Chapter 102: CH 96

A few days passed as I’ve been doing paperwork in the palace. Father was busy with his duty as the minister, so he threw all military related paperwork to me. Honestly, everyone seemed to have forgotten that I was still a student.

Recently, Father had been busy preparing for the purification ceremony. Many battles had occurred in the royal capital these days, so the purification ceremony or commonly known as exorcism, would be held.

I didn’t know if the ceremony would actually purify something, but at least holding this kind of ceremony would calm the citizens’ mind.

I wasn’t doing this alone, though. Half of my paperworks would be taken care of by either the Augen and Schunzel pair or Barkey and Neurath pair. The two pairs would take turns helping me with my paperworks. Augen and Barkey were new, so I paired them with Schunzel and Neurath so they could learn.

In any case, I made all my subordinates work overnight in Alea and Finnoi, so I had to give them some vacation soon. As for me, I was working with Max as my assistant. When there was something I didn’t understand, I would either ask Max or just directly have him take care of it and double-check it later. I meant if I insisted on doing everything by myself, I would never finish.

They were prioritizing paperwork related to money which would be given to the family of the soldiers who died in the battle and the money which would be given as a treatment fee to the soldiers who were injured in the battle. After that, paperwork related to the reward for the knights who gained achievements in this battle was also being prioritized. After all, a proper reward was important.

Other than money for the knights and soldiers, there was also paperwork for treatment money for the knights and soldiers’ personal horses that became injured in the battle.

Next up was the paperwork for the payment of the supplies to the merchants. I needed to be extra careful in creating this since it wouldn’t be funny if we lost our relations with merchants because of some mistake in the document. As for whether the document I would send to the merchants was easy to read or not was a matter for later. On the other hand, sometimes the merchants would try to rip their customers off when their customer purchased some supplies on the battlefield, so I also needed to carefully check the prices.

The most troublesome thing regarding the payment document was that even if merchants were clearly ripping us off, they would try to accuse us of being cheapskates nobles if we didn’t want to pay what prices they were asking for. You needed to find a middle ground when this kind of thing happened. Though most of the time merchants that did this would be immediately put into the deny list.

“Damn. It’s a pain in the…”

Purchasing something amid the battlefield would often be done on a spur of the moment, so almost all payment related documents were written quickly and laxly. Sometimes there were even payment documents which were written on random things just like how I wrote a permission document to use the Skywalk on a piece of clothes before.

By the way, it was most troublesome when the person buying the supplies ended up not returning alive from the battlefield. After all, once that happened, no one could verify the seller’s words, so we needed to do a long investigation. Sometimes, investigation could take several days just for one case.

I also made a plan to deal with the county’s internal affairs while listening to the explanation of one of Father’s longtime assistants. It involved reevaluating the county’s governor, safety management, securing tax revenues, confirming the result of recent court trials… All troublesome stuff.

The word ‘taxes’ in the medieval period was often associated with the taxes for crops and other commodities, but in reality there were other taxes too, like tax for using the waterwheel to grind the wheat or tax on the construction of a bread oven. The type of tax collected would differ from one territory to another. For a territory where wine was made, there was even tax for the tools used to squeeze the grape.

To put it simply, I needed to check every document carefully. This should be the job of a deputy, but since I also wanted to reevaluate the deputy, I checked them myself and compared them with the deputy’s report to see if deputies did their job properly. My work saw no sign of ending.

I worked in the palace all day and only returned to the mansion late at night. Even at the mansion, I continued to work. This time, I read the daily report from the orphans who worked for the town’s beautification. Well, rather than ‘read’, maybe ‘deciphering’ would be a better word because their writing was just… atrocious.

The knight apprentices and the guards also gave me reports, but the report from the children was the most time consuming to read. At this level, it was more of a paper filled with some secret code rather than a proper report. However, since the information in this report might be useful, I forced myself to decipher them under the light of the lamp.

I was the one who came up with the idea of making the children create a daily report to help them practice writing, but I never thought that idea would bite me on my back like this. Frenssen was also working with me to organize the children’s report by day and by district, so I had an easier time reading them.

“Welner-sama. I brought you some tea.”

“Come in.”

“Pardon my intrusion.”

I heard Lily’s voice from outside, so I let her in. I felt bad for making her do this at this hour. Mother had instructed me and Frenssen to judge Lily’s ability in pouring tea, so we watched carefully as she was pouring the tea.

“Please.”

I glanced at Frenssen, who nodded his head silently. It seemed like Frenssen judged Lily had passed the test. I then took the sip of the tea.

“It’s good.”

“Thank you for your praise.”

It’s superb, you know. Tea poured by her before was already good and now it was even better. Lily’s tea was far better compared to the one I poured. Usually I just randomly pour the tea and wait until it barely changes color before serving it. So well, my tea brewing tea was pretty bad. In any case,I hope there was also a coffee. Nothing beats a cup of coffee when you stay up all night to work.

After that, Lily also poured tea for Frenssen, then she looked at me curiously.

“It is already this late, but you still have more work?”

“Yeah. There is stuff that I need to finish as soon as possible.”

“I sincerely think it would be better if you find more people to help you with your work, instead of just me.”

I couldn’t refute Frenssen’s complaint. When I urgently left the capital to go to Finnoi before, Frenssen ended up working on the paperwork alone. So the amount of paperwork Frenssen had finished all this time combined was probably more than what I’ve finished.

As I was complaining about writing in my heart, Lily looked at the daily report in Frenssen’s hand.

“The 3rd…”

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She… could read it!?

As Frenssen and I exchanged a bewildered look, Lily looked at us with a confused expression. Frenssen finally asked, “You can read this?”

“Yes. Some pilgrims who came to the inn had a rougher handwriting, so this much wasn’t a problem for me to read. In fact, I think the writing here was cleaner, so it was easy to read.”

That was when I realized the reason Frenssen and I were having a hard time reading the orphans’ handwriting was actually simple. We were just not used to it. Both of us had been reading things intended for nobles so we were used to the beautiful and neat writing.

On the other hand, even though Lily could read, she was a commoner. She might even have read something on the level of writing carved on a random wooden board, so she was used to the handwriting that we, the nobility, considered bad.

With a serious expression, Frenssen turned to me.

“Welner-sama. How about asking Lily to help us?”

“But…”

“We still need to check the stall arrangement in the commerce district. If we keep reading the daily report at this pace, our work will never finish.”

I couldn’t refute Frenssen’s words. Well, it was my fault for piling up work. Lily looked at me with a puzzled expression, then she asked, “Stall arrangement?”

“Ah, right. Lily, you are still unfamiliar with it.”

Well, in a noble house it was always the merchant that came to the visit the mansion to sell their goods and only few merchants would came to a village like the Alea so stall arraignment wouldn’t be needed. It was normal for Lily to not know about it.

A landed store existed in a large town but a place where a travelling merchant could set up their temporary stalls also existed. The place where the merchants could set up their stalls was decided in advance. Like in a large town square. permanent stalls would be lined up in the side of the town square.

Most people didn’t understand that for a merchant to set up a temporary stall, they must follow a certain rule. They must follow a certain scheduled. The expectation of this rule was if the merchant has signed a contract to open a permanent stall with the guild.

In the early morning when the sky was still dark, almost all stalls were selling bread. Commoner and some nobles who had baronage or viscount peerage would buy the bread they needed to eat for their entire day here.

Well, bakery also sold bread but because the space in one bakery was limited, the owner of bakery would also sell their bread in the stalls. The people who managed the stalls were usually the baker’s children or apprentices.

Then, when the morning bell was rung, roughly around 8 a.m in my previous life the morning session would begin. The stalls would stop selling bread and changed into selling tools necessary for travellike metal utensil, and bag. As for food, there were meat and cheese.

When the noon bell at 12 o’clock was rung, most of the stalls would change their goods into vegetable, meat, and all other coking ingredients.

Other than cooking ingredients, the stalls would also sell ready-made food. Well, kind of side dish stores for the commoners. Store that sold ready-made food would usually buy the ingredients they needed in the morning, cook them, then sold it in the afternoon. Unlike in my previous life, the darkness of the night time in here was pretty severe and lamp were expensive so people would stop working whenin the night time and started working again when the sun rose.

At night, the good of afternoon stalls were cleared out and the stalls was transformed into the ‘red lantern bar’ It seems like even in the otherworld a quick drink after a work was still a popular choice for many workers.

This was a rough description of one day stalls rotation.

(T/N: red lantern bar, or also known as Izakaya was a bar where typically japanese worker visit for a night drinking after a day work.)

Of course, it was possible to buy any of stalls item in a landed store but stalls always sold the items cheaper sometime, the stall even sold the item half of the usual store price. This was because the good sold in the stall need to be sold out otherwise it would become additional burden for the seller. Plus, a landed store need to pay taxes just for owning it.

The places where the stalls were set up would be divided by block and the merchant would rotate which stalls would they sold their goods on. There was ‘prime location’… well technically the words ‘prime location didn’t exist here though… where many costumers would flock like near the gate. It would be a problem if just 1 merchant monopolize this location so all guild that would sell their goods in the stall decided which guild would get which stalls beforehand.

This rotation was actually a test of a guild strength and influence. A weak guild might ended up having to sell their good in a I deserted stalls everyday.

I heard that every year all guilds would gather to have a meeting to decided the stalls scheduled for that year, I don’t know the detail though. I also heard that the competition for prime location stalls were so fierce to the point that sometime people would died in that competition. I won’t tell Lily about this though.

“That’s why even if the daily report said which stall it was referring, the stall would have a different merchant selling their good depending on which day and which time slot it was.”

“I see… um… I simply need to read these outloud, right?”

The second she understood my explanation she jumped right into work, huh. Well, I wasn’t in any position to say this but it was already this late you know, Lily.

“Then, Lily will read them, I will make a clean copy of the report. Welner-sama, please confirm the report and recheck them.”

“Understood.”

“Frenssen!”

…sigh no one listened to me here. Well, I guess I don’t have any other choice but to ask for Lily’s help for today but I should apologize to her later.

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