Chapter 15
Chapter 15
"Wow! Potatoes, potatoes! We'll eat our fill today!"
The knights grinned from ear to ear as they kept tossing dirt-covered potatoes into baskets.
"And now, this."
And right now, I knew the magic words that could raise their morale to the highest level in an instant.
"Every two days, we'll also butcher a chicken."
The chicks that had come to our residence a month and a half earlier were now young chickens.
In any case, we would have to wait five months for them to lay eggs. So once they were raised enough to eat, butchering them right away was the rational choice.
We had brought in a large number of chicks and raised them, so the population had grown too large as well.
On top of that, chicks kept hatching from the fertilized eggs. We also had to manage the stock of wheat bran and rice bran used as feed.
"Waaaaaaaah!"
Of course, the speed at which we ate chickens would be far faster than the speed at which the chickens multiplied, but since we only had to hold out for another month and a half, it was fine.
"In other words, in two days."
I declared solemnly.
"To commemorate the butchering of our first chicken, we will hold a banquet."
It was the evening I had invited Baron Forman.
"We shall put in all of our ingredients."
Besides chicken, eggs, potatoes, and lettuce, we were eating many other things. I planned to use every last one of them.
"Waaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
Everyone cheered except Wendy.
That was because Wendy was buried not only in potato work but in other labor as well.
"Um, my lady."
A knight who had been standing watch far off came running over.
"The old gentleman you once described has crossed the territory's border!"
As expected.
It had to be Baron Forman.
'He must have wanted to see whether he could really come and get a free meal. He does have a sense of shame.'
I had already described Baron Forman's appearance to the knights and told them that if such an old man came, they were not to seize him but to let him quietly do whatever he came to do, then report to me.
I was seeing straight through the former intelligence operative at every turn.
"All right."
I said indifferently.
"Don't bother pressing him. Let him look around to his heart's content."
* * *
Baron Forman crossed the territory's border with ease. Realistically, the knights could not guard every stretch of the border.
'Is it really all right for me to accept the banquet invitation? At a time when people's goodwill has worn this thin.......'
He swallowed a sigh inwardly as he thought of the mood in Hawin Barony.
With food growing scarce, people had become on edge.
These days, there was no one in Hawin Barony who ate three meals a day.
Baron Forman thought Sears would be no different. If anything, he expected that if the situation was bad, it would be worse.
First, he lingered around the commoners' homes. Then he spotted a child heading to the riverside carrying a basket.
"Hm? That's......."
The child picked a great many mushrooms from a log by the river.
Come to think of it, rotted logs and such were lined up along the riverside.
"Child, what is that?"
Baron Forman asked the child.
The child answered as if it were nothing.
"Mushrooms. A month and a half ago, the young lady had the knights do it. To grow them like this."
The child who had picked the mushrooms now cut grass at the riverbank with a swish-swish and put that into the basket too.
"What is that?"
"Water dropwort. Just as the young lady said, we cut the stems and planted them as they were, and they multiplied like this."
Beside the water dropwort patch, the child pulled out a fish trap. It was full of small fish.
"The fish lay their eggs on the water dropwort stems. So the number of fish increased too. We catch this many every day."
Baron Forman's mouth fell open on its own.
'Of course, having a river is an enormous advantage, but can food be obtained this efficiently?'
The child's expression, relaxed manner, and easygoing air were all things he could not see in Hawin Barony.
"Then do you live on only fish, mushrooms, and water dropwort?"
"There's this and that besides. The young lady taught us more than ten things."
The child, who had answered brightly, stared openly at Baron Forman. Then they shrugged once and said,
"Grandfather, you're from Hawin Barony, aren't you?"
The child took a handful of mushrooms from the basket and gave them to Baron Forman.
"Take them and eat them. Giving away this much for free should be fine."
Baron Forman looked at the oyster mushrooms the child held out.
Once the child explained, he could see it.
The riverside was completely different from when he had come not long ago. It had been neatly arranged and designed to produce food without cease.
He remembered Brisa Sears, who had haughtily held out the invitation.
There she had been in this peaceful riverside village, impeccably dressed as though she had dropped straight out of the heart of the capital, a girl of flawless etiquette.
'All of this...... was done by...... a twelve-year-old girl?'
The child looked at him as if he were pitiful and said.
"Next time, bring something proper and trade it for eggs."
From the look of it, only Baron Hawin did not know, while the territory's people were all quietly coming and going among themselves.
"They say Sears eggs have very rich yolks and are delicious, so the people of Hawin Barony like them."
And so a few days later, Baron Forman disguised himself again and returned to Sears territory.
He waited with a pounding heart until the doors of the marquess's residence opened.
A maid who did not look hungry in the least greeted him haughtily.
'Since I'm pretending to be a country old man who knows nothing, it will be natural to wolf down the food as if I know no etiquette.'
He thought, dressed in a badly pilled vest.
* * *
'He eats well.'
I thought as I watched Baron Forman eat potatoes, lotus root, and water dropwort.
I knew that western etiquette normally called for leaving a little on the plate, but Baron Forman ended up scraping noisily at his bowl.
"You eat lotus root even now?"
"It's normally in season in autumn, but you can eat it now too. It has less starch, but it's more tender."
Lotus root was a carbohydrate source that was easy to multiply. That was because you could cut the existing roots and replant them.
That was called vegetative propagation, and I had done a lot of it a month ago.
"No, then how do you get salt......."
As soon as he asked hesitantly, the maid scolded him.
"Our young lady is kindly answering a mere commoner's questions, so do you think you've brought yourself a tutor? Stop bothering the young lady's meal and ask in moderation!"
Baron Forman flinched.
Well, as for salt.......
'The people of Hawin Barony brought it themselves, saying they were taking water.'
The thing that came in most in exchange was salt.
As soon as I heard that House Hawin had a lot of salt, I stopped worrying about salt.
Barter was not something that failed to happen just because those above tried to block it.
'Especially if they were people who had lived together as neighbors until not long ago.'
Baron Forman then scraped clean the mushroom, lettuce, and radish sprout salad that came out next.
Soon the main dish came out.
"It is roasted chicken leg served with a fish dish. Eat it with the perilla seed sauce."
Perilla seeds also came in from Hawin Barony. That was because the Beron region that had been taken from them had been perilla fields.
Originally, perilla was not a common crop in the empire. Beron was unusual.
It was because of my father's hopeless judgment that, given the central region's narrow fields and developed distribution, it would be good to grow unusual crops in small quantities.
So the people of Hawin Barony brought perilla seeds after salt.
The perilla seed lees were also fed to the chickens. That was because they then laid eggs better.
I watched Baron Forman lick his fork regretfully and asked.
"Would you like more fried fish?"
"Yes! But...... the radish sprouts and lettuce......."
"The commoners' homes usually grow a lot of autumn radishes, so we got seeds from them and are growing them. Would you like more potatoes?"
"Yes!"
At that point, I couldn't help asking if he wanted more.
When I gave him egg pudding topped with plums as dessert, Baron Forman made a face as if he were about to cry.
"Plums? These are extremely fresh......."
"They grow by the river."
There were fruits that grew by the river in early summer.
Fruit was not very productive, but we still cherished and raised it without cutting it down. That was because we had to conserve sugar, so we were adding it to food little by little.
Before I knew it, I was watching Baron Forman scrape the bottom of the dessert bowl, and I added one more thing.
"......Would you like more?"
Baron Forman answered.
"My lady, would you perhaps like to marry my grandson? That is the best thing I can give you in return."