The Abandoned Duchess Seems to Want a Peaceful Life - Chapter 24

Chapter 24: Urban Planning

"A reorganization of the village, you say?"

"Yes. It will have to be done in a great hurry, but I'd like to build a square and lay out roads radiating from it as the center, and expand the village. Right now the houses and chicken coops are built all over the place, aren't they? In some places the roads are very narrow, or they suddenly end, so it's inconvenient for getting around."

Lutz looked unwell again today. I see, yes, he said, but it came across that he was thoroughly bewildered.

"Living here, we don't have much trouble as things stand..."

"If more people start coming and going, or trade with other places begins, then building houses at random like this will leave the land cut off halfway or the boundaries vague, and that can become a source of trouble. Besides, I'm planning to build various new facilities."

If that happened, secondary and tertiary industries would be born in Enkar Village, which had been supplying almost everything through primary industry. Horses and carriages would also pass through more often.

If land readjustment would be needed sooner or later, it was better to do it before people and industries increased beyond what they were now.

"Well, um, thanks to you, Lady Melfina, a good many of the villagers are well off now, but whether every one of them has the, um, leeway to build a new house..."

"That's all right. In fact, Enkar Village has been paying too much in taxes up to now. I have recovered it, so there are funds."

"Eh?!"

"A pioneer party is usually set at a very low tax rate, or exempted for decades at a time. But when I asked Nid, he said half of the harvest was being collected as land tax, so I thought it was strange and had it looked into."

It was only that she had reported it when Alexis came to do business, so it was Alexis who had actually investigated and Alexis who had punished the tax collector who had been acting dishonestly, but this was in the first place a failing of the ducal house.

"It seems the bailiff who had jurisdiction over this area and the tax collector colluded and committed fraud. I had them collect everything, going back into the past."

Inflating a set tax a little when collecting it, and misrepresenting the set tax itself, mean entirely different things. If the latter were tolerated, then to exaggerate a little, it was a crime that would shake even the foundations of monarchy.

Though Alexis had his quirks of character, when it came to maintaining order as a lord he was a character who was strict to a degree one might call harsh. He had confiscated all the private property of the bailiff and tax collector for the amounts they had embezzled, and covered the shortfall at the ducal house's expense to return it.

In the first place, the reason the opening of the Enkar region had progressed so slowly was that the lord had neglected to recruit investors to support it or to dispatch engineers.

The mainstream farming in this world was the so-called three-field system: divide the fields in three, plant wheat at the start of winter in the first, beans and barley in spring in the second, and leave the third fallow, rotating each. 

On manors directly held by the lord and in large granary regions in particular, that was common knowledge, and Melfina had studied that method as part of her education, as the only daughter of a great lord of the south.

In the Enkar region, however, wheat was grown on nothing but the rule of thumb that it must not be grown in succession, and they appeared to have been farming in a way close to the two-field system from before the three-field system developed.

The Enkar region was land that had been opened many times over. If engineers had properly taken part, such a state of affairs would have been impossible.

Moreover, when Melfina first came to this village, the serfs' tools had been in tatters, in a terrible state. With that, land clearing certainly would not have gone forward.

*—The reason Enkar was chosen in the game as the land to receive Saint Maria's blessing must be that this was the harshest, most abandoned land in the Francesca Kingdom.*

If anything, it was remarkable that they had managed to form a village of Enkar Village's size in this condition. She could see how earnestly... literally risking their lives, Lutz and the others had lived on this land.

"So, a fair amount of money came back, but the period was too long, so the person who ought to receive it is already gone, or at the time it was paid the land was not individually owned, and it's all muddled. However it's distributed, I think it would end up causing a dispute somewhere. So I wondered whether it might be best to just use all of it for the village."

It was a proposal that could not be made in ordinary times, but fortunately, no one in Enkar Village now was so destitute that they were at their wits' end individually. Now, while the village was buoyant with the corn boom, there was room for it to be accepted.

"...Lady Melfina, are you all right with that?"

"? What do you mean?"

"That tax is surely the property of the current lord, Lady Melfina..."

Lutz forced out the words, sweating greasily even though the height of summer had passed, and she smiled with her eyebrows lowered. "Ah."

"Well, one could think of it that way."

At present it was Melfina who governed Enkar Village, and if Melfina were to say that the tax rate had always been fifty percent, the returned tax would become Melfina's as it was.

It was outrageously unfair to Melfina, who had the memories of her previous life, but in this world a lord's power was extremely strong. Doing that much was probably taken for granted, with no need even to report it to the people.

"But I don't like that, it doesn't feel good."

"Doesn't feel good, you say?"

"Right. When a mistake or something bad has happened, I want to overwrite it with something really good. Around here, the winters are bitterly cold, yet there are so many wooden houses, aren't there? It will be a rushed job, but let's start surveying so that everyone can spend this winter warm."

"...Indeed. All the houses are wooden and falling apart, and in winter my hips and knees hurt terribly, so I would be grateful to spend it warm."

Lutz said so a little wistfully, stroking his knee, and a smile came to his deeply wrinkled mouth.

"While we overwrite things with good ones, Enkar might one day take the name of the Great Flower of the North away from Soarasonne."

Melfina blinked her green eyes in surprise, and then smiled like a flower.

"Yes, I hope that happens."

\* \* \*

"We'll discuss the details again, together with the carpenters who will do the actual work." With those words, Melfina left Lutz's house.

Though it was the village chief's house, it was one of the houses of a poor pioneer village, only a little better than a hovel. And in it, the glossy hair, the well-tended skin, the calm features that knew nothing of hunger or suffering, the thoroughbred noble young lady did not fit in at all, as ever.

"Spending winter warm, is it."

Until now Lutz had thought that winter was simply like that.

That winter was the cold, harsh season that you spent storing up the autumn harvest and praying for the winter that carries off children and the old to end even one day sooner.

He had worked on the clearing of this land since he was little, and had lived covered in soil.

To be honest, he could not even imagine himself living in the orderly townscape that Melfina spoke of.

But he could not help thinking how wonderful it would be if his youngest grandchild, and the great-grandchild to be born in winter, could grow up in such a place.

*—I'm too old to be dreaming dreams.*

Even so, that he had dreamed was no doubt because of the lord who had come this spring, who might as well have stepped straight out of a dream, like a princess.

\* \* \*

The office in the lord's manor he was summoned to was cramped.

Ricardo had worked with several regional lords and nobles, and it was the smallest room in his memory. A brown rug was spread on the floor, there was the lord's desk, and the one sitting at it was a girl younger than Ricardo's youngest daughter.

"An underground room, you say?"

"Yes, I'd like it built on a fairly large scale. Reinforced with walls and pillars, a work space in the center, and along the walls shelves with four tiers each for placing barrels. —Can it be done?"

When constructing a new building, a request for a cellar was not unusual. It made it possible to create storage on limited land, and with good management it was easy to protect food from rats and pests.

But the cellar this client asked for was about the floor area of two large merchant company buildings in the ducal capital. And she wanted one each in the center of the village and near the lord's manor.

Naturally, the bigger the cellar, the looser the ground. A number of reinforcing pillars would be needed, so it would take effort, and with maintenance considered, it would cost more than the premise of saving land alone would suggest.

"Building it is no problem, but may I ask what it will be used for?"

"I intend to use it as an ale brewing cellar."

"In that case, wouldn't a somewhat smaller scale do? The work is said to be urgent."

"No, I want it, no matter what."

The young lord, who could still be called a girl, said so flatly with her smile unchanged.

Even if the brewing cellar were built as requested, the villagers all together would not be able to finish drinking it.

For commoners, ale was basically made at home and drunk at home. It was ready in about a week and drunk up in about ten days.

Ricardo, as a master carpenter, was sometimes paid in ale, but he drank that with the journeymen and apprentices of his workshop, and the ale he drank at home was made by his wife.

Ricardo was a master carpenter belonging to the Building Guild of Soarasonne, the Oldrand ducal capital. Having worked as a master for a long time, he sometimes tasted the pricey ale from breweries, and that was an exceptional flavor.

*—Is she planning to play at running a brewery?*

Among lords there were not a few who schemed to make a famous ale from the wheat squeezed out as tax, but those who produced ale as well made as a renowned brewery were rare.

The well-known lord-run breweries could be counted on one hand, and for some reason their flavor sometimes changed drastically around the time of a fire or the like.

Most of the famous breweries were run by monasteries. The general view was that amateur-made ale, unlike theirs, was not blessed, and so did not taste good.

Be that as it may, if the client asked for it, building it was Ricardo's job.

"Understood. However, with houses being built all over the village at the moment, for this excavated part you might do better to have earth-attribute mages come. They can make the basic hole in two days. If that's acceptable, I'll request them from the guild right away—"

"No, if possible, I'd like you to use villagers who have free hands."

While scratching his bald head without thinking and looking over the plans, the lord's words came overlapping his.

"The wheat harvest is over and it's the slack farming season, so there are many with free hands, and everyone is strong, so I think they'll be a help."

"Ah, if there are hands spare for corvée, that would be cheaper."

A lord has the authority to make farmers and serfs work without pay. In the slack farming season in particular, it is ordinary to put spare hands to labor on public works.

At those words, the young lord gave a troubled smile.

"I will request them properly as laborers. This village has no guild, so I'm having the village chief's son handle the coordination. I'll introduce you afterward, so please talk with him about the places and numbers needed."

"...Understood."

It seemed this lord governed quite well, Ricardo thought with admiration.

In winter, distribution stalls everywhere, so there are all sorts of expenses in preparation. For that reason, assigning roles to those who can work and paying them wages, however small, also serves as relief for the poor.

This year, with crop failures everywhere and food prices soaring, Ricardo was one of those who had been saved by this big job coming in before winter. He had called out to the workshops around him, and now three workshops had responded and were staying in Enkar Village.

It lacked the glamour of work in the royal capital, but it was a relief not to have to let the craftsmen and apprentices he had brought go short of food. Above all, a chance to handle a big job like reorganizing a village did not come along often.

"With so much construction going on, everything will change all at once, won't it? If I prepare a new townscape and buildings and say to them, from today you live here, it's hard for them to grow attached. This is the land they opened up themselves. I want everyone to feel that they built this village."

"...I see."

"It may make the work a bit harder for you, Ricardo, but I'm counting on you."

The one who directly commissioned him was the girl in front of him, but those who would live in the houses Ricardo built were the villagers. Certainly, it would be hard to give instructions the way you would bawl at an apprentice, and there would be all sorts of extra things to be careful about.

"No, indeed, if you leave the people who'll live there behind, there's no point in building the container, see."

His speech slipped without his meaning it to, and the hand of the young woman writing something beside the lord stopped dead. Her pale blue gaze looked at him reproachfully, and it was rather frightening.

"Then, I'm counting on you. I'm looking forward to seeing it finished... Hehe, making alcohol has been my dream, you know!"

Ale was a thing you could make just by putting sprouted wheat and water in a jar or barrel and leaving it to do the rest.

Unless it was made by a really famous monastery, ale was not such a special drink. That it was easy to make, and so there was little difference in taste, was Ricardo's impression of ale.

*—They say the best wine is made by the feet of a pure maiden, so ale brewed by a young, beautiful lord might become a talk of the town just for that.*

"If the lord's ale is finished while I'm still staying in this village, please let me have a taste."

The young and beautiful lord smiled brightly.

"Yes, I plan to make plenty, so by all means try it."