The Abandoned Duchess Seems to Want a Peaceful Life - Chapter 14

Chapter 14: The Lord, Again

"I have something to consult you about, so I'd like to either visit you soon or have you come to us. Is there a day that suits you?"

The boy who had come from the lord's manor asked in polite words.

He was still small, but compared to the village children his hair was smooth and his skin glossy, and he wore good clothes. Judging from his bright expression, it was clear at a glance that he was doted on and treated with care by the lord.

Lutz agonized. If told to come right now, he would have to drop everything, even in the middle of brewing ale, and fly over; but going straight to the lord's manor with the boy, saying "I'll come right away!", might also be rude.

The right answer for nobles changed from one occasion to the next.

"Um, you are..."

"I'm Ed! I've been living at the lord's manor since a few days ago!"

"I see. Ed, young Ed? Should I visit the lord's manor right now, or should I ask you to come back and ask again which day is convenient for the lord, saying that any time is fine on our side? Which would be better?"

The boy groaned, "Hmm."

"The lord seems busy both morning and noon, so I think any time is fine."

"No, that can't be right. A time when she's as free as possible would be better."

"I don't think there are many free times. Even I'm surprised, thinking, nobles work this much."

When the boy told him that the lord, if Miss Marie didn't stop her, really did work all the time, Lutz grew more and more troubled.

—I don't have the heart to tell a person like that that any time is fine on our side so please come to us.

"...By the way, why is the lord so busy?"

It might be that napping counted as work, or that reciting poetry over tea was one of the noble's important habits, or something like that. Let it be something like that. Lutz asked, stifling his desperate hope, and the boy lowered the outer ends of his brows a little, troubled.

"Well, in the mornings she does difficult talks and calculations with her secretary, Miss Marie. About the territory's, um, income and expenses, estimates for orders to merchants, how to settle transactions."

"I see... and then?"

"She makes lunch with Miss Marie! Lately she's even taught me how to cook, and I can make simple things!"

"...? The lord cooks?"

"Yes, and it's really, really delicious. Sir Cedric doesn't make a very pleasant face about it, but even so, he eats the most of anybody."

"He definitely loves what Lady Melfina makes," he said, lowering his voice as if whispering in Lutz's ear.

Lutz grew anxious, wondering whether he had just learned a secret he should not know, about that knight whose handsome face only made him seem more frightening.

"I-I see... and the afternoon, how does she spend the afternoon?"

Cold sweat began to come, wondering whether it was all right to pry into a noble's private affairs like this, but the more he asked, the further it drifted from the image of nobles in Lutz's mind.

I'm only working out when to visit. Lutz made that excuse to himself.

"She hires adventurers to investigate the mountains and the lake and receives their reports, and does purchasing from nearby towns and the ducal capital."

"Ah, so those strangers I'd noticed prowling the mountains and the lake lately were adventurers. ...If it's about this land, we'd answer right away if she asked us."

Lutz had been clearing land around here for over fifty years and still lived working a field. He prided himself on knowing most things there were to know about the Enkar region.

He had no intention of saying it aloud, but it felt as if he were being told that our reports could not be trusted, and that stung, a little.

"I asked too, you know. Why don't you ask the people of the village?"

"You asked that..."

"And she said everyone has their own work, so what can be investigated with money she'll investigate that way, and consult only on the things that are truly important!"

"Is that so..."

"So I think it's fine to go right away if Lady Melfina says she wants to talk! She said she wants to develop things as quickly as possible!"

It had reached even Lutz's ears that the new lord was doing something with the serf settlement.

Among the residents of Enkar Village, some did not welcome a young noble girl stirring things up, but at the same time, he could feel resentment building: why was the lord only fussing over the serfs?

That nobles didn't bother with them was something to welcome. Even Lutz, who believed that from the bottom of his heart, had been curious when he saw the serfs carrying garbage away from the dump at the edge of the village, wondering what they were up to.

And in a long line of wagons, too.

There was no way the serf settlement could have prepared those wagons and donkeys. Then who had arranged them... there was no need to think.

The lord was favoring the serfs, not them. And the serfs, doing something new, seemed to be enjoying it.

Frontier villages basically had few amusements and were always starved for new topics. To have no place for oneself in the excited atmosphere was something that stirred impatience, a feeling of not wanting to be left behind, a dissatisfaction.

"Then let's go, Village Chief!"

"Wha—huh?!"

"It's all right, Lady Melfina is kind! There's nothing scary at all!"

And so, half dragged by the boy, Lutz stormed the lord's manor.

The lord, with the still fearsome-looking bodyguard knight behind her, was taking off her apron, saying "Oh my, it's almost lunchtime, Ed!" with a surprised look, and Lutz turned pale, thinking the timing had been bad after all.

* * *

"I'm so sorry. I asked you to find out when would suit Lutz, and you actually brought the man himself."

"No, it is I who am terribly sorry and feel dreadful about the sudden visit."

"Since you've come all this way, shall we get the talk done first? Marie and Cedric, go ahead and have lunch..."

"I will sit in on the interview and take notes of the necessary points."

"I will stand by behind you."

Both said it so flatly, leaving no room to argue, that Melfina decided to get it over with quickly and took her seat in the study chair.

"I've been surveying the area around the village and the forest near Lake Moltre and the settlement, but I thought it would be more reliable to ask Lutz about the village."

"Y-yes, please ask me anything."

"About the crops: besides wheat, the main ones are vegetables and potatoes, and of those, seventy percent is potato fields."

"Yes, potatoes are our staple, so we plant a lot."

"Does the village keep any livestock?"

"A few people have chicken coops, and pigs number about seventy now."

"Ah, I've seen them several times in the village and on the highway. They're let roam free, aren't they? I was surprised. And there are quite a lot."

Enkar Village was a small village of about two hundred people. Seventy pigs there meant nearly one pig per household.

"Yes, they're friendly, and beg for food here and there. Pigs grow even if left alone, and they bear piglets too, so every house keeps at least one and slaughters it before winter. Though houses with babies put up fences so the pigs can't get in."

"I see... that is something worth keeping up from now on."

Pigs are omnivores and eat anything. That must be what this meant.

"Do they not ruin the fields?"

"It's a rule that each owner of a field puts up a fence. Even if pigs get in and ruin it, the pig's owner bears no responsibility."

According to him, this was a common system in frontier villages.

Land settled by a pioneer party first became the common property of the pioneer party. At that stage, it seemed anyone could pitch a tent wherever they liked, let their own livestock eat the plants of the land, and members of the party could go into the forest to hunt and gather freely.

From there they proceeded with clearing, made a village, and divided the cleared land among the households, but as a remnant of the land having been common property to begin with, management of land after rights were obtained became the owner's responsibility, and keeping other people's pigs from wandering onto one's premises was likewise the owner's duty.

—Even in this world there's an idea like fence laws.

In the regions of her previous life where settlers had colonized the new continent and pushed development forward, a person who became the owner of land bore the responsibility of fencing and managing it, and it had been only about fifty years before the era in which she herself had lived that every piece of land had its owner decided and the fences were removed.

That was how deeply the consciousness that "land is the community's property" was rooted in pioneers, and it was probably also a system for survival.

"Lutz. I'm not saying right away, but I intend eventually to make it mandatory to keep pigs in pens."

"That is... may I ask, why?"

Melfina, who had been born and raised in the royal capital, in a strictly controlled noble quarter at that, was unfamiliar with it, but in this world letting pigs roam free was an utterly ordinary custom.

There was also the aspect that the pigs neatly disposed of kitchen scraps from households and the waste thrown out of windows.

For Lutz, suddenly told to stop letting pigs roam, the sight of that waste disposal system halting must be coming to mind. In terms of her previous life, it was like garbage trucks stopping.

"First, simply, free-range keeping is unsanitary, and even now it's dangerous for little children and babies, isn't it? And owners too, don't they sometimes lose a pig let out into the forest because beasts eat it and it never comes back?"

"That's true, but... pigs have always just been there, so what the villagers would say..."

"I understand it's hard to break with custom."

Building and managing pens was not free. On top of that, pigs that had always grown on their own by being left alone, eating leftovers and human waste and acorns and young buds in the forest, would now have to be given prepared feed.

—But pens are a system I want to introduce as soon as possible.

Livestock dung and urine make good fertilizer material. For Melfina, who was preparing to get through a large-scale famine, leaving them to flow out onto the hills and fields was something she could not overlook.

But if it only increased the owners' trouble, complaints were natural. So she needed to present them with benefits they could clearly recognize.

"In exchange, I'll take on building the pens myself, and for each pig I'll also pay a boarding fee, with a limit of three years from the day free-range keeping is banned."

"Th-that means that if we leave pigs with you, a reward comes from the lord?"

"Yes. Slaughtering the pigs you leave with me is up to the owner's discretion, and breeding them is fine too. However, each household may keep up to two pigs, and the boarding period will be six months. For pigs kept beyond that number and boarding periods beyond that, I will in turn take a boarding fee.

After that, free-range keeping will be banned completely, and if anyone sees a pig in the village, the person who finds it may slaughter and eat it as they please."

It was already about one pig per household. If they kept two, it would bring a little income, and if they could slaughter and eat grown pigs, the benefits would outweigh the drawbacks, since they wouldn't be attacked by wild beasts.

"Understood. I will make it known in that way."

He looked so relieved, as if this were the end of the talk, but the talk was not even half over.

—Somehow, talking with Lutz makes me feel sorry, as if I'm bullying him...

It pricked her conscience to see an old man with a badly bent back sweating cold sweat and cringing.

—I hope that sometime he comes to think I'm not frightening.

Even so, it pained Melfina that there were so many things she had to discuss with him as lord and as the one responsible for the village.