Forest Mage

Sergeant Duril, who had become my de facto adviser, shrugged and suggested, “In hard times, folks are comforted by what they’re used to. Doesn’t matter if it’s porridge for breakfast or the same prayer each night. More than half that town was soldiers at one time or another. Put them back under military command until they remember how to run their own lives.”

I decided he was right. I told him to choose his men. That afternoon, we crossed to the Landing with Duril at my side and his men behind him. We rode our horses into the center of town. There, in as commanding a manner as I could muster, I called what was left of the town council to order in front of me in the street. In no uncertain terms, I told them my father had empowered Duril to select a dozen men he judged trustworthy to represent order. I told them that under my father’s authority, he would be using that patrol to impose martial law on the town, setting a curfew, boarding up unoccupied houses, commandeering and rationing supplies, and pressing a number of the more troublesome young men into service as gravediggers. Duril supplied the muscle; I kept the records, for I promised them that when the dust settled, people who cooperated would be reimbursed for whatever necessary supplies were seized. Despite my ungainly body, I did my best to strike a martial posture and suggest an authority that was mostly imaginary. I was a presence. I implied that Duril would report to me, and I would report to my father. This was true. What they didn’t know was that my father continued to stare at the wall silently while I made my reports.

It worked. It took only ten days of such tactics before the townspeople recovered their sense of lawfulness, and proved ready to resume running their own affairs. I let the surviving members of the town council know that they could report to me, and that if necessary, I would have Sergeant Duril and his patrol enforce whatever rules they thought needed for the town’s recovery. I took a great deal of satisfaction from that. I knew that the idea had been Duril’s and that he had supplied most of the discipline at the lowest level. But I had conducted myself as an officer and a gentleman, and it had worked. I was proud of myself, and imagined that when my father came back to himself, he would share that pride and sense of accomplishment.

That was but one of the tasks that busied me from morning to night, and every day there were dozens of others that scarcely seem worth mentioning, but demanded my immediate attention and a solution. I had thought I knew a great deal about the running of the manor. Only when the cistern went dry did I recall that keeping it full required several men, a wagon, a team of horses, and water casks filled from the river to replenish it on a weekly basis. Dozens of young fruit trees in the orchard had gone unwatered during the plague, but I swiftly restored boys to that task, and was able to save more than half of what my father had planted that year. Fences the cattle had broken down had to be mended.

To me fell the grim task of notifying friends and family of our losses. I wrote to my uncle, to Epiny and Spink, and to other relatives, and sent messages also to neighboring farms and holdings. I wrote to the head of Vanze’s order, telling him what had befallen our family and enclosing a personal letter to Vanze. I received in response a starchy response that Vanze was in meditation and isolation for a month, and that the news would be given to him when he returned. I sighed for my little brother, and then the other demands on my time claimed me. A brief letter from Dr. Amicas arrived, offering his condolences and suggesting strongly that I have any bedding and hangings in plague chambers burned, for fear that they might hold contagion. After I had carried out his order, I looked at my mother’s stripped room and my heart misgave me. The smell of death lingered elsewhere in the house, so I ordered a thorough cleaning of every room.

Although most of our servants and hired folk had wandered back to us, certain key people had disappeared, and it fell to me to decide who would take on those tasks. Some of our people had suffered through the plague, and though they were recovering, they were scarcely ready to take up the full burdens of their usual chores. Impulsively, I moved Nita up to be the head of our housekeeping, and quickly discovered that although she was loyal and intelligent, it did not make her adept at making everything function smoothly. But I did not know how to demote her without insulting her, nor who I could put in her place if I did. So we limped along under her haphazard supervision.

I found my father’s ledger books and his keys and did the best that I could to keep records up to date and to spend only what we needed. It was not easy, and I often wondered how he, a soldier, had so effortlessly managed all this business of being a noble. I had never imagined that it required so much accounting, let alone such a plethora of managing people. Daily I prayed to the good god that my father would recover and take these burdens from my shoulders.