301

The Time of Beasts and Humans

"A fortnight ago, House Barca sent their soldiers to the streets of Oldova," Raúl reported.

Cárcel's eyebrow rose in question. "Only a fortnight ago?"

"They must have realized that Don Joaquín's art storage holds only a few pieces of his collection and that he owns a storehouse in the District of Oldova. As you're well aware, there are numerous warehouses of different merchants all over the region, though it boasts the highest tax rates in Mendoza."

There was one particular reason that business tycoons who were clever with their money stored their wares in Oldova despite the high tax rates. It was the nation's safest harbor for wealth. Unlike nobles, who could mobilize their private soldiers to protect their manors in Ortega, merchants were often at the mercy of professional looters, giving rise to the saying that they "entrust their vaults to God." It was not that they were indifferent to matters of security, as it was human nature to fear losing their possessions the more they owned. There were legal limits on the amount of manpower they could hire for security reasons. As it was illegal for merchants to keep a private army like nobles did, and they did not have the authority represented by family manors, Oldova was the only choice for the wealthy merchant class. But even Oldova had its vulnerabilities. Just as the nation supported those with good money, the imperial family at times supported the more sinister sides of riches as well. As there were plenty of servants willing to smile at their masters during the day only to plunder their belongings at night, the only solution was to set up an area where such people could not enter. And as Don Joaquín was the most successful art dealer in Ortega, he had more than enough funds to own a vast vault in Oldova, built to look like a mansion, to prevent this exact thing from happening.

"What justification did House Barca have of sending their soldiers there?" Cárcel asked.

"That remains unclear," Raúl answered. "I was told that the soldiers arrived under the cover of night. No one witnessed their approach, and the guards did not challenge them, so they did not make a scene or leave a trail. Not a single resident noticed anything."

"They must have moved with intention," Cárcel murmured, resting his chin on his hand as if he wasn't surprised by this at all. His mind churned, piecing together the threads of a plot. Alicia Barca had undoubtedly used her family's soldiers, and Oscar must have cleared the path for them. However, the timing struck him as odd. He had thought that this had happened much longer ago. The crown prince's urgency hinted at motives darker than he had expected.

Oscar was not a man ruled by patience. Obsession and jealousy, or even much more despicable desires, ran through his veins. His hatred for Emiliano must have festered in him. He could not have forgotten the utter humiliation he had suffered at the hands of a lowly painter, just because he had turned back time.

"Ah, my poor cousin," Oscar had said, a trace of derision in his voice. "Did you truly think that I would love a woman who held a dog like you in her heart?"

Even back then, the crown prince had "remembered" everything.

Oscar had never been one to forgive. His wounded pride would not have allowed him to forget Emiliano. Everything about the lowly man he had not managed to defeat was likely still etched in his memory; years of failure to crush the man must have deepened his resentment. If Inés hadn't been so incredibly cautious, Oscar would have already exacted his vengeance on Emiliano in this life. Or perhaps he would have twisted Emiliano's fate into something crueler than death, just to make sure Inés's hands were tied. Though Oscar could not do much against his noble cousin, he could do whatever he wanted to the humble painter without dreading or even thinking of the consequences. Except for Inés's heart.

Cárcel's lips twisted into a lopsided smirk. Oscar must have known all along and been watching all this time. But he had not done anything to Emiliano in the end. The crown prince had grown afraid of driving Inés beyond the reach of his control. Twice, he had pursued her to her death, and he had finally decided to withhold from killing Emiliano this time. The fact that Oscar now feared Inés's despair was ridiculous to Cárcel.

How painful it had to be for Oscar to let the painter live. Reminding Inés of Emiliano and the love they had shared had to be the last thing the bastard wanted. Even Cárcel was subject to petty emotions whenever he looked at Emiliano's necklace, so he could understand how it felt. This was why Oscar had not done anything until now. He may not have been able to, in fact. Even after confirming that Cárcel Escalante was now Inés's new love-or indeed her new weakness-Oscar would have denied it until the end. And now, before it was too late, he had desperately tried to split them apart by using House Barca to get his hands on Emiliano's paintings.

Oscar wanted to obtain Inés's weakness more than anything, but he was also a pitiful bastard who wished for her not to have any more weaknesses at all.

The crown prince's disgusting voice echoed in Cárcel's head yet again. "Indeed, it's a pity that you two do not remember each other. The woman that you love is no better than a common harlot to me. Cárcel Escalante."

Oscar must not have realized it himself back when he had spouted such dirty nonsense. He had spent so many years tormenting her and breaking her in order to prove that Inés Valeztena meant nothing to him, only to realize that she did. Oscar never would have expected himself to hope that they did not remember her.

If something so disgusting and ugly could be called love, Oscar was just another creature of God who could not see the future. Emotions tended to rot after too much time. The crown prince was a lunatic who believed that this decaying, spoiled thing he kept in his wicked heart was true love. It was clear that he spouted such nonsense because that was all he consumed.

Even fortune tellers on street corners were good at putting together someone's past for a few coins. But just as they could not foresee how they would starve tomorrow, Oscar's gaze was fixed only on the past. His head knew nothing but what had happened before, so he was no different from those fortune tellers who told made up drivel for a living. He believed that with his knowledge, he had control of the future, as though he had been given a power rather than a punishment from God. And so, his vision of the future was even blurrier than that of the hungry fortune teller. The crown prince pretended to be a man among beasts, or perhaps even a god among men.

"I believe it is God's way of bringing you salvation. Instead of simply the pain of remembering, He intends to provide you an opportunity," Emiliano had told Cárcel.

Memory being a form of punishment was a trap in itself. Sin gave way to greater sin, and those who believed they knew everything ended up knowing nothing at all. They only looked at the present with memories of their past. They grew blind to what was obvious.

And so, whenever Oscar's hand began to be revealed, Cárcel found himself holding back laughter. Oscar was ridiculous and as pathetic as an insect crawling on the ground. Cárcel knew full well that one day, Oscar would be trampled under the feet of an unfeeling God and be crushed to death.

He would finally be shown that he was no different from all the other lowly beasts, though he imagined himself to be special. And that was how Oscar must have seen Cárcel all this time.

"They say God answers through anything that exists at times. You regained all of your emotions of the moments you suddenly remembered. And as soon as they came to your mind, you must have gone through countless things and experienced numerous emotions before those short moments in your past lives. And you have recovered all of those accumulated emotions and experiences through small memories in the blink of an eye. You spoke as though this was your story, not someone else's that you were unfamiliar with. As if you had experienced those memories yourself in those few seconds."

"And what does that change?" Cárcel had asked.

"It will prepare you with a fury that has not faded over time. You will be able to save Her Ladyship without the temptation, sin, and pain of knowledge."

Perhaps Emiliano was right. The price for Cárcel destroying that statue was already coming to haunt him. In the moments of clarity Emiliano had shown, when his pure voice had taken on a confident note, in the traces of the priest's handwriting that morning he woke up in Bilbao, and in the visions the holy scriptures had shown him.

"Why shouldest thou die before thy time?" (Ecc. 7:17, KJV) "There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death, and there is no discharge in that war, neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it." (Ecc. 8:8)

He recalled the hand of an army priest touching his head as he kneeled on the deck of the rocking ship before the bodies of the fallen soldiers were tossed into the sea. It was clearly a portent of something. At the time, he had thought it to be a sign to not be so foolhardy with his life. But there was a deeper meaning to it.

The statue of the apostle Cárcel had pushed over stood up, wearing Anastasio's black soutane and turning to look at the younger Cárcel. It was him in that first life that he had known nothing about. The man Cárcel had laughed at in the past.

Raúl continued his report. "Barca's soldiers also rushed into Don Joaquín's mansion that lies at the end of Mercedes Street."

"And they were all fully armed, I imagine."

"Yes. They threatened Don Joaquín, telling him to keep quiet and forced him to accept payment for his paintings. They apparently stabbed him in the leg. That was why he has been staying indoors lately."

"How ironic for them to stab him and then pay him."

"They made it so that Don Joaquín technically sold them the paintings."

Cárcel looked down at Emiliano's paintings leaning against the wall and nodded calmly. He had bought up all of the man's paintings displayed at House Barca's exhibition. Even the two landscape paintings other nobles had bought up first.

"What shall we do with all of these?" asked Raúl.

"They ought to go back to their owner. Send them all to Bilbao."

"To Emiliano... Understood, my lord."

"Except for the largest one."

Raúl's gaze swept over the woman with the black hair depicted in said painting.

Cárcel simply left the man to do his bidding, evidently uninterested in what Raúl might think, and continued to stare at the Inés in the painting.

After all the other paintings were removed, only the scene of Inés and her child remained. Cárcel only drew his eyes onto the child in the cradle once Raúl left alongside the servants. He remembered Luca quite vividly. The boy had soft, light brown hair resembling his father, and bright green eyes just like Inés's that sparkled as he giggled. But the sunlight streaming through the window in the painting made the child's hair shine bright, making it look golden rather than light brown, and the eyes that were supposed to be green actually looked as blue as the sea.

Those who believed they knew everything ended up knowing nothing at all. Cárcel mused over this thought as he slowly smiled, bitterness evident in his eyes. The child in the painting wasn't Luca. This was not Emiliano's memory. It was his.

A memory of the first ever Cárcel Escalante. A scene from the life he could not recall at all. His wife. Their firstborn son, who had not even lived for a year, so that they had failed to even put his name on the family register. Inés at a mere eighteen, gazing down at her baby with hesitation. It was a piece depicting the worried gaze of the Cárcel Escalante of that life.

He slowly turned over the painting. On the back of it was written: "He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it; and whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him." (Ecc. 10:8) "Whoso removeth stones shall be hurt therewith; and he that cleaveth wood shall be endangered thereby." (Ecc. 10:9)

The handwriting was unruly, making it look as though Emiliano had scribbled this down as he heard it. This was the only painting on which he had written anything.

How would Oscar react if he found out that he had a hand in helping Cárcel recollect a time that Oscar did not want him to remember? And how would he react when he found out he would soon be thrown into the pit when he was so certain that he, and only he was beloved by God?