The Abandoned Duchess Seems to Want a Peaceful Life - Chapter 18

Chapter 18: A Bountiful Land

The wasteland that included Lake Moltre and the Forest of Moltre lay at the very north of the Francesca Kingdom, a region where land clearing by pioneer parties was still ongoing, collectively called the Enkar region.

To the lord who governed the vast north, the still largely undeveloped lands farther north beyond it were, to put it bluntly, an unremarkable region.

There was the southern city of Elban, which boasted the most developed port in the duchy, flourished on trade, and had grown so prosperous it was called the second royal capital.

There was Austin, the western city that produced enormous wealth from mines and jewelry work.

There was Yohou in the east, patron of the arts, with an elegant cityscape at the forefront of cultural development.

And there was the ducal capital, Soarasonne, the great fortress city known as the Great Flower of the North.

All of them still had plenty of room to grow, and it was only natural for a ruler to focus on the places where vast numbers of people lived.

"There were no signs of famine in Enkar Village or its surroundings. In fact, it's incredible. The fields stretched almost to the horizon. The villagers and serfs aren't enough, so they apparently plan to hire laborers from neighboring villages for the harvest. That's probably why so few petitions come from that area, too. They can easily pay the wages out of part of the harvest, and if anything, the villages that get hired will be the ones saved."

"…Surely there is some mistake?"

Enkar Village itself was a fairly successful village in terms of clearing and settlement, but that was thanks to the fertile forest soil from cutting into the Forest of Moltre.

Clearing a forest is no ordinary labor, and the harvest does not increase dramatically in just a few years.

Fields stretching nearly to the horizon were something that made one suspect that August, who had gone to check, had been slipped some strange drug.

"Apparently this year, under Madam's lead, they planted no more potatoes than in the existing fields. In the newly cleared fields they planted corn, and thanks to that the effect of the blight was extremely slight."

"Corn? That is more fodder than a crop."

"Potatoes promise bigger yields, so everyone just grows potatoes for food, but it's not that people can't eat it. In the taverns of the lower town, boiled corn rubbed with salt often comes out as a snack."

Though it's not popular, since even commoners strongly think of it as animal feed, August added, and Alexis folded his arms.

*What on earth is my wife thinking?*

When a lord clears land, the first thing he has planted is wheat. Wheat is a kind of currency, and having it grow abundantly is itself proof of the land's value.

Making new fields and then planting something other than wheat in them was something no one with even a slight understanding of running a domain would ever do.

He thought for a moment, but concluded that the answer would not come quickly. He did not know the woman he had taken as his wife well enough to imagine what Melfina was thinking.

As head of the ducal house, taking in a mistress of the household to manage its affairs and producing an heir was nothing other than a duty. But Oldrand already had a direct-line nephew, William, and a sister, Marie, though an unofficial one.

Melfina was the daughter who had been proposed at such a time by the House of Marquis Crawford, whose domain held the great granary of the south.

The north has deep snow and is often hit by poor harvests, but its knight orders are highly trained and take in men who seek service from all over the country. The south has rich land, but tensions with the neighboring country to the south are not uncommon.

For the lords of the south, which yields abundant crops but has a spark of trouble close at hand, and of the north, which tends toward unstable food supply but fields many sturdy knights, a political marriage was by no means a bad arrangement.

What was needed was only an alliance between north and south, and the marriage was like signing the contract for it.

Alexis had never once thought he needed a partner in his private life. Still less could he imagine anything but a nightmare in a young lady raised in comfort in a townhouse in the royal capital meddling in the household affairs of Oldrand, which had finally stabilized after a period of turmoil.

That was precisely why he had refrained from granting her any authority as his wife, and had made it clear he would keep providing her a comfortable greenhouse as before so that his own life would not change.

But Melfina had turned his words, that she could live wherever she liked, to her own advantage, wrested the lordship of the Enkar region from him, and left.

He had thought her an odd woman even then, but after she hurried out of the ducal manor, he had only received reports from minimal surveillance and pushed her to the back of his mind.

Honestly, he had very nearly forgotten that he was married.

"…Did you meet Cedric?"

"Yes. It seems he often spends whole days out in the fields keeping Madam company. He's still doing his work as bodyguard, but lately he was grumbling that the serfs' children are about to steal that role from him."

"What do you mean?"

"It seems the serfs adore her, Lady Melfina. When Lady Melfina stops by, the children follow her around the whole time, so I hear."

Alexis's impression of Melfina was not especially strong. He only recalled the pale skin, typical of the nobility, so white that the blood vessels showed blue, and the slender fingers, without a trace of roughness, that he had touched when he put the ring on her.

The combination of Melfina, a marquis's daughter and a thoroughbred noble, with serfs seemed completely mismatched.

"Cedric, of all people, would be the type to cut down any serf who came near my wife."

"Well, apparently he already attacked one once, and got thoroughly scolded for it by Lady Melfina. She made him choose: either go back to the ducal house, or obey her without a word."

With his personality, that's a cruel choice to be forced into, poor guy, isn't it, August laughed. Though he called his cousin unfortunate, his tone was thoroughly amused.

Cedric's family background was good enough that, coupled with his rigidity, there were many ways in which he failed to get along with the other knights. August, standing before him, though related to him by blood, disliked Cedric's stiff-necked manner, and the two were even said to be like dog and monkey.

"But I think he's changed a bit, you know."

Alexis asked with his eyes what he meant, and August grinned.

"For better or worse, I'd say the tension has gone out of his shoulders. The chains he used to bind himself with, 'Discipline! Rules! Model behavior!', have loosened just a little. Though he's still as nagging as ever about not wearing the knight's uniform sloppily and walking with a straight back."

"Cedric is right."

Saying so, he tapped his fingertips on the desk.

"Can we assume Enkar Village is able to export food elsewhere?"

"Normally corn, as I said, is what drunkards eat when anything will do as a snack for cheap liquor, and it isn't much loved even by commoners, so I doubt it would sell. But people will eat even poison herbs rather than starve. No one will complain about food that tastes decent."

"Meaning?"

"I don't think it can cover the entire north, but it might be possible to keep the damage to a minimum. There's just one big problem, though."

"Say it."

"Your Grace, there's a pretty good chance you've earned Madam's personal grudge, isn't there?"

The fingers that had been tapping the desk stopped dead.

"Is that so…?"

"Of course it is. Declaring to a noble wife that you won't give her your favor is the same as picking a fight with her head-on. If word gets around that she and you are on bad terms, Lady Melfina becomes a laughingstock in high society. A wife who isn't loved by her husband has rank but no standing."

"I promised not to neglect her standing."

As long as she did not overstep as the duke's wife, she could enjoy luxury in a peaceful place. She should have been able to live far more comfortably than in the cold, cramped north, and Alexis had never once commented on Melfina's extravagances.

"Well, telling her 'I won't love you, I won't touch you, I won't have children with you, go wherever you like' is rough, you know. Lady Melfina didn't lose out at all, but a timid noble daughter, hearing that and then having no visit from her groom on the wedding night, might well have hanged herself."

"………"

"And then Madam left, and now she's the formal lord of the Enkar region, and a lord is also an independent sovereign of that land. Even if your rank is higher, you have no right to demand food from them just because we have a poor harvest and they have a good one."

"I have no such intention."

If he did that, it could very well mean war between domains.

Alexis and Melfina could hardly be said to be evenly matched to begin with, but if it came to a one-sided invasion and she petitioned the royal house, it was he who would be in the weaker position.

Above all, both the church and the temple loathed private wars. If someone picked an unreasonable fight, they sometimes suspended their activities within that territory.

How terrifying it would be for the groups in charge of treating illness and injury to suspend their activities went without saying. And yet they would pretend to be "saviors of the people."

"But the Enkar region was originally ducal territory. It is also land that the ducal house supported the pioneer party in clearing for many years."

"That's the delicate part. In the fields cleared back when the ducal house was supporting them, they kept planting wheat and potatoes as usual, even if they increased the share of other vegetables. The cornfields are all new land cleared after Madam moved to Enkar Village."

"Fields stretching to the horizon? Is that even possible?"

"I was shown the clearing plan and the maps and made to check them thoroughly. Miss Marie has kept all the documents as secretary, and Cedric also testifies that the clearing is genuine."

That a bountiful field had been made in just a few months, in a place where clearing had crawled along for decades, was hard to believe in itself, but Alexis concluded that even if some shady means had been used, no evidence of it remained.

"Then what should we do? If we knew nothing, that would be one thing, but knowing there is a rich harvest in the same north while our territory starves, we cannot fail to take action."

Well, now, August made a show of thinking. They had known each other long enough that when he took this attitude, he usually already had the answer.

"You may speak frankly."

"Then first, I think we should approach Madam about buying the crops as an equal lord. Of course, given the emergency, she'll probably gouge us quite a bit, but even so the damage to the ducal house will be lighter than throwing open all the storehouses."

"Paying a price is only natural."

"Madam struck me, even after just a short conversation, as someone with quite rational thinking. Building vast fields in such a short time at the northern edge of the duchy, where clearing crawled along, and leading them to a bumper harvest was no accident. Personally, I think we should show respect for that skill. If it's a proper transaction, I don't think she'd refuse out of personal resentment."

"Hmm…"

"Well, there's a good chance that feeling gets added onto the price, but that's the same in any domain."

"Unless the price is set so high it topples the duchy, we have no choice. Needs must."

Starting from the premise of a pampered city woman, and moreover one who was his wife in name only, it had probably been hard for him to think of this as an equal transaction.

August had first overturned that premise by telling him that he was in the position of the one who was resented.

Some said the knight was unserious in attitude and disrespectful to his lord, but Alexis was helped more often than not by his blunt way of speaking. This time was no exception.

"Oh, and I think you should buy the recipes for the corn dishes from Madam, too."

"Other than eating it off the cob or making soup, is there something else?"

"Well, that's the thing. In the Enkar region, a dish of thin flatbread made from ground corn with various fillings tucked inside is all the rage. It's novel, and it's delicious. It goes great with ale, too."

I bet it'll be a hit in the ducal capital too. The laughing knight seemed to have already sampled the novel dish.

"Understood, we will buy that as well."

"Then shall we send an envoy and start negotiations?"

"No, I will go myself."

"Huh?"

"I don't doubt your report, but I find I want to see this field of bumper crops stretching to the horizon with my own eyes."

It had been about a week for August to leave and return, but the famine caused by the potato blight was only spreading.

Pleas for relief were arriving from nearly every city, town, and village in the domain.

Shutting himself away and hearing nothing but gloomy reports was taking a bit of a toll even on Alexis, who was called the Ice Duke.

"If we are buying that recipe, it would be better to taste it for myself first."

He knew full well how forced the excuse was.

A mountain of work waited to be dealt with, and the trip to Enkar Village alone, changing horses, would take about two or three days each way. Including the inspection and negotiations on site, he would be away for a week to nearly ten days.

Even so, he wanted to see it with his own eyes. He could not suppress the urge.

"Call Rufus. I will temporarily entrust him with oversight of the civil officials."

"Mr. Rufus is getting on in years, so you should go easier on him, Your Grace. Well, but if you're going to see Madam, I'm sure he'll be glad."

Knowing perfectly well that was not what he meant, teasing his lord was exactly this rogue knight's bad habit.

But at the moment, Alexis did not feel like reproaching him.