“Chotilek might have taken his price, low as it was, and let him dig through,” the innkeeper confided, “but he thought it better to see how things settled out. Begging the mesnera’s pardon, if you see what I mean.” With a nod in her direction.
And she did see what he meant. These people were not her tenants. They owed her nothing, either in rents or loyalty. But it seemed they were willing to give her a chance to speak on their behalf. To see if she would throw the weight of her name behind their concerns, only for the sake of that name.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she promised in parting the next morning. The region was known for wine and cattle—she could bargain with Mazuk for their transport needs and leave everyone with gains.
* * *
The title-lands of Turinz lay in the low hills and fertile fields that rose to meet the Terubirk range in the far south of Alpennia. They were far enough from Rotenek for local concerns to be overlooked, and close enough to the French border to have borne some of the brunt of the war. On the other side of the Terubirks lay Baron Mazuk’s hope of wealth: iron works that needed cheap transport of coal. Turinz had no share in that particular hope, but the manor had been rich enough until the more prosperous parts had been sold off. Now, even a less ambitious man than Arpik would have been hard put to support the style expected of a nobleman in Rotenek from those title-lands alone. Well, what was sold was gone and there was little chance of regaining it. Over the years, others had snapped up the most profitable lands. Mazuk himself had speculated in some of those squandered acres, though it seemed he would have done better to invest nearer to Sain-Mihail.
The village that of old had served the manor straggled in an awkward sprawl across two banks of the Trintun River, escaping the bounds of the title-lands on the far side. Barbara consulted LeFevre’s maps—or rather the maps in his memory.
“Most of the other bank belongs to a family named Perkumen,” he supplied.
She recognized the name from the rolls of the council of commons.
“A few smaller freeholds,” LeFevre continued. “The woods there further upstream are yours, and the mill.” The manor itself lay out of sight beyond the hill. They’d deal with that shortly.
No point in thinking they could enter the village unremarked. When Barbara stepped out of the carriage and shook her skirts loose—no riding breeches for this entrance—the parish church stood before her. Yes, that would be the place to start. She eyed the stone bell tower warily. One corner had crumbled. Another casualty of that unexpected earthquake, for the fallen stones were still piled at its base, waiting to be hauled away or restored. The main building seemed sound. She signaled to her retinue and they entered under a small crowd of curious eyes. She expected that crowd to grow shortly. Good. This was a time for broad gestures and that called for an audience.
At the priest’s questioning welcome she said, “A prayer, Father, if you will, for the peace and prosperity of the lands of Turinz and the well-being of its people. And when there is time, a mass to be said for the souls of all who have departed since the last time any lord of Turinz set foot in this church.”
At the end of the improvised service, the priest stepped away from the altar toward the gathered crowd and announced, “My friends, please welcome Mesnera Barbara Lumbeirt, Countess Turinz.”
This was different from her return in triumph to Saveze several years back, where they had known her for years. She weighed the mood of the crowd and began. “I am a stranger here among you.” After that, the words came more easily. “Indeed I was a stranger to myself for many years. But I know that my mother, the last Countess Turinz, lived here and some of you might have known her.” They had hardly been happy years: exiled from friends and family in Rotenek, kept out of the way by a husband who had cared only for her dowry. Barbara realized she had no idea what impression her mother might have made on the older folk who did remember her.
“The late Count Turinz,” she continued, then hesitated. It wasn’t well to disparage one’s predecessors and there might have been some reflexive loyalty to the man. “The late Count Turinz is not a man whose legacy I continue.”
That was both true and safely ambiguous. There was a muffled gust of laughter in the back that might have been accompanied by a crude joke. No matter. Better to have it out in the open. Someone tried to hush the man quickly, but Barbara turned to respond.
“No, it’s true what you’ve heard. I’m not of Arpik’s blood, and yet I am his heir. And since Turinz has fallen to my hands, honor demands that I do my best by you.”
There was no aclaim, no hearty cheers as there had been in Saveze, but the suspicious frowns had faded. They would give her a chance.
Her party took over the entirety of the second-best inn the village boasted. The better one lay across the river outside her bounds. It was better to show loyalty if she hoped to win it. In what was left of the daylight she rode out to the manor itself, an ancient towered hall flanked by rambling outbuildings that ranged around a space more farmyard than courtyard.
Someone had been using a few of the rooms. Langal’s agent, no doubt. Most were neglected and filthy. She climbed the stairs with a lantern found in the stables, heeding Tavit’s cautions about loose stones and rotted wood, but these buildings seemed to have been spared the damage that struck the church. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but with a couple days’ work it might be suitable for a symbolic occupation. Entertaining…that would need to wait.
Which of these had her mother inhabited? There was nothing to tell by the rubbish that remained. Anything of use or value had long since been stripped away. Was she mad to have taken on this burden? Burden it was, for the moment. But looking out the window to the fields beyond, she could tell the land was good and would be better with a careful hand. There was promise.
That promise seemed thin indeed by the time the next day had passed. Langal’s agent had demanded the next quarter’s rents in advance. “For the new countess,” he’d said. She, of course, had seen none of it. Some had paid. The bolder or more canny had held to their rights and delayed. And some, no doubt, had done the latter and claimed the former. There was no untangling it with the account books gone.
There was worse than that: stories of lost records, extra fees. In addition to the needed work on the church, the mill had been damaged ten years past and never repaired. Since then they’d had to send everything by wagon to a mill twenty miles east.
Barbara had raised an eyebrow at that. “Over the border into Mazuk? Not down to Fentrinz?”
Langal’s agent had given those instructions, like many other questionable ones. And once again Mazuk’s name cropped up more often than seemed reasonable in the affairs of Turinz.
* * *
Even without the further evidence of Mazuk’s meddling, the meeting with him was not one Barbara cared to put off. She had sent a politely worded letter the first day she arrived. Throughout the past spring, Baron Mazuk had maintained a brittle hostility toward her when they met in council or on the streets of Rotenek. That hostility was becoming more understandable. The empty title in Turinz had left opportunities that her presence threatened. Yet now that their future as neighbors was established, his response to her invitation was more conciliatory. Yes, he would be pleased to come to Turinz to discuss matters of mutual interest. She might expect him on Thursday next. Hoping she was in good health et cetera. A practical man, Barbara thought, if not one of firm principles.
Given the distance, Barbara had not expected him to arrive at the manor until late afternoon. But the sun had just reached its peak when she heard a shout from the first man to spot the carriage and outriders.
She broke off the sparring lesson with Brandel and swore softly as she ran a hand over her hair where it was escaping from its pins. “Damn his timing, I’d meant to be more presentable than this.” She handed the practice blade to her cousin and caught up her coat. A quick wipe of her face with a handkerchief completed the hasty toilette.
Mazuk arrived in all state, with footmen in attendance in addition to an armin as outrider. The latter she could understand, given their history, but Barbara was used to country customs that frowned on too much formality during the summer season. Her own appearance only emphasized the contrast. Where she had donned buckskin riding breeches and a dark linen coat, Mazuk was dressed like a dandy returning from a stroll in the palace gardens in pale fawn trousers and green-striped waistcoat. Although he topped her by several inches, his stout figure made him seem shorter compared to her own more athletic build. And, of course, his hair was impeccably oiled into place. A lock of her own tawny hair escaped the pins to blow across her face. Barbara let it be this time.
“Welcome to Turinz,” she offered, with a bow. “I fear my hospitality will be lacking.” She nodded toward the entry. “I’ve arranged dinner at the inn later—you’ll need to rely on it for lodging too. I haven’t anything suitable for guests yet, I’m afraid.” She signaled to Brandel to step up for introduction. “My cousin, Eskambrend Chamering, my mother’s nephew. Brandel, our neighbor Baron Mazuk.”
That set him aback, having taken Brandel for a mere hireling like Tavit. Tavit himself and Mazuk’s armin were performing their own silent rituals of introduction and acknowledgment.
Mazuk had been thrown off his stride. It wasn’t only the clothing, Barbara realized—though to her recollection he’d never encountered her in breeches before. After all, he’d never taken her invitation to cross practice swords at Perret’s fencing salle. He had come prepared to play courtly games with a lady and found none. She hid a smile and took the steps up to the front entrance with an energy that had nothing of petticoats or kid slippers. Mazuk followed more sedately.
In the entry hall, LeFevre came out of the parlor he’d commandeered as an office to say, “I’ve asked for tea to be brought—or perhaps you’d prefer wine?” They followed him back in and ranged themselves around the sparse furniture with the air of a battlefield treaty negotiation.
Mazuk cleared his throat. “I understand you have an interest in my canal, Baroness…well, today shall we say Countess Turinz? Or do you keep to strict precedence?” Turinz might nominally be the higher title, but Alpennia followed French customs. Saveze held greater rank by age and influence.
“Turinz will do for today,” she said. She tried to guess whether his sally had been meant as flattery or insult and her heart quickened to the game.
Mazuk’s disquiet made him less than articulate in his persuasions, but his project itself spoke eloquently. They agreed on the essentials. The Terubirk range had iron but it had never been worth working at any scale unless you could reliably bring coal up the river. Easier transport would benefit everyone—everyone with the right to use it. As things stood now, goods often went west over the border to France, rather than all the way to Rotenek, or even to the nearer port at Falinz. The prices for that trade were whittled away by tariffs if it were done openly, and bribes if it were not. Easier transport would address a number of problems. And if someone else had taken the risk and work to dig the canal…and there was the rub. For Mazuk made a fuss about how much work he’d done and how little a thing it was to cut through that corner of land.
“Little enough,” Barbara agreed. “And yet it wasn’t yours to use. And now there’s the matter of trespass.”
Mazuk tried to bluster. “A misunderstanding, nothing more. That quake was damned inconvenient. The surveyors—”
Barbara cut him off. “Don’t try to tell me that surveyors who can lay out the course of a canal can’t tell when they’d crossed a boundary line. You gambled that you’d have no neighbor of name to answer to, and you lost.”
They went back and forth for hours it seemed, like market-women haggling over the price of eggs. In the end, one simple fact decided the matter: the cost of either drawing back and going the long way around or of trying to move the rockfall was far more than the value of a few barge tolls. And so it was settled: Mefro Chotilek of Sain-Mihail would trade his corner of land for toll-free use of the canal. It might seem a small thing, but Mazuk would know he could no longer treat Turinz as his personal parkland.
* * *
Local affairs were more complicated to settle. It took two full weeks even to find the shape of the gaps between Langal’s accounts and the story they heard from the villagers.
“What a tangle!” Barbara said to LeFevre over dinner at the end of the day when they called a finish. She was startled to notice three empty wine bottles on the table between them. Had they been that long at work? Brandel had long since gone up to his room and even Tavit had abandoned them. “There are no records, no receipts, no rolls. I’d be within my rights to demand new rents from them all, but that’s no way to begin. There’s many couldn’t pay a second time. And God only knows who’s telling the truth!”
“Now there’s a thought,” LeFevre said. “Leave it to God.” It might have been the wine speaking, but it had the ring of a recommendation.
She raised an eyebrow at him.
“The bell tower repairs shouldn’t wait. Tell your tenants that anyone who still owes the midsummer rent should pay it to the church. That will answer your dilemma. You could hardly start work on the manor this summer whether you have the rents or not. It will take that long to determine what needs to be done.”
“Yes,” Barbara said slowly. Her every fiber cried out against starting with debts, but she had slowly grown easier about treating Margerit’s fortune as her own. Not—as Margerit insisted—because the old baron should have left it to her by right. Only because the pledge they had made one another—one heart, one home, one purse—had never yet betrayed them. It might have been Saveze money that paid Langal for the mortgage, but it would be Margerit’s funds that turned this heap of stones into something worthy of a countess again. Oh, Margerit! She yearned to be done with all this and in her arms again. She nodded at last in agreement.
LeFevre ran a hand through his thinning hair leaving an uncharacteristically unkempt look, then drew off his spectacles and closed his eyes briefly. “We’ll need to find someone trustworthy to take on the management here. Someone local who knows all the secrets, and then a second clerk to keep him honest. And you should find someone in Rotenek to oversee the Turinz accounts separately.”
“Separately?” Barbara was startled. “Do you expect it to be that much work?”
He shuffled the papers before him and stacked them neatly. Barbara knew it for a delaying move. It was a habit of his before opening a delicate subject.
“Barbara…?”
That caught her attention. He hadn’t addressed her by her Christian name since the day Prince Aukust had set the signet of Saveze on her finger.
“Barbara, I’m not a young man. Haven’t been for a very long time. With Maisetra Sovitre’s properties, and your lands in Saveze…I don’t think I can do justice to another entire estate.”
Barbara examined him closely. Did he indeed look more tired than usual or was he only now allowing it to show? Or had she simply not been paying attention? There had been a time in her life when that inattention could have been fatal. She tried to remember LeFevre’s age. Near what her father’s had been. Marziel Lumbeirt had fallen before his time, but… She felt a worm of fear. In many ways, LeFevre had been more of a father to her than the old baron had been. How could she not have taken more care for him?
“Of course,” she said quickly. “We’ll find someone. Perhaps it might be better to appoint separate managers for all of the properties. That would leave you to review accounts and read their reports.”
LeFevre let his breath out in a sigh. “I don’t know. That’s becoming the worst of it. The reading. My eyes. Mostly Iannipirt reads for me these days, but…”
Barbara followed his thoughts. A clerk who could no longer read was crippled indeed, even with as faithful a secretary as Iannipirt at his side. “Why didn’t you ask Ianni to come with you? He would always be welcome at Saveze.”
“I d
idn’t want to say anything,” LeFevre continued. “It comes and goes. And Ianni spends the summer with family. The holiday is good for both of us.”
Barbara reached out and took his hand. “You should have told me. Did you think I’d turn you out into the street?”
They both laughed at that. He had enough properties and investments of his own in Rotenek to live comfortably. But most of his life had been given in service to Saveze. It must pain him to admit his growing incapacity.
Barbara took the stack of papers from in front of him. “You should have said something,” she repeated. “I’ll have Brandel read them to you, if that helps. I’ve been thinking of using Turinz to give him some experience in managing properties.”
“He’s too young for that,” LeFevre protested.
“Oh, not for the manager’s job you were thinking of,” she said. “Just…” She trailed off, not yet ready to share those unfledged thoughts. The opportunity might never come, after all.
As always, LeFevre was there with her. “He can’t inherit Turinz,” he said gently. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of in burfroi birth, but only the nobility can hold title-lands.”
“No he can’t, not as he is,” she agreed. “But the bloodline connection is there. He’s kin to the previous Countess Turinz and the Arpik side is long dispersed. That would be enough of a claim if…”
“If he were enrolled,” LeFevre finished for her.
It wasn’t impossible. Common-born men could be enrolled into the nobility for many reasons. Lord Albori had been rewarded for his long service as foreign minister. There might come a day when Princess Annek would owe her a favor…
“Don’t set your heart on it,” LeFevre cautioned. “Even if you adopted him, it would make no difference without enrollment. I know you never really meant him to become an armin, but it’s a long road to go from a country squire’s son, to a courtier, to a man of sufficient note to be ennobled.”
Mother of Souls: A novel of Alpennia Page 3
