The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) (22 page)

The Montivallan noblewoman frowned for a moment as she bowed again, obviously thinking how to put the answer in straightforward terms to strangers. Reiko made an inaudible cluck of frustration to herself; she could handle spoken English much better now, enough to carry on most of the time without a sweat of concentration breaking out on her brow, but it was still
work
. Not like real conversation where the words did what
you wanted without thought. And she was continually checked because she didn’t know the common unspoken things everyone took for granted.

“These are the Five Great Fields of the manor,” the noblewoman said.

She was making her speech slow and distinct without being too obvious about it; her manners were exquisite, though not exactly the same as those of a Japanese.

“The strips are each part of the peasant holdings; one strip of land in each of the Five Great Fields, as well as their toft in the village—”

“Toft?” Reiko said, frowning; she was
sure
she hadn’t run across that word.

“Their home and garden and sheds. And with the holding go rights in the meadow, the common waste and the woodland—grazing for so many beasts, so many cords of firewood, the right to cut timber to repair houses and barns. They pay a part of their crops and of the yield on their animals . . . usually a quarter . . . to the lord, and provide a worker for the lord’s demesne two or three days a week. Though the lord feeds the ones who work, on those days.”

She pointed with her riding whip, using it as a conversational aid the way Reiko would have her fan.

“Those fields over there beyond that row of poplars are demesne land—you understand, Your Majesty, Montinore is where I was born, and my brothers and my younger sister; it is the home manor of the estate, right next to the castle. But all manors in the Association lands work in roughly the same way, that was established at the very beginning by the first Lord Protector, according to his plans. He was a scholar of the ancient ways, and in those terrible days it was a way that worked, so it was easy to spread far and fast. My lord my father’s original estate, the Barony of Forest Grove, is just north of here.”

“Demesne is lord’s land . . . how different from peasant, tenant?”

“All that the demesne produces is the lord’s; but a peasant’s land and its product is his as long as he meets his dues, and he can pass the holding on to his descendants. On this particular manor a lot of the demesne is in vineyards; Montinore wine was famous even before the Change. And there are other dues, payments on inheritance and at marriage, milling
and grape-press fees, cartage of firewood and building timber from the lord’s forests, and service in the household.”

Reiko glanced at her advisors. Ishikawa was looking at a tall slender windmill pumping water into troughs for the livestock in a field; it seemed to need no human attendance, and the water flowed when the animals pressed little flat levers with their noses. He was tracing the mechanism with his eyes, his lips moving silently as he analyzed; he was a good ship commander, but at least as much interested in things as people. Her folk used wind and water power a good deal too. That specific trick might be worth copying to save labor, especially in a fortress where many horses were stabled, though otherwise it was probably not worth the trouble and materials with the far smaller herds of her land.

Koyama and Egawa were both listening to Heuradys with close attention—land tenure was
important
, and just as important to a lord as to a peasant—and Koyama in particular seemed to be understanding a fair amount of the English, though neither spoke as fluently as she yet.

“Why sose . . .
th
ose . . . peasants we passed, they yell each other and shake fist?” Reiko asked.

Heuradys chuckled. “Your Majesty, one family accused the neighbors of taking a forkful of hay from
their
strip.”

“That happens much?”

“Every once in a while, but those are the Johnsons and the Kowalskis. The bailiff should never have let them cart their hay on the same day but they probably leaned on him so they could watch each other.”

“Families have quarrel? No, s . . .
th
ose families have
a
quarrel?”

“They’ve been at it as long as I can remember,” she said, and rolled her eyes in exasperation. “And even they aren’t sure how it started, though they’ll talk about it for hours if you let them. They’ve been at it as long as my
mothers
can remember. A forkful of hay, a sheaf of wheat, a handful of potatoes thrown into the wrong basket—their kids steal apples from each other’s trees and throw rocks at each other’s dogs and the youngsters get into fights around the wine-barrel at festivals. We’ve tried fines, we’ve tried the stocks, by the Dog of Egypt, we had the heads of household flogged when they drew knives—that time was when they accused
each other of plowing the boundary furrow wrong and shaving a sliver of land from each other’s strips, which is serious business. And when we had the surveyor in to check it against the cadastral tenure map of the manor it turned out they’d
both
done it, so we fined them again and they howled louder than they had at the flogging. I think what made them really angry was that they’d each thought they’d put one over on the other!”

Reiko translated it; her councilors laughed, and she could see that several of her guardsmen were smiling behind their impassive faces. The details differed, but there wasn’t a village where that sort of thing didn’t happen now and then. Living at close quarters could mean, often meant, closeness. Unfortunately it also meant that if you quarreled with someone, you were stuck with the results for the rest of your life. That was what manners were for, in large part; to smooth over life’s frictions among people who had to live closely with each other whether they liked it or not.

Heuradys shook her head. “But when we offered to move them to different manors, they wouldn’t. I think they need the quarrel to give their lives savor, like salt on boiled potatoes.”

“What does the lord owe, Heuradys-
gozen
?” Koyama asked, and only had to repeat it once before he was understood.

“To the tenants, protection and order, settlement of disputes—well, we try—fair judgment in court if things get that far, assistance in bad times or family emergencies, care for orphans and the sick, maintenance of things like drains and buildings and roads and bridges, the church and schools and clinic. And a sort of . . . mmm, general duty of help, what we call
good lordship
. Helping an able youngster get an apprenticeship, for instance, that would be good lordship.”

Reiko had to translate that last, since
good lordship
wasn’t a combination of words familiar from the pre-Change English they’d studied, but her retainers nodded. The
concept
was certainly one they knew, or something close to it.

Heuradys went on: “To one’s overlord, or the Crown if you’re a tenant-in-chief like us, the one who holds the fief owes the mesne tithes—a share
of the revenue—and upkeep of the public works; we repair this road, for example. And of course service in war. Equipping and training your menie . . . your fighting tail, your armed retainers. Lancers, infantry spearmen, crossbowmen, to numbers specified in your indenture of vassalage. A baron or higher lord will have vassal knights in turn, either paid or enfeoffed with land of their own; we have three manors we keep in hand on this barony besides this one, and a dozen subinfeudated to our vassal knights. There’s a peasant militia, but that’s only called out in real emergencies. Associate vassals”—she touched the jeweled dagger on her belt—“can be called whenever there’s need for as long as the Crown requires.”

“Sank . . .
Th
ank you, Heuradys-
gozen
,” Reiko said; the
th
sound was the hardest of all, and she reminded herself to press the tip of the tongue to the back of the front teeth to make it.

When the Montivallan noble had bowed again and legged her horse forward to talk to the commander of the escort, Koyama nodded thoughtfully.

“That sounds sensible, Majesty,” he said, after making sure he’d caught the terms.

“Not precisely as we do things, but not totally different,” Egawa said. “Perfectly workable way to organize their armies, if they take care about things . . . which it looks as if they do. At least here. This Montival is a very big place.”

“And this Protectorate is only part of it, though itself quite large, and we have had only a glancing look at anything else. I was right that Montival is a federation of sub-kingdoms with quite different customs,” Koyama said.

“I wonder what they’re guarding
against
?” Egawa said thoughtfully, looking at their escort; those included mounted crossbowmen as well, in lighter gear. “This looks like peaceful country. You can see nothing’s been raided or fought over for quite a while. The peasants aren’t carrying any weapons except knives on their belts, and those are tools. Most of the travelers we’ve passed have no more than knives and staffs, except for the
bushi
, and hardly any of them are riding in armor, they’re just wearing
their swords because they wear swords. If all this armor is precaution against us . . . should I be flattered?”

“They let us come near their Crown Princess armed, including armed with distance weapons like bows,” Reiko said. “I think this escort is a gesture of respect.”

Egawa was still having some trouble following English, much less speaking it, and was feeling a bit suspicious and resentful because of the sense that things were going on around him he could not understand. Of course, an Imperial Guard commander was
supposed
to be suspicious, and it must grate on him terribly that his charge was essentially helpless in the hands of foreigners, however polite.

“In this part of Montival, it is the mark of
shi
,
gentlefolk
is the English word, or Associate, those with the jeweled daggers, to ride horseback with their swords at their side,” she went on.

She touched the hilt of her katana. Wearing the two swords was a mark of rank in the homeland as well, an old custom revived not long after the Change. She went on:

“And great lords ride with their warriors beneath their banner. The escort is to give us further consequence, I think.”

Egawa’s chuckle was harsh. “Not so very different from us, then, Majesty.”

“And these are the Protector’s Guard—the High Queen’s own household men. Notice how all bow and give them passage.”

“Hai, Heika,”
he said with a pleased half-growl.

She nodded to herself at the sound of satisfaction in his voice. Most of it would be for her; a slight to his ruler would make him far angrier than one to himself. Likewise, a gesture of respect to her would impress him more. Unconsciously, that would also affect his analysis and advice.

And while I do not doubt their courtesy is genuine, I also think I have met several people here quite clever enough to see that themselves. Gestures are important—how else do we make ourselves known to each other, and what is speech itself but a set of complex gestures? On the other hand, when considering gestures . . . remember that even if you intend to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.

Koyama was more thoughtful.

“This is very different from anything that I expected,” he said. “Here, especially. That Corvallis place, it was a dem-oc-ra-cy, more or less, from what I caught—some sort of representative assembly sent that delegation to Princess Órlaith. In the name of the
kokumin
—the People—and the Faculty Senate.”

“She was much more polite to them than I would have been,” Reiko said. “Those speeches!”

“
Hai
, Majesty, but her patience is itself significant. The McClintocks have their assembly to decide great issues under the Clan chief’s direction, and they say the Mackenzies do as well. But this here . . . this is very strange.”

“Why?” she asked. “We also have returned to many of the ancestral customs, Grand Steward. Or something fairly close to them. If I remember correctly, those ancestors of the Americans who came from Europe lived much like what we see here, once. My history tutors remarked on it, and said that the resemblance to Japan perhaps explained why we alone in Asia stood up to the Westerners successfully when they arrived. They beat the Chinese like dogs and burned their Emperor’s palace, but they soon learned better than to try to bully
us
even though they had more deadly weapons.”

“And soon ours were as good, or better,” Egawa said.

“Yes, Majesty, Egawa-san, true as far as it goes. But our ancestral customs were much closer to us in time. After all, it was only two long lifespans from Meiji to the Change. So I would have thought them more . . . more accessible, as it were. More a part of the way our parents and grandparents thought even without knowing it, and so of what was natural for them to fall back on in the terrible times.
Americans
never lived so, not on this continent, whatever their more remote ancestors might have done many, many centuries ago. Something truly strange happened here—in this part of Montival in particular.”

It wasn’t very far from where the train had stopped to the
han
estate of the local
daimyo
 . . .

No, manor of the baron, use their words, they are less likely to deceive with false assumptions,
Reiko reminded herself.

“It is disturbing. But not the most disturbing of many disturbing things, Majesty,” Koyama went on.

“I am disturbed myself,” she admitted after a moment. “Principally by . . . There is such a great deal of this Montival place. We knew that old America was very large and populous, but I was not . . . prepared as well as I could have wished. Seeing a map and reading numbers is not altogether the same thing as traveling through real lands.”

The trip up the Willamette valley had taken days, even traveling rapidly on the railroad—a wonder in itself of which Ishikawa Goru and Koyama and others of her party with engineering training had taken many notes. None of the islands of refuge were large enough to make it worthwhile, but when Honshu and the other great territories were reoccupied it would be time to consider it.