8 – become a lord (1)

As soon as the next morning came, I headed straight to the office where the baron was waiting.

“Your Excellency Baron Kreuttel, Ciel von Kreuttel has arrived at your call.”

After a moment of silence, the baron’s voice came from beyond the door.

“Come in.”

When I opened the door and entered, I saw the baron sitting at a wooden office desk and chair.

Fortunately, he didn’t hit me with an angry expression, so at least he doesn’t doubt me.

Lived, at least now, like Crown Prince Sohyeon of the Joseon Dynasty, the flag that would die from being suspected by Injo has been broken.

“Okay, the story is going to be a bit long, so sit here.”

“Yes, Father.”

Following those words, I sat upright on the chair pointed out by the baron, like an interviewer at a job interview.

Then the baron put on a serious expression and spoke in a serious voice.

“Yes, according to a messenger from the village… I heard that Bayleef Mars dared to disobey my orders and embezzle huge amounts of money from the serfs in the name of death tax, watermill usage tax, farm equipment rental, and the like.”

“Yes, it is.”

“And they even sold serf women who couldn’t pay the death tax as prostitutes to mercenaries, and sold their children to slave traders or worked them to death. I heard that the girl you brought, Ella, was trying to get you as a concubine, and offered it to appease you.”

“That’s right. It was a really jaw-dropping thing. Ella’s younger brother Jacques…”

The baron raised his hand to stop me from continuing, and resumed his conversation.

“My story is not over yet, Ciel von Kreuttel. I never taught you to cut off my story.”

“sorry.”

When I bowed my head to apologize, he took back his anger and continued talking in an ice-cold voice.

“Once you figured out that situation, you had to report it to me and execute it through a fair trial. But Ciel von Kreuttel. It is unacceptable to arbitrarily kill an official of a territory without a report, no matter how justified the purpose. In the same way, it is incomprehensible that he returns the stolen property to the serfs. Because I never gave you permission to do that. However, I will give you a chance. explain.”

When I heard the story up to this point, I could feel it at first glance.

The Baron is certainly not suspicious of me.

If you doubted me, you wouldn’t have called me one-on-one like this and given me a chance to explain.

And I won’t even discipline you like this.

It’s just that if you openly scold me in front of the other nobles and take appropriate probation measures, you’ll be able to bring me down or weaken my foundation.

No, rather, because he cares about me, he must be giving me an explanation even though I did this kind of transgression.

“First of all, the bailiff violated the lord’s inherent powers: the right to set the collection of taxes and the duty to protect the serfs. In particular, selling a serf girl with taxes that don’t exist, and furthermore, offering Ella to me as a plaything to bribe me, is an open trampling on my father’s honor.”

The Baron heard that and nodded in agreement.

“So, of course, it was necessary to undo everything in order to restore my father’s honor.”

“What you said is right. I only gave Bayleaf the right to collect additional taxes on crops, on marriages, and sometimes on the serfs in times of war. By exercising any power beyond that, and selling the serfs into slavery, I violated my duty to protect them.”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

Hearing that, the baron relaxed his expression a bit and spoke in a more comfortable voice.

“Yes, as you said, this act is a fair noble punishment. Even though I don’t like that you exercised the ‘life-and-death right’ against the official, which is not allowed to you. However, you have yet to explain the arbitrary distribution of Bayleaf’s property and the failure to report Bayleaf’s disposition to me in advance.”

“Yes, I also tried to report and punish Baileif’s misdeeds whenever possible. But I punished Bayleaf for letting Ella into my room. Ella was neither a prostitute nor a slave, but a serf of this estate. But please think about what it means to offer Ella as a plaything to me, the successor of the lord of this territory.”

As I said, even if they were slaves, beggars, or poor people, all serfs in this world were legally ‘owned by the lord of the domain’.

Therefore, noble knights do not recklessly kill serfs even if they have a good justification, and punish them through an annoying trial.

Otherwise, any vassal who dared to challenge the lord’s authority could be beheaded for treason.

But I get drunk on a girl who makes debts and eats them for ridiculous reasons the way the dead Bayleaf did?

This is clearly treason against the lord, and at the point of inviting me to do this, Bayleaf is turning me into a scumbag who tried to taint my allegiance to my father as a nobleman.

So what I said would be a perfect excuse for me to say that I had no choice but to kill Bayleaf to show my allegiance to the baron.

The baron, who listened to me and pondered for a long time to see if his words worked, relaxed his expression before he knew it and treated me with a relaxed expression, although not smiling as usual.

It’s fortunate that the excuses worked, no matter how much I calculated and made up my mind that this would happen, if that man was a madman, I could have gone straight to the afterlife or been purged without any excuses or anything.

“I see. he is also my son You did well.”

The baron’s voice no longer showed any rebuke to me.

“Thank you, Father.”

“However, it was a little careless. If I hadn’t believed you, I would have been furious at the thought of giving away your wealth. And he must have doubted you.”

I remembered it only after hearing that.

Yes, when I think about bandits called bandits like Hong Gil-dong, they stole thousands of seats of rice or other riches from the storehouses of the ‘rich man’, ‘landlord’, and ‘yangban’, and then distributed them all.

The reason for the distribution was to return the property extorted from the poor to the original owner, but the biggest reason was.

There was also an intention to gain their public sentiment so that they could continue such bandit activities in the future.

And that bandit activity was actually treason against the king.

In other words, although my action was to restore the property of the unfair serfs as the heir to this estate, on the contrary, there is room for thought that I would try to incite the people and attempt a rebellion against these serfs.

Of course, it would be unfair to be misunderstood like this, but there are innumerable cases in which a rebellion was actually built up step by step in this way.

Damn, I was too careless.

Seeing my face crinkle, the baron smiled and said,

“You know now? hahahaha. It’s not easy to behave in a manor, is it? That’s why I told them to go to the academy to learn these things. There, too, various aristocrats form factions with each other, and small politics take place.”

“hahahaha, that’s right.”

I had laughed hard a moment ago, but cold sweat was running down my back.

Because when I was studying history, I was behaving like generals and nobles who ran away from ‘overloyalty’, which I considered the most stupid.

And it was a crisis that he could die from being suspicious by his father while he acted like that.

Seeing me like that, my father laughed out loud for a while, then looked me in the eyes and said,

“Yeah, what. Well done though. To be honest, from the time you said you were inspecting the countryside, I was about to give up sending you to the academy if your intentions were that stubborn. A man made up his mind, and if that’s right… rural aristocrats like us don’t even have to go to an academy.”

Hearing those words, my heart suddenly jumped.

The person in front of me right now isn’t my real father, but I haven’t met a ‘father’ in over 10 years who believes in and supports me this much.

That’s why the baron’s fatherly love in front of me was even more impressive.

“father…”

“good night. Then, as you suggested, I won’t send them to the academy. Go back now. However, in this case, we will hold a separate trial to find out your fault and punish you formally. The execution of an official who did not report is wrong anyway.”

Well, the baron already said ‘yes, you passed’, but if you say it as a punishment, it must be at the level of punishment with a cotton bat.

Even if a nobleman said, ‘Your Excellency, isn’t even the heir too cheap?’ Even if this is the case, if I just explain it that way, I won’t have anything to say.

On the contrary, it would be better not to go sightseeing or eat.

“Okay, let’s go back.”

***

A few days later, as my father said, I was tried in front of several knights.

At the beginning of the trial, some of the nobles thought what I was going to do, although some tried to get close to my half-brother.

As a result, it ended in punishment with a cotton bat, as my father had already given me.

No, it was rather an advantage.

Since the house probation ended on the 14th, I should use this as an excuse to sleep in as much as I can, make plans, and play.

Oh, of course we have to come up with a plan using the data we got from this visit.

All issues worked out really well.

And I considered putting Ella in an orphanage, but the Baron ordered me to take charge, so Ella was nominally made an ‘exclusive maid’.

The baron said this while entrusting Ella to me.

“If you leave this child in an orphanage, all she has to do is become a concubine of a noble. At least this is because she is really pretty, so she can live a better life. Orphaned girls usually become prostitutes in the majority of cases. .”

So after hearing this, I found out about the orphanage, and it was as it was said.

Because the orphanage in this world like the Middle Ages collects orphans and protects them, but the facilities are really poor.

Children in orphanages do not work as hard as adults, but they work the same number of hours as adults.

For rice, a bowl of thin wheat or barley porridge and a piece of bread are given only a day.

Even after leaving the orphanage, there were many cases where there was no place to find a job, so they ended up in the city’s poor, or in the case of girls, they became prostitutes selling their bodies.

At least, girls with pretty faces sometimes became maids or playthings of nobles.

To entrust a cute girl like Ella to a place like that.

In the worst case, the head of the orphanage might turn a blind eye and touch it.

And since I decided to live in this world, I couldn’t treat the child I had rescued as if I had met a dog or cat on the street.

was a little frivolous

So in the end, I took it under the name of my exclusive maid.

And after doing so, my probation was released before I knew it, and my father’s order arrived at me.

[Gives Ciel von Kreuttel the Windheim area, which was managed by Baileef Mars, as a domain.]

As soon as I received the order, I went to visit my father, thanked him, and immediately set off for the village that Bayleaf was managing.