Broad continues: Planning

Dear Grandmama,

Loveliest and wisest of beings, whom this humble one knows herself fortunate to count among her foredragons!

I went again to Broad’s story telling, and this is what I heard.

While the Queen was making plans for the 18th birthday celebration (or disaster), other smaller and less conspicuous plans were being made and carried out by the humbler folk of the kingdom. Families that hadn’t moved for generations were moving, one before planting, another after harvest, another at snowmelt the next year, a smith in mid-summer, a candlestick maker in mid winter. Instead of moving to the village outside the castle, where any money was perhaps to be made, they were, oddly enough, moving further away.

The Bailiff finally noticed, and reported to the Seneschal: ‘Too much moving around. Too much gossiping in the taverns that stops when I come in. I think they are planning something.’

‘Nonsense,’ said the Seneschal, ‘peasants don’t plan. It’s that new-fangled apprenticeship thing that’s getting them crosswise – who’d imagine any good could come of a craftsman taking in any lad, or worse, a girl, that wants to learn a trade? A man should train his sons; a cobbler should train up his boys to be new cobblers. That’s plain, that’s the way it always was, but look what’s happening now! The cobbler’s son is learning to bake, the baker’s daughter wants to be a smith, of all the mad things you could imagine, and the smith’s son is off learning to keep bees. They should only sting him to death! Then the family wants to up and move to a different village, to make it handier to practice their new trades! Who’s going to do the work for the castle, I ask you, with only one cobbler and one dried flower arranger left in Briar Village?

‘And who’s going to pay the new taxes we’ll need to build the Birthday Dome? The farther away they live, the harder it is to get them to pay what they owe, the weasels! You’d be shocked how little we get from the border villages – they’re always saying that the lot from the other castle came collecting, and took everything, and they can’t pay because there’s nothing left. They seem to think that’s an excuse!

‘Not that I’d put it past some of them foreign royals to be stealing our revenues – old Duke Scrimy the12th never got it through his thick head where the border was. His son, young Scrimy the 12.5th, he has the effrontery to claim even more than his potty old sire did. I knew His Majesty our King should never have married his sister to Scrimy – whenever there’s mention of the frontier, she gets out her dowry document and draws some more lines on the map. Last time I saw it, all those squiggles looked like a new range of mountains was trekking across the Maresdeath Marsh and climbing the North Slope.

‘But our villagers have no cause to complain. If they’re fools enough to move into Scrimy’s reach, or the Brandyburghs’ or any others of our greedy neighbours, they are getting no more than they deserve. Should have stayed in Briar village in the first place; should have learned their trades from their da, and settled down in the family workshop and stayed put!

‘And you know, it’s old Nellie we have to thank that it isn’t so; it’s she we have to thank for our mad apprenticeship scheme. When His Majesty’s father, may his soul be rocking in the Hammock of Heaven, needed help in time of trouble, she was the only one who could see the way through the morass he’d gotten his royal self into. As the price for helping him, she asked that the village young uns be allowed to decide for themselves what trade they’d follow. And he agreed! Wasn’t much for thinking things through, was the Old King – his idea of foresight was to start thinking what he wanted for dinner before he’d finished his tea. Not that I don’t hold his memory in the highest respect, of course.’

If you listened to the talk at the Court (if you could listen to it without falling asleep) you would have heard that almost everyone there agreed with the Seneschal. If you listened to the villagers and peasants, you heard something rather different.

To start, you wouldn’t have heard them cursing “old Nellie”; you would have heard them speak of “Aunt Nellie”, and you would have heard the affection and respect in their voices. And second, you would have heard about the Plan. (The Bailiff was right and the Seneschal was wrong; there was a Plan.)

While Rose was growing up, Nellie’s nieces and nephews (or rather their children and grandchildren) were learning useful trades and earning places of respect in all the villages, not just in Upper Columbine, but in the kingdoms around. You can do a lot along those lines in 18 years.

And what happened at the end of the 18 years? Well, one thing that happened was a splendid party. I’ll tell you about it next time.

That was all for tonight. I kept Minsky under my wing the whole time, and it wiggled and tickled, but I ignored it and concentrated on the story. I don’t know why it wants to come, when it won’t sit quietly and listen, but it says I’ll know when the time comes.

The moons were bright when I took Minsky home. Scuttlebutt has it that the prince situation is well under control, so we took a break and flew the long way around. By the sea, Minsky suggested I try my wing as a diving platform. It was the sort of thing I haven’t done since I was a nestling, flying low and slow for Minsky to dive from my back, then flying back even lower, with my tail dragging the water so that Minsky could clamber up again. I had more fun than I’ve had in centuries. I’m so glad you suggested cultivating Minsky.

With greatest love, respect, and gratitude,

Yours, Toby