The Isolated Marchioness Just Wants to Make a Living
Chapter 15
“Whoa! Potatoes! It’s potatoes! We can finally eat our fill today!”
Beaming from ear to ear, the knights steadily dropped dirt-caked potatoes into their baskets.
“And starting now…”
And right now, I knew the magic words that would instantly send their morale through the roof.
“…we’ll be slaughtering a chicken every other day.”
The chicks that arrived at our marquisate mansion a month and a half ago were now pullets.
It would take five months before they started laying eggs anyway, so once they were big enough to eat, it only made sense to butcher them right away.
Besides, having brought in so many chicks to raise, their population had grown too large.
On top of that, more chicks were constantly hatching from the fertilized eggs. I also had to manage our inventory of wheat bran and rice bran used as feed.
“Waaaaaaaah!”
Of course, the rate at which we ate them would far outpace their reproduction, but that was fine—we only needed to hold out for another month and a half.
“Which means, in two days…”
I declared solemnly.
“…to celebrate butchering our first chicken, we’re holding a feast.”
It was the very evening I had invited Baron Forman.
“We will spare no ingredients.”
Beyond chicken, eggs, potatoes, and lettuce, we had plenty of other things to eat. I intended to mobilize every last one.
“Waaaaaaaaaaaah!”
Everyone cheered, save for Wendy.
Wendy had been excluded not just from harvesting potatoes, but from all other manual labor as well.
“Um, milady?”
A knight who had been keeping watch in the distance came running over.
“The old gentleman you mentioned has just crossed into our borders!”
Just as expected.
It had to be Baron Forman.
‘He must have wanted to see for himself whether it was really all right to accept a meal. At least he has a sense of shame.’
I had already described Baron Forman’s appearance to the knights, instructing them not to detain him if such an old man showed up, but to quietly let him do whatever he wanted and then report back to me.
The former intelligence agent was completely exposed to me like that.
“Very well,”
I said nonchalantly.
“Don’t bother cornering him. Just let him look around to his heart’s content.”
Baron Forman crossed the border with ease. Realistically, the knights couldn’t guard the entire perimeter.
‘Is it truly right to accept an invitation to a feast? At a time like this, when people’s generosity has soured to the extreme…’
He swallowed a sigh, recalling the grim atmosphere in the Hawin Barony.
Food was scarce, and people had grown sharp-edged.
Lately, not a single soul in the Hawin Barony ate three meals a day.
Baron Forman had assumed Sears wouldn’t be any different. If anything, he expected conditions here to be even worse.
For now, he lingered around the village cottages. That was when he spotted a child heading toward the riverbank with a basket.
“Hm? What is that…?”
The child picked a bounty of mushrooms from the logs along the river.
Come to think of it, rows of decaying logs lined the riverbank.
“Child, what are those?”
Baron Forman asked the child.
The child replied casually.
“Mushrooms. A month and a half ago, the young lady ordered the knights to grow them like this.”
Having harvested the mushrooms, the child moved along the riverbank, slicing crisp greens and tossing them into the basket as well.
“And what are those?”
“Water dropwort. Just like the young lady said, we cut the stems and planted them right into the mud, and they multiplied like crazy.”
The child pulled up a fish trap resting beside the water dropwort patch. It was teeming with small fish.
“Fish lay their eggs among the water dropwort stems, you see. So the fish population grew too. We catch this much every single day.”
Baron Forman’s jaw dropped involuntarily.
‘Granted, having a river is an enormous advantage, but can one truly harvest food this efficiently?’
The child’s expression, the calm demeanor, the easygoing composure—none of these could be found in the Hawin Barony.
“Then do you live solely on fish, mushrooms, and water dropwort?”
“There’s plenty of other things, too. The young lady taught us more than ten different methods.”
Answering cheerfully, the child stared intently at Baron Forman, then shrugged and said,
“Grandpa, you’re from the Hawin Barony, aren’t you?”
The child pulled a handful of mushrooms from the basket and offered them to Baron Forman.
“Take these and eat. Giving away this much for free should be fine.”
Baron Forman stared at the oyster mushrooms held out to him.
Now that the child had explained it, he could see it clearly.
It was completely different from the riverbank he had visited not long ago. It had been systematically organized and designed to produce a constant stream of food.
He recalled Brisa Seers, proudly presenting him with an invitation.
Amid this tranquil riverside village, a girl possessing flawless etiquette, dressed impeccably as though dropped straight out of the heart of the capital.
‘All of this… accomplished by a twelve-year-old girl?’
The child looked at him with pity and said,
“Next time, bring something decent to trade for eggs.”
Apparently, Baron Hawin was the only one in the dark; the commoners were already trading back and forth under the table.
“The people from the Hawin Barony love them, saying the eggs from Sayers have plump yolks and taste delicious.”
And so, several days later, Baron Forman returned to Sayers Fief in disguise.
As he waited with a pounding heart, the doors of the marquisate mansion opened.
A maid who looked far from starved greeted him with haughty composure.
‘Since I’m posing as an ignorant country elder, it’ll seem most natural if I pretend not to know proper table manners and devour the food greedily.’
Dressed in a heavily pilled vest, he mused to himself.
‘He’s really eating well.’
I thought to myself as I watched Baron Forman eat the potatoes, lotus roots, and water dropwort.
I knew it was customary in the West to leave a little food behind, yet Baron Forman ended up scraping the bottom of his bowl.
“Do people eat lotus roots this time of year as well?”
“Autumn is their peak season, but they’re fine to eat now. They have less starch, but they’re tender instead.”
Lotus roots were a great carbohydrate source for rapid propagation. All you had to do was cut the existing roots and replant them.
It was known as vegetative propagation, and I had done plenty of it a month ago.
“Then… how did you manage to get salt…?”
The moment he asked hesitantly, the maid snapped at him.
“Just because our young lady kindly answers the questions of a mere commoner, do you take her for your tutor? Stop disturbing the young lady’s meal and keep your questions to yourself!”
Baron Forman flinched.
Well, as for the salt…
‘The people of the Hawin Barony offered it up themselves in exchange for taking water.’
Salt was what we received most in return.
The moment I heard the Hawin family had abundant salt reserves, my worries about salt vanished.
Barter didn’t simply grind to a halt just because higher-ups forbade it.
‘Especially not between people who had lived as neighbors until quite recently.’
Baron Forman scraped clean the salad of mushrooms, lettuce, and radish sprouts that was served next.
Soon, the main course arrived.
“Grilled chicken leg accompanied by fish. Please enjoy it with the perilla seed sauce.”
The perilla seeds were also brought in from the Hawin Barony. The Beron territory that had been seized from us was a field of perilla.
Perilla was not a common crop in the Empire. Beron was an exception.
It was all thanks to my father’s disastrous eye for business, having decided that given Central’s narrow fields and well-developed distribution, it would be best to cultivate uncommon crops in small quantities.
Thus, after salt, the people of the Hawin Barony brought perilla seeds most often.
We even fed the perilla press cake to the chickens. It helped them lay eggs better.
Watching Baron Forman lick his fork with lingering regret, I asked,
“Would you like some more fried fish?”
“Yes! But… the radish sprouts and lettuce…?”
“The villagers usually grow a lot of autumn radishes, so we collected seeds from them to cultivate. Would you like more potatoes?”
“Yes!”
With him like this, how could I not keep asking if he wanted seconds?
When served an egg pudding topped with plums for dessert, Baron Forman wore an expression on the verge of tears.
“Plums? These are remarkably fresh…”
“They grow by the river.”
There were fruits that bore in early summer along the riverbanks.
Fruit yields weren’t great, but we tended them carefully without cutting down the trees. Since we had to ration our sugar, we added bits of fruit to our dishes instead.
I watched Baron Forman, who was already scraping the bottom of his dessert dish, and added one more word.
“…Would you like some more?”
Baron Forman answered,
“Milady, would you perhaps be willing to marry my grandson? That is the finest reward I can offer you in return.”
