My Winter Preparations
The ruelle gathering had been a failure and I ended up bedridden, having to drink some potions to recover. But the Harvest Festival itself ended without issue.
“Welcome back, Lady Rozemyne,” Gil said upon my return to the temple.
I sighed. “And so I have returned. Did anything happen while I was gone?”
“There is much we need to discuss,” he began, prompting Fran to step forward.
“And to that end, Gil, please guide Lady Rozemyne to her orphanage director’s chambers to talk there. It will be more peaceful there since she has just returned from the Harvest Festival and her things are currently being returned to the High Bishop’s chambers,” he suggested, indirectly saying that I would get in the way of the movers.
I heard him loud and clear, and so we headed to the orphanage director’s chambers with Gil and my guard knights.
“Here you are, Lady Rozemyne.”
Gil served me tea once we were inside, which I sipped as he caught me up on everything that had happened while I was gone. He was making clear strides in his tea-making skills, and while he still wasn’t as good as Fran, he was a lot better than before. He told me about how much paper and how many picture books they had made, how much ink they needed, and so on, before moving on to talking about a trombe.
“A stretchy tree appeared in the forest while we were making paper there, and we all cut it down together. It was large enough that the soldiers had to help,” he explained. “They said we had done very well and that, since they didn’t need the young, thin branches, we were allowed to take those with us. We’ve already peeled away the black bark.”
Lutz had apparently negotiated with the soldiers to let us take all the young trombe wood with us.
“As long as nobody was hurt, I’m glad to hear that.”
“Afterward, Ingo came to the workshop to discuss improving the printing press with Lutz and the gray priests. I believe Lutz will have a more detailed report on that for you.”
“I am looking forward to that.” Just thinking about improving the printing press made me excited. What sort of changes did they have in mind already? “What about the kids from Hasse? Are they fitting in well? Would it be okay for me to go and check up on them?”
“...We can go to the orphanage, if you would like.”
“Oh yes, I would. There is something I need to ask Wilma, after all.”
And so, I headed to the orphanage with my guards. Wilma was surprised by my sudden arrival, but when I explained that everyone else was busy moving things back to my room, she giggled.
“You have so few attendants, Lady Rozemyne, that these matters often prove to be a handful.”
“...Do I really have that few attendants? I’ve heard that most blue priests maintain about five, which is as many as I have.” I also knew that the former High Bishop had about six attendants. I say “about” since I wasn’t sure whether Delia counted, but still—we weren’t too far off from each other.
“That is enough for most blue priests, but you are the High Bishop, the orphanage director, and a forewoman, all at once. I believe you would want at least three attendants for each position,” Wilma replied.
As it stood, she was handling the orphanage, Gil was managing the workshop, and Fran, Monika, and Nicola were taking care of the High Bishop side of my work. Considering that Nicola also usually went to the kitchen to help out, I basically had one attendant for each job, which did indeed seem like a lot of strain on them.
“I will discuss this with Fran and Ferdinand, and increase their numbers if necessary. In any case, how were things here during the Harvest Festival? Did you have enough food?”
“Yes. We finished it without issue thanks to your preparations, Lady Rozemyne.”
Even though many of the blue priests had left with their personal chefs, the orphanage had many gray shrine maidens who knew how to cook now. They had managed to survive the Harvest Festival without starving thanks to us preparing food ahead of time.
“How are the children from Hasse holding up? Are they fitting in now?”
“At first, there were some problems with their attitudes being so different, and I sometimes saw them at a loss for what to do. But the priests and shrine maidens who had lived with them in Hasse provided some assistance, and over time, everyone came to understand these differences,” Wilma explained.
The kids in the temple had been raised here without ever going outside, so they weren’t too familiar with the concept of people thinking differently from them. But they had recently seen Lutz and Leon working in the workshop, as well as Johann and Zack visiting as craftsmen, among other guests, which had made it easier for them to accept.
“How are winter preparations for the orphanage going?”
“We have already started boiling jam, drying mushrooms, and doing everything else we can. More firewood was gathered in the forest this year than last, and what we’ve bought through the Gilberta Company has already been delivered,” she said.
Pig Day was still a ways off, but this year, we would be doing it together with the Gilberta Company. And with their experience from last year under their belts, they wouldn’t have any problems.
“Excuse me, Lady Rozemyne. Nora and Marthe were asking whether the orphanage spun thread or weaved fabric for its winter handiwork. As we had never heard of these things, I wanted to ask you about them. Should we acquire what would be needed to do them this year...?” Wilma asked hesitantly.
Weaving and spinning were the most important kinds of winter handiwork that a female commoner could do. They were necessary to make clothes for your family, and sewing skills were an important factor in becoming a beautiful woman who men wanted to marry. However, gray priests and shrine maidens were given clothes from the temple. At the moment, we had just been buying cheap used clothes from poor lower city stores for the dirtier work in the forest or printing in the workshop.
Honestly, it would end up a lot more expensive for us to buy thread. Even those who were bought by nobles were given clothes and hand-me-downs in the noble estates, and since basically no priests or shrine maidens ever got married, sewing and weaving skills didn’t really matter that much.
“As the temple provides clothes, there is no need to make them. I am not currently considering weaving to be important. However, it might be wise to prepare wool and knit clothes in general, so as to have warmer attire for the winter.”
Last year we had bought old sweaters for warmth, but the more warm clothes one had during the winter, the better. For this reason, I decided to order wool and knitting needles from the Gilberta Company so that the orphanage could work on knitting this winter.
“Having warm clothes will be much appreciated. Nora and Marthe seem to know how to knit, and it might be wise to ask Tuuli if she has the time to help as well,” Wilma replied, seeming quite enthusiastic. It would probably be a good way to kill time over the winter, too.
After telling her about the tithes that were being prepared in the castle to be sent to the temple later, I stood up from my chair.
“Before you go, Lady Rozemyne, there is one more thing I would like to ask. I drew a few more illustrations of the High Priest using the art utensils provided by Lady Elvira, but I am unsure of where to take them.”
“Please show them to me at once,” I requested, and soon I was face to face with an illustration of Ferdinand drawn using soft colors. It had Wilma’s filter over it, of course, so Ferdinand was basically radiating a heavenly aura.
This really makes Ferdinand look like a saint, but that’s just not right. He definitely doesn’t give gentle smiles like this! They’re dark! And full of evil!
I was screaming on the inside, but as far as I could tell, Elvira really did see Ferdinand like this. She would probably cry tears of joy upon seeing it.
“Please wrap it up in cloth, place it in a chest, and bring it to my orphanage director’s chambers,” I instructed. There was a chance that Ferdinand would find it if it were brought to my High Bishop’s chambers, so I decided it would be best to leave it in my orphanage director’s chambers instead.
“As you wish.”
Having finished talking with Wilma, I returned to my chambers with Gil and my guard knights. The unpacking had already been completed.
“Lady Rozemyne, please spend the remainder of today resting. You will be quite busy starting tomorrow,” Fran said.
Over half of the blue priests had already returned from the Harvest Festival, and as the High Bishop, I would need to listen to their reports with Ferdinand tomorrow. I would then have to retrieve the small chalices from the blue priests who had visited provinces ruled by other nobles, and after confirming that all the golden chalices were accounted for, I would line them up on a shelf and lock them away. Managing the chalices was part of the High Bishop’s duties, and we would be refilling them with mana over the winter’s Dedication Ritual.
“Furthermore, you will need to decide on both the ritual and home visitation schedules,” Fran continued.
The tithes that the blue priests had acquired during the Harvest Festival would later be brought from the castle to their homes, and so they would thus be visiting their homes to accept the delivery. But since there was so much to move around, the process would turn into a huge mess unless we created a schedule and had them leave gradually over time.
“These are the temple’s—or rather, the blue priests’—winter preparations. You will need to visit the castle to retrieve your own tithes, Lady Rozemyne, but that can be done when you give your report to the archduke.”
It seemed that I would need to go to the castle and give a report to Sylvester once all the blue priests had returned and I had all the chalices. That, too, was the duty of the High Bishop.
“The plan is for the castle to prepare my tithe and send it over via wagon,” I said.
“That would be a great help. But your winter clothing is going to be prepared in the castle as well, correct? We will need to bring that here as well, and you will surely have many meetings over your winter debut,” Fran said, listing out all of the reasons why I would continue to be busy even now that the Harvest Festival was over. I had assumed everything would be the same as last year and that I would only need to prepare my chambers and the orphanage for winter, but all of my new responsibilities meant that things weren’t quite so simple.
And so began a series of meetings with blue priests that continued day after day. Their main job had been to retrieve the chalices, but they also told us about the tithes, tax officers, and atmosphere of each farming town. Some blue priests went into surprisingly thorough detail, while others simply noted that not much had changed from the previous year.
“...Ferdinand, might I suggest delegating some administrative work to Kampfer and Frietack? Neither are from wealthy families, and it seems they will take their work seriously if paid a proper amount.”
“I do not have the time to teach them from the ground up without knowing how motivated they will prove to be,” Ferdinand said curtly. As it turned out, he had actually delegated work before, but the blue priests were so incompetent and the former High Bishop so intrusive that he had ultimately decided to just do everything himself.
“I know that you get work done faster and more reliably than everyone else, but you’re so busy right now because you always use that as an excuse to take on more work. You should learn to delegate, even if things end up taking longer as a result. After all, Bezewanst isn’t here to get in your way anymore,” I said.
Now that Bezewanst was gone, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Ferdinand wielded absolute power within the temple. There were some blue priests who had been minimizing contact with Ferdinand to protect themselves from the High Bishop, and now Ferdinand could use this opportunity to train them.
“How many blue priests would normally be doing the work that you’ve taken it upon yourself to manage? Just so you know, Sylvester was giving you more because he assumed you were bored and had an abundance of spare time here. Have you not been telling him how much work you really have?”
“Work given by the archduke must be done swiftly and properly. What point would there be in reporting the amount? All he needs to know are the results,” Ferdinand said.
I couldn’t help but sigh about how strict his attitude toward work was. Who had raised him to be like this? I had read in a book once that keeping your superiors updated was one of the fundamentals of a smooth workflow, and while the people here didn’t seem to respect that, it was surely important.
“One key aspect of a smooth workflow is keeping everyone up to date on what’s going on. For example, Sylvester relaxed the printing schedule a little after I told him how I felt. He said that I could continue at my own pace.”
“You... You told him you could not finish the work you were given?” Ferdinand asked, his eyes wide with disbelief.
I pursed my lips in a pout. “I didn’t say that I couldn’t do it. I just told him the truth—that he was being so unreasonable about it that I didn’t have any spare time at all. He assumed that you would be doing it all for me, Ferdinand, and was very surprised when I told him that I was taking the lead myself.”
“And that was enough for Sylvester, of all people, to agree to slow down? I see he is very soft on you,” Ferdinand said, crossing his arms with a frown. But really, he was the weird one for piling so much work on me when I was so sickly and—at least in appearance—a child. He would probably just say that it only made sense to give work to those who were capable of completing it, but I didn’t want to do more than I had to.
I just want to read. Give. Me. Reading time!
“In any case, the one thing I can say for sure is that you should not expect me to do as much work as you, Ferdinand. I simply lack the stamina for it,” I said. My hands were already going to be full with the Dedication Ritual and dealing with noble society over winter; my body couldn’t handle much more.
“You have a fair point, but I have prepared more than enough potions for the both of us.”
“Well, I don’t think a lifestyle dependent on potion abuse is very healthy! Actually, Ferdinand, I really think you need to learn to live without relying on them. If you don’t reduce your workload to a point you can handle on your own, you’re going to collapse one day. Don’t make me tell Rihyarda about this.”
At that, Ferdinand gave an extremely displeased scowl. He could no doubt imagine what Rihyarda would say to him—or yell at him, rather.
“Reducing one’s workload is no simple matter. What would you have me do?”
“First, you can go to the castle less frequently. I know it’s a key part of gathering information, but since they give you work every time you go there, I think staying at the temple and having Justus gather information in your place would be better,” I suggested.
Ferdinand tightly knitted his brow in a deep frown. “But if I do not go, then work will continue to pile up on Sylvester’s desk.”
“That’s Sylvester’s work. You can let him handle it. How will Ehrenfest survive when its ruler cannot even handle personal responsibility? Despite everything you say, you are actually spoiling Sylvester quite a bit. You should be as strict with him as you are with Wilfried.”
It didn’t take long to realize that the only ones Ferdinand considered family were his half-brother Sylvester and Karstedt, his older cousin. But when I told him not to spoil the archduke, he looked shocked.
“Me, spoiling Sylvester? Nobody has ever accused me of that before.”
“Think about it. You tell me to clean up my own messes, don’t you? And while you help with the work that I can’t do, you never help me with the stuff that I can handle myself. Is the work on Sylvester’s desk work that he literally cannot do? If we have an archduke who can’t handle his own work, that’s a pretty big problem.”
Ferdinand closed his eyes and shook his head, stroking his chin. “He attempts to push the work onto others, but he is not incapable of doing it himself.”
“Sylvester should work at least as hard as Wilfried is now. Please prioritize your work in the temple over helping with Sylvester’s. And finally, delegate some of your own work to other blue priests to give yourself some spare time,” I said with a clenched fist.
Ferdinand looked down at me, his interest caught. “Spare time, hm? And what purpose would that serve?”
“...It’s for your health. It has absolutely nothing to do with me securing more reading time.”
“At last, you reveal your true intentions. But, well... I suppose your points are valid nonetheless. In that case, when Sylvester makes unreasonable demands of the temple, I expect you to be there as the High Bishop to stop him,” Ferdinand said with a grin, unloading one of his more annoying duties onto me.
...Strange. I wanted to reduce my workload, but now I have even more work. Why?
Once I had received all the chalices from the blue priests, I arranged a meeting with Sylvester and headed to the castle with Ferdinand. As soon as we arrived, I started driving to his office in my one-person Pandabus, simultaneously asking Rihyarda to make the necessary arrangements so that I could take home the prepared parts of my tithe on my way back. I also asked how Wilfried’s studies were going.
“Wilfried is making steady progress on his task list. I’ve since replaced half of his attendants, and he’s now studying harder than ever before. He throws himself at the karuta each and every day, saying that he’ll beat you next time for sure, milady. He can now read most letters and all numbers, though he needs to practice his writing a little more,” Rihyarda explained with a lively expression on her face. She really did love raising kids.
Since I was already there, I decided to teach her a card game that involved addition as a key component. Wilfried would probably learn a little bit of math by playing it on top of everything else.
“His harspiel practice is going well, too, and he should be capable of playing a song by winter. He always ends up throwing a tantrum since he’s learning through repetition, but after crying and stomping his feet for a bit, he gives up and practices all sullen-like,” Rihyarda added. “Lord Sylvester and Lady Florencia were both shocked to see how quickly he’s progressing, and I can hardly express how happy they are. They’re beyond thankful, milady.”
Any parent would be happy to see their kid escaping disinheritance. And since Wilfried knew how pleased they were, I was sure that he would keep working hard.
As we arrived at the archduke’s office, I put away Lessy and entered the room with Ferdinand. There was a large stack of paperwork on the desk, just as he had said there would be, and upon seeing Ferdinand walk in, even the scholars nearby looked as though they had been saved.
Ferdinand ignored them all, told Sylvester that I had brought all the chalices back, then gave a report on the Harvest Festival.
“So the Harvest Festival went off without a hitch, huh?” Sylvester remarked. “Good going, Rozemyne. And I hate to ask, but I’m gonna need you to fill up ten extra chalices, just like you did last year.”
“No.”
My reply was instant.
Sylvester blinked in surprise, then cocked his head. It was clear from the look on his face that he either couldn’t understand what I had just said, or simply didn’t want to understand, so I explained my reasoning for turning him down.
“We can’t do the same thing we did last year. I need to enter noble society this year, and the temple has fewer people due to the incident in spring.”
Bezewanst had been a flawed man, but as one would expect given his family’s status, he had noticeably more mana than the other blue priests. Last year had been hard enough, and no way would we be able to manage it again with less people.
“...I’ve already accepted the request. Can’t you do anything about this?” Sylvester asked.
But no matter what he said, I needed to rest, and I needed to participate in noble gatherings. I already had to be there with Wilfried to ensure he didn’t embarrass himself during his winter debut; I didn’t have the time, stamina, or mana to spend on filling chalices from other duchies.
“Please do not underestimate our shortage of mana and blue priests, or forget my lack of stamina. If you absolutely must give them the mana, then you may come to the temple and donate it yourself.”
“Wait, me?!”
“Is it not expected for nobles to take responsibility for their actions and solve problems they introduced themselves? You are the one who accepted this request without asking me what I thought, so it is therefore up to you to get yourself out of this mess. No matter how hard we try, the temple simply cannot manage more than half of those chalices.”
Ehrenfest has just as serious of a mana shortage as anywhere else. I don’t know what political deals have led to Sylvester taking on these chalices, but we don’t have the resources to take care of other duchies on top of ourselves. And should they absolutely need to be filled, Sylvester can surely use his own mana, or send more blue priests our way. There has to be something he could do.
Sylvester quickly gave up on convincing me, turning to look at Ferdinand instead. “Ferdinand, can y—”
“My sincere apologies, but this is the decision of the High Bishop you appointed. I am but the mere High Priest serving beneath her. Furthermore, do you recall what I told you last year? ‘Just this once,’ I believe it was. Rozemyne is correct—you are the aub, so solve your own problems,” Ferdinand said with his lips curved into a grin, rejecting Sylvester in a tone that lacked even a trace of remorse.
Sylvester opened his eyes wide and cradled his head. Judging by that reaction, I could tell that Ferdinand had only accepted the request last year after much grumbling and complaining.
“I’m afraid the temple simply has no leeway whatsoever. Please do your own work without relying on Ferdinand, Sylvester. Do you not need to serve as an example to Wilfried, as both his father and the aub?” I asked, giving Sylvester and the scholars who had looked so desperately at Ferdinand a dignified smile.
At that, I tugged on Ferdinand’s sleeve and we sped out of the office.
“Ferdinand, shall we return to the temple?”
“Why so soon? I believe we should wait until the dust has settled.”
“Because you are incapable of relaxing for even a moment, Sylvester’s scholars will ask for your help if we stay in the castle, and you will ultimately agree to do his work for him again,” I observed.
Ferdinand drew his brows together. Despite his frown, his lack of protesting meant that I had been right on the money. I could still remember Fran mentioning that, even when Ferdinand brought his attendants to the Noble’s Quarter during the Starbind Ceremony and ordered them to rest, they all ultimately gathered to discuss work anyway.
...Ah, geez! He and Fran are way too alike!
“If you wish to work that much, do your work in the temple. And while you’re at it, train your successor. In the event that you decide all the blue priests are beyond saving, you may train a gray priest instead.”
Once Ferdinand freed up his schedule and started using his spare time to seriously train a successor, he would spend less time piling things onto me, which would decrease my workload. A voice in my head was saying that he would never let me get off so easily, but I decided to ignore it.
“Now there is an idea. Training my successor, hm...?” Ferdinand mused, glancing my way before crossing his arms and falling into thought.
...Why are you looking at me? I don’t like this. This can’t mean anything good. Ferdinand, stop looking at me. Please.
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