2nd Week of June, 1460
Snuggled in her man’s arms, Agape couldn’t have been warmer if someone had stuffed her under a baker’s oven. After weeks of waking cold and alone, she could get used to this. Christos’s arms were heavy around her, his chest warm against her back, his breath brushing the side of her neck.
The trouble was how those arms shook when he slept.
Agape lay still for a while, feeling the tremors pass through him. He held on to her like a man clinging to a plank in a sea storm, fingers tightening as his dreams turned ugly. His breathing turned into the rasp of someone fighting in his sleep and losing.
“Love,” she whispered, twisting carefully in his grip and shaking him as gently as she could.
“Ah-” Christos woke with a start all the same, his whole body jerking as if he meant to spring from the bed and grab for his glaive. His eyes were wild before they found her face.
“It’s morning,” Agape murmured. “We can’t stay in bed much longer.”
She had grown used to waking at early dawn at the latest and Christos had always been a slow riser, but lately his need for sleep had become even worse. He’d told her how poorly he slept under siege from the Genoese, and camping on the march had been scarcely better. It was as if his body was trying to snatch back every stolen hour now that he finally had a roof above him.
“Ah, yeah, okay, okay,” he grumbled, voice thick and rough. “Ah, sorry.” He seemed to notice then that she couldn’t leave the bed because he was practically pinning her in place.
“Off to the castle?” he asked, rubbing at his face.
Agape noticed the sweat dampening his nightshirt.
“Unfortunately.” She wriggled free and sat up, pushing her loose hair away from her face. “I’ve worked as a maid for less than half a year, and they’ve got me tutoring new servants now, of all stupid things.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t enjoy lording over the young unfortunates.” Christos was barely awake, but apparently that was enough for him to start running his mouth. “Best go quickly. You must save them from Miss Dina.” He had a mocking smile on his face that irked her.
Christos had heard enough about that dried-up old crow to know Agape would rather scrub chamber pots with her bare hands than listen to her hiss instructions all morning.
“Get your fat arse dressed.” Agape snatched up his chausses, or whatever weird name he gave his trousers, and flung them at him. The damned things were heavy enough to count as a weapon. “And don’t make me drag you out by the ankle.”
“Complaining because you can’t throw things at my face as easily as before?” Christos asked, catching them against his chest with a lazy grin.
“Things were much simpler back when my man wasn’t some bigshot sergeant,” she sighed, laying the word on thick enough to make him snort.
Christos climbed from the bed and came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist before she could make a clean escape. His body pressed warm and solid against her back, and she was faintly annoyed by how quickly she softened into it.
“Complaining that you don’t have to sleep in mud-filled hovels anymore?” he asked, nodding toward the small stone house around them. It was the third time she’d had to move houses, but she couldn’t well complain as each time she did it came with better perks.
“Well, you could have bought me nicer clothes as well,” she said, going for tongue-in-cheek, though she found herself leaning back into his touch anyway.
Christos rumbled a laugh near her ear. “Why? I prefer having you undressed.”
His rough palm slid along her waist, and Agape placed her hand over his, feeling that familiar little fire bloom low in her belly despite herself. What a wicked man she had, always thinking about what he shouldn't, and dragging her down with him.
She turned her face toward him, already close enough to taste the warmth of his breath.
“We’re going to be late.”
The high-pitched voice stopped whatever sin they were about to commit.
Valeria stood in the doorway, big hazelnut eyes peering up at them, her small face unreadable.
Agape felt herself turning a shade of beet red as she pushed Christos away, smoothing down the front of her dress as if the cloth had somehow betrayed her. “Ah-yes. We should go, yes - get going, I mean.”
Christos, shameless creature that he was, looked more annoyed than embarrassed. His eyes had gone flat in the way they did whenever Valeria appeared.
“No, if anything, you lot both leave too early,” he grumbled, dragging a hand through his hair. “Because of you.” His brow furrowed deeper as he stared at Valeria with a mean scowl. This was far from the first time the brat had interrupted them, and that was too many times to be a coincidence in his book.
The brat didn't even have the decency of being scared.
“The lords value punctuality,” Agape said, leaning up to give him a quick peck on the cheek before she turned away to straighten her sleeves. “You need to get going too.”
Christos grunted his assent, though he looked as pleased about it as a man being marched toward the stocks.
“Bye, honey. I’ll be back soon.” Agape gave him a wink from the doorway, and that softened the grumpy lines around his mouth at least a little.
Then Agape looked down at Valeria, who was already turning to leave. “Forgetting something?”
Valeria blinked up at her and tried to play the fool, all big round eyes and a cute 'what' face, but Agape had grown wise to the little demon’s tricks.
With a grave scowl, Valeria turned back toward Christos and spoke in the most reluctant tone she could manage. “Bye.”
“Get out,” Christos grunted in a near identical spirit.
Agape couldn’t hold back a sigh as she stepped between the two of them and ushered Valeria out before either one found some new way to prick the other.
She prayed every day that these two might learn to get along, though at times she suspected even God did not have the power to make peace between one stubborn soldier and one stubborn little girl.
…
“Off you go,” Agape said, nudging Valeria toward Miss Dina, who had been tasked with teaching the younger children etiquette in the spaces before and between their proper duties as runners and the like.
Valeria’s face pinched as if Agape had asked her to walk into a wolf’s den. She hated being left among the other children, and Agape hated leaving her to Miss Dina’s whims, though shackled by the Lord’s orders as they were.
“Don’t let her beat you down.” Agape touched her forehead to Valeria’s, softly stroking her hair with a touch the girl leaned into.
Valeria looked back at Agape with a look that asked You’ll be fine?
Agape had to fight off a smile. It didn't bode well if she needed a little girl worried about her.
“Go,” she said, trying to sound stern.
She knew she had missed the mark by the small twinkle in Valeria’s eye. Then it was gone, tucked away as quick as a stolen coin, and the stone-faced little girl was back in its place.
Agape’s tasks that morning led her first to the courtyard, where the Lord had selected a few servants by name to gather. She noticed there were five of them in total, all young, all among the new servants hired after the change in masters, and all of them women. That last part made Agape narrow her eyes a little. Men in power always had reasons for things, and the Lord had ten reasons where a normal man might have one.
“Good morning, everyone,” the Lord greeted.
They bowed in unison, some more clumsily than others.
“Today’s task will be a novel one,” he said, looking over them with that calm, serious way of his, “but one you will be doing for the foreseeable future. It will take place outside the castle. Walk with me.”
They followed after him like little ducklings trailing after a mother.
A small squadron was already assembled at the portcullis, standing in neat order with spears upright and faces set. Ironically enough, Christos led them as the Lord’s formal bodyguard, looking like he'd arrived in the nick of time. He tried to keep a stern face, shoulders squared and chin lifted like some great man of war, but the effort was ruined when he caught Agape’s eye and winked.
Agape had to hold back an eyeroll.
“I wanted to begin by asking you a question,” the Lord said as they passed through the gate. “You’ve noticed all the bizarre practices I mandate of the servants and men-at-arms present in the castle.”
The servants glanced at one another.
“Do you not find it strange that I had a latrine built in the castle?,” he continued, “Why do you think that is?"
The girls grew even quieter, each looking more frightened than the last at the thought of answering.
“Due to the smell, my Lord?” Agape said because no one else would. She had never been a woman fit to sit quietly and demurely, which actually made her quite unwomanlike now that she thought about it.
“In part,” he answered with a nod. “But mostly it is because I believe God values cleanliness above all. And I am a man of God, if nothing else.”
Agape hadn’t known cleanliness sat that high up in God’s book, and looking around, she could see she wasn’t alone in that thought.
The Lord paused as they entered the castle town proper. “And do you think Suyren shares the same standard? Having walked every day from your homes to the castle, you must have noticed the difference.”
He gestured to the streets before them, and Agape could hardly miss his meaning. The road was mud-lined and foul-smelling, churned by boots, hooves, and cart wheels into a dark mess that clung to hems and shoes alike. Refuse sat in corners where people thought no one would notice, and the stink of old waste rose strongest where the morning sun touched it.
Agape faced it every day when she had to empty out the refuse bucket, and the difference between that and the orderly castle was that of night and day.
“I aim to change that,” the Lord said.
They reached Suyren’s central square, where a small crowd had already begun to gather around a wooden box set in the open. Atop it stood a crier with a parchment in hand, his clothes plain but carefully brushed. His face was gaunt, but his eyes burned bright. Agape had heard the man had turned pauper for years after speaking out against the Nomikos family. With the new lords’ arrival, it seemed his tongue had become useful again.
“Hear ye, hear ye!” the man called, voice carrying across the square with practiced force. “There is a new law to be passed. From this day forth, all waste and excrement is to be deposited into buckets or proper containers, to be collected by specific night-soil collectors employed by the Lords of Suyren!”
The announcement caused a slight stir in the crowd gathered around the square. Folks didn’t seem sure whether they were meant to laugh, complain, or keep their heads down. The Lords of Suyren had been quiet after that first loud proclamation of sovereignty where the castle was seized. People had waited for taxes, punishments, maybe some nonsense about loyalty. Instead, their first proper order of business was dung.
“All citizens of Suyren are henceforth required to deposit their excrement into buckets or do their business in the newly built latrines in and around Suyren! Any person found disregarding this order will be fined fifteen copper!” the crier called, his voice sharp enough to cut across the square. “Every dawn, the collectors will pay in copper folles proportional to how much of each bucket is filled, with a full bucket priced at three copper folles.”
Agape’s eyebrows rose slightly, and she saw that look mirrored nearby. Men scratched their beards. Women glanced at one another. A few children giggled until their mothers clipped them quiet.
Three copper folles for a bucket of filth was nothing to ignore, and fifteen fined even less. A family of five could potentially fill two buckets each day, if they played their cards right. Three copper folles was enough for a cheap meal back in Mangup. It was nothing to sneeze at, especially for families hovering on the brink.
The crier finished by nailing the parchment onto the wooden noticeboard planted smack in the middle of the square. The hammer blows rang out clear and final, making the thing feel less like foolish talk and more like law. He repeated the order three more times, drawing in more passersby with every turn of his voice. By the last reading, people had stopped snickering quite so much. As if the trueness of this new law they would have to abide by had begun to settle in.
The Lord turned back to them. “I plan to ensure that it is not only the castle that follows God’s plan.” Agape had never known the Lord to be so pious. “And for that, I need you to help me.”
He walked deeper into town, and they were forced to follow.
Agape noticed quickly that he was heading toward one of the less pleasant roads in Suyren, which was saying something, given the state of most of the place. The lane narrowed between leaning hovels with patched roofs and walls daubed in old mud. Dirty water crawled along the ruts, mixing with straw, and barefoot children watched from doorways with runny noses and wide eyes. It wasn’t every day that the Lord himself went into the least desirable parts of town.
Ahead, Agape recognized a cluster of women she knew to be the local midwives of Suyren. At their head stood Myrto, the unofficial leader of the dingiest part of town. She had always reminded Agape of a barrel, built short and sturdy, with thick arms crossed beneath a chest broad enough to shame most men.
“Myrto, thank you for meeting us here.” The Lord inclined his head slightly, which was a surprise.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, waving it off, which was even more surprising. “You said it was important, and it better be. I was just told one of the tanner’s daughters is going into labour.”
“Great, we can head over there then. It will be easier to explain that way,” the Lord said, perplexing everyone in earshot.
If Myrto thought it strange that a lord would volunteer to witness a birth, she didn’t show it. “The things I have to do,” she muttered with a shrug. “Come along then. It's quite a walk away.”
Their reception inside the tanner’s house was predictably exuberant.
The family was already gathered around the soon-to-be mother, a young woman with a streak of smooth black hair plastered to her damp cheek. Every person who turned to greet the dozen-strong entourage arriving at their door had their jaw fall open as if the saints themselves had barged in carrying buckets.
“Is that the good-for-nothing?” an older woman with the same vivid black hair barked out from beside the bed. “Took him long ’nough to fuckin’ show up, didn’t he? Can’t even lay off the bottle to come watch his kid pop out.” There were clearly a great many feelings stored up in that woman it seemed. “Bring ’im here. Why, I oughta-”
Whatever else she meant to spit died in her mouth as the Lord and his party stepped fully into the room.
“Apologies for the disturbance, Madam,” the Lord said, walking forward with a respectful tone.
The woman could not throw herself onto the floor fast enough. After she was done gaping at the Lord like a fish out of water, that is.
“My Lord!” she exclaimed, astonished by the turn of events. After one bewildered heartbeat, everyone else followed the matriarch’s lead.
“I am sorry for the inconvenience,” the Lord said, helping the older woman rise as though she were some fine lady and not a tanner’s wife with flour on her sleeve and embarrassment stinging her face hot. “But might I ask if we may observe the labour?”
The woman needed a long moment to swallow that question, and Agape could hardly blame her. There were many things one expected a lord to ask upon entering a poor woman’s house. Food, obedience, news… asking to watch a birth was near the bottom of the list.
“Uh-yes, my Lord,” the woman said at last, agreeing more from terror and habit than because she had understood what she’d allowed.
“Thank you.” The Lord smiled gently.
“Of course,” the woman said, looking even more thrown by the thanks. “My apologies for the, uh, crass words.” Agape heard the fear tucked beneath the apology, the worry that her loose tongue might cost her more than embarrassment.
The Lord waved it aside. “Carry on,” he said to Myrto and her midwives.
Myrto clapped her hands once, sharp enough to make everyone in the room twitch. “You heard him. Stop gawking like goats at a market and move. Did you boil the water like we asked, Agnes?” The old matriarch nodded, still half dazed as if she were living some sort of dream.
The midwives stepped around the bed with the brisk impatience of women who had no time for lordly oddities while a child was trying to enter the world. The younger children were thrown out while a water pot was taken out of the hearth and another put in. They then began laying out strips of linen on a clean board, each one folded with care and kept away from the dirty floorboards.
The soon-to-be mother groaned, one hand clamped around her own mother’s wrist, her face slick with sweat and pain. She could not have been much older than Agape, perhaps younger. Her hair clung to her temples in damp black lines, and her breath came in rough pulls, as though each one had to be hauled up from a well.
“Boiled water first,” Myrto said.
One of the midwives poured some from the pot into a basin, then left it to cool while another woman brought out a small cake of harsh soap, which the midwives started scrubbing their hands with, rubbing between the fingers and beneath the nails until their knuckles reddened.
The Lord had them stand near in the back near the wall, close enough to see but not crowd the women working. His soldiers remained outside, thank the saints, though Christos hovered by the door, looking at the bizarre scene with curiosity.
“The reason I brought you here,” the Lord said quietly, not speaking over the mother’s cries, “is because one of the places where I believe cleanliness can help most is childbirth.”
Agape glanced at him, then at the young woman gripping the bed ropes while Myrto murmured instructions into her ear.
“Currently, it would be no exaggeration to say one in every ten children dies at birth,” he continued. “That is an appalling number, and one that saddens me deeply. Too many mothers bury children they barely had time to hold. Too many families lose women to fevers after the child has already been born.”
Agape felt something cold touch the back of her neck, and she was sure all the girls near her felt the same. Those tragedies were too common, and men liked to claim it was God’s will for the sins the mother had committed. Agape had never thought much of it, just accepted it as fate.
“For close to one month,” the Lord said, “Myrto and her ladies have followed this doctrine of cleanliness during childbirths. The practices are still imperfect, but we have discovered something remarkable.” he turned to face them. “Fewer babies die, and the mothers report fewer complications after birth. Less fever, foul discharge, or weakness that lingers after birth.”
Myrto, who had been pressing a damp cloth to the young mother’s brow, grunted. “Still get trouble. Birth’s birth. No washing makes it easy.”
“No,” the Lord agreed. “But fewer deaths is worth chasing.”
The mother cried out then, louder than before, and whatever lesson had been taking shape broke apart under the force of the moment. Myrto bent close, her broad hands surprisingly gentle as she guided the woman’s knees apart and spoke in a firm, steady voice.
“Breathe when I tell you. Push when I tell you. Don’t waste strength screaming at the rafters unless you mean to pull them down.”
The young mother sobbed, and then bore down with all the force left in her body. Agnes kept cursing the absent husband with a creativity that made even Agape blink, holding her daughter’s hand through the ordeal.
The midwives moved around her like women in a dance they had practiced all their lives, only now the steps had been scrubbed clean and made stricter. One changed the cloth beneath her when it became soiled, dropping it into a separate basket instead of letting it lie near the bed. Agnes was made to wash her own hands before she was allowed to hold her daughter’s shoulders again.
“I want to spread this knowledge farther,” the Lord said as Myrto’s women continued their work around the mother. “And improve upon it. I want no child or mother to suffer needlessly if there is a way to prevent it. That is why I chose you.”
Agape blinked.
For one stupid moment, she thought he meant Myrto. Then his eyes moved across the young servant women, Agape among them.
“You will learn from Myrto and her ladies in between your other duties twice a week,” he said. “You will help them with these procedures, and carry these practices into the castle, the town, and wherever else they are needed. They are still new to this doctrine, but I believe you can learn from one another and improve it together.”
Agape felt her mouth go dry.
She could be her chance to make a difference, something that wasn’t supposed to be possible to a poor peasant girl from a village in the butt end of nowhere. It felt almost surreal what she’d been through the last year, and the opportunity she was being given now.
She glanced toward Myrto, who was already barking at someone to bring more cooled water and stop standing in the doorway like a post. The woman looked hard, broad, and impossible to impress.
Agape straightened her back.
Well then, she thought. If this was to be her chance, she’d be damned before she let it slip through her fingers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Theodorus left the tanner’s house a few minutes after the aforementioned good-for-nothing husband finally arrived, eyes half shut and legs moving with the slow, treacherous care of a man hovering somewhere between half drunk and the first cruel edge of a splitting hangover. The young man had barely crossed the threshold before Agnes’s face darkened in a way that promised judgment more immediate and severe than anything a king could provide.
Theodorus decided he did not need to be present for the predictable walloping that would soon follow. In fact, after a brief assessment of the room, he concluded that his presence was likely the only thing still protecting the man from the thorough thrashing his mother-in-law had stored up for him, and which he very much deserved.
Theodorus was a teacher at heart, so he was always glad to help young men learn valuable life lessons.
Agape and the other young servants remained inside with Myrto and her ladies. From what little he had seen before withdrawing, the midwives had picked up several of the habits he had tried to impress upon them. They still moved like women who trusted experience far more than instruction, but the soap, boiled water, and cleaned linens showed that they at least believed in the results they had seen so far.
He had spoken to them first as a captain in charge of the militia, and back then the most he could do was ask. He was honestly surprised they had kept up the habits even after he’d fled Suyren.
Now, as their lord, he could command them to work with as much care and cleanliness as circumstances allowed during labour, and that distinction mattered plenty when it came to following orders.
Hygiene was one of the lowest-effort, lowest-cost investments he could make right now, the most pristine of the low-hanging fruit he could pluck from the tree of innovations that sat in his mind.
Medieval society was plagued by contagious diseases of every kind, and those illnesses did more than kill. They weakened workers, orphaned children, drained households, slowed harvests, and ate away at the metric Theodorus cared about most - the productive capacity of his population.
Good hygiene would not magically create a population boom, nor would it cut death tolls in half within a season - hygene was not that powerful in and of itself. The miraculous longevity of a 21st-century person was due mostly to advanced medical care and proper pharmacological compounds. But it would work at the margins, trimming needless losses and morbidity. Over years, marginal gains became structural advantages and over generations, they became the difference between a fragile principality and a resilient state.
This particular effort was also something of a pet project for him: the development of a rudimentary medical corps from one of the most underused resources in medieval society, women. While he was under no illusion about the notion of introducing gender parity in a medieval world. With proper institutional support, he could work away at it, if at least a little.
“Where to now, Commander?” Christos asked as they stepped back into the street.
“The pigstead,” Theodorus answered.
Hygene was a hydra, chopping one head off would matter little if the others were kept alive. And he intended to sever as many as he could in one fell swoop.
Medieval society, especially across Eurasia, revolved around humans living far too closely with animals that served as vectors, reservoirs, and hosts for a veritable panoply of diseases. So his next order of business was clear.
The pig farm sat nestled against the rear of the Dung Quarter, and it was the very place that had so famously given the district its charming name.
The smell reached them before the enclosure did, thick and sour beneath the warmer stink of mud, manure, rotting straw, and animal musk. Even so, Theodorus was pleased to see that the beaten, reinforced paths his levy had carved through the district still held firm. Spring had been light on rain, and their improvised side drains had held up.
Ironically enough, that meant the Dung Quarter had become one of the better looking parts of town. It was also where Theodorus intended to house future levies as they passed through, just as his once had.
The swineherd himself was waiting near the low fence, sleeves rolled up and stained to the elbows. He was a man with an unfortunate receding hairline who looked close to forty, though he swore with great insistence that he had not yet reached thirty.
“My lord,” Zois greeted him, and there was still a faint amazement in his voice at the sight of the boy before him standing now as his liege.
“Thank you for meeting me, Zois.” Theodorus greeted, and a few of the pigs seemed to oink back in response.
“The honour is mine, my lord,” the swineherd replied, glancing once toward the soldiers and then back to Theodorus. “But to what do I owe it?”
His sleeves were dirty, as though he had already spent the morning shoulder-deep in the work of the farm. Swineherding was a profession where filth was treated as part of the trade and that was precisely the problem.
“I came to speak with you about the arrangement we held back when I served as an aide here in Suyren,” Theodorus said and the man’s eyes lit up.
Theodorus had struck a small but useful bargain to take the leftover bones from the beasts he slaughtered. It was a modest number, but bones meant broth, marrow, flavour, and badly needed nutrients for soldiers who otherwise had to make do with thin pottage. Scraps could be turned into strength if one knew how to use them.
“I am not sure if you have heard about the new laws for night-soil collection in town,” Theodorus continued, “but we are now offering payment for excrement and urine by the bucketful.”
Zois stared at him in open surprise, as though Theodorus had just announced that Suyren would begin paying people for spitting into jars.
“And the same will apply for animals.”
Zois’s surprise turned into interest.
Theodorus intended to set up compost stations and manure collection now that Suyren was pacified enough to begin such work. Used correctly, animal waste could become fertilizer, and fertilizer was desperately needed across the harsher, stonier stretches of northern Theodoro.
It was an improvement with low cost and potentially significant long-term return, precisely the kind of quietly compounding policy he favoured.
“I see, my lord,” Zois said, and Theodorus could almost watch the man’s mind begin counting copper. To the swineherd, this was a golden opportunity. If husbandry had anything in abundance, it was excrement. Ridding oneself of it was a filthy chore that cost time, labour, and sometimes coin. Now he would not only be spared part of the trouble, he would be paid for the privilege.
“I would be very interested indeed,” Zois added, a little too quickly.
“However, this would be contingent on a few things,” Theodorus said, dousing the flame before it could grow too high. He understood the benefit to the swineherd perfectly well, which meant he had no intention of giving it away for nothing.
Zois’s expression tightened.
“Currently, the location of your pig farm, while on the periphery of town, remains close enough that complaints arise from the proximity of the animals,” Theodorus said.
The swineherd frowned slightly. “I am used to such complaints, my lord, and I understand them. But moving farther away means more time to reach the market, more trouble moving the animals, and discomfort for my family and me.” There was a slight plea to his tone. If his Lord mandated him to move out, there was little he could actually do.
“I understand,” Theodorus acknowledged. “That is why I would offer to build you a greater farm, with more adequate fencing, more space for your pigs, and better separation between the pens, slaughter area, and living quarters.”
Zois blinked slowly, almost comically. That was no small undertaking. A larger farm with proper fencing was the sort of boon a man might spend half his life hoping to afford. The Lord would simply do it? There had to be a catch.
“In exchange,” Theodorus continued, “you would be mandated to follow a few basic protocols regarding the cleanliness of your animals and their enclosures." Theodorus glanced at the mud-coated animals as they lined up near the fence, screeching for food or treats. "You would grant us the entirety of the leftover bones and offal from your herd for a period of ten years. You would sell a portion of your animals to us at a modest fixed price. And, crucially, you may not use animals that die of natural causes for meat.”
Zois looked baffled now, and Theodorus could hardly blame him. Cleanliness for people was a concept a man of this century could at least grasp, even if he found it fussy, expensive, or inconvenient. Cleanliness for animals was something else entirely.
Pigs were pigs. They rooted in muck, ate refuse, and were then turned into meat. The idea that their living conditions could matter beyond fattening and survival was alien enough to sound almost comical.
That was why Theodorus did not frame it as animal welfare. He spoke instead of rules, punishments and incentives. “If you are found to be in breach of any of these requirements, you would have to pay a fine proportional to one silver stavatron.” Zois swallowed. This was a heavy burden, barely manageable for a well-off commoner like himself.
Theodorus’s real concern was the food chain. Pens too close to homes meant flies, foul air, and contaminated runoff. Moving the animals farther from town would not solve all of it, but it would reduce the risk and for now, that was enough.
“I believe cleanliness is a virtue ordained by God,” Theodorus said, keeping with his pious pitch in order to convince his subjects. “And if we eat improper meat marred by foulness, then we may scrub our outside as much as we like, but our inner self will remain unclean.”
There was an intensity in his voice that left no room for negotiation.
“Of course, my lord,” Zois said after a long beat of silence.
The new lord was bizarre, but then plenty of lords were bizarre, and apparently this one cared about pigs being clean before they became meat. A peasant’s duty remained much the same through it all: keep his head low, nod when nodding was required, and make certain not to give reason for the lord’s wrath to crack down on him.
Theodorus left the pig farm with the agreement secured, then visited the three other medium-sized farms that catered to the town and extracted similar arrangements from them.
The cost to the families was not small. Moving pens, adjusting routines, and submitting to inspections would be a burden, and none of them missed that fact. But the benefits were too large to ignore. Better enclosures, paid manure collection, guaranteed purchases, and the favour of the new lord made resistance look like poor arithmetic.
With this, all large-scale animal production in Suyren would begin moving farther from the inhabited streets and closer to the compost pit he had ordered dug outside town, using the large levy still at his disposal. The smaller household farms would remain, however. He could not very well uproot half the families in town because they had two or three animals.
For now, he could only hope the manure collection would hopefully encourage people to care more about the state of their own yards. That was a problem he would have to address later.
“And where to now, Commander?” Christos asked, almost weary, as he faced the early afternoon sun.
He knew Theodorus well enough by now to understand that so long as daylight remained, work remained as well.
“There is one more place we must visit, Christos,” Theodorus said. “And it is perhaps the most important of all when it comes to the cleanliness of this town.” He had a small smile on his face. “The chapel.”
“To see the priest?” Christos asked, surprised.
Theodorus nodded.
True cleanliness would never be achieved by law alone, no matter how many measures he implemented, incentives he laid out, or punishments he threatened. For that, its citizens had to want to be clean in the first place.
And what better way to do so than to ask God to work for him?
The Almighty was omnipresent, after all, and Theodorus did not abide anyone living in his domain rent free.
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Author's Notes: In the birth scene, when Myrto and the midwives were caring for the pregnant woman, we had another instance of the procedure going too smoothly. In reality they would not have done all of those procedures or probably scrubbed under their nails. Those are the kinds of details that people of the time would not overly care for, but I decided to put in because I will not be revisiting the procedures that Theodorus put into place. Also, Theodorus himself is not a doctor, so what would happen is that, over time, the midwives themselves would start innovating and coming up with more efficient ways of doing their job. I was particularly happy with the fact that I managed to pick up a loose thread I had left all the way back in chapter 40: The Hound and the Beast. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about Gerasimos, by the way. But, much as what happened with Apostolos during the Genoese siege, I have so many POVs to choose from, I will only harken back to specific characters when they become relevant to the story.
Another thing I noticed while writing this chapter is that most of my female characters have rather strong personalities. This, I will admit, is a historical inaccuracy. Female decorum was very much centered around being quiet, pious, and chaste, although in commoners this definition was more fluid and decorum wasn't as strict. But honestly, I prefer writing stronger, more vibrant characters in general. It makes for funnier interactions in my opinion. And I try not to have any one or two characters feel the same, although overlaps inevitably occur.
One of the things I have come to realize as an author is that I have to constantly juggle between enough dramatization and storytelling to make the reading pace bearable and the story interesting and realism. If I were to strictly adhere to realism and what would most likely happen, half the things that happened in the book might not have. And in the end that would make the story suffer.
When all is said and done, my job is to try to fit unrealistic and dramatic journeys into a realistic historical setting just enough that you, the reader, feel that you are living in that time period without suspending disbelief. It is a fun challenge, but I apologize if at times I do not get it right.
Let me know what you've been thinking of the author's notes and if you'd like them to continue.
As always, thank you for your support :)