The Abandoned Duchess Seems to Want a Peaceful Life - Chapter 23

Chapter 23: Hope

Summer was just showing signs of ending, and the days were growing shorter bit by bit, when the inflow of people into the Enkar region suddenly became intense.

Porters hired by the ducal house carried out the harvested corn, packed in hemp sacks, one load after another. They hauled it to the depots in nearby villages and to the ducal capital and came straight back, so the line never broke.

The corn came in three forms: as it was, dried on the cob, and dried and stripped into kernels. Naturally, each later form was lighter and less bulky, but the number of wagons carrying corn as it was, unable to wait for drying, was considerable too.

Those were taken to the depots of relatively nearby farming villages and towns, while the already-dried corn was to be sent to the ducal capital first.

"Lunch is right here! Enkar Village's specialty, flatbread sandwiches!"

"Over here, too! Today's filling is egg and pork with red sauce!"

When the flow of people increased, the number of people doing business to match naturally increased as well. Some villagers seemed to have pocketed quite a few copper coins selling lunches and corn tea to the porters, to the knights and officials guiding them and keeping guard.

Melfina had left the lord's manor to inspect the problem Lutz had consulted her about before lunch, and she let out a "wow" at the heat of the crowd, as ever.

"Hello, may I have one, too?"

"Lady Melfina?! I'll make a fresh one right away, so could you wait a moment?!"

"No, one of the ones you already made is fine. They look delicious."

They were three iron coins apiece, so she bought three for one copper coin and told them to keep the change. One iron coin was about a hundred yen, so it was a little pricey compared to the stalls in the ducal capital, but the sandwiches wrapped in Moon Rabbit leaves were generously packed with meat and vegetables.

"They're really hearty, aren't they?"

"We were taught that if you eat your fill you can work a lot more!"

"Being hungry is hard!"

The two young men, using tables they had apparently brought from home as stalls, said this in turn. Both were full of energy and drive.

"Sorry for disturbing you. Keep up the good work."

"Yes, ma'am!"

"Please be careful, Lady Melfina!"

She looked around, hoping to find somewhere to sit and eat the still-warm sandwich, but unfortunately there was nowhere she could sit.

To begin with, Enkar Village had neither benches nor a square, and this street was only a road that had happened to be left with wide gaps between the houses and had naturally come to feel like a main street. The ground was bare earth, and with so much foot traffic it was a little dusty.

"In the ducal capital, those who set up stalls have to pay a stall tax," Marie murmured pensively.

Roads were basically public space, which is to say the property of whoever governed that land, so it was common to pay a usage fee when holding a market. The fees also differed between open-air stands and food stalls, and the space one could use was often strictly set.

"Until now, there's been no such thing as selling food in Enkar Village, has there?"

Every household was basically self-sufficient, and when they needed something they bartered as a matter of course, so the act of selling was an extremely new culture in this land.

As for taxes, there was only a rule that a fixed proportion of the harvest, based on the size of the farmland, was paid, and nothing was established regarding commercial activity. There had never been a need.

*—Come to think of it, even collecting taxes is such a hassle for lords and bailiffs that handing it entirely to tax collectors is not uncommon.*

A tax collector was like a tax office employee in her previous life, a job that a lord or bailiff entrusted to an individual from the educated class.

Tax collectors extracted taxes from the farmers and merchants of the land allotted to them and delivered them to the lord or bailiff. In doing so they were permitted to keep as their own profit the difference gained by raising the amount collected on various pretexts.

*—From the time the Bible was compiled until the French Revolution, tax collectors were practically a byword for villains.*

A system in which an individual could raise or lower the tax amount at his own discretion was, to begin with, a system that all but presupposed corruption. Even so, in her previous life that system had been in operation for two thousand years. Tax collection was such a troublesome job that it had to be left to people who could remain unruffled even when resented.

*—This is also something I'll have to think about. At least so that fewer people suffer from the distortions of that way of doing it.*

"Still, it feels strange to have so many people walking around like this."

"Yes, it was unthinkable not long ago."

It must have been just lunch break time. Some were eating, using wooden crates and barrels set against the walls as chairs, while a group sat cross-legged on the bare ground without caring. Somewhere ale was apparently being sold, and laughter rang out here and there as people tipped their tankards.

*—It feels like public order is poor.*

Moving food was an urgent matter for the ducal house, so they had probably gathered up anyone who needed work and food. Since most of Enkar Village's residents lived by tilling the soil, nearly every house stood empty during the day.

The knights dispatched by the ducal house were patrolling to prevent trouble between Enkar Village and the ducal house, but problems were already occurring here and there: people trespassing on property, someone bothering the chickens, a young girl who had happened to see a rough-looking man relieving himself beside a house.

"Ah, so that's what Lutz was talking about."

Outside the village fence, a number of tents had been pitched along the highway. Tents, though they were, they were crude affairs, just waxed cloth hung from tree branches with cord, covering the luggage and the barest minimum of people.

Behind them stood wagons with their donkeys still tethered, and in places it was crowded.

"There are quite a lot..."

"Yes. The tents there now will be gone by tomorrow, but the next ones come right away, so it never ends. They leave behind worn-out old cloth and excrement, so it doesn't look good, either."

At Marie's words, Melfina gave a small groan.

Enkar Village was at the very farthest edge of the north, and the inn in the neighboring village was a fair distance away. The porters were paid their daily wage by the number of crates and barrels they carried, so those who arrived late to set out for the neighboring village, and those who wanted to rest a night and load up to depart the next morning, pitched tents outside the village, and complaints had come in about it.

The residents of Enkar Village were not especially wary of outsiders, but the sight of burly-looking men whose job was hauling cargo pitching tents and loitering was bound to be unsettling.

At night they lit fires for cooking and to keep off beasts, so there was also the worry of fire. And though the knights handled checking the cargo and guarding the village, they did nothing about those who were outside the village grounds.

"If I scatter them, they'll just pitch tents somewhere else, won't they?"

"They can't very well go to the neighboring village with empty wagons, and if they loaded up and set out now, it would be night by the time they got there."

"If you order it, the knights currently in the village can drive them off," said Cedric.

"There's no need to go that far."

The excessive Cedric had made a rare return. But they had not done anything wrong.

There was no law forbidding sleeping out beyond a village, and people slept around fortress cities as a matter of course, too.

Still, it was undeniable that there was a sense of pressure. She did not think such a thing would happen in Enkar Village, but it was also common for people who settled in such places to gather and become the breeding ground of slums.

"I could designate a place for pitching tents and have the tents anywhere else removed or fined, but there would be a backlash, wouldn't there?"

Near the village, apart from the highway, nearly everything had been turned into fields. Even if she built a campground, it would have to be quite close to the forest side.

"They are also working hard to make as many round trips between Enkar Village and the depots as they can, so it is difficult."

The fact that people overflowed like this was, in the end, largely because Enkar Village had no capacity to receive them.

If there were something like a flophouse, where laborers could stay cheaply, they might use it, but the Enkar Village of today had no inn, not even an eatery serving light meals.

Enkar Village was by no means a large farming village. It had only some fifty households. Even counting all the serf settlements the population was a little over three hundred, and because it was a pioneer village at the northern edge, no itinerant craftsmen had ever visited, so it had covered most of its needs by self-sufficiency.

*—If I mean to develop the village from here on, it will need some fairly large-scale work.*

But whether she should do it, Melfina was wavering.

The line of porters would not last another month. It was known that once all the harvest was finished and the delivery of the food traded with the ducal house was done, it would stop.

Next year other regions would be growing corn too, so the confusion would be much milder than this year. And Melfina knew that after the year after next it would hardly happen at all.

*—And yet, trying to change the present now, isn't that my own ego?*

She now knew that being materially rich was not the only form of happiness.

However much luxury one indulged in, if one could not obtain what one truly wanted, it could not be called happiness. Even if told you are blessed, if you carry something unfulfilled, the heart stays frozen forever.

*—If we could live quietly as a pioneer village at the northern edge, maybe that would be better.*

If it grew rich, people would gather for that reason. With a larger population there would be more that could be done, but if all sorts of people gathered, trouble would grow too.

*—Besides, I don't even know whether I'll be here the whole time.*

Even after divorcing Alexis, Melfina intended to go on living here. But there was no guarantee that the House of Crawford would stay silent.

Melfina was the only daughter of the Marquis of Crawford. Her younger brother Rudolf was the heir, and since she had been treated at home as if she did not exist, she thought they would choose to leave her alone rather than have her come back now.

But there was also a non-zero chance that her increasing her own bloodline outside might be taken as a source of house strife.

It was a family with the power to forcibly take away a girl with no backing, lord though she was, and shut her away in a convent on the frontier, if they wanted to.

If she kept pouring effort in and then left it half done, those who would suffer were the people living in the Enkar region.

A sweet, soft wind blew now that the height of summer had passed, stirring Melfina's golden hair.

The corn fields after the harvest had a sweet, dry scent, like millet.

"Lady Melfina."

"Hm? What is it, Marie?"

"No... Lady Melfina, you..."

"Yes?"

"...I felt as if you had the look of someone going far away. I'm sorry. It's strange, isn't it?"

"...Ha ha."

She laughed, and somehow felt like crying, too.

*—Why are you being so weak, Melfina?*

Melfina was not a saint. Preparing enough food and salvation to reach everyone was beyond her, but for now she had managed to protect what was within reach of her hands.

She had also felt anxiety about what if she could not protect them as their lord.

During the time when she alone knew a famine was coming, she had known that she looked strange to others, and she had told lies that would be easy to accept, smiling as she did.

Now that it seemed to have settled somewhat, she must have become a little anxious.

"Hey, Marie, Cedric. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could make the Enkar region stronger and bigger, more and more? Take on all sorts of challenges, make lots and lots of interesting things, and make life richer."

"It will happen naturally. Because you are here, Lady Melfina."

"I think so, too."

Her secretary and her bodyguard knight both nodded as if it were a matter of course.

In the gentler wind, the light dazzling, she felt as though everything would go well from here on.

Melfina was laughing.

"That's right. Let's do everything we want to do. And then, all of us together, let's be happy."

\* \* \*

Some time later, Melfina asked the breeder who supplied hunting dogs and took one puppy into the lord's manor.

She was a sheepdog with the color of freshly baked white bread and large, pricked-up ears.

Choosing to keep by her side a dog that herds livestock, guards the land, and makes the best partner to live alongside people was, in Melfina's own way, a show of resolve.

*—As long as I wish it, I will live on in this land.*

With that wish poured into it, she gave the puppy she welcomed the name Felice Fortuna.

That it would be the first of a breed famed as the dog loved by the woman later called the Lady of the Northern Edge, no one yet knew.