Chapter 3

One advantage to being beloved of my people was that they would brook no treasons or rebelions against their own lord Matty. I was saved from revolt and overthrow several times by loyal and true landsmen and lands women who quickly revealed the overheard plotters and mischief makers. I in turn continued to rule with a hand so light as to be upholding instead, any farm ranch or orchard I directed my attentions toward profited greatly as a result, and I had a reputation for ‘blessing’ the tenants whom I counseled of the tested and tried methods I had learned of in my readings to better their yields and harvests.

I explained but was uncertain I was believed or understood, it seems counter to wisdom to remove over half the blossoms of a fruit tree, but forty large apples provide more meat than one hundred stunted, crowded sour cherry apples. S’truth, I had grafted in the good branches the year prior, they had seen me do it, it wasn’t magic. They preferred to believe in the miracles of our own lord Matty. The Low Friars basked in reflected glory as well, it was known that all my healing and wisdom was learned from them.

One of my first enactments as the new Earl was to sponsor a copy smithing of all the hundreds of manuscripts the Low Friars had amassed as well as the few others to be found. It was slightly impious to neglect copying and illuminating the Good Book, but with the unmentionable transgression of my brother who’s name is now unmentioned shadowing my popular, newly ennobled lineage- along with my military successes against the breakaway nobility; the High Church left us to our own impiety which allowed for the quadruplication of most of the manuscripts.

After I wed Indrid I sent missions of Low Friars with their own library to remote fasts with directions to keep the knowledge whole, from bee-keeping to brewing, from clerk’ry to grafting, along with letters and historys, to stay humble and forgo ostentation forsaking rich robes so as not to make of themselves a butt of envy and avarice. One gaggle I sent tripping off to the Northern Islands as I knew they couldn’t help but make the lives of my in-laws better, if only in the form of better drink!

But they were all a bunch of readers up there in the cold north winds, and had large broods as well, as a result. I was certain the Low Friars mission would be succored and honored.

Indrid missed the waters of her homelands so in exchange for taking her crag-hopping and egg stealing, she taught me the ways of a slippery cog in the wild waters of stone and spray. I was quite terrified, but able to play my part in the dance. She just understood the water and wave as one of the seilke folk might, and after a se’nnight I began to see how the wave rebounded from the shore-stones much as the fast river foamed on it’s rocky bed. Just in a slosh rather than a hard flow. I never got the perfect timing of the waves, but did well enough to not be caught out completely.