Five Silver A Month

Supper had been laid on in the dining hall kept for the household staff, for the servants back from their hard march and for the newly hired tailors. The table was crowded with steamed Dural and Dural fries, brown bread made from grain, Dural soup, and piping-hot ramyeon.

Dong-hui was in and out of the convenience store constantly so that the servants’ hall never ran short of ramyeon. The trips were a nuisance and left her a little tired, but four hundred packets at a time weighed nothing at all, and they cost her no money, so it hardly mattered. As long as she kept herself busy, she could give the servants as much ramyeon as they liked, free of charge.

She had not forgotten to lay down a rule, either. None of it was to be carried out of the staff dining hall. There were far too many ways that could go wrong. If the day ever came when ramyeon could be made here too, the rule could go; until then it stood.

Handsome, quick on the uptake as ever, went so far as to appoint someone to take charge of the ramyeon, which took a weight off Dong-hui’s mind.

“Wow, can I really eat all of this?”

Eugene asked. A bowl of soup steamed in front of him, and he swallowed hard, again and again. Delma, who had heard the gist of what had happened, stroked his round head and nodded broadly. It had been a very long time since a child this small had lived at Grace Castle.

“Of course you can. And if that isn’t enough there’s more to be had, so take your time and eat plenty. Careful you don’t bolt it down and give yourself indigestion. All right?”

“Yes! Thank you!”

He set to at once, spooning up the soup.

Julia was still dazed, but the boy, perhaps because he was so young, had settled in remarkably fast and taken to people very readily. The household staff who doted on him grew in number to match.

“It’s so good! I’ve never eaten anything this good in my whole life!”

Eugene blew on the hot soup, hoo, hoo, and put it away with relish without spilling a drop. Then he took a second bowl, dipped his bread in it, mashed the steamed Dural into that as well, and finished his meal in fine style.

Julia and the other tailors ate every bit as well. They had come thinking that if they found work and could buy themselves even one meal a day, the journey would have been worth it. But Grace gave them more than they had hoped for. They were given rooms to sleep in, and told they would have three meals a day besides, free of charge. Nor was that all. The daily wage, too, came to two or three times what odd jobs as assistants in other dress shops had ever paid them.

“I really do think we did the right thing, coming to Grace.”
“Didn’t we just. I never dreamed it would be such a good place.”
“And the lord is so beautiful, and kind-hearted too, I think.”

The tailors’ praise of Grace and of the lord ran on all through supper.

But the thing that truly astonished them came after the meal was over.

“I wonder whether the food was to your liking.”

Dong-hui asked, looking at the tailors. They had been summoned to the study after their meal.

“Yes. We ate very well indeed.”
“I couldn’t tell you when I last ate until I was full.”
“Thank you so very much, my lady. We’ll do our very best from now on.”

At the question the tailors fell over one another to give their thanks. Dong-hui looked on them fondly, their faces so much brighter now, then turned her head and called Handsome.

“Butler. Bring it in.”

Every tailor’s eyes moved at once to Handsome, standing off to one side of the study. All but two of them were young women, and a curious flutter rippled in their eyes as they looked at him.

A lovely age. What a lovely age to be.

Dong-hui muttered it inwardly like an old woman, watching the pink burst in the girls’ eyes.

The status window had thrust itself out in front of her.

That I’m at a lovely age, I’ll grant.
But why has it suddenly stopped being polite?

Her eyes flew wide with indignation.

She eyed the “ma’am” bolted so half-heartedly onto the end with a sour look. Handsome had come up close just at that moment, so she jerked her chin at him again.

Like a practiced assistant, he handed each of the tailors a sheet of paper with something written on it.

“What is this?”

The one who asked was Monel, the oldest of the eight. She must have had a hard time of it. Hair that would once have been blonde was dry and brittle as straw, and the cheekbones stood out in her thin, pale face. Her dark gray eyes held a carefulness that did not match her years. She looked twenty-one or twenty-two at the very most, but she had spoken up, it seemed, out of a sense of responsibility as the eldest.

She looked uneasily back and forth between the paper Handsome had given out and the lord.

“A contract.”

Puzzlement flickered across her gray eyes at the lord’s matter-of-fact answer.

“…A contract?”

Monel’s face said plainly that she did not understand. She had never once in her life drawn up a contract.

“Mm. A contract, exactly as it sounds — that you and I are entering into an agreement, as employer and employee. As you’ll see when you read it, the term is one year.”

Most of them had picked up a scattering of letters over somebody’s shoulder while learning the tailor’s trade, so Dong-hui had made Scrooge take particular care over the wording, to make it something people with little schooling could follow.

They read carefully down the contracts they had been given.

The employee ( ) shall work as a tailor of Grace Castle for one year from today (year 000, month 0, day 0).

Working hours shall be from nine in the morning until seven in the evening, with one day of rest each week.

Whether the contract is renewed after one year shall be decided according to attitude to work and results.

Wages shall be 5 silver a month, and may be raised to 6 silver a month upon renewal after one year, according to attitude to work and results.

(Provided that, should any matter arising within Grace Castle be disclosed, or comparable harm be done, this contract may be terminated at once and damages may be claimed.)

On the very last line stood the signature of Chloe Grace, lord of Grace Castle.

The tailors read slowly through what it said, and then their eyes went round as though they could not believe it.

“Do you really mean to pay us five whole silver?”

For work as a tailor’s assistant, the most any of them had ever been paid was about three silver, and a good many tailors did not pay even that. Some worked their assistants for nothing on the pretext of teaching them the trade; others demanded a tuition fee instead.

“That’s right. Your wages will go up when the contract is renewed a year from now. Provided you produce results to match, of course.”

Dong-hui meant to take the measure of the tailors’ skill and then set them to making clothes in all sorts of designs. The clothes here were far too uncomfortable, they kept the cold out badly, and they were a trial to look after.

“We’ll work hard!”
“We’ll do our very best not to disappoint you.”

The tailors fell over one another to write their names in the blank. Their handwriting was nothing to boast of, but they could not say how glad they were to be able to read and write at all. They felt almost grateful now to the tailor who had made them write out and memorize customers’ names and called it tuition.

Work began the very next day. They cut the thick cloth to a set size and made up clothes for the children in three sizes.

“Make them as easy to move in as you can. And cut the outer coats a little generous, so several layers can go on underneath.”
“Yes! We understand!”

Even as they answered, they were privately astonished at a lord who gave thought to such small details.

Chloment proved formidable.

Builder mixed the materials to the proportions the lord had written out for him, spread the mixture over the outer walls of the houses and paved the roads with it. Morta and Enol were put back in order at speed, and Morta in particular came out far handsomer than it had been to begin with.

Once the work at Morta and Enol was more or less finished, Dong-hui called the two village chiefs, Builder, and Scrooge together into the study.

The two chiefs had lived their whole lives in villages belonging to the Grace estate, but this was the first time either of them had been invited to the castle where the lord lived. They were neither nobles nor wealthy merchants, and people like them had no occasion to set foot inside a noble’s house.

Set beside the great houses of other nobles, Grace Castle was large and nothing more, old and worn and plain to look at. But to two people who had spent their whole lives in small villages, there was not one thing that did not catch the eye, from the great drawbridge to the high-piled walls to the castle itself. Most of all, the carriages the lord had sent so that they might travel in comfort were more than they could take; they could hardly sit properly in them.

Their two carriages came through the gates of Grace Castle at almost the same moment, and the butler showed them into the study at almost the same moment too. Stiff with nerves, like people who had come somewhere they had no business being, the two of them sat with their knees pressed together, glancing about them constantly and bending deep at the waist to everyone they met.

The household staff of Grace Castle, so neatly turned out, seemed far grander people than they did in their own old and fraying clothes. Even the chief of Enol, who had never once given a thought to what he wore, kept fingering the worn hem of his coat for no reason at all.

“If you will wait here a moment, her ladyship will be with you shortly.”

Handsome treated the two of them with courtesy. Their devotion to their villagers had impressed him greatly, and the lord had given particular orders that they be well looked after.

“Yes. Thank you.”
“Thank you.”

The two of them ducked into a stooping bow, and Handsome smiled a bright, clear smile and inclined his head politely.

A short while later, just as Handsome had said, the lord came into the study and crossed toward them with quick steps. The chiefs sprang up as though scalded and bowed deep at the waist as she strode up to them.

They had met her a good many times out in the villages, but meeting her inside the castle was altogether different. The lord of the villages had seemed almost approachable; the lord here brought it home to them all at once that she was a noble of dizzyingly high station.

“Sit down and be at ease.”

Dong-hui said it kindly to the two of them, and then came straight to the point.

“The reason I called the two of you here is that I was curious how much you each know about your own village.”
“That is… I am not sure of your meaning.”

The chief of Enol asked in a careful voice, trying to make out what the lord intended. There was next to nothing about Enol he did not know, but with no notion of what lay behind her question, he could not answer with any confidence.

“Then let me ask again. What is there in the villages of Morta and Enol that could be sold?”