“…What?”
The attendant turned fully toward him. The other farmers around him tried to dissuade him with anxious faces, but he could not suppress the indignation welling up inside him.
“No one in this castle has ever bowed their head so servilely to outsiders!”
“Y-you… you……!!”
“While bowing your head so humbly, when have you ever let our wheat be loaded away like that,”
Thwack! Thwack thwack!
Before he could even finish speaking, the attendant who had rushed over in an instant struck the farmer. Due to the difference in physique, and because the farmer’s robust body, hardened by long labor, would not easily yield, the attendant slapped the cheeks of the man standing there dumbly back and forth, breathing heavily.
“Kneel!!”
He snarled as if he had lost his mind.
“Kneel at once!! I shall charge you with blasphemy against His Excellency!!”
A thorny silence filled the vacant spots of the square. Strength entered the fists of the farmers who had been carrying luggage, and their eyes turned red.
It was the very moment when the attendant puffed out his chest to spew more venom.
“How long do you intend to keep me waiting?!”
When the man waiting in the carriage barked in an irritated voice, the attendant let out a deep sigh and growled at the farmer.
“You, I won’t let this go, so be prepared.”
Then he turned and ran back to the carriage.
As the attendant moved away, those nearby approached the farmer who had been struck.
“Go into hiding. We’ll hide you. Don’t come out for a while.”
“…….”
The farmer stared at the square with a disheveled face and muttered as if to himself.
“Do you remember? Back in the day… when the former Count was still alive. Around this time……”
When he trailed off, the person standing beside him nodded with eyes full of yearning.
“The Wheat Harvest Festival would have been in full swing.”
“My son doesn’t even know what that is. Because he’s never seen it.”
“My daughter doesn’t know either. She was too young to remember. We ate meat and fish. All the people of Taylor danced and played through the night with us.”
When the wheat harvest ended, Taylor Castle was filled with the splendid smell of food. Every street overflowed with generosity, and even the stray dogs wandering the roads carried pieces of bread in their mouths.
The Counts of Taylor throughout history held festivals to coincide with the completion of the wheat harvest. The people of Taylor called the event the Wheat Harvest Festival.
Bards and orchestras sang of the toil of those who had labored throughout the year, and to every household were delivered fresh fruit and meat, as well as fish that the people of Taylor could rarely eat. Men and women, young and old, all ate and enjoyed themselves.
In particular, Arthur Taylor and Luciana Taylor always brought their young daughter to the festival.
“My Lord, my Lady! This year was another bountiful harvest! Everything is thanks to you, my Lord, my Lady!”
“It is thanks to all of you who diligently sweat to cultivate the wheat, and thanks to God who has granted us the proper season. You have all worked hard.”
The people who made their living in the County of Taylor offered them crowns woven from wheat stalks, filled with gratitude. The couple smiled and placed wheat stalk crowns on each other’s heads, and placed one on Grace as well.
“Thank you, everyone!”
One day, when young Grace had shouted out in her lovely voice, the crowd filling the streets knelt on their left knees to them as if by prior agreement. A spectacular sight unfolded like gentle swells rushing toward the distant sea.
Back then, everyone believed without a doubt that such a spectacle would continue forever.
But peace shattered like a lie in an instant. The square that should have been bustling with the festival was now filled with carriages from another house.
“Why is our Taylor wheat…… why is it being loaded onto those carriages? I simply cannot understand.”
An unusual flower: beneath four petals, two long petals like a bird’s tail were superimposed.
“What…… what emblem is that?”
The farmer’s hollow question sank into the wheat dust and vanished.
* * *
That flower, the seal of Nightmare, was also stamped on the document that Count Taylor was signing.
“Thank you, Your Excellency. Please stamp here one last time.”
When the deputy butler of Count Chernin’s household pointed to the place where the seal should go, Count Taylor flared up in anger.
“I know without you telling me, I know!!”
“…….”
“Damn it all!!”
He rose from his seat and slammed his fist down onto the soft wax waiting to be sealed. With a thud, Count Taylor’s signet ring on his middle finger pressed down into the wax.
“So when does this damn debt repayment end?!”
Chernin’s deputy butler smoothed out the crumpled documents with a displeased face and answered coldly.
“You agreed to repay it over twenty-five years, and with this, you have paid off another year, so nineteen years remain.”
Count Taylor let out a hollow laugh as if dumbfounded and waved his hand for him to get out. After the Chernin deputy butler bowed and withdrew, Count Taylor muttered in indignation.
“Twenty-five years? He speaks so lightly! Hazel Chernin, that bastard clearly boasted to me that a gold vein would strike in that mine! That’s why I invested, so why am I the only one bearing all the responsibility?!!”
Around that time, the current Count Taylor had invested in far more than just that one mine.
When an upstart who couldn’t even properly manage a barony suddenly became the owner of a vast fortune, nobles flocked to Taylor. They whispered that these were the times of mines and trade, and that since he had become the wealthiest Count in the Empire, he should invest and amass even greater wealth. Intoxicated by the treatment he had never before received, Count Taylor signed documents without properly examining what they even were.
Most of the documents he signed were close to fraud, so even now, if he only set his mind to it, there was much that could be set right. But the Count didn’t even know this fact, nor did he have the inclination.
“Just where did it all go wrong?”
Cold derision settled in the eyes of Lady Cornwall, the head maid who had been watching that sight.
Where did it go wrong? He would never obtain the answer to that question.
Count Taylor might think he possessed everything of Taylor, but the Taylor legacy was not limited to the visible wheat fields, gold, and castle. What was more important was the invisible legacy, and he did not possess it.
The Counts of Taylor throughout history sat their children on their knees and taught them about the vessel of wealth.
“Every person has their own vessel of wealth. The vessels God gave us all look the same at first.”
“Father, that’s strange. You said I am the heir of Taylor and already possess many things. So how can everyone’s vessel be the same?”
“Listen more, Grace. The vessel I speak of is not something you can see. I speak of something more fundamental than what is visible.”
Arthur Taylor gazed into young Grace’s clear eyes and continued.
“At first, everyone holds the same vessel, but as time passes, its size changes depending on who holds it. Some make their vessel smaller than their palm, while others make it large enough to hold the sea.”
Arthur Taylor smiled down at his young daughter who tilted her head as if she didn’t understand. Grace stared at her father’s smile and asked.
“How can I make my vessel bigger?”
“First, you must recognize the vessel. But most don’t even know such a vessel exists.”
“After I recognize it?”
“You must decide the size of your vessel.”
“If I decide it, the vessel grows?”
“Of course. Surprisingly, it grows to exactly the size you decide.”
Arthur Taylor gazed into Grace’s fresh green eyes and gave her homework.
“Think about how large you would like your vessel to be and write it down on paper.”
About a month later, Grace presented her father with a piece of paper written in neat, precise handwriting.
Arthur Taylor looked at the paper containing his daughter’s vessel for a long time before bursting into hearty laughter.
In the girl’s vessel were contained the people of the County of Taylor.
Grace laughed along with her father, then asked something she was curious about.
“Father, what happens if I receive more than my vessel can hold?”
“What do you think happens? You only obtain as much wealth as your vessel. Whether you’re a wandering beggar or an Emperor on the throne, it doesn’t matter. You only receive that amount.”
Even a beggar wandering the roads, if his vessel is large, will ultimately possess as much as that vessel holds; even an Emperor upon the throne, if his vessel is smaller than his palm, will eventually lose everything.
Just as Lady Cornwall was recalling the conversation between father and daughter from her memory, Count Taylor muttered again the words he kept repeating.
“Damn it. The Count’s house wasn’t all that special after all!”
As Arthur Taylor had said, the current Count Taylor was obtaining exactly as much wealth as his vessel could hold.