Canon: Remove if not applicable.Most of the time, Astolphe was left to his own devices. His father was often in discussions all day long, with Gralat’s older brother. And Gralat spent his day training. The day after Astolphe had first participated in the training, he had woken up in pain. The training had left him bruised, and his movements were stiff and slow. He quickly learned that the training in Ellvaldez almost could be called torturous.
He had been left in peace with the book Gralat had lent him, though he also felt a little hurt that Gralat didn’t at least ask him if he wanted to join that days training.
Reading the book, which had the most gorgeous illustrations but wasn’t very thick, taught him that Ellvaldez, indeed, had few resources and no chance of sustaining itself without outside help. It made him wonder if that, perhaps, had something to do with his father’s association with the Berlurik family. But he would need to do far more research than this to be able to ask proper questions, and expect proper answers that he could understand.
He finished the book close to mid-day. Dinner was taken two hours past noon, so that people could be outside during the brightest time of the day. The sun went down much earlier than in the rest of Baltrhein. But it was around noon that he finished the book, and despite the pain, he eventually climbed out of the bed and pulled on some more clothes to keep him at least somewhat warm. Once he judged himself sufficiently dressed, he headed out of the bedroom, and followed the corridor.
It was only when he realized that he was lost, that he realized that this was the first time that he went anywhere without Gralat for company and guide. It wasn’t a big manor, but it was apparently big enough for taking a wrong turn in.
He wandered down the corridor, looking for anything that would tell him exactly where he was, but there were not many things that stood out in the corridor. All the doors looked the same. There were paintings, but none of them looked so remarkable that he had remembered them. The paintings portrayed people, probably ancestors of Gralat’s. Besides the hair styles being slightly different, and the fashion, they all looked pretty alike; they were probably really tall too, just like the two members of the Berlurik family that he had met thus far.
Not everyone had as piercing eyes as Gralat did, and sometimes another color appeared in the portraits, but they all were reminiscent to the climate of the country.
He had stopped to look up at one or two of the paintings, to scrutinize the beard that the man in it had chosen to wear. It looked like a goat’s beard, but was way too long to actually look anything but ridiculous. Otherwise he was fairly good looking. Nowhere near how good-looking Gralat and his brother was, but definitely good looking. Either way, the fashion of whatever time period the person in the painting came from was unfortunate, too. It didn’t compliment him at all. Astolphe tipped his head to the side, the hand not holding the book at his chin in thought.
“Maybe he just had a terrible fashion sense?”
Astolphe nearly jumped out of his skin, and the hair at the back of his neck prickled. He spun around, wincing at the pain the sudden movement caused. That training really had made him sore all over. But he had not noticed anyone approach; he had neither heard nor seen anyone.
The reason for that was easily explained, because the man stood in a doorway nearly right behind Astolphe. The door was only partially open, as if the man had been in the process of opening it and stopped when he noticed Astolphe.
He had a beard - a much less unfortunate one than the man in the painting - and of course he was tall. He had mussed, pale yellow hair, that was mostly brushed out of his face except some strands that hung into his eyes and halfway down his cheeks. He had dark circles under his squinting, blue eyes. He was pale, too. And he was not dressed for receiving; he looked more like he had just stepped out of bed and like he was sick, to be honest. Astolphe could see that the room behind him was dark. The curtains must be drawn over the windows.
He was probably around Astolphe’s father’s age, or a little bit older than him by some years, and maybe he was Gralat’s supposedly bedridden father.
He was looking at the painting.
“...Um,” was the most intelligent thing that Astolphe, completely thrown off, managed to say.
The man slowly turned his gaze from the painting to Astolphe. “You must be Camus’ youngest,” he said. Astolphe nodded. “Astolphe,” he introduced himself with a bow. “Yes, you look just like him,” the man said. He didn’t introduce himself in return. “You haven’t seen Amabel, have you?” He added, when he saw Astolphe’s confused look, “Our maid.”
Astolphe shook his head. He had barely seen a trace of any of the four servants that the house employed. He knew there was the maid, a cook, and two stable hands. There was apparently a man they employed as a gardener and a woman that did laundry, too, but he had not seen either of them at all. The gardener only worked there during the summer, anyway, and clearly he had his work cut out for him because things did not easily grow in Ellvaldez.
“I have not seen her, no.”
The man made a thoughtful sound at the back of his throat. “I guess she’ll show up. That woman has an uncanny ability of knowing when I’m doing something I shouldn’t.”
But a maid couldn’t tell her master off, could she? Or was that another Ellvaldez thing?
The man nodded toward the painting Astolphe had been looking at, but made a grimace when it seemed to exacerbate his health in some way. Maybe it made him dizzy or gave him a headache, or something else of the sort. “Sometimes ancestors looks ridiculous, don’t they? That’s my great-grandfather, and he didn't live all that long ago.” He frowned, and blinked and made another grimace. “Never got very old, either.”
What was he supposed to say to that? They had not been properly introduced and Astolphe was in his house.
A shadow moved in the corner of his eye, and Astolphe saw a woman with wrinkles around her mouth draw near.
“Oh, Amabel, there you are,” the man said, and the “Master, you ought to be in bed still,” confirmed Astolphe’s suspicion that the man was indubitably the master of the house and Gralat’s father. She ushered the man back into the room and she was, indeed, scolding him. Astolphe didn’t get the chance to exchange more words with him.
“And you, are you lost?”
She was very direct, wasn’t she? That seemed to be a common trait among the people of Ellvaldez.
“I was looking for the library,” Astolphe said.
“The library? It’s down this corridor, to the left, down a flight of stairs, straight down the corridor until the first corridor the the right. It’s the second door to the right.”
Apparently busy, she departed the way she had come from, muttering something under her breath. It sounded way too much like an insult directed toward her master for comfort.
When he started down the corridor to follow the directions she had given him, he paused when he realized. Gralat’s father had used Astolphe’s father’s name, and nothing else. No title or other polite way of calling him. He didn’t think that was because of the Ellvaldez directness, because Gralat’s brother called Astolphe’s father Marquis and called Astolphe Lord. Or maybe they were simply very good friends? But Astolphe had not ever heard of the Berlurik family, before just recently.
It was very strange.