The Abandoned Duchess Seems to Want a Peaceful Life - Chapter 17

Chapter 17: The Shadow of Famine and a Ruler's Irritation

"The west and the south are no good either."

Alexis von Oldrand muttered it with a groan as he looked over the reports.

He was always composed, and even now his face was expressionless, as though he had killed every emotion. But only the butler and the bodyguard knight attending him knew that the fingers pressed to his temple were a sign of how deeply irritated he was.

"In the regions I toured in person, the potato fields were nearly dead across the board. I checked with my uncle at the royal palace, and it seems that every field in the kingdom is in the same state."

"What does the temple say about the cause?"

"That it is not a curse but an epidemic, and so the response is left to the church."

"…And the church?"

"That it has not been confirmed to be an epidemic, so they are earnestly investigating, including the possibility of a curse."

"Neither is of any use."

It was a curse he let slip only in the study, with just his two close aides present. That he had let it out meant Alexis was in an extremely foul mood.

The temple, which upholds the development of culture and tradition and is founded on the worship of the goddess, and the church, which is a magical research institution and the bearer of the male deity's prestige, have traditionally been on poor terms.

Usually they keep to their own spheres and it rarely grows into any major dispute, but in an emergency they tend to shift the blame onto each other and trumpet how incompetent the other is.

Getting angry and asking whether this was any time for such things had been the ruler's job in every age. At times like this, even their own claims that their work is the salvation of the people sounded terribly hollow.

Both the priests serving the temple and the clergy working in the church had the learning of healing and recovery magic written into their doctrine, and by and large injuries were treated at the temple and illness at the church.

This time it was a crop disease, so the temple side surely wanted to say it fell within the church's domain.

"It is only just the start of summer, so it seems people are staving off hunger with wild plants and fruit, and with fish caught in rivers and lakes, but that will only be a stopgap. It can't last forever, and food that can't be stored will run out by winter. Above all, there's no way to secure enough to feed every commoner."

"Sir August, please restrain yourself."

"It's fine. …Have there been deaths from starvation already?"

"There seem to be a few, but they were people who were already living on the edge, and overall it is minor at this point. It likely isn't enough to require opening the ducal house's storehouses, but if this continues, the summer wheat harvest may shrink."

If ears of wheat swayed before a hungry man, it would be impossible to tell him not to lay a hand on them. Even if soldiers were sent on patrol to prevent it, if people kept dying of starvation, the hands available to harvest would dwindle.

Forcing farm work on people in a state of starvation would only make them keel over and never move again.

"If only we had some crop that could take its place… no, it is too late for that now."

"If the withering had progressed slowly, we might have had time to take measures, but it seems that once the leaves turned a little yellow, the roots died almost instantly."

Even if the disease were to subside, planting potatoes now would leave no telling how far starvation would spread before harvest. Merely imagining it was dreadful enough, and reality would surely be far more ghastly.

"We have no choice but to lower the tax rate and have the bailiff of each city take the lead in distributing food, with priority to serfs and the poor who hold no land of their own."

"Whether it actually reaches the mouths of the poor is another matter, though. They do say 'assume the wheat you hand the miller is a tenth lighter.'"

It was a saying meaning that someone you entrust your property to will not necessarily manage it honestly. It also carried a more direct meaning, as millers and bakers are always the objects of hatred for those who have been driven to starvation.

"…If the situation is serious, it would be better for the fortress cities to close their gates from autumn through spring."

"I feel for the soldiers at the gates, I do."

Those driven to starvation head for the cities, where work and goods are concentrated. Even a child could understand what would happen if the gates were shut there.

As the butler and the knight argued, Alexis vividly pictured the corpses of farmers and serfs, thin as sticks, strewn about outside the walls, and rubbed his aching temple.

*This again.*

Since Alexis had inherited the ducal title, no major trouble had broken out on the surface. That was because he had stamped out every problem by force before it grew. He had been especially strict with corruption and crime. His way of governing held that if you loosen one thing, everything loosens.

But a crop blight was another matter. At most, he could adopt the policies that seemed effective and severely punish those who committed fraud amid the chaos.

The Duchy of Oldrand was a cold land even within the Francesca Kingdom, and its yields were never great compared to the south and the west. If the lord did not manage it properly, the people would be at a dead end in no time.

It was not so bad if a ruler threw away his duties and gave himself over to debauchery, but to govern such a land properly put great stress on its lord. Having held the ducal title for five years, he understood well why his father had always worn such a sullen look.

"It's ironic that the wheat harvest is the same as every year. For the nobles of the royal capital, if not for the regional lords, it must be hard to feel how much this epidemic is affecting things."

"We eat bread too. We have no right to throw stones at those in the royal capital."

Nobles ate white bread, commoners with some means ate black bread, and poor farmers and serfs ate potatoes and beans. That was the mainstream staple of this country.

The problem was that the lower down you went, the larger the population, and as long as wheat could be harvested as usual, it was hard for those eating white bread to feel how serious things were.

Of course, if farmers and serfs died of starvation in large numbers and the harvest was affected, tax revenue would drop and they might feel a sense of crisis. Even then, the royals and central nobles who would move to do something fundamental about it would likely be a minority.

Even if it was only treating the symptoms, he would have to lower taxes and judge the moment to finally open the ducal house's storehouses.

*Everything about this is a headache.*

Thinking that, he suddenly turned over the documents in his hand.

"There are no petitions from the north."

To be precise, none from the pioneer villages at the northernmost edge of the duchy. Requests for tax reductions and aid were arriving from the farming villages and towns on the way there, but the number dwindled the farther north one went, and beyond a certain line they stopped altogether.

*Beyond this point should be the pioneering regions.*

Pioneer settlers, who were carving settlements out of mountains and fields, had little chance of a stable harvest and were extremely vulnerable to food crises even in ordinary times. That was precisely why they were charged a very low tax rate until the settlement stabilized.

Even so, whenever there were signs of famine, it was always the pioneers who sent in petitions for aid first.

"Now that you mention it, I haven't heard much from the north. It's a region at the edge of the duchy still under development, and there's little traffic, so maybe it has escaped the spread of the disease."

"…The Enkar region, where Madam is staying, is in that area too, is it not?"

At the butler's words, Alexis remembered his wife for the first time in quite a while.

Around the wedding, preparing to receive her and arranging the party had taken a great deal of his time, but since she had left there had been no word of her, and all he did was occasionally glance over the reports from Cedric, whom he had assigned as her bodyguard knight.

Even those reports did not describe any great disturbance, and with the famine investigation taking up all his attention, he had not even looked at them lately.

"She seemed to have been troubling the village chief of Enkar Village, but if the disease hasn't spread there, that would be a blessing in disguise."

Since he had ceded the land to Melfina, that place was no longer part of the Duchy of Oldrand. He had no obligation to extend a hand however dire its straits, but it was land the House of Oldrand had originally funded the settlement of. He could not let it be ruined by the whim of a wife who surely had no experience in running a domain.

Melfina herself could simply abandon the village and head to the royal capital, but to the pioneer settlers the land they had cleared was as good as their own flesh and blood. No matter how dire the circumstances, they would not be able to leave it.

"Miss Marie is also staying there with Madam. Perhaps it would be good to confirm the details once."

"Marie… I see."

It had been about three months ago, some time after Alexis held his wedding, that the girl he had never treated carelessly as a sister, even though he could not formally call her one, had sent a letter saying she was leaving the ducal house.

She was not entered in the household register, and he had understood that she found this house stifling, so he had written a reply giving his permission along with a note saying she could return at any time if she changed her mind, but amid the crush of work she had slipped out of his mind.

He recalled his sister, who since childhood had suppressed her emotions and, though she accepted what she was given, never sought anything for herself.

Though he knew perfectly well it was in no way her fault, Marie's existence was tied to the many tragedies that had later befallen the House of Oldrand, and he seemed to have unconsciously banished her from his thoughts.

Even though she was not in the register, and even though he had never called her his sister, he had thought he was looking out for her, and now he realized, belatedly, that he had not noticed there had been no word from Marie since that one letter.

They say no news is good news, but in this emergency, the fact that no information at all was coming in gave him a sense of foreboding.

"Send whoever is free to Enkar Village and have them check on how things stand. Even though I handed the lordship to my wife, that place is part of the north all the same, and we cannot let it starve and perish."

If things were truly terrible there, that could even serve as a pretext to take the Enkar region away from her and make her stay quietly in the royal capital this time.

"Oh, then I'll make a quick dash there on horseback. I'd like to see my cousin's face again, too."

"…Don't overdo it."

When August von Carlisle of the Oldrand Ducal Knights bowed, Alexis's interest in the north vanished from his mind.

There was a mountain of other things he had to think about before the reports came in.

The report that the Enkar region was having a rare bumper harvest reached Alexis just after that week ended.