Chapter 3 Chapter 3 Immediate Results

She came out of the small door of the tower and saw the servant Aden in the prayer room wiping the wax tablets of gods hanging on the wall with a piece of linen.

The child looked to be only about ten years old. He was not tall and had to stand on a wooden stool to reach the edge.

He was wearing a two-piece linen robe and trousers, a half-worn brown felt waistcoat, and a pair of leather short boots. He was a very dedicated servant.

"Adam, where is the steward now?"

Olivia walked over and asked him while admiring the wax painting.

Adam turned his head. His face was chapped from the cold and red, just like the ugly apples in the orchard outside.

"Ma'am, my father just sent someone to town to buy tiles. This morning, the yeomen and tenant farmers delivered the linen for tax deductions. They should be counting it at the longhouse by now."

"Well, call him over and ask him to bring two wax tablets. I plan to renovate the main building and have a few things to tell him."

Adam responded immediately upon hearing this, jumped off the stool, and slipped out through the back door of the stairwell.

Olivia wandered around the prayer room.

This place is said to be a prayer room, but in fact the only things that show its function are the portraits of the ancient creator gods in Alta mythology hanging on the wall.

If these paintings were removed, the house would be an empty, unfinished house.

The floor tiles were mottled and loose, and most of the wall paint had fallen off.

She walked around the corner, touched the peeling lime plaster on the wall with her fingers, and went to the window.

Here stood the only furniture in the room, a set of sturdy wooden shelves, usually used to hold plate armor, swords, and longbows.

Caesar's armor was won when he was a squire beside the Count in a duel with a nobleman in the arena. Therefore, the armor was of very fine smelting and workmanship. It was plate armor instead of lamellar armor, so it was smooth enough for her to use it as a mirror.

When fully armed, no skin is exposed from head to toe, and he looks like a metal machine. This outfit is probably the most valuable thing in this manor.

Normally, he wouldn't wear a full set, at most a breastplate, but today's patrol was a collective action of all the mercenary knights and fief knights in the barony.

The Baron is coming in person, and whenever their superiors want to inspect, they have to cover themselves up like a sticky dumpling to show their majesty.

As for the old knight's armor, the workmanship is a bit outdated. It is a lamellar style, which is also the most common style nowadays. It is now worn by Caesar's knight squires.

It's convenient to put these things here.

She thought for a moment and then checked the window next to her, which had a wooden frame.

The window sashes were neither glass nor papered; both were either too expensive or not widely available.

Today's windows are all assembled with wooden boards, a bit like blinds, fixed on the windows. If you want to open the windows for ventilation, you can only manually lift these wooden boards one by one and lock them in place.

After decades of wind and rain, the nails on these windows have rusted, and every piece of wood is riddled with holes from insects.

At this moment, there was a strong wind outside and a light wind inside the house. She had to wear two more layers of clothes when she got up to go to the toilet at night.

Olivia knew that if the system didn't cause any trouble in the future, she would probably have to live in this place for the rest of her life.

Then, these repairs are also essential.

Since paper has not yet evolved to be suitable for writing, most nobles now use parchment. A kingdom code made of parchment is more expensive than a house.

Small nobles and commoners did not use it, but a wax board was used on a large scale.

Wax boards are usually made of two thin wooden boards with holes punched in them to form hinges. The inner pages are coated with beeswax mixed with charcoal ash, and then words are scraped on this layer of black beeswax with a metal pen.

Beeswax is easier to obtain, and this recording method is cheap. The beeswax can be melted and then smoothed out for repeated writing.

This type of wax tablet is suitable for recording tenants' grain payments, crop storage quantities, and business records in town, for example.

A little while later, Olivia was walking into the dining room to check the corner of the table, which had come loose.

At this moment, the old butler Jock and his youngest son Adam came over with a few wax tablets. Jock respectfully opened the wax tablet in his hand and handed it to Olivia.

"Madam, this is the amount of linen and ramie we collected this year. They have all been placed in the longhouse storage room."

Olivia took it and took a look. There were seven pieces of ramie and seven pieces of linen cloth each. One piece of cloth in this country, converted into the unit of calculation in her previous life, was about 30 meters long.

“How many households are eligible for this tax credit?”

Olivia put the decoration matter aside and first asked Jock about the tax matters in the fiefdom.

In the entire village, there are fifteen self-cultivating farmers and twenty tenant farmers. There is a big difference in tax payment between these two types of households.

The land of the self-cultivating farmers belonged to them and could be traded, but the owners of the land were required to perform military service and pay a poll tax.

If a knight wanted to recruit soldiers from his fiefdom, he would provide weapons and then select young and strong men from these self-cultivating farmers to become infantrymen or archers.

Generally, the richer the knight, the more soldiers he recruited.

If a self-cultivating peasant family could not afford the head tax, they could offset it with grain or cloth.

However, most self-cultivating farmers would specifically grow a piece of ramie or flax, and simply process and weave it at home and hand it in, and the value of the cloth would be much greater.

Self-cultivating farmers who paid the head tax could engage in simple fishing, hunting, and grazing in the mountains and rivers of the fiefdom, or they could run businesses in the village and work as blacksmiths or carpenters.

However, the situation was completely different for tenant farmers. They rented the knights' fiefs, and had to pay one-third of the annual grain harvest as rent. They also had to give the knights private plots of land to cultivate in the manor.

In addition to paying rent, tenant farmers also had to obey the steward's instructions and do voluntary labor on the manor, such as rebuilding the house.

Tenant farmers were part of the fiefdom and had little freedom, not even the ability to fish within the territory.

If they met a good lord who allowed them to hunt, they could have a bite to eat and satisfy their hunger. But if they met a harsh lord who did not allow them to hunt, they would not be able to eat meat all year round.

Jock said their village was very tolerant in this regard, allowing tenant farmers to fish in the river, collect firewood in the mountains, and allow livestock to graze freely in the village.

There are now twenty tenant farmers in their village, with nearly a hundred people.

The land cultivated by the tenant farmers had different fertility levels. Some tenant farmers left enough food for their own families, which was not enough to hand over, so they also planted cash crops, such as ramie and flax, and wove cloth to make up the difference.

After listening to Jock's explanation, Olivia probably understood the situation.

The village's annual tax revenue was about one hundred barrels of various grains and a dozen pieces of this kind of cloth. Only wealthy carpenters, blacksmiths, beekeepers, and the like would pay.

Since Alta was a kingdom with its own state religion, any clergy position was granted by layers of lords, and the clergy also relied on the lords for support, so farmers did not have to pay tithes separately. Paying taxes to the lords already covered all their expenses.

If converted into currency, these things can probably be exchanged for forty or fifty kingdom gold coins, but don't be too happy too soon.

Regardless of good years or bad, knights must pay the tax of twenty-five gold coins to their baron.

Therefore, a knight could only earn about twenty gold coins a year, which was enough to support his family's food, clothing, housing and transportation, and he also had to provide weapons and repair weapons for the soldiers recruited from the self-cultivating farmers.

As well as the livestock on the manor, the food and drink for several members of the manager's family, if there is no other way to increase income, the remaining money will not be enough to buy a cow.

A priest was supposed to be appointed at Olivia's estate, but there was no suitable candidate in the town's church, so this expense was not paid for the time being.

Jock said this as a subtle reminder to her that even if she had to spend money on construction, she should not take too big a step. However, he didn't know whether the lady would listen to him or not, so he could only say this. As a butler, he couldn't stop the lady from doing anything she wanted to do.

Jock's previous lord was very stingy with these expenses and never messed with the manor, which saved the manors money and time.

Olivia also roughly understood what Jock meant. She lowered her head and closed the wax board, remaining calm.

Jock looked at his wife's expression and could tell that she was well aware of his reminder and temptation.

"Jock, you've done a great job keeping these accounts. They look very clear. I'm very satisfied with your work."

"As for repairing the manor, don't worry too much. I have it all figured out. Just do as I ask."

Hearing this, Jock nodded and put his heart at ease.

Olivia opened the blank wax board, wrote down the areas that needed to be renovated, handed it to the housekeeper, and began to describe in detail the effect she wanted.

"The floor tiles in this room are loose, but there's no need to replace them. Just re-lay them and fill the gaps with clay."

Olivia was thinking that completing the system task was important. Even if she didn't do the soft decoration, she had to complete all the repairs in the task.

Therefore, she asked the housekeeper to replace the tiles first, replace the damaged floors in the attic and second floor, fill the floor tiles on the first floor, repair the windows of the entire main house, and block the rat holes in the cellar.

There is a dirt road between the gate of the house and the gate of the manor wall. This needs to be repaired or at least paved with gravel. Otherwise, when the ice and snow melt in spring, the road will become muddy and unsightly.

As for tasks like pasting walls and making furniture that are not part of the system tasks, you can take your time.

After listening to this, Jock roughly reported the materials that would be needed.

He also estimated the expenses needed, such as nails, wood, clay, and stone.

Nails and clay had to be purchased in town, while wood and stones could be dug in the mountains and forests, requiring the labor of about four or five tenant farmers.

Olivia asked the housekeeper to provide them with two meals of dry food every day, and the specific arrangements for the maintenance work of the main house were completed.

She thought to herself that one of the downsides of traveling to this world was that she couldn't watch ads to skip the construction wait time.

However, lunch time was approaching, and Olivia saw Jock busy himself, so he walked out of the back door of the main house with his robe in hand, and in front of him was the backyard of the manor covered with snow.

People passing by left footprints on the ground. She followed these footprints and came to the chicken coop on the left side behind the house.

The conversation with Jock just now made Olivia feel the pressure of her financial situation. She now knew very well that the output of the manor alone was far from enough to improve her quality of life.

To be rich, you have to find ways to make money.

The main body of the chicken coop is made of stone and covered with thatched roof. Once the door is opened, you can see hens with mixed feathers laying eggs in the nest.

Olivia went in with her nose covered, squatted next to the chicken coop, drove away the big rooster that was about to peck her, lifted up the hen's butt, and touched a nest of still warm new eggs.

I counted each chicken coop and found a total of six hens, which laid six eggs today. Well, the system really works, and the effect is immediate.

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