‘Maybe,’ I replied, ‘but there are going to be changes up there, Alleran – fairly major changes – so I’m not really going to be very popular anyway. My vassals are Arends, so I’m sure that they’re all mortally offended by the fact that their new ruler’s a woman. There isn’t much point to pretending to be all sweetness and light, is there?’
‘It’s your duchy, Aunt Pol. You can run it any way that suits you. When should we have the ceremony?’
‘Which ceremony was that?’
‘Each of them has to swear an oath of fealty to you after I’ve released them from their oaths to me.’
‘A transfer of ownership, you mean?’
“That’s a very harsh way to put it, Aunt Pol.’ He considered it. ‘Fairly accurate, though,’ he added. ‘We’ll do it in my throne-room – if that’s all right with you. After the ceremony, I’ll nose about a bit to see if you’re going to need an army to put down any rebellions.’
‘You’re just full of cheer today, aren’t you, Alleran?’ I said acidly.
The ceremony in the throne-room was a formality, of course, but Arends adore formality, so that part went off quite well. I sat imposingly on Alleran’s throne, crowned, ermine-robed, and absolutely dripping regality. After my vassals had all pledged to protect, serve, and defend me with their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, I gave them a little speech just to brighten up their day. I discarded all the archaisms and got right to the point. ‘Now that we’re all one big happy family, my Lords,’ I began, ‘we’ve got a few new rules to put in place. You’ve customarily paid Duke Alleran a certain tithe for the honor of serving him and administering the estates he’s bestowed upon you. Now, Duke Alleran’s far from being a spendthrift, but it seems to me that those tithes might be just a bit excessive. I don’t think I’ll really need all that much money, so why don’t we just cut those tithes in half for a few years and see how that works out, shall we?’
My vassals cheered me for about a quarter of an hour for that bit of generosity. Some of them actually wept. They were Arends, after all.
When silence returned, I continued. ‘Now then, since you won’t be needing so much money to pay your rent, why don’t we improve the lot of your serfs as well? I’ve cut your tithes in half, so you’ll show your gratitude by cutting the amount of goods – and services – you’ve been extracting from your serfs by the same amount. You compel your serfs to work your land, and then you turn around and take at least half of what their own fields produce. From now on, you’ll limit yourselves to one quarter of their labor, and you’ll leave what they grow to feed their families alone.’
‘What?’ a stout, red-faced baron – Lageron, I think his name was – almost screamed.
‘Are you having trouble with your hearing, my Lord?’ I asked him. ‘I said one quarter of his labor and none of his own food. A starving man can’t work very well, you know.’
One of the other barons nudged Lageron and muttered in his ear. Lageron’s expression of outrage softened, and his look grew sly. I was fairly certain that my barons planned to ignore the new restrictions.
‘Just so that we all understand each other here, gentlemen,’ I told them, ‘I’m sure you’ve all heard wild stories about me.’ I smiled. ‘Nobody really believes all those fairy-tables, do they?’
They laughed at that. Then I let the smile slide off my face and put on a fair imitation of one of those expressions my father uses to intimidate people. ‘You’d all better start believing, my Lords,’ I warned them. ‘No matter how wild the stories you’ve heard may be, you’ll find that the reality is far, far worse. Don’t think for a minute that you can ignore the limitations I’ve just placed on what you can bleed out of your serfs. I have ways to know just exactly what you’re doing, and if any one of you exceeds the limitations by so much as one turnip, I’ll look upon that as a violation of the oath you’ve just sworn, and I’ll turn him out of his manor house with nothing but the clothes on his back, and his estate shall revert to me. My eyes are everywhere, my Lords, and you will obey me – or take up a life of landless vagabondage.’
I let that sink in for a moment, and then I once again returned to a tone of sweet reasonableness. ‘A change of administration always causes a certain amount of disruption and upheaval, my Lords. Things will go more smoothly once you’ve grown accustomed to my little quirks. If, however, anyone here finds what I’m doing too inconvenient, I won’t hold him to the oath he’s just sworn. He’s free to leave the duchy of Erat at any time, and if he can devise a way to carry his lands and his house on his back, he can take them along with him. I should advise you, though, that I don’t think that even my father could do that, so the lands and houses will probably stay right where they are. Let me put it to you in the simplest possible terms. “My realm; my rules.” Are there any questions?’
There was a sullen silence and no questions.
Duke Alleran, however, immediately mobilized a large force and marched it to the south bank of the River Camaar.
That isn’t really necessary, Alleran,’ I told him a week later when I found out what he’d done. ‘I can take care of myself, you know.’
‘Just a precaution, Aunt Pol,’ he told me. ‘The fact that the army’s there might help to keep a lid on people like Lageron. I know all those barons up there, so I know what it takes to keep them in line.’
I shrugged. ‘It’s up to you, Alleran,’ I told him, ‘but you’re the one who’s paying all those soldiers. Don’t send me any bills.’
‘Nerasin and Corrolin have agreed to help defray the costs, Aunt Pol, and to provide more troops if we happen to need them. We all want your duchy to be stable, so you might look on those friendly troops lining your southern frontier as our communal investment in peace.’
‘Whatever makes you happy, dear,’ I said, patting him fondly on the cheek.
In addition to the tithes I received from my vassals, there were extensive estates which I owned outright, and Killane advised me that about a quarter of the entire duchy was exclusively mine. I was still determined to abolish serfdom, so it goes without saying that I planned to emancipate my own serfs almost immediately. One of the peculiarities of that repugnant institution was the tradition that a serf who ran away and evaded capture for a year and a day was automatically a free man. If serfdom were abolished on my estates, they would in time come to be viewed as havens of refuge for runaway serfs from one end of the duchy to the other, and a strictly enforced ‘no trespassing’ policy would keep my vassals from amusing themselves by hunting down their departing property. It wouldn’t be long until every able-bodied worker in the duchy resided on my land, and there’d be nobody to work the estates of my vassals.