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

by S. M. Stirling

  They hadn’t seen any fields abandoned since the Change today, though those had been common enough farther south in the Willamette; now one cultivated stretch succeeded another as they did on Sado’s central plain, but for far longer. Beech trees stood beside the highway beyond the verge-side ditches, planted in neatly spaced staggered rows on either side; the road was lavishly wide for one through arable land, thirty feet including the shoulders. The trees had leaves of a striking purplish-bronze color, sometimes meeting overhead and turning the long road into a tunnel of shade and flickering brightness. From the countryside to north and south of the roadway came a smell intensely green and fresh, a scent of vigorous growth and damp soil. It was stronger than the familiar odor of horse and leather, and occasionally livened with the pungent scents of manure or a deep flowery sweetness.

  What she saw was wholly different from the rural parts of her own country beyond the most basic elements of forested hill and river and cleared cultivated soil in areas that were not too steep, but she recognized the slightly metallic green with hints of blue, wheat or barley rippling around knee-high, and some of the other crops—potatoes and turnips, flax and beets and more, though it was odd not to see any rice or millet or soybeans. Where the worked soil showed it was a very dark brown, deep and stoneless, moist but not wet, looking as rich as the sweet adzuki bean paste filling in the buns on a street-vendor’s cart.

  No terraces here, either, she thought.

  Parts of Sado were staircases of green up the hillsides.

  They don’t need to use every inch, you can see they farm carefully but it’s all so . . . lavish. Lucky! If we could just get free of the jinnikukaburi long enough to really resettle the main islands we might have more good land than we needed too.

  What caught her eye was the sheer size, fields that were regular squares that must cover hundreds of acres, each bordered by hedges and trees. That was bizarrely huge compared to the paddies of Japanese farms. By cocking her head and looking closely she could see that though each big field was planted to the same sort of crop they were subdivided by ankle-high ridges within into a patchwork of rectangular strips each of seven or so acres.

  Which is still larger than the whole of a good-sized peasant’s farm back home.

  Peasants were at work among the crops, quite a few though never as densely as she was used to, cultivating with some very ingenious-looking horse-drawn machines as well as long-handled hoes or just stooping and pulling up weeds. They stopped to remove familiar-looking conical straw hats and bow deeply as the mounted party passed, with the hats held in their hands; Heuradys d’Ath waved back at them with her riding crop, and a few of them replied with waves of their hands and called her name.

  The men among the landworkers wore a long belted tunic that came to their knees and loose trousers beneath, of a cloth that mixed linen and wool, with wood-and-leather shoes on their feet. Women wore the same tunic over another that reached to the ankles, and the older ones had kerchiefs around their heads beneath the hats. Some of the children were barefoot, and most wore only the short tunic. From what she could see all the peasants were as roughened by work and weather as any countryfolk, but big and well-fed as well.

  The strips that divided the fields showed very slight differences in the precise texture of what grew, like a larger blanket composed of pieces that didn’t exactly match. About two of every five of the large fields held a mixture of grass and clover, thick with crimson blossom now in late spring that turned them into sheets of an almost lurid red.

  Sometimes the bees working among them were numerous enough to make the horses shy a little as they crossed the road bearing pollen and nectar back to their hives. Cattle with hides of black or creamy yellow or red bodies and white faces grazed the fields, or sheep looking comically naked after their shearing in others, and now and then they saw sounders of pigs or herds of horses. Calves and lambs and colts born that spring played, kicking up their heels and butting at the udders of their dams, a sight that made her smile a little.

  The sweet smell became overpowering when the field to their left was being mown for hay. Reiko looked closely; that wasn’t much of a part of the farming she knew, since the limited number of oxen and horses her people kept were fed from verges and roadsides or with the by-products of crops meant for humans, while pigs ate scraps or foraged in the woods and chickens pecked for bugs and the odd spilled grain.

  Here a staggered row of a half-dozen machines each pulled by two horses mowed broad swathes and left the cut grass behind to the accompaniment of a whirring, clacking sound. More horses pulled complex devices of wire and wood that raked the hay into swathes and left it to dry.

  “This is wealth,” she said quietly to Koyama. “They can afford to use nearly half of their land to grow food for animals! No wonder they use so many horse-powered machines.”

  He nodded agreement as he looked around at the countryside. “The more so as the Montivallans are not showing us this to impress us, I think. This estate is just the most convenient place to put us, nothing extraordinary.”

  “Wealth and power, Majesty,” Egawa added. “I can see why they have much cavalry, too. Good country for it, difficult to find terrain features to anchor a flank, and lots of fodder.”

  Farther away in the same field workers with long-tined forks on six-foot handles were pitching the dried hay cut on earlier days onto carts with high latticework sides, these pulled by oxen.

  Egawa grunted again. “And now we know how they can bind their bowels with all that meat they eat.”

  Koyama snorted, and Reiko ignored the byplay as she studied the scene. You could see the smaller strips were there too amid the hay once it was cut, and she thought she could see two groups—families, she supposed, they were each of men and women and children—arguing with each other as they pitched the fodder onto their respective carts. The dispute grew more heated, then stopped abruptly as the train of mounted warriors went by.

  Heuradys d’Ath rode off the road and into the field, spoke briefly to the peasants, shaking the riding crop like an admonishing finger. There were more bows, but when she turned her horse back again one of the peasant men raised his hand to the other group with the fist clenched and middle finger extended, and got a clod of soil kicked back at him by a man who then spat on the dirt and ground his clog on it as if he wished it were an enemy’s face.

  Heuradys dropped back to ride beside the Japanese leaders when she returned to the road. Reiko was glad of it, though she missed Órlaith. Partly because of the simple ease of conversation, and partly because . . .

  Because we share a loss and a burden no others do. We may become friends, I think, or as close as those in ruling families may be.

  But Órlaith’s retainer was able.

  And someone to respect.

  She also seemed to be someone very close to the Crown Princess; not a lover, Reiko judged, despite their sharing a tent and the obvious affection, but a confidant-friend-right-hand, truly a hatamoto, one who stood at the base of the lord’s banner.

  I have nobody that close, she thought a little sadly. I have many loyal retainers, but few friends at all.

  “Your Majesty,” Heuradys said politely, bowing in the saddle.

  “Heuradys-gozen,” she said. “Lady Heuradys . . . those strips in the big fields . . . they are what, please?”

  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 . . . those . . . 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 . . . those 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 . . . Thank 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.