Harvest

It was nearly harvest season.

By now, even the grapes planted outside the original farm should finally have grown to maturity. Cheongsu, Shine Muscat, and all sorts of other varieties had blossomed all across Croatoan Island.

For the first time in a while, I took the thirty Englishmen who could be called Croatoan Island’s “founding members” (though two were missing), along with Manteo’s tribesmen, and set out to harvest.

“Now… we’ll be keeping grape exports to Europe in mind. Any fruit with splitting or damage from disease or pests should be removed separately at once. If those are left alone, the fungi will spread to the other fruit.”

“…What are fungi?”

“Uh, good… question. Uh…”

“…”

“…”

Five minutes later, Bacon fainted on the spot.

Anyway.

The situation was different from before, when we would simply pick the grapes, hand them out here and there, and eat the problematic ones among ourselves.

Now that we were properly connected to England, we had to begin seriously researching long-term preservation with Shine Muscat exports in mind.

We placed the grapes on the sorting table, selected only the healthy ones with good weight first, and packaged them.

After all, long-term preservation was a process of reducing the decline in quality as much as possible, not a process of maintaining quality exactly as it was. Only the ones that were good from the start should be sent across the Atlantic.

And by stacking the grapes together with sulfur dioxide pads that released sulfur dioxide gas, we extended the grapes’ shelf life as much as possible.

“…They don’t use sulfites in winemaking right now, do they?”

Without sulfites, long-term preservation of low-alcohol wine was nearly impossible. In other words, the only group that could preserve wine long-term right now was us.

Imagine it. If something like a 1592 Imjin War Edition wine survived into the modern day… Oh. At that point, it would no longer be something you could open. It would be a cultural property.

“Wine, too… export!”

Since we already had endlessly regenerating glass bottles, all we needed was cork stoppers, and wine would become an “exportable” product.

My ambitions grew another notch.

I would push vast quantities of grapes and wine into Europe… and achieve the dream of a grape farmer…!

I would export domestic(?) wine… to Europe…!

The dream the instructor had cried out during the “Young Farmer Winemaking Course” run by the local government—I would make it come true…!

As I stood there for a while, filled with emotion, looking at the newly built vineyard and the storage crates piled high, someone walked up beside me.

“They’ve grown very well. Now there should be no worry when it comes time to make wine.”

It was Mr. Huet. The lawyer who gathered my remarks and wrote a Bible out of them, and also the temporary pastor of this settlement.

“Well, I suppose so. If the vineyards keep expanding like this, perhaps one day not only Croatoan Island but the entire area around this Pamlico Sound will be filled with grapes.”

“That would be wonderful. I would very much like to see that sight.”

“Would you?”

“Yes, Lord Nemo. I would. Would that not mean that so many more grapes and so much more wine are needed, and that your people in this land have increased by that much?”

“Uh… I suppose one could see it that way too.”

“Yes. Indeed.”

“…”

“…”

It did not seem as though he had anything in particular to say, and Mr. Huet, who had come to my side, did not speak further. I too had nothing to say and closed my mouth, but it was not an uncomfortable silence.

The two of us were simply enjoying this peaceful stillness.

Then, after a long while, Mr. Huet suddenly gazed closely at the horizon stretching out to the east and sighed. Somehow guessing what was on his mind, I asked quietly.

“Is it because of those who left for London?”

“…Yes. As expected, you know. I have not been able to shake off my worry for them.”

“…”

“Even as I believe they will do well, I cannot help but wonder whether they truly had to go to that place, of all places, filled with death and malice… After all the hardship they endured to settle in the New World… why did they leave so suddenly?”

“…”

I could not ease his worries.

If I were a real angel, I would have flown to London at once. I would have watched over Eleanor Dare, Walter Raleigh, Margaret Lawrence, and the others around the clock, and kept an eye out for anything that might harm them.

But I was only an ordinary human. I could not do such things.

I could only believe.

“They will be… safe.”

“Because you will protect them, Lord Nemo?”

I told you, it’s not that.

With a bitter smile, I shook my head.

“No. Not only because of that.”

“Then… why?”

Let us not bring up complicated matters. Things like how Sir Raleigh was the Queen’s favorite and a key figure in the American colonies, so unless something truly extraordinary happened, he would not be harmed. That was not what Huet was curious about.

So I told him something that might put him at ease.

“Did they not leave to do good?”

“Pardon?”

“It may be a crude comparison, and a trite story… but isn’t doing good much like farming?”

I opened one of the Styrofoam boxes at my feet, plucked a Cheongsu grape, and showed it to him as I spoke.

“Just as grapes usually grow in a vineyard, good deeds will be returned with good deeds.”

“…”

Huet hesitated, then accepted the grape I handed him and put it into his mouth. Watching him roll the grape around in his mouth, I continued.

“From one very small branch, countless little branches spread out, and on each of those little branches, countless fruits grow, do they not?

Around those who do good, more good things will grow.”

“…Is that so?”

“Yes, well, that’s how it is.

At least, that is what I believe.”

***

“Disinfection! Disinfection!”

“By order of Her Majesty the Queen, disinfection!”

Men carrying water diluted with disinfectant on their backs ran through the streets of the Aldgate slums outside the walls of London, shouting in every direction.

Among them were guardsmen, and also Sir Raleigh’s personal men. They rose at the crack of dawn, went through every corner of the alleys emptying rat traps, sprayed disinfected water on roadsides and inside houses, and purified wells.

As the hand of public authority reached this place—somewhere the high and mighty would normally have passed by with contempt and disregard—the residents gathered, murmuring, to watch them.

And.

“Harriot, I can’t tell from here. Which way does the alley turn?”

“It is a dead end farther in. We must first turn left, then proceed.”

Sir Raleigh, too, was moving in the midst of it all.

When a famous figure of London appeared before their eyes, and in strange white clothes that looked as if they ought to be worn by a child or a clown, the eyes of the residents here grew wider and wider.

Moreover, was this not the season when the “Black Death” was roaming about? What in the world had brought the Queen’s favorite all the way here?

“They must be planning to raze this place… and build a grand mansion.”

“Are they trying to drive us out?”

“Since the plague is spreading… they’ll burn the filthy neighborhoods first…”

After such “plausible” rumors circulated a few times, the people’s attitude turned defensive. Even if fear kept them from blocking the Queen’s soldiers, they deliberately took long detours around the roads the soldiers passed through, or averted their eyes.

And.

Walter Raleigh finally arrived somewhere.

“…This is the herbalist’s house?”

“It seems so…”

Needless to say, beggars, prostitutes, and day laborers could hardly have the money to find a proper physician. Thus they inevitably sought out herbal women whose faith, medicine, or both were suspicious in the extreme.

Having come to the house of that “unlicensed practitioner,” Raleigh shuddered at the stench that pierced his nose from the very front of it.

This was… the smell of something rotting.

The smell of meat and entrails rotting.

And this place was far removed from a butcher’s shop.

Once those two facts were combined, one could roughly guess what was happening inside. Sir Raleigh, standing at the head of the soldiers, hesitated, then stepped forward, but Harriot grabbed his shoulder.

“No. You must not enter here right now.”

“…”

“You must take care of yourself. You have already stayed up nights for several days because of state affairs…”

“Aaaaaah!”

A cry.

Not that of an adult.

At that sound, Raleigh’s body moved before his mind. The soldiers hurriedly followed him.

“Sir!”

Raleigh soon pushed his way through the building where corpses with blackened limbs were rotting away. He stepped over the body of the old herbalist woman, already dead.

And.

Bang!

When he opened the door, a child who looked about five or six years old was twisting in a high fever.

“Help… help me…”

“…”

Around the child, swarms of rats seethed. Sir Raleigh held his breath for a moment, then threw himself forward.

He plunged into the sea of rats and pulled the child out. Holding the child in trembling hands, he stepped outside, and everyone stared at him blankly.

The wary eyes of the slum prostitutes, and the worried gazes of the soldiers, were all fixed on him.

“The… the treatment center.”

Then he spoke.

“There are no other survivors in that… building… First clear the area around it and… burn it.”

“…”

“To the treatment center in Southwark… Send this child there. Mrs. Dare and Miss Lawrence will save…”

“…You should go too, sir.”

“…”

“Is your head not dizzy?”

“…Now that you mention it.”

“Of course it is, because you keep doing things like this.”

Harriot asked.

“Why do you go this far? If you are going to work, you must take care of yourself as well…”

“Oh, my friend. You still have not cast away the nature of a skeptic.”

“…”

Raleigh smiled weakly, yet clearly, and soothed the child, who had stopped struggling.

“…When the path to salvation lies open, what more could I ask for?”

There was a flame in his two eyes.

A flame enough to burn his whole body and more was blazing from his heart.

***

“Here! Over here!”

Eleanor ran, feeling her hair clinging all over her sweat-soaked neck. Just as she was heading to the cabin to change out of her protective suit after finishing the day’s work, someone called her like this.

It was not a rare occurrence. Every time she came to and left work, people asked her to help move a family member or friend who was too ill to walk. This time was the same.

“…Huh?”

…At least, Eleanor thought so as she turned the corner.

It was a dead end.

“Um… there’s nothing here?”

As Eleanor said that and turned back, something flashed in the dark alley.

It was a blade.

“…Do you remember Sir John Hawkins?”

The man licked his lips with his tongue and slowly walked toward Eleanor. Only then did the man’s features, which she had not noticed because she had hurriedly followed him, come into view.

Things like clean skin and plump cheeks, unlike those of someone from the slums.

Features that were useless to notice now.

“It is truly terrifying to fall out of favor with someone high above. Do you know how terrifying that is?”

“…”

“It is as terrifying as meeting a murderer in a deserted alley of the slums.”

The man chuckled, apparently satisfied with his own humor… then took another long stride and closed the distance to Eleanor.

Soon, he swung the knife in his hand and thrust it toward Eleanor—

“P-push that, anything!”

Crash, crash, crash!

“…Huh?”

Eleanor, who had squeezed her eyes shut while imagining the blade stabbing into her chest, slowly… opened them at the sudden cry she heard.

Then she saw that the boxes stacked beside the wall had come tumbling down on top of the “murderer.” He was still clutching the knife as he twitched… and soon stopped moving.

When Eleanor stepped closer and carefully checked his pulse, she felt nothing.

“A-are you all right?”

“Aaaah!”

“D-d-don’t worry. W-we, we won’t h-hurt you, Mrs. Dare.”

A woman was stammering severely, her whole body curled in on itself. Looking closely… she was a patient who had been discharged from the treatment center just three days ago. The young prostitute who stammered.

“There was a s-suspicious f-face I h-hadn’t seen before, so I f-followed…”

“Mrs. Dare! Are you all right?”

“Are you hurt anywhere?”

Soon after, other patients she had cared for and volunteers who had worked with her came running, kicking the already dead murderer wildly as they checked her condition.

“What? Ah, I’m fine! I’m fine, but…”

“Just follow me for now! There’s big trouble over by the clinic!”

“...Pardon?”

Led by the hand of an old beggar, Eleanor blindly ran with the others. Once again, she found herself heading from the middle of a dark, narrow alley toward a bright, broad main street.

She squinted at the sudden sunlight, then opened her eyes.

Around the clinic, burly men holding clubs... were huddling in fear before the powerless beggars.

It was not the other way around.

The burly men were trembling as they slowly backed away, afraid of the beggars.

“You bastards! Eat this!”

“Eat this and get treated here yourselves!”

The beggars were throwing rat carcasses.

They were from the rat traps Eleanor and Margaret had set up all over the slums some time ago. Because of that, rumors had spread to some extent that rodents were the cause of the Black Death.

“D-d-don’t come any closer!”

“S-spare me...”

And that “knowledge” was making the thugs who had come to threaten the clinic afraid. They were at a loss for what to do... when a shout from behind them made them jump in terror.

“What are you lot doing there!”

It was a voice that no one in London failed to know by now. A face that no one in London failed to know by now, after having roamed the slums and every alley so relentlessly.

“The G-Guards are here in person!”

“Fuck this!”

When Eleanor turned around, she saw Sir Walter Raleigh, the “Captain of the Royal Guard,” and his guards drawing their swords and charging at the thugs. The thugs scattered in every direction, fleeing in a panic.

As she stood there blankly... merely watching the scene, Margaret came running from afar. Margaret embraced Eleanor and burst into tears.

“M-Mrs. Dare... I, the others said they didn’t know where you’d gone, so I thought something had happened to you...”

“I’m fine! I’m truly fine, so...”

“Hey! Are you all right?”

“Sir Raleigh? The child in your arms is...”

“A patient. First, this child... cough.”

“You’re coughing! Sir Raleigh, you should first...”

“The child first.”

“...”

“There will be... no more attacks now. Once they’ve failed, they won’t be able to try anything foolish again. From next time on, I’ll have guards stationed here as well... cough, khak.”

“Please receive treatment first! This way! First, those waiting in line... should...”

As Eleanor and Margaret hurriedly supported Sir Raleigh after he set the child down...

The chaos in the crowd ceased in an instant.

The crowd gathered before them parted to either side like the Red Sea.

Even those who had been first in line stepped aside on their own, opening a path so they could enter the makeshift ward.

Hundreds of people... were praying in that state.

Some knelt and raised both hands toward the heavens, while others murmured, “They are a saint and a holy woman. A saint and a holy woman...” and made the sign of the cross again and again.

In that strange and sacred silence, the three walked toward the half-destroyed clinic.

***

And that night.

“That tent over there collapsed! Set it back up!”

“Gather up the syringes and bring them here!”

Those who had been walking along the street, the residents of this wretched slum, protected this place and rebuilt it.

People who had gathered from somewhere quietly lent small helping hands, then disappeared.

When hundreds, thousands of those small hands came together...

“...Huh?”

“What... happened?”

When Eleanor woke the next day, the clinic had been almost completely restored.

It was nothing more than a simple, childish faith.

That if one did good, more good would return.

And yet, at times, even such faith is rewarded.

Just as countless small branches sprout from a single tiny bough.

And just as countless fruits grow upon each of those branches.