The rest of the letter was filled with all the small moments of daily life.
If I fell asleep in that unfamiliar bed and woke again, would Hilda be lying beside me?
I had already half convinced myself I was back in Feuzen.
[From your wife, who misses the empty space beside her every morning she opens her eyes]
H-has pregnancy made her more sentimental?
That last line weighed heavily on my chest.
I just stared at the letter for a long, long while. I don’t know how many times I read it. At some point, I realized I was crying. Have I always been this sensitive a man?
It was as though someone had turned on a faucet.
Thank goodness I had a private room. If anyone had seen, I’d have died of embarrassment.
"I-Inspector General! You can’t go in there!"
"Bah, I’m here to see my brother-in-law. Why are you stopping me? Move!"
The hallway suddenly erupted into commotion.
Michael’s drunken voice tangled loudly with those of the subordinates trying to hold him back. Then the door flew open with a bang. I froze awkwardly, my wife’s letter still in hand.
"Brother-in-law! If you’re still awake..."
"Inspector General! You mustn’t..."
Michael and his subordinates caught sight of me and froze on the spot. I’d been caught sniveling over a letter, and they wore the expressions of men who had just witnessed the most terrifying thing in the world.
Michael’s eyes darted about before he hastily apologized.
"S-sorry! S-sorry to interrupt! Ahem! I’ll be going!"
"Please forgive us, Baron!"
Michael and his subordinates scrambled out of the room.
Yes, running was the right call. I had been about to explode.
Seriously wondering whether it was safe to leave Schafen to that man, whether I hadn’t just set the fox to guard the henhouse, I passed the deepening night drinking wine with Hilda’s letter as my only company.
The next day, I woke late.
I had been a truly pathetic sight the night before.
"Water for washing, my lord."
The castle attendants brought me water. After a quick wash, I stepped outside to find my subordinates carefully gauging my mood. Only Oscar and Ted stood there looking puzzled.
Oscar asked,
"You sent only Brother Anton and Sir Beort ahead to Breisburg?"
"Yes. Things looked serious, so I told them to request help from the Capital Sentinel Command."
Oscar and Ted seemed relieved. Like Anton, they had apparently worried that I had become the sort of man who put business before the safety of his retainers. I can sympathize with their concern.
Wasn’t seeing things through to the end the very vow I had made?
That reminded me: Oscar’s wife is pregnant too.
"How does it feel to receive the Lord’s blessing and become a father?"
"I, uh, it still doesn’t feel real."
"Ted, still no progress on your end?"
"I haven’t forgotten Gustav’s promise!"
The young militia captain of Rosenheim had promised to introduce his younger sister. So Ted still remembered that? I haven’t had time to look into it, but I should follow up.
This is Ted’s marriage we’re talking about, after all.
He has as much of the layabout in him as Drek, but Ted also has a surprisingly innocent side. Which is to say, he’s hopeless with women. He only ever seemed otherwise because he worked so hard to hide it.
"Your child will have a whole crowd of friends the same age. In difficult times like these, that’s a joyous thing."
"Everyone is praying the young master will be born healthy as well."
"All I want is for Hilda and the child to be healthy."
There’s no guarantee it will be a boy, so calling the child "young master" is a bit premature, but it was meant as a kind of well-wishing. For a noble family, the hope is always for a son.
In this era, only a son can fully inherit a title and the family legacy. Daughters can inherit too, but more often than not they’re called golden brides and treated like property.
The textbook example is Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine. Inheritance and dowry disputes passed her territories back and forth between crowns so many times that England and France ended up pummeling each other for a hundred years.
If I ended up with only daughters, the neighboring princes would very likely start drooling. Even if I took in a son-in-law, a weak house can always be forced to dissolve the marriage.
Of course, my job is to prepare diligently so that I never grow weak and that future never comes to pass. Build up strength, raise my children well, and see the family grow rich and powerful.
That is why investing items in the heir is essential.
The stronger the heir, the better the odds of survival.
In any case, the more sons the better. They might squabble among themselves like the Altringens, but personally, I’d rather have an inheritance dispute than watch the territory fall to some undeserving outsider.
My current point balance stands at 96,240. Nearly a hundred thousand, though it is bound to scatter like dust in an instant. My plan is to assess the situation once I reach Feuzen and spend the points accordingly.
My subordinates moved busily, preparing for the return to Radensdorf.
Michael, perhaps still feeling guilty about the previous night’s blunder, lent a hand.
Meanwhile, I met with Markus, the saltpeter businessman. Fortunately, the middle-aged northern entrepreneur was still staying in Schafen. To be precise, the duchy army’s blockade had made leaving impossible.
"From Brandenburg, you said? You’ve come a very long way indeed."
"Truthfully, I had intended to settle in Italy, but the cities there are in the thick of war with one another."
Italy’s cities wage savage wars against each other.
They are fiercer than wars between duchies and thoroughly centered on plunder. The prime example is Pisa: a city that once boasted tremendous power, broken by Florence and Genoa and reduced to a minor town.
"My, you picked a poor time to settle. So you came back to Germany?"
"Yes. Along the way, I found Schafen well suited to a saltpeter venture and applied through the administrator here, but the Lord of Schafen never gave a firm answer and simply kept stalling."
"Because the plan called for plowing under part of the land taken up by the Boden vineyards, no doubt."
"Exactly. The Lord of Schafen loved his wine far too much. Eventually my money ran out, and I was considering a return home when Schafen suddenly came under cannon fire. I thought I was going to die."
So he had been huddled there trembling, unable to flee, and when word came that I was looking for him, he had come running. His eyes were full of longing and anticipation. Well, I could certainly satisfy that longing.
His disposition read as dealmaking (good), which is a genuinely excellent one.
Calculating, yes, but good at heart, which meant he wouldn’t stray from the straight and narrow.
"I’d like to establish a saltpeter farm in Rosenheim. How would you like to run it?"
"Ohh, Baron, you are the Christos (the Messiah) the Lord has sent to me!"
"That’s blasphemy, so don’t go saying it anywhere else."
"I am merely expressing my whole heart! Ohh, Christos!"
He said he had meant to settle in Italy. Did he turn into an Italian along the way?
And with the looks of a stout, full-bearded Germanic warrior, no less.
At any rate, Markus said he would first travel to Rosenheim to confirm whether the land and climate suited the business before making his decision. That actually made me trust him more. At the very least, he was no swindler.
If he turns out to be a genuinely solid business partner, I’m even willing to grant him special privileges. Lords have plenty of perks at their disposal that would make any merchant lose his head, such as tax breaks and tariff exemptions.
The saltpeter venture is only the beginning.
Rosenheim will become a holy land for entrepreneurs.