Machiavillainess

78. A Meeting is Requested


Consequences often escaped predictions. Her father's efforts some decades ago towards making birth a safer matter had, to the keen mind, the clear consequence of increasing the population. If less people died, there would surely be more people around. It also meant there was another woman around who could give birth again and again and again.

Except that didn't happen. At least, not if one gave the census the looking over it deserved.

The city had always—and still did—report many more deaths than births even as the population grew. Part of that was due to people moving to the city who would thus add to how many died in the city while not adding to those born there. However, this migration did not entirely account for this discrepancy.

There was only so much day labour to do in the city: families could not afford to be larger. A carpenter could hardly split his little workshop between two sons. Commoners, not ignorant of how pregnancies came to be, were not ignorant of ways to discourage such pregnancies either.

That was to say, rather than the population being limited by deaths, it had been limited by births.

In the countryside, this "economy" was a little different. There was often a little more land that could be worked, a bit of land that could be worked more intensively, a little work that could be done on a nearby farm, a little more thread to be spun, a little more cloth to be woven.

However, that did not change the same problem the carpenter's second son faced: a farm could be small enough to support a single household, but no smaller. So those second sons left for the towns and cities, as did those daughters with no marriage prospects.

The census did not lie. The population of the city, of the entire county, had risen almost every year. What the census did not—could not—do was explain why.

Nor could she, but she could guess and she was rather good at coming up with guesses. Whether or not her guesses were correct was a different matter entirely, but it was only by having this guess that she could be wrong, that she could work a little closer towards being right.

So she guessed.

On the one hand, she knew that a person required food to live. It followed, then, that a population could be no larger than the amount of food it could acquire.

On the other hand, she knew that the size of a population was but one part of it. Of rather more interest to her was how this population was spread across her county. Many were in the city, that was true, yet it had only exceeded a tenth of the population in these last years.

The census, then, most interested her in what it had to say about the rural population. Places with high populations—where farms were small, small yet productive enough to support the family who depended on it. Rural places with low populations—where there was some issue with the land, or perhaps the opposite, a place where farming households were able to farm more land with fewer people.

However, none of that truly mattered. Just as the spinners had broken the spinning wheels, she knew that there would be much resistance if she attempted to change how the entire county farmed, and from both her noble and her commoner subjects, if not also from those men of the cloth.

So her guess was simple: rather than change her county, she need only to have changed the world.

"Dame Katherine, it is good to meet again after so long."

The elderly woman stood tall, yet her age weighed heavily upon her, a maid at her side. "Princess Julia flatters me. The only people happy to see me are my child and grandchildren." Although a hoarser voice than their last meeting, it did not lack vigour.

She politely tittered with her hand over her mouth. "So madam jokes, yet I speak sincerely. Many indulged my fancy at that time and few followed through on their feigned interest."

"Ma'am is not simple," the old woman said, almost a whisper. "My eldest granddaughter has enjoyed her education here. My second has begun hers, my third eagerly awaits her turn. That is enough to satisfy me."

She let a moment pass, then said, "Madam won't ask for the bond to be repaid?"

"I would donate that money to the academy anyway, so I see no need to make a fuss."

She gave a smile that went unseen, the two standing side by side, and that smile slowly faded back to something polite and no more. "I hate to speak as if hurrying madam; however, I must confess I am most curious why she chose now of all times to request a meeting."

The old woman sighed, a sigh that seemed to slip out of every joint, but she did not falter. "Something we may only… appreciate with age is how thoroughly we are influenced by fleeting moments. My husband and I barely had a decade together and my son is now much older than his father ever was."

"Indeed," she said softly. "I had so little time with my father. Still, in my heart, he is far wiser and more mature than I am, even though I am around the age he was upon his passing."

Silence fell for a while, a loud silence. Pickaxes dug into dirt, bricks tipped out, men yelling, laughing, cursing. Distant sounds that blended into a loud silence.

Eventually, the old woman spoke. "I suppose I did not answer Ma'am's question. It is… nothing so interesting. Perhaps, it is merely me being old-fashioned," she said, her pace a touch slow, deliberate. "I am here to give my thanks for educating my granddaughters."

She could have asked why now, why not sooner, why not later, or why her. However, she did not. "I shall pass along these thanks to the academy."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The old woman did not object, but her mouth twisted into a thin smile. After a deep breath, she quietly asked, "How is that library coming along?"

While the two stood quite some distance away, the building was one which could easily be seen from such a distance. Tall, but what lingered in the mind was its vastness, less like a building and more like a feature of the landscape. As grand as cathedrals were, much taller, they had a narrowness, eventually reduced to a spire. Whereas this library sat with an immense sense of sturdiness, something which only God could move.

"I shan't lie. It is, as is always the case for such undertakings, behind on the schedule initially proposed. At the same time, these are foreseen delays which do not impact my belief that it will be completed within a reasonable time."

The old woman gave a breathless laugh. "So it is both behind schedule and on time," she said.

"My priority has always been that it should be completed. When rushed, people make mistakes. Something riddled with issues, both known and not, is hardly something which may be considered complete. What good is it to leave behind such a legacy? Something which would require our descendants to constantly maintain it, or worse—something which may collapse at any moment."

"In the centuries to come, these few years shall seem meaningless."

At those words—she went to speak, then held back, her lips stretching into a smile as she bowed her head. After a breath, she gave her quiet reply. "How can these years which so influenced us be meaningless?"

"Ma'am is not simple," the old woman said again.

"Nor is madam."

The old woman drew in a grating breath, her laughter more like a groan. "I have endured. Through it all, I have endured. Do you know how?"

She hesitated, then said, "The love for your husband?"

Silence was the old woman's answer to that. After a pause, she answered her own question. "I endured by being simple. Many people have taken me for a fool, satisfied to scurry off with a few of my coins. However, in being simple, I made no enemies and those who came back for more found it believable I had no more to give. At the same time, I have made many friends."

The old woman broke into a coughing fit and her maid fussed over her, a whisper of, "Please drink, madam," as the maid brought out a flask.

Once the old woman recovered, she continued. "This is… a lesson I learned from my husband, not that I thought of it as such at the time. Oh I would hound him every time he told me of a loan he had given a friend. Of course, when he passed, none of those men came to repay their debts…."

In the lull, she let her gaze travel across the landscape. What had once been grazing land and forest now was a sprawl. It would eventually need to be torn down, bit by bit, to be replaced with something more planned, currently nothing more than wooden shacks and a handful of properly-built warehouses.

Soon, the massive forges would be built, their sole purpose to produce the giant cast-iron frame for the library's centre. Massive glassworks too. Although charcoal had already begun to be stockpiled, there was also an ongoing inspection of a nearby peat bog and some coal seams.

This last half a decade, she had changed the landscape, and it would continue to be changed.

"Kindness is not the weakness many think it," the old woman said. "One must be strong to be kind. At first, I admit, I did not think Ma'am strong enough to be kind. It is easy to think those much younger than us have not faced the same struggles we have. Or rather, to think their struggles are lesser than ours."

She gave a titter, hand over her mouth, then lowered her hand until it met her other one. "Madam is too kind. What I do may hardly be considered kindness," she said.

"That is not for Ma'am to say. One cannot show kindness, kindness must be something received. There are far too many instances of one showing a kindness that is received as an obligation. Rather, kindness is like a tree's shade on a summer's day."

With these last words, she felt the rush of understanding, a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. "Madam does not take kindness lightly."

The old woman, at the maid's quiet insistence, drank a little more from the flask. "When my eldest granddaughter last visited me, she spoke of this library."

A gentler voice, a little distant, each pause lingering.

"At her age, long, long ago as that was, I remember that what excited me most was the prospect of being a mother. My brother's wife had recently given birth and, when I visited, I happily held my niece for hours. How envious I felt when her mother took her to feed. Oh, I learned what it meant to be a woman, and I witnessed the praise my sister-in-law received for… performing her duty as a woman."

She listened well. What needed not be said was how it had taken the old woman so long to conceive, joyous news only learned after her husband's passing.

"My granddaughter speaks of the library as I once spoke of the child I yearned to have. She told me of how wonderful it will be, how it is so large it could fit every book ever written, how she is sure every person with an interest in learning will journey from far and wide to visit. She has told my son she intends to find a husband here, someone who would devote himself to learning with as much dedication as she shall. She is already tutoring some children of my son's acquaintances with the intention of spending her savings on copies of her favourite books. She told me those beautiful books gifted to her are too precious, so she will purchase cheap copies which she may make notes and such on."

The slow, meandering pace had that monologue drag out, yet her focus did not waver. She heard every word clearly, so she was not surprised when, after a moment of silence, the old woman continued in an almost heated voice.

"You did not spare my granddaughter a single thought in your schemes. Why would you? You simply did as you wished. Unlike others who would spend their entire lives struggling to leave a mark upon this world, you… understand what it means to be strong."

She did not shy away at this change in tone, nor did her own tone change. In a voice without emotion, neither hurried nor unhurried, she said, "Did madam truly only request this meeting to give her thanks?"

The loud silence settled for a long moment, neither speaking as they stood there, gazes on the distant library.

Eventually, the old woman spoke. "I have seen and heard much over the years and that includes the stories of my mother and her mother before her. Perhaps I am overly cautious, but these recent years have left me with… an unease. Others may dismiss Ma'am as merely a woman, yet I know well this struggle and that, to accomplish what she has, Ma'am is not someone to be dismissed."

With a brief pause there, she cleared her throat and pushed away the flask her maid tried to force upon her once more.

"Ma'am is strong and one must be strong to be kind. However, kindness is something felt, not shown. This reminder is my thanks."

"It would be strange to respond to such thanks with thanks of my own, so I shan't. What I will say… is that madam is correct, my kindness is not kind. However, it is not the case that I do so for the sake of gathering obligations either. I suppose one could say I pity them. People who, out of fear, will suffer. A tree, no, I am the one who plants trees, knowing full well that I shall never know their shade. That I look around and see no one else who will do it and so I take it upon myself. If I am kind, it is only because of the failure of others."

In the silence which followed her speech, the old woman smiled a hollow smile, a grating laughter building in her throat until it finally broke out as a wheeze.

"Ma'am knows how to sound convincing," the old woman whispered.

"Did madam not ask for this meeting in order to be convinced?"

The old woman chuckled, bowing her head. "Perhaps I did."

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