At Least It Isn't Nike

Setting out for Morta with the tailors, Dong-hui realized there was only the one carriage, and her face clouded over. There was nothing for it but to split the tailors up among the carts loaded with the coats.

“You will have to ride on the baggage carts. Will that be all right?”

The tailors answered as though they could not imagine why she would even ask.

“Of course, my lady! Not having to walk is joy enough for us.”
“We came all the way here on a baggage cart, after all.”
“Riding a baggage cart is fun!”

They came back at her in a chattering rush, as giddy as students off on a school outing.

Even in the carriage her backside and the small of her back ached after only a little while, and a baggage cart, she thought, could only be worse.

Dong-hui called over Handsome, who was wholly taken up with the preparations for departure.

“Yes, my lady.”

Handsome came running at once and answered with his head bowed low before Chloe. The work must have been hard on him, for he had grown a little thinner than before, though it had brought out his jawline and made his clothes hang well on him. He was tall, with a small, well-set head and features that carried a presence quite out of the ordinary.

However she looked at it, Scrooge had done superbly in picking his successor in the butler’s office, if nothing else. Just looking at him was a treat for the eyes, so that was two birds with one stone and no mistake.

“We shall have to buy several more carriages. Will you look into it?”
“Several… did you say, my lady?”

Not one carriage but several. Handsome could not wrap his head around it, and his words trailed off.

“When the workers go out to the wasteland, they all ride the baggage carts, do they not?”
“Yes. But there are not carts enough, so most of them walk.”
“Truly? But it’s a long way!”
“That is why they set out a little earlier.”

Dong-hui smacked her forehead. She had not thought even that far. Handsome swallowed hard, bewildered, and cast about for whatever he had done wrong this time without turning up a single thing.

By his own standards, nothing was more natural than for estate residents doing hard labor, or for workers, to walk to where they worked. If anything, it was riding on baggage wagons that had been troubling him.

“The work is hard enough as it is; walking all that way must be exhausting. They would be worn out before they had even begun. That will not do. Buy baggage carts, and buy more carriages besides. Talk it over with the treasurer, find out where they may be purchased, and if a merchant can be sent for, send for one. Understood?”
“…Yes. Understood, my lady.”

Handsome answered without the least idea of how any of it was to be done, racking his brains all the while.

The carriage carrying Dong-hui rolled into the village of Morta with the baggage carts and their load of tailors and clothes behind it, and the villagers came swarming up around it.

“It’s the lord!”
“The lord has come!”

The villagers cheered as though they had met a hero, and Dong-hui went red in the face with embarrassment.

Handsome and Scrooge caught each other’s eye at the childlike look on their lord and broke into small smiles. One moment she carried herself as though she had grown into a woman, the next she showed a girlish side like this, and they were both very fond of her for it.

The knights escorting the carriage planted themselves like a wall in front of the pressing crowd. Before anything else came the lord’s safety.

Dong-hui felt exactly like an idol.

The children came running in their brightly colored clothes to greet their lord. She could almost hear the villagers’ favorability climbing like mad, and she could not say how glad she was that she had set the alert sound to silent.

“Have you all been well?”

Dong-hui asked, looking at the children who had run out ahead of the rest.

“Yes! This morning my mom made Dural bread for me!”
“The Dural bread Kevin’s mom made was the tastiest of all!”

The children fell over one another to bring up the Dural bread. Dong-hui remembered the task she had set the village chief of Morta.

“Did she now? I should like to try some myself.”
“Come to our house, my lady! The chief praised my mom and said she made it the best of anyone!”

By the child’s account, Chief Hope was carrying out his homework in earnest.

“Handsome will help the tailors and hand out the clothes for the children; Scrooge, you shall come with me to the chief.”
“Yes, my lady.”

Handsome answered at once and ran off to the tailors, who looked quite overwhelmed by the press of the crowd.

The knights, still standing to hold the people back, were half deafened by the cheering that swelled every time Chloe moved so much as a step. But they hid what they felt beneath blunt, expressionless faces, as their training had always taught them, and gave their best to the part assigned them.

“My lady!”

Speak of the devil. No sooner had Dong-hui finished than Hope came into view over the way, running toward them for dear life, the few hairs left on his head streaming as he came, like seaweed under the sea.

“Have you been keeping well.”

Perhaps because she had given him his name herself, he felt more familiar to her than before.

Like a child born of the heart rather than the belly, would you say?

“Yes, my lady. As it happens, I was meaning to go up to Grace Castle tomorrow or thereabouts to make my report to you about the Dural bread.”

The chief’s voice came out unusually loud and clear. Every eye in the place turned that way, and Dong-hui caught on that he wanted to show off his closeness to her in front of the villagers.

The chief looked at Chloe with bright, shining eyes and waited for an answer.

He’s doing his homework so faithfully — shall I let him have his moment?

Dong-hui broke into a broad smile and answered Hope, who stood there respectfully, looking at her.

“That is the best news I have heard in some time. Shall we go to your house, then, and hear the rest of your report?”
“Yes!”

The chief answered in a great voice, as though meaning the villagers to hear it.

The sight was endearing and comical at once, and Dong-hui nodded and followed along behind him.

“So this is the Dural bread they say Kevin’s mother made?”

Dong-hui asked, looking at the round loaves set out on the table.

The Dural bread had been made with great care against the day the lord should come, and it covered the table end to end. No two loaves matched in size or in shape, each one showing where a different hand had tried the recipe its own way.

“Yes, my lady. These are the best of all the Dural bread made up to now, picked out from the rest. Some were made by Kevin’s mother, and some by others.”

No wonder they differed in shape and size, when the hands that made them were all different too. Dong-hui’s expectations rose higher still.

“They all look delicious. And the ingredients that went into them are the same throughout?”
“The ingredients are the same, but the way of making them and the proportions and such differ a little from one to the next. Some have a great deal of Dural in them, and others more grain flour.”

She was listening to the chief’s account and studying the loaves closely when several pairs of eyes appeared at the open window, heads poking through to peer inside. Not children, but women of every sort of age. In all likelihood they were the very ones who had made the Dural bread.

“Are these the people who made the bread?”

She had been quick to spot them, and the moment she asked, the village women scattered from the window in a scramble. She would have liked to call them inside, but the chief’s house was too small to hold them all, so she pretended not to notice when they came creeping back to the window and turned her attention to the bread again.

Dong-hui tasted them in turn, from the smallest loaf to the largest. Every time she tore off a small piece and ate it, a commotion broke out outside.

“The lord ate the bread I made!”
“Good heavens! I’m shaking!”

Like youngsters come to audition at an agency in hopes of becoming idols, the women were by turns fluttering with excitement and stiff-faced with nerves.

Having tried a good many of the loaves, Dong-hui picked out the one she found the most delicious.

“This one will do.”

The one she had chosen was a Dural loaf about the size of a hoppang¹. From outside the window came sighs of disappointment and cries of delight at the same moment.

“Who is it that made this bread?”

The instant she asked, one of the women standing outside the window raised her hand timidly. She looked beside herself with delight and yet unable to rejoice as she pleased, with one eye on the faces of the others who had been disappointed.

“Come inside.”

At Dong-hui’s beckoning, the woman’s eyes went wide and she looked to the chief.

“What are you standing there for? The lord has told you to come in, has she not! That is Kevin’s mother, my lady.”
“Ah, is she? As it happens, I heard that you, Hope, had praised it as the most delicious bread of all. It seems your palate and mine are the same.”

“I—it is an honor, my lady.”

She had said no more than that their tastes agreed, and yet Hope was as overcome as a person who had received the highest praise there was.

In the meantime Kevin’s mother had come into the chief’s house and stood hesitating in front of Chloe. Her head was bowed, but her face was flushed so deeply that the red of her forehead showed.

“That’s my mom! My mom got picked! What did I tell you! Didn’t I say my mom was the best at it?”

The voice belonged to the child who had boasted of his mother’s skill in front of her a while ago. Dong-hui beckoned to Kevin as well. Somewhere in the middle of it all he had put on the coat the tailors had given out.

The coat looked a little large on Kevin, but seeing even that much on him set Dong-hui’s mind considerably at ease. The thought of getting the other children into theirs as soon as possible made her impatient. Not Morta alone, but Enol, Kondal, Rasen and the other villages besides. She was in a hurry.

Kevin stood beaming, holding on to the hem of his mother’s skirt. He was a dear child, with a dimple that dented one cheek.

“What is your name?”

Dong-hui asked, turning to Kevin’s mother. No noble had ever asked her her name before, and she drew a great breath and answered in a voice tight with nerves.

“It is Bakey.”

Bakey.

Well, at least it isn’t Nike.

Once again the name ran true to expectation. If the one who had made the bread had been Kevin’s father rather than his mother, Dong-hui thought, would the name not have been Baker?

“You have produced a truly splendid result. It was so delicious that I found I wanted to go on eating even though I was not hungry.”
“Th-, th-, th-, th…”
“Thank you, you mean?”

Bakey nodded hard, her mouth still stopped in the shape of that “Th.”

Kevin and Bakey were, beyond any doubt, a very dear mother and son.