The Abandoned Duchess Seems to Want a Peaceful Life - Chapter 13

Chapter 13: Barley Tea and the Witch

When the contents of the boxes, giant crates made of fitted boards that looked as if they were growing out of the ground, were dug over with hoes, a fermentation heat wafted up softly, along with a gentle fermenting smell that was like yogurt and also something like beer.

"Yes, the first batch I mixed should be about ready. Could you plow this into the ground we've tilled and make ridges?"

"Yes, understood!"

At her instructions, the serfs began to work briskly. In these two weeks or so, they had burned off almost all the wasteland near the settlement, cut down the few thin trees that had been growing there and pulled out their roots, and had finished up to the point of mixing in ash and plowing it in lightly.

Cultivation was urgent, and the larger the area of the fields, the better.

—But I do think everyone is working too hard.

She had told them repeatedly to take breaks as needed and go home when the sun began to set. Even when she explained that if they overworked themselves and wrecked their health, or let fatigue pile up, work efficiency would suffer in the end,

"I'm fine! I can still go on!"

"Compared to clearing the forest, this is easy!"

"I never want to stop swinging this hoe! I want to plow more!"

This was the response.

Nid had said that forcing people to rest when they wanted to work was worse, so she had made them promise never to overdo it, to keep an eye on those near them besides themselves, and to make anyone who looked unwell rest, by force if necessary, but the enthusiasm was tremendous.

"So this is the 'fertilizer.' It doesn't smell bad even though it's made from garbage."

Marie peered into the compost with curiosity. She didn't seem to want to touch it, but she was interested.

"The fermentation heat kills what causes bad smells, and the insects too. But this is one of the successful batches; if there's too much moisture, it can give off a rotten smell."

"What do you do in that case?"

"Some say you can use it as it is, and others say it's bad for the fields. Either way, if you spread it on the ground for about two weeks it breaks down, so it's probably best to plow it into newly tilled land."

When she raised her head, the serfs were tilling the farmland that had been surveyed. By mixing into the newly cleared land a fertilizer made by fermenting straw, wheat chaff, vegetable scraps, and burned and crushed bones, the first farmland was complete.

When a container was emptied, fresh straw was laid in again. The straw collected from Enkar Village was limited, so once it was used up they would have to change the proportions by mixing in dead leaves brought down from the mountains and so on. The women and children of the settlement were helping with this.

"I want to get started on manure compost made with livestock dung as soon as possible. Consult Lutz and put a system in place to manage the livestock kept in the village all together..."

"Lady Melfina, you have been on the move since morning, so please take a little rest."

Marie spoke to her while she glared at the compost, muttering and putting her thoughts in order.

The sun was well up, and it looked as if the day would grow warm again.

"You're right. Everyone, stop your work and rest."

What she had insisted on thoroughly since starting the new clearing around the serf settlement was introducing breaks in the morning and afternoon, and at lunch.

Until Melfina asked whether they were really getting proper breaks and lunch, they had apparently worked without rest except for lunch. Serf work was almost never supervised, but strict quotas were imposed, and failing to meet them meant a fine, so the habit had apparently taken root.

Of course serfs had no assets with which to pay fines; in that case the fine was recorded as the serfs' debt, and almost all of the wheat that was already mostly taken from them was seized, or they had to pay it from the next year's harvest onward.

A serf was one who had taken on debt for some reason and sold his human rights to a lord. The lord stationed serfs on land that needed clearing, and they were treated as the common property of the people living on that land.

Violence and overwork were prohibited, but apart from being guaranteed bare minimum food, clothing and shelter, they were treated the same as working animals.

And since the children of serfs were also born serfs, settlements of serf families naturally formed.

It was not that there was no path for a serf to become a commoner. If they could buy back their status from the lord for three gold coins, they could return to being freemen.

But the clearing was done by their own hands, half of the harvest went to taxes, a further sixty percent of the rest was taken by the landowner, and what remained in hand was only enough for a family to eat. However much they worked from morning to night and scraped together savings, they repeatedly had their property, even their families, taken for failing to meet quotas.

That system too would need to be changed somewhere down the line.

Even if the parents were serfs, to have the children born serfs from the start was like increasing the debt by the number of children.

The annual income of an ordinary person living in the royal capital was said to be roughly five to five and a half gold coins. In farming villages, where barter was overwhelmingly more common, it might be less than one gold coin, but a system that used three gold coins of capital to keep poor people working for next to no wages down to their children's and grandchildren's generations was unhealthy.

Introducing the basic human rights of her previous life into this world was difficult to do through her own power. But at least within her own territory, she could change them.

—If they take people away instead of fines, then returning human rights instead of rewards should become the norm too.

"Lady Melfina. Please rest not only your body but your head too."

"Yes, Marie. Thank you."

Spring was in full swing, and as chilly days had decreased, the days had grown a little sweaty at midday. Before summer came, she wanted to make sure to tell them every day how important it was to stay hydrated.

While she rested, drinking the tea Marie poured into a wooden bowl, the village children came toddling up. At first they had kept their distance, probably wary of Cedric, but lately they seemed to have finally come to believe he would do nothing.

"Hey, hey, Lady of the Manor. Are you a witch?"

A girl of about five, with sun-browned skin and brown hair like straw, asked innocently.

"Oh my, little miss, what's your name?"

"Lena!"

"Lena, I'm Melfina."

"Lady Mel-fee-na!"

She was adorable, lisping. She said it with such an unreserved face and such confidence that Melfina couldn't help giggling.

"If it's hard to say, 'Lady Mel' is fine. Nice to meet you, Lena."

Lena was giggling ticklishly, but one of the women who had been handing out tea hurriedly ran over, firmly grabbed Lena by both shoulders from behind, and stopped her.

"I'm so sorry, Lord! Please forgive her, it's only a child's silly talk!"

She was still a young woman. She had pretty features, but a large scar ran painfully from her temple to her jaw.

Among the serfs there were many who used a distinctive dialect or weren't good with polite speech, but she spoke clearly.

"It's all right. What's your name?"

"I am Ellie... Eli."

"Eli, it's a break, so please have some tea too. Please, Lena, you sit too."

When she gently stroked the bed of the roofless wagon, Lena, who had slipped out of her mother's hands, hopped lightly onto it. Eli said, in a slightly trembling voice, that she would stay as she was, overcome with awe.

"Lady Mel! This brown water is good, isn't it!"

"It's called barley tea. Is it tasty?"

"Yes, it's tastier than water."

Narrowing her eyes at the girl drinking with a wooden cup wrapped in both small hands, Melfina tilted her own cup. The barley tea, made by roasting barley and boiling it, was lukewarm but tasted properly like barley tea.

—How nostalgic. Melfina had never drunk barley tea, after all.

It would be better with ice, but there was no one who could use ice magic, so they let it cool naturally after boiling and drank it before it spoiled.

In this world, getting a stomachache was quite a serious matter, possibly fatal. She had made sure to tell the people of the serf settlement and Enkar Village that leftover barley tea turns to poison as time passes, so they should drink it all or throw it out.

"So, Lena, why did you think I was a witch?"

"Because you do strange things! You gather straw and mix it, pour water on it, burn bones!"

"Lena!"

She stopped Eli, who tried to scold her, with the palm of a hand. The women who had been working were watching her rather than chattering as usual. Though none of them said it aloud, they had surely wondered what it was they were being made to do.

"Lena. Your father and the others are working hard now to make fields, aren't they?"

"Yes, they were worried whether vegetables can really grow on wasteland."

"That's right. As things are, the vegetables might not have enough nutrition and might not grow big. So I'm doing this to make the fields healthy."

"Does that make the fields healthy?"

In her previous life there had also been slash-and-burn agriculture, and what Melfina was trying to do this time was close to it in principle.

But that was done by moving as a village, farming and then leaving the land alone for nearly ten years while its fertility recovered, repeatedly, and it required land for fields to be extremely large relative to the number of people. It was unsuited to development premised on settling, as here.

To make fields and keep them going, soil-building suited to that was necessary. The soil of the wasteland was hard and low in nutrients. Merely turning the ground could not be expected to give sufficient harvests continuously.

"Lena, what do you think you'd need to do to make crops grow strong and big?"

The girl looked up at the sky as if to say "um," thinking. Probably unconsciously, her dangling legs swung back and forth, which was adorable.

"Lots of sunshine, and give lots of water?"

"My, Lena, you're very clever."

When she patted the small head, the girl gave a proud, happy "ehehe."

"Anything else? Do you think there's something?"

"Isn't that enough?"

"If sunshine and water were enough, then even if we plowed the wasteland, lots of crops would grow, wouldn't they?"

Lena thought for a while, but before long she held her small head and groaned. It was probably too difficult for a child... even for adults, in a world with little knowledge of fertilizer.

"Well, for example... even people get thin and small if they don't have food, don't they? Plants are the same. If you give them lots of food, they become strong and big. I want to make that food."

"Lord, are you making food for the crops?"

"That's right. And when lots of crops grow, I want Lena, and Lena's mother, and Rod and everyone to eat lots of food. But I can't do that alone, so I need everyone's help. Will Lena help me too?"

"Yes! I'll help Lady Mel!"

"What a kind girl. Thank you."

When she stroked her head again, Lena smiled as brightly as the sun.

Before she knew it, it had gone quiet all around. Suddenly embarrassed, she drained the rest of her cup in one go.

After the break, the women worked even more briskly.

"As expected of you," Marie said, smiling softly.

Since the day Marie had said she wanted to change jobs, she had come to smile often. That made her happy; though she didn't quite understand what it meant, Melfina smiled back and said, "You think so?"