Songs sung as monotonous manual labor was being done were repetitions of easy-to-remember stanzas and melodies. Both Lawrence and Holo quickly learned the tune, took their own tools for husking—two sticks connected together by a string—and joined in the villagers singing as they worked the wheat.
Holo had spent centuries in Pasloe, but she only ever helped with the harvest work herself a few times in the distant past; she had simply watched in the times after that.
The reason she quickly gave up husking the wheat was less out of boredom and more out of her inherent curiosity—she wanted to see what the other work was like.
She joined in with the ones who bit into the harvested wheat to see if it had dried completely and helped out with picking chaff and other contaminants from the wheat in a big washtub. There had been a particular trick to shaking out the washtub, and the other girls there giggled at her as she ended up shaking her hips more than the tub.
The harvesting work in the fortress would last for more than one or two days. And so, instead of persevering throughout the entire thing, people often changed jobs or stepped out briefly, giving the sense that they would carry on with this work in a relaxed manner for a long time.
Just as Lawrence found himself getting lost in the rhythm of the monotonous work, one of the villagers asked to switch with him, and he reluctantly handed over his husking sticks.
“Now, then.” He glanced around the area to find Holo missing from the lively castle garden. He asked around and learned that once she was done helping pick out bad-quality grains from a mountain of the wheat, she had gone into the main house.
Though it was getting closer to the height of autumn, it was still rather hot when the sun was high in the sky. Lawrence wondered if she had worn herself out and was taking a rest since she had such a terrible hangover the day before. Holo was typically slothful, so she would sometimes push herself too far when it came to work like this and suddenly run out of energy.
Despite his worry, Lawrence thought she was likely all right if she had taken a break of her own accord, so he decided to wrap up the matter on the delivery of their goods. He fished out some parchment from their things and made his way into the great room, where the assistant priest was watching over everything.
“Have you chosen a field?”
The assistant priest, who had been writing down the amount of wheat harvested and how the harvest was progressing in charcoal on a large wooden board leaning up against one of the walls in the great room, turned to Lawrence, clearly not bothered by the charcoal smeared on his face.
The church in Salonia presently owned the privileges to the land once ruled over by one called the Hero Voragine, but owning those rights did not necessarily mean things would always go smoothly.
There was still the matter of managing the day-to-day activities on the land, bringing someone in to manage the harvest period, making sure it was collected for taxes, being conscious of the worst and best of the harvest, and trying to avoid being scammed or subject to any injustices.
The assistant priest, who seemed to have been left in charge of all those things, had been very kind to Lawrence and his entourage when they came to visit in relation to the tariff troubles. That was perhaps because he had been hoping to hand off some of the work to Lawrence, but when he saw just how exhausted he looked, he had a feeling that might happen.
“Yes, we found a nice spot, so I came to inform you.”
Aside from the board, where the assistant priest had written down reports that came in from the villagers and the apprentice clergy boys diligently copied the sheer volume of numbers down onto paper, there was a rough map of the territory drawn in charcoal, and Lawrence pointed to it.
“The field right next to the first shrubs southwest from the fortress.”
“There, yes. I’m glad you picked a spot easy to find. All the quarrelling over zone divisions causes us headaches throughout the year.”
The easy-to-find point that Holo had indicated had apparently been very important.
The assistant priest took two of the deeds the bishop had given Lawrence, then turned to the apprentice clergy boy and named several villagers and ordered him to write down a zone about a pace wide where those villagers’ locations intersected.
“These privileges become yours in God’s name.” The assistant priest looked between the two pieces of parchment and handed one back to Lawrence as he spoke.
“Glory be to God,” Lawrence said.
The assistant priest exhaled in a way that could be either taken as a sigh or a sign of agreement, then rolled his head around his neck and shoulders.
“Thank you for all of your hard work,” Lawrence added.
“I wish I could have taken a dip in the hot springs you built in Salonia.”
“You’re always welcome at our bathhouse,” Lawrence said with a smile.
The assistant priest grimaced. “Aren’t the hot springs in Nyohhira supposed to be a secret? I heard only archbishops are allowed there.”
“That’s a bit of an exaggeration. But even if it were true, then I suppose we would be welcoming you in the near future.”
Though he was young, the assistant priest was canny enough to grow a beard to give himself a mature and dignified air. His lips stretched into a grin under his messy whiskers.
“I will be sure to send the wheat your way every year.”
“You have my thanks.”
Lawrence was certain this assistant priest would reach great heights and become a regular at their bathhouse.
As that thought crossed his mind, he rolled up the parchment and tucked it away in his pocket.
“Where has your wife gone, by the way? Do you have any plans for the rest of the day?”
The assistant priest seemed keen to offer they stay here for the night, but as they stood here speaking, there was a line outside the door of people waiting to report to him.
Lawrence replied briefly, “We’re hoping to leave before sunset and follow the river downstream.”
“I see. Lovely.”
The smile on his face suggested he was relieved there was one less thing he had to worry about on his plate.
“Thank you.”
Lawrence gave a nod, which the assistant priest returned with a polite bow, and he was already back into work mode. Lawrence left the great room, sliding past all the people waiting in line, then planted his hands on his hips with a sigh.
“Now, where has that Holo gone?”
The old fortress was not small by any means. Though the sun was still high in the sky, the light did not reach the depths of the building, and a dreary ambiance settled in the darkest corners.
He doubted she had gotten lost and was crying somewhere in this big fortress, but he did wonder if she had suddenly gotten emotional out of the blue.
Lawrence had brought Holo to the lively harvesting work area so that she would not be suddenly overwhelmed by the gaping hole left by the busy and exciting time spent with Elsa and Tanya. Jumping from the roof of a five-story building would surely cause great bodily harm, but jumping down to the four-story building next door, then to the three-story one, then the two-story storehouse and then onto the street would make it possible to walk home.
He thought it would be nice to take a breather with the lively harvest workers, then return to the river and take a boat downstream. They would be awash in the lively atmosphere—not just the shanties sung by the captain, but calls from those pulling the boat downstream, and excited greetings from those traversing the roads that ran alongside the river. There were also regular checkpoints built along the river, so they would surely find vendors in those places. And then, once they came to the port on the sea at the mouth of the river, that would provide even further relief.
Elsa would surely tell Lawrence that he was coddling Holo again, but he believed it was his life’s work to do whatever he could to help her.
And as of late, Lawrence had grown fond of her demure squirming as he catered to her needs.
He searched the building with those thoughts in mind, and eventually heard that Holo had ventured into the third-floor storage area with a mug of booze in hand.
He passed the women sitting around the hearth on the second floor doing the mending, stepped through men who were reattaching polished scythe blades to their handles, weaved through children sitting on the stairs, picking out whatever looked edible from the poor-quality grains, and headed for the third floor.
There were plenty of people busily going to and fro on the third floor, lending to a constant buzz throughout the area; Lawrence doubted she was here moping.
But as he wandered, lost, not sure exactly where the storage room was, he saw four men emerge carrying a pot meant for making food for all the people who had come to work—it was big enough for a fully-grown adult to use as a bath. Behind them was Holo, a stack of three pots on her head and a spoon large enough to hold a baby under her left arm.