Knight and Wand

Chapter 60 Recruiting Servants
The girl was not difficult to find. As soon as Leon went out, he saw her at the door next to the townhouse, discussing something with Brian the blacksmith.

After Baron Elliver left, the old blacksmith no longer let her hide in the house.

In fact, Leon was a little suspicious. If he was really afraid that the girl would be favored by those noble lords, didn’t Knight Balfe still live in the village?
Isn't Uncle Brian afraid that the scarred noble knight will fall in love with his precious daughter?
Although he was confused, he didn't have time to think too much. Leon walked up to say hello, and then simply asked the father and daughter if there were any vacant houses in the village.

After hearing this, Brian the blacksmith thought for a while and pointed directly to the house in front of him that was connected to his own house.

"If you don't mind the size, you can take over the house next door for your own use."

Leon was a little uncomfortable hearing the old blacksmith's honorifics towards him. Olivia was already his close friend, and it felt weird that the girl's father was too respectful to him.

He looked up as he was told, at the two-story house in front of him where several injured people were temporarily living.

It looked very similar to Olivia's house, the same stone half-timbered structure with a protruding second floor, a main body made of wooden beams and stone brick walls, and a sloping roof on top.

He rested in there for a night yesterday. It is definitely spacious enough and has many rooms.

If we don’t mention the various convenient living facilities of modern people in our previous life, the space of this house alone is many times larger than the broken cement box that he bought with a huge amount of money in the city on Earth.

Not counting the backyard which is the same size as Olivia's house.

"Did the original owners of this house die?" Leon asked.

Hearing this, Olivia's eyes were filled with sadness.

Old Brian sighed helplessly, "The family living next door used to be Matt's. He was a carpenter in the village. This townhouse was built with his own money many years ago. Now his family has met with misfortune, and the house is now ownerless."

Leon mourned for the deceased in his heart: "Have their bodies been found?"

Olivia nodded. "The bodies of Uncle Matt's family are being placed with the bodies of the other victims. My father and I were just discussing this."

"Have you encountered any difficulties?" Leon turned to the girl and asked.

"Thanks to the help of the Baron, the soldiers dug pits and buried the bodies of the Kantadar people yesterday. However, we need to deal with the remains of the villagers as soon as possible. However, we do not have enough manpower. If we continue like this, it will probably take more than seven days to dig enough graves." Olivia replied with a frown.

Therein lies the problem. People can wait, but rapidly decaying corpses cannot. With so many bodies, the villagers do not have the ability to embalm them one by one.

When Leon saw the sad look on the girl's face, he knew that it was not easy to arrange the burial of more than one hundred bodies. These were not the bodies of the enemy, so it was impossible to just dig a big pit and bury them there.

It would be much easier in Serrian. The Holy Sun Church advocates cremation. Except for the remains of saints, most people's bodies would be sent to local church facilities to be burned into ashes after death, and then buried in tombs in urns.

But in the Kingdom of Orland, people still maintain the tradition of burying their dead.

"Don't worry, Selva is my territory now, and I will help."

Leon continued, "Later, Lord Balf and I will go to Longka and Plydon to recruit laborers to help open up a new cemetery. Also, do we have enough coffins in the village?"

"The village never prepares wooden coffins, and Uncle Matt has died. Now there is not even a carpenter who can make coffins." Olivia shook her head helplessly.

After she finished speaking, she finally reacted and asked in surprise, "Are you going to prepare coffins for all the villagers?"

"Well, yes, what's wrong?" Leon asked back.

"Even the most ordinary wooden coffin costs ten dirs, not to mention it has to be transported from outside the village, so the cost may increase by two dirs. For most villagers, burial in a coffin is not cheap." The old blacksmith kindly explained.

Only then did Leon realize that they were afraid that he would waste his money.

Although he had the original owner's memories, it was indeed not something a teenager could understand about funeral expenses so early.

Leon calculated that one hundred and twenty-four coffins, plus the transportation costs, would cost about fifteen gold crowns.

A single coffin doesn't seem expensive to him, but if there are a lot of them, the cost will be quite high. It is enough to feed a qualified war horse for more than a year.

“Let’s put it this way. For victims like Matt’s family, where all the members of the village were killed and there are no family members left, the money for the coffins will be paid by me as the lord.

As for the others, and those whose families are still alive, I will pay for the coffins first, and when the villagers get the ransom for the captive, it won’t be too late to return it to me.” Leon proposed a compromise.

"Thank you, Leon, you are such a good lord." Olivia thanked him sincerely.

"You don't have to go that far." The old blacksmith reminded the young knight, "Many of the villagers who died had family members who died while they were still alive, and they didn't have the money to buy coffins for their relatives. They could just wrap them in linen and bury them."

"I know. Just think of it as me trying to fulfill my responsibilities as a lord."

Leon naturally understood how expensive a coffin was for an ordinary tenant farmer, but he waved his hand and said, "If I can't even see the afterlife of these dead people, then I don't deserve to own other living people."

Why not spend some money to buy people's hearts?

Besides, as long as the ransom is finally distributed to the villagers, they can naturally return the money for the coffin to themselves.

The actual cost of a coffin for a family with no descendants is not that much. It is just the labor cost of hiring someone to dig the grave, which is pure expense.

Turning around to look at the house that would soon belong to him, Leon also planned to buy a few high-quality coffins for Matt's family who had died.

If you occupy someone else's house on the ground, you should also make their underground shelter decent.

This is not Earth. The ghosts and souls in this alien world are real and objective existences. He has seen them with his own eyes.

And if what Miss Lola said is true, there is even an afterlife in this world.

Leon still remembered the description of those spells - in the name of Yinnie, obey the laws of the eternally frozen primitive Dead Sea.

Yin Nie, is it the name of the god of death in this world?

So the so-called "Dead Sea" is the place similar to hell or the underworld in Miss Lola's understanding?

"Big brother~!"

Little Lina's excited voice brought Leon back from his thoughts.

When the girl saw her savior, she ran over happily from the house.

"Now you should address me as 'Sir', Lina," the old blacksmith reminded.

"Oh, I'm sorry, big brother, Lord." Hearing Uncle Brian's admonition, Lina had to stop, shrink her neck, and lower her head obediently.

"It's okay, you can continue to call me brother." Leon smiled gently at the little girl. "Well~! Thank you, big brother, I haven't thanked you and the other two brothers for saving me~ Listen to me, when I was helping Aunt Milia today, I learned a very delicious dish, I will cook it for you to taste"

Little Lina promised in her childish voice that she would let Leon and the other two taste her cooking skills.

Leon reached out and touched her head, sighing in his heart.

He had asked Olivia before, and learned that the little girl's family had all been killed and she had no relatives left, and now the old blacksmith and his daughter were taking care of her.

Such a sensible and well-behaved child, who lost both parents and is left alone at this age, how can we not feel sympathy for him.

In my previous life, a child of this age would probably be attending school without any worries, but now he has suffered a disaster in which his family has been torn apart.
"Lina~? Come and give me a hand." A woman in the house shouted.

"Oh! Okay, I'll be there right away." Little Lina turned around and answered, then waved goodbye to her big brother and ran back into the house.

Looking at the child's back as he returned to take care of the injured, Leon had an idea in his mind.

He turned to Olivia and asked, "How many children in the village are like Lina who have lost all their relatives and family members and have become orphans, and are under this age... I mean, under fourteen?"

In this world, there is no strict concept of adulthood. If you have to say, nobles will generally give their children a formal name when they are around sixteen years old, getting rid of their childhood nicknames.

But for ordinary lower-class people, being over fourteen years old is the limit for measuring whether a person has the ability to live independently.

"In this case, besides Lina, there are four girls and three boys, all between ten and fourteen years old." Olivia tapped her chin, thought for a moment, and then answered.

That’s just right, it can be considered as accumulating virtue.

Leon was already in need of servants who could help out with chores, and if he employed these children who already had no worries, he would feel more at ease to a certain extent.

"When you are free, please ask them if they are willing to serve me."

Leon did the math, then said to Olivia and the old blacksmith, “I need servants to help with chores like cleaning the house and maintaining armor and weapons.

For those who are under eleven years old, I can take care of their accommodation and food and drink. They just need to sweep the floor and wipe the tables and chairs, and learn to do things like other older children.

If the child is over eleven years old and works hard, I will pay him an additional three dirhams per month.

If they can work for me until they are fourteen years old, I will continue to employ them at the normal salary of male and female servants. "

After hearing this, old Brian couldn't help but sigh at the kindness of the young knight.

If those children who lost their parents had not encountered this disaster, they might never have such "luck" in their entire lives.

Brian knew very well how much the noble servants were paid.

An ordinary male servant serving a noble could earn nearly 20 dirs per month.

An ordinary maid earns about 10 dirhams per month.

This is much better than the fate of those children who would have grown up to be farmers and herders.

Although cruelly, such an opportunity is entirely due to their current miserable status as orphans.

"I would like to thank you for your kindness on behalf of those children, Lord Leon." The old blacksmith knew that those lonely children would not refuse such an opportunity and way out.

"Speaking of this, do you know anyone in the village who can take care of livestock? It would be best if they could raise horses." Since the issue of servants was being discussed, Leon simply continued to inquire.

"Hawk knows how to raise horses. My father taught him before. He often took care of our two horses before." Olivia answered immediately.

"Hawk?" Leon recalled that silly face.

"Is that the young man who stutters?"

"Yes, if you don't mind his stuttering, I think Hawke can help you take care of the horses and livestock."

The old blacksmith also recommended: "The kid is not a bad person. His parents died early, and he grew up alone on the support of the village. In fact, he is smarter than he looks, and learns things quickly."

Olivia raised her finger and shook it, saying with a smile, "Do you remember the trouble you encountered when you first came to Selva? The reason I was able to arrive so quickly that day was because Hawke came to me in advance to inform me. He had been helping me keep an eye on that bastard Boris."

After hearing what the girl said, Leon remembered that Hawk was indeed at the end of the team of village thugs brought by Boris, and he was the only one without a weapon in that group of people.

"Okay, I'll try hiring him." Leon nodded.

Of course, Hawke alone couldn't take care of all the horses.

Even if he shared the war horses equally with his companions, it would still take several skilled professional grooms to take care of his three horses.

However, seeing that Olivia and the old blacksmith recommended the young man so much, Leon decided to let Hawke be the leading groom to lead the other people.

After all, any warhorse is worth a lot of money, especially the top-grade Uriah horses ridden by the three noble knights.

According to Baron Ierive's estimate, the market price is around 180 gold crowns, which is more than ten times the price of an ordinary Uriah warhorse.

This huge sum of money is enough to make any desperate person take risks.

If there were no trustworthy servants to watch over the horses day and night, and if they were targeted by horse thieves one day, or even if the groom they hired committed the crime of stealing, they would have no place to cry.

Leon stroked his chin, and now he understood more and more why so many nobles lived in castles. If they lived in ordinary houses, it would feel difficult to protect even their own property. Armor, sword, war horse, any one of them would be a huge loss if lost.

It seems that if there is a chance in the future, even if there is no money to build a stone castle, we must find a way to build a wooden wall.
So, in terms of the selection of servants, there were candidates for servants to do odd jobs and candidates for grooms to look after the stables. Next, Leon found a candidate for a chef to take care of his diet through Olivia's recommendation.

It was the young woman named Milia. Leon remembered that when he and his friends lived in the windmill and were about to leave Selva, he tasted the pastries made by Olivia. The woman's craftsmanship was indeed good.

However, her fate was really pitiful. Not only was she ravaged by the thugs, but her two children were also unfortunately killed.

Now, seeing her busy taking care of the wounded in the village, one can only admire her strength. Fortunately, her husband was conscripted and she escaped the disaster, so the family still has a pillar.

"By the way, your money is still under the bed in my room, don't forget to take it." After recommending the chef to Leon, Olivia did not forget to remind him of another more important thing.

"It's okay. You're the best fighter in the village. I'll keep the money with you for the next few days. It's safer than in our hands. You can get it when I move next door to your house." Leon waved his hand.

(End of this chapter)