The Abandoned Duchess Seems to Want a Peaceful Life - Chapter 15

Chapter 15: An Invitation of Chickens and Pumpkins

"Regarding poultry farming, keeping birds privately may go on as it is, but if chickens are raised in a poultry house, I will buy their droppings. For the time being, without limit."

"Wha—!?"

As Lutz's eyes bulged and his body shook, the chair he sat in rattled. Behind her, Cedric twitched, and Lutz went pale and shrank.

"Please forgive my bad manners. I was... so surprised."

"That chair is a little loose in its joints. Don't mind it."

She raised a hand slightly to restrain Cedric, and a sigh escaped her.

She would have liked neither of them to make large movements: Lutz was frightened of nobles, and Cedric apparently moved on instinct when someone acted suspiciously in front of the person he guarded.

"And, um, buying... droppings?"

"We build a chicken house of a set floor area, raise a set number of chickens in it, spread chaff on the floor, and when it is replaced at regular intervals, I buy the droppings together with the old chaff."

For a farming village, cash income was worth something entirely different from what it was in the cities. Between barter and money, the quantity and quality of what one could choose when buying changed.

For Melfina, too, chicken droppings were a material she wanted urgently and in as large a quantity as possible.

Chicken droppings contained the most phosphorus among livestock-derived composts, and their fertilizing efficiency was high. They were something she wanted more than anything right now, enough to reach out for with her bare hands.

—The risk of fertilizer burn is just as high, but we've only just begun clearing, and above all, the rainy season is coming soon. I want to finish fertilizing before the heavy rain starts.

After burning the wasteland, she would make nutrient-rich soil. In the Enkar region, where the population was small relative to the area to be cultivated, there was little material to make fertilizer from to begin with.

Human waste being scattered around was unsanitary and not at all pleasant, but more than that, it felt like such a waste.

—I'll have to deal with this soon too. Before the smell or the dirt, poor sanitation is, above all, a source of epidemics.

But for now, she had to settle the arrangements about livestock before anything else.

"Chickens are very useful poultry, so I'd like to actively increase them. I plan to introduce cattle eventually, but the initial investment for those is high, so I intend to build a ranch and barns directly under the lord and hire people to look after them."

"Ah, yes..."

"Marie, please arrange craftsmen and laborers to build an enclosure and pigsty on the land selected for the pig farm."

"Understood."

"I'll let you know once I've drawn up detailed rules for the chicken houses. And one more thing."

Lutz looked as if he might cry, wondering whether there was still more.

"It's all right, this is the last."

"Y-yes, I apologize."

"In the places I've looked around, I haven't seen any, but are there no dogs in the village? Hunting dogs, or guard dogs?"

"Stray dogs sometimes come down from the forest chasing pigs, but there are no pet dogs in the village."

"You don't use dogs for hunting? Don't pests come after the crops?"

"The larger ones, well, a bear sometimes comes down from the forest, though rarely. If it's a weak one, the men of the village deal with it, but for a strong one, we petition the bailiff who governs the neighboring villages and have him send a suppression party."

Besides those, wild animals like foxes and weasels also apparently appeared. Guard dogs would be extremely useful against such pests too.

"Is there a reason dogs haven't been introduced?"

"Hunting dogs are very expensive. Because dogs breed so much, mongrels increase too much and might turn feral in the mountains or catch rabies, so the lords forbade frontier villages from keeping them."

"I see..."

A pioneer party settles at the very edge, where it could be wiped out at any moment. Through history, there must have been countless tragedies.

If the people disappeared and the dogs remained, the dogs would turn feral in the mountains and could later become a danger to people who came to settle again.

The Enkar region had a rich forest, a water source centered on the lake, and a vast uninhabited land, so it was quite possible that dogs could survive and return to the wild.

"Is there anyone in the village who has handled hunting dogs and is still an active hunter?"

"There's one. He's old, but he goes hunting with his sons and grandsons, and he's still going strong."

"Then, if he isn't out hunting today, could you call him this afternoon? It concerns the village, so Lutz, you sit in as well."

Lutz made a face of despair, as if asking whether this would go on in the afternoon too.

It was said that being disliked was part of the job of those who stand above others, but being feared this much left Melfina a little lonely.

* * *

After lunch, as she and Marie were calculating the budget for livestock raising, Cliff, who had been tending the horses, came to say there was a visitor.

The visitor was an old man whose hair was just as white as Lutz's, and he gave his name as Godot, a hunter. He was short and wrinkled, but sturdily built, as befit an active hunter.

Several deep scars were left on the arms showing from his short sleeves, which conveyed that he was a veteran hunter.

"Welcome, Godot. I'm glad you came."

"Pardon the intrusion. The village chief told me there was something to discuss about hunting dogs."

"Yes, I heard from Lutz that you used to work with dogs, so I thought I might ask you to raise new hunting dogs for me."

"I can't pay for the dogs."

At the blunt reply, Marie stopped the pen she was taking notes with. Beside Godot, Lutz held his stomach.

"Godot, first listen to Lady Melfina to the end."

"But, Village Chief, a hunting dog costs about one gold coin. On top of that, dogs retire after six or seven years. A hunter's earnings can't possibly cover that."

Godot sounded as if he didn't want to talk about dogs at all, but beneath his stubborn attitude, attachment to dogs... affection... seeped through.

Dogs have been humanity's best partners in every age.

Someone who had worked with dogs must know their usefulness, their dependability, and also how much one misses them.

Breeds specialized for hunting existed in this world too. In the west, where sheep were pastured, there were sheepdogs, and at the royal castle guard dogs were even let loose at night.

Those were managed by specialist breeders, and even puppies traded at very high prices.

From now on the Enkar region was going to cultivate a great deal of land and make fields, and she very much wanted to introduce dogs early to protect those fields.

"Godot, what I want to ask is whether, if I buy puppies, you could train them for me. While you're training them I'll pay you a boarding fee, and when puppies are eventually born, I'd like you to keep raising those too. And once the dogs have grown and become good enough that you can take them along when you hunt, how about you give me one tenth of the dogs' work?"

Hunting was not taxed, so that should not be too heavy a burden.

In practice, for a while she would be employing Godot as a hunting dog trainer.

"...Is that all right? With those terms, I can't see how it benefits the lord."

"I told Lutz as well: from now on, free-range keeping of livestock will be banned in the Enkar region. When livestock gather in one place, wild animals will come after them. Dogs are absolutely necessary to protect the village from outside enemies. Please train them well to obey people, so that they can protect the village from pests that ruin the fields as well."

Godot seemed dazed, but in time he clenched his fist, trembling on his knee.

"...I can live with dogs again."

He said it in a trembling voice and bowed deeply, and Lutz, watching from beside him, said he would hold a village meeting to let everyone know what had been discussed today.

It felt vaguely like time to break up. She tried to think whether there was anything else she had forgotten to say, and thought of something.

"Oh, and one more thing."

"S-still something!?"

She blinked at Lutz, who raised his voice, and at almost the same moment Cedric cleared his throat. To Lutz, whose face had gone the color of someone about to be strangled, she said, "Please calm down."

"This is not an order, just if you wouldn't mind, but would you plant pumpkins in the fields where you haven't yet planted potatoes?"

"Pumpkins, Lady Melfina?"

"Yes, I love pumpkins, so I'd like everyone in Enkar Village to grow a lot of them as well."

"If it's an amount of pumpkins the lord could eat, the fields we have now are enough..."

Potatoes were the farmers' staple at the moment. As village chief, he could hardly nod easily to being told to reduce their planting. Melfina had no intention of asking for that much either.

What mattered was to make people want, of their own accord, to grow something other than potatoes.

"For pumpkins harvested from fields where people have stopped planting potatoes and planted pumpkins instead, I will buy all of them."

"Many people would be glad of that!"

She had named it Operation "If They Have No Potatoes, Let Them Eat Wheat Bought with Pumpkin Money."

"Then I leave everything to you."

She did not know how many people would agree, but if she could reduce the planted area of potatoes even a little, that would do. To Melfina, the final proposal was a hope that at least a few people might go along with it.

As it turned out, there were quite a few people in Enkar Village too who wanted to join in on the new lord's unusual policies.

At the harvest festival held in the Enkar region for the first time that autumn, chicken and pumpkin dishes would be served in abundance.

It was the moment when the standing of potatoes and pumpkins, which in this world should never have been overturned, suddenly wavered.