, this trip to bring your ladyship the information I know about the Blood Sacred Artifacts if there is any incompleteness I hope your ladyship will understand my incompetence.
Yours faithfully, Mars Abe.
Qinghai Abel Estate Book
Mars writes to the King's Duchess that he will be coming to Lister's Keep as a guest by February 6, bringing information about the Blood Sacrament that the King's Duchess has asked him to pry.
It had been nearly three years since I left Thomas Manor, and I had moved through nearly a hundred cities in Europe without finding any semblance of the Blood Sacrament.
On my way to visit Lord Lister, I was unfortunately bitten by a wolf in the forest and was saved by the butler of Lister Castle to save my life. Only after I explained everything to the King's Lady did she, as a Blood, finally restrain her desire to use me as food.
I told her in broken French and gestures that I was from Thomas Hall in London and had been ordered by King Kamalila to find the Blood Sacrament, but still had not had a shred of reliable information to lead me to any of the twenty-seven sacramentals. I asked the Duchess of the King if she could supply me with some information, promising a heavy reward. She immediately wrote to her friend, Mars, who was far away in China.
The Duchess accepted the deposit I had paid, and I told her that if the information from Mars was reliable, I would give her enough money to buy a detached house in Paris after finding the sacrament. That was her only wish after her husband's death.
I landed at the old castle of Lister in the name of the King's Duchess, and the butler treated my wounds. The pack of wolves had sunk their teeth in deep enough that the butler said it might leave a scar.
Everything in the Château de Liste and the solitary mansion in Versailles was left to her by the King of Liste as a place of refuge, and she refused to follow the advice of the French police to hand over the Château de Liste to the government.
After I checked into the château and spoke French with her for a week, she told me that she spoke Chinese and English and that she said I didn't need to obsess about speaking French to her who always made grammatical errors.
I blushed and confessed to her that I thought she only spoke French.
I've always hated France because the French don't like English and I only speak English as a foreign language.
Mrs. Lister said with undisguised sarcasm, "French is a beautiful language, and you have ruined it."
It embarrassed me, but I knew that bantering others had always been a common pleasure of the Bloods. That's all the bad taste the older Blood have had for hundreds and thousands of years of living, isn't it? Luckily I'm still human, and while I aspire to be a Blood, at least I won't learn these cheap jokes from them once I've achieved that desire. So, I ignore all this teasing from her, knowing that sooner or later even she will get tired of it.
These days the Duchess had gone to Versailles, and before she left had hired a group of slaves from outside, saying that she feared I was too badly injured to care for myself, so she had hired someone to look after me. I did not believe her, for she was afraid that I would take away the valuable things of her castle, that the price of them would be much more than the deposit I had given her, and that she would lose a great deal.
However, to keep her on her toes for a few days at Versailles, and to revenge her for thus distrusting me, I politely told her in my letter to her that I had dismissed all the servants.
I did.
When the servants left, I gave them a tip. Since the bid was twice as high as the King's wife's, they were extra happy as they packed their bags and said to me in French as they left, "May the Lord bless you, beautiful lady."
At that time, I was jokingly calculating in my mind whether I should tell them or not that this was the ancient castle of the Bloods at all.
Will the Bloods, or humans who follow the Bloods, be blessed by the Lord?
"Not," I said to myself as I closed the door.
2. Anneliese.
The odd man arrived quietly along with the chimes of midnight, and I was stirred awake by the electric bell, dragging my sleepy body downstairs to open the door. The biting cold wind outside the house burrowed into every inch of my skin and I couldn't help but shiver, my mind doubly clear before I could see the visitor.
He was an eccentric man, dressed in a nineteenth-century army-green king's outfit with an annoying ruffled collar clustered in layers in front of his neck, a neat attire, but one that made him look uncommonly human, after all. His hair was short and curly, on the gray side, and his biting eyes had been on me since the door opened. His skin was pale, more pronounced against the night. His hair and clothes were covered in a thin layer of snow, and I crossed over to him to see that snow was falling heavily outside, and the wind was making its way indoors with reckless abandon.
I felt my nose tickle and couldn't help but close my eyes and sneeze in front of him as a coolness leaned over. When I opened my eyes, he had taken a few steps forward and closed the door behind him with his backhand.
I was in front of him, only half a finger away. My head could only reach his chest and I had to look up to see him. It seemed to me that I was already almost leaning over him. This awkward state of affairs forced me to take a few quick steps backward and I couldn't help but lower my head, knowing that my face had long since flushed.
"Excuse me, mademoiselle." The first words the man spoke were in the original French. His voice was a little husky, but it didn't detract from that inherently masculine, mellow voice, and his tone of rigor and determination, how it sounded like a formal official speaking to a subordinate.
I adjusted my thoughts, worked out a long list of French in my head, slowly translated the sentence I wanted to say, and then looked up - through my face was still rolling - and said to him in French, "Sir, you are trespassing, and according to the law, I am allowed to sue you."
"Miss." He held his right hand to his chest and bowed to me in a sort of salute, then continued in fluent English, "If you don't mind, I am available to speak to you in English. I presume you are not the lady of the house?"
I froze, then nodded to him affirmatively, "I look after the old castle for the owner here."
"So," he smiled calmly, "no wonder your accent doesn't sound pure French, are you of Asian descent?"
His sudden question caught me off guard.
"Yes. I'm one-sixteenth Chinese."
"Forgive me for intruding in the night, my lady, I am a traveler who got lost in the forest when I got lost with a friend on the way. The snow fell heavily and by chance, I was able to reach here. I have taken the liberty of coming here, and I hope you will allow me to stay overnight, and I will leave on my own after dawn."
I heard him sound sincere, and it was snowing outside, so I couldn't feel comfortable sending him away, and besides, he was so handsome.
The white snow on him had melted into the water in the pounding warm air and seeped into his coat. His hair was wet, yet it covered his head like a flourishing fire. His deep eyes were slightly grey, with a light whose gravity made them impossible to look at. He had a tightly closed mouth under his long, high nose, lined with a slightly square jaw.
He looked like a man in an ancient European painting. His attire, on the other hand, did.
There are many such canvases in the collection of the King's Duchess, some of them nude (but full nudity I didn't look at), and the strong pecs and abs of those men used to make me blush.
The most striking feature of the attire of the man now before me was the tight pants and riding boots, which accentuated his fine lines.
He was smiling at me when I realized I was paying attention to everything he was doing again and said, "Did you say yes, miss?"
I nodded repeatedly and sidled him into the living room.
I invited him to sit down, put the tea bag in a cup, made a simple cup of black tea, added the right amount of lemon juice, and handed it to him. He held the cup of tea in both hands but didn't seem to intend to drink it as he sat on the couch and I stood in front of him. After pouring the tea, I wasn't sure what to do next.
"My name is Daniel Edson, beautiful lady, can you tell me your name?" He suddenly looked up and asked me, I was a little nervous and a fine bead of sweat permeated my hand. I stammered and replied, "My ... name is Anneliese Jo Thomas, you can call me Anneliese Jo."
"Is it okay to call you Joe?" He set his teacup down on the coffee table and stood up to face me, "You look young for your age."
I didn't deny or nod, but I knew in my heart that I didn't like people calling me young because young meant less seniority, and meant I was immature. And I had been out searching for holy weapons for years to prove to others that I would be more capable than my older elders.
Daniel approached me and reached up to straighten the ruffles of my bohemian white dress before gazing quietly into my face. "Jo," he flicked his lips, "I'm tired, can you show me to my room?"
It was like I was expecting him to say or do something else, but he didn't, instead, he walked around me and walked straight up the stairs.
When I reacted, I immediately grabbed the large set of keys from the coffee table and followed him upstairs. The keys had been left to me by the Countess, and I think that was why she had hired someone to "look after" me.
On the way upstairs, I fumbled with the heavy keychain, feeling vaguely out of place. I knew the brass key was for the study, the small gold key was for the study, and the gray round key was for the house where I lived, but what about the rest of the keys? There were at least fifty keys left. So what this caused was that I took Daniel through the room after room trying out one key after another at the door.
He leaned against the door with interest to watch me fumble.
"Why don't you go downstairs and rest for a while." I put the nth key in the lock hole, assured him for the nth time that "I'll find the room in a minute," and nodded confidently, not sure if it was to him or myself.
I pulled out the ill-fitting key, then picked up another.
Daniel's long, white, slender hand suddenly reached out and I heard him say, "Let me try!" Then he took a whole bunch of keys out of my hands. He picked a key as if at random, gave me a meaningful look, inserted it into the lock, and gave it a slight twist.
The door opened.
"It's lucky, isn't it?" He said to a dumbfounded me.
It was a bedroom, much smaller than the one I had, but still had a large floor-to-ceiling window with a view out and was fully furnished. I changed the sheets off the bed and got the quilt out of the room's wardrobe. With that done, Daniel asked me where there was a washroom. His suitcase was already open next to the bed, and in addition to clothes, I seemed to see books and other angular items.
But I knew it was rude to stare at someone's intimate belongings, so I quickly averted my eyes and went out to point him in the direction of the washroom.
He said "thank you" and reminded me to get an early night's rest before taking his robe and toiletries to the washroom. I left his room when I heard the sound of the water rushing.
3. Anneliese
I just drifted off to sleep in the wee hours of the morning and woke up at noon, a blanket of white outside my window, the snow last night had continued until now, it was awful.
I vaguely remembered that I had taken in a handsome man who was staying overnight at midnight, but I listened carefully and did not hear any noise from inside the old castle. He must have been too tired, and perhaps still asleep now.
I am so sure of myself because I have great faith in the sound transmission of the Château de Liste (or rather I know its soundproofing very well), and from my personal experience I understand that when the Duchess of the King leads a song in the lavatory, I am fortunate enough to be in the drawing-room to be able to hear the magnificent French flourishes of the seventeenth-century blood noblewoman.
So I wasn't the least bit worried that this strange visitor would now be scurrying around the old castle, marveling at the assorted collections of the Duchess, and then making incredulous odd noises - just like the servants did back then.
I took my tablet and wandered around the web a few times, replying to a comment from a friend named "The Chancellor".
Chancellor: warmth is everywhere. If your heart is cold, you are not fit to set out even if the weather turns warm; to act within one's means is what everyone should do, and to do things impulsively invites only more trouble. Warrior, are you ready for everything?
Anneliese Jo: Thank you for that reminder. Justice of the Peace.
I have to mention more about the mystery man.
As I have written, his dress was that of an ancient European man, like those of the Bloods I had spied at Thomas's Manor, who were also strangely dressed, but so proper that they would not have been pointed out to anyone in the Middle Ages, except by looking uncomfortable.
It's like spanning centuries, and they stay alive. Ageless, immortal, and immortalized to live forever.
Could he be a Blood too? I was surprised by my thoughts. So what purpose did he have in mind for staying overnight, given the absence of the castle's blood master?
I wasn't a Blood and couldn't read people's minds as easily as a well-read ancient Blood could, so I wasn't sure if that guess was correct. From what I remember, his skin was indeed as pale as that of Blood. But, goodness! There are plenty of pale-skinned people aren't there? His deep eyes, his looks, his dress code, all could find a reasonable explanation. I could get a Victorian women's outfit to wear too, these are just personal interests. As for the personality and the calm and steady demeanor, those can be faked out as well. It's a bit far-fetched, but after all, it's the most plausible explanation I can think of at the moment.
He wasn't a Blood, the more I said this to myself in my mind, the more I suspected his mysterious identity.
Was it as simple as him saying he was just a lost traveler? His easy luggage told me that this was never the case, but ... I knew I had to stop this unwarranted paranoid thinking. I forced myself to accept what he said, that he was just a traveler.
Delicious food can make people happy, and I need to get up quickly to fill my stomach as a way to make sure I don't pass out from hunger at any moment.