Chapter 429: The Presses Run Hot

Lent would begin soon, but fortunately expectant mothers faced no restrictions on what they could eat, so Hilda could have meat as an exception. That applied only to the nobility, of course. Commoners generally made do with fish.

"We should send meat to every household in Rosenheim with an expectant mother."

"That’s a lovely idea, but is there enough meat left to go around?"

"We’ll hunt aurochs to cover it. They’re so thick on the ground now they’ve become a nuisance."

The aurochs population grew by the day, to the point that the forests would burst at the seams if we didn’t cull them. Wolves and bears increased right along with them, feeding on the aurochs, and the woods were overflowing with game of every kind.

Most of northern Feuzen was forest, covering a considerable stretch of land, which meant development there was out of the question. There was nothing for it but to revise the plan and clear land to the south instead.

The Feuzen ranch was coming along smoothly as well.

The horses were in excellent health and free of illness, they’d adapted well to their surroundings, and most of the mares had conceived. That meant we could expect sturdy, fast foals shaped by the fertility of the land.

For someone like me, who built his forces around cavalry, that was a very good result. A horse’s working life as a war mount is relatively short, so producing quality animals on our own ranch would be an enormous advantage.

I planned to build a ranch in the Hungarian settlers’ village as well, not just in Feuzen. After long deliberation, Barosi and Herto had chosen a site south of Denmach, southwest of Rosenheim proper.

They asked me to name the village Magyar. Germans call Hungary Ungarn, and the Hungarians call their own country Magyarország. Hungary, for the record, is the English name.

Barosi and Herto wanted the name so they wouldn’t lose their identity as Magyars. Naturally I granted the request, and a Magyar village was born within Rosenheim’s domain.

"Brother, here it is. My very first book."

"That came together faster than I expected. And it looks rather fine, doesn’t it?"

"Hehehe, doesn’t it? And it’s all thanks to you, Brother. Thank you for making my lifelong wish come true."

"It’s hardly a hardship to do that much for my sister."

The cover was a rich gold, the paper was high quality, and the printing was very well done. Above all, the book was solidly made. At that level of quality, even scholars would have been tempted.

"Sign the margin here for me."

"Then I’ll use my real name instead of my pen name."

Lily had beautiful handwriting.

The copies she gave Hilda and me both carried her carefully written signature. Hilda didn’t understand why, but I was certain that if Lily’s novels became wildly famous, those copies would one day be rare items.

In any case, the Gutenberg print shop that Gens had opened in Rosenheim started putting out high-quality books instead of the low-grade volumes flooding the market, and most of what it printed was Lily’s novels and Bibles.

Put that way, it sounds like Lily’s novels were being treated as the equal of scripture, but ever since Gens learned that the lord’s sister who wrote under the pen name Wolf was none other than the crown princess, he’d been pouring everything he had into her books.

Gens looked back on the past as he spoke to me.

"Back when we were printing scripture at Gutenberg, we managed only one hundred and eighty copies in three years. Before we ever saw a return, I was hauled into a suit for repayment of the principal and lost every press."

It wasn’t that the press was incapable of printing more than a hundred and eighty. It was that he had thrown himself into the craftsmanship so completely that a hundred and eighty was all that came out. Maybe that’s what finally exhausted Fust’s patience.

Because of that obsessiveness, the hundred and eighty Gutenberg Bibles that Gens printed were regarded as masterworks surpassing hand-copied manuscripts, and they traded among the clergy at extraordinary prices.

"Is the press you have now much better than the one you built back then?"

"Certainly. I took the failure as a lesson and designed a press that’s more reliable and much faster. All of it thanks to your patronage, my lord."

"I don’t know much about presses, but it’s clearly a remarkable machine."

The press Gens showed off so proudly was enormous and intricately built. To have produced a machine of that caliber in this era, well, the talents of historical figures really did tower over those of ordinary men.

"I won’t interfere in the slightest, so run the print shop however you like."

"Thank you, my lord. I count myself fortunate to have met you before I die."

Making high-quality books was Gens’s last remaining pride. The printing market was overrun with cheap garbage, quite literally, so I judged that his business had more than enough of an edge.

There was something fitting in the fact that, alongside the revival of the Gutenberg Bible, the first novel Gens ever printed was Lily’s. But how were we supposed to sell it? Hilda offered a suggestion.

"I think Bodo would do a wonderful job selling Lily’s novel. What do you think?"

"Him? Come to think of it, he did wait on Lily for a while. He’d know the story."

He was supposedly deep in his studies, trying to adjust to life among the Elsheimers. Would he even be interested? I sent a copy of The Charging Wolf and a letter to Bodo anyway. A few days later, his butler Brenner came rushing in.

"The young master accepts your proposal."

"That’s a faster response than I expected."

"Haaah. The head of the family pushed it through with a great deal of force."

The head of the Elsheimer family was Ariel. It seemed Bodo had been clever about this. If he’d tried to launch the venture on his own, he’d have drawn objections from every direction inside the family, so he’d gone through Ariel instead.

As luck would have it, Ariel had fallen completely for The Charging Wolf and had snapped up my proposal on the spot. Which was why the Elsheimer butler was standing in front of me like a man who’d bitten into something rotten.

Books were normally traded through merchants, but I entrusted sales to the Elsheimers outright and had them do business in Breisburg. We were the supplier, they were the seller.

On top of that, Hilda sent a copy to her friend Elisabeth, and that became the opening through which the novel reached high society. Unexpectedly, a romance novel became the fashion among noblewomen.

"It’s like the topaz brooch you gave me, Wolf. When I wore it to a banquet, everyone had to have one. Elisa showed off the book, and now it’s the newest fashion among the ladies."

"Is that all it takes to start a trend? I feel a bit dazed."

"Elisa and I are always the center of attention among the noblewomen."

Hilda and Elisabeth, married to me and Fiel, had risen to the heart of society overnight. Every noblewoman looked up to them, so naturally they were in a position to set trends.

So everyone rushed to read the novel Elisabeth recommended, and as a result the Gutenberg print shop was running its presses hot enough to catch fire. Word was the price had settled at an insane fifty coins a copy.

Noblewomen who had never cared about anything but jewelry and ornaments now had their introduction to romance novels, and since these were high-quality volumes any noble would want to own, the books seemed to have stirred the collector’s itch too.

All of it happened right before Lent.

Well, well. A jackpot from a direction I never saw coming.

Lily was grinning from ear to ear, naturally, and it got to the point where she sent someone to the Elsheimer viscounty to negotiate the split. The envoy she dispatched happened to be Angela.

Hmm. I could picture Bodo and Angela sitting across the negotiating table, staring at each other in awkward silence. Ariel would take a keen interest too, so there was no doubt Lily had sent Angela on purpose.

"Brother, I have had a revelation."

"A revelation about what?"

"That the Lord has blessed me with a gift!"

"Is that what you barged into the lord’s office to tell me?"

I was working, and the girl in white had burst in to interrupt me. I was so exasperated I nearly rapped her on the head, but I held back. She was the crown princess, after all. I couldn’t go around laying hands on her.

Not that she cared either way. She was lost in a world of her own.

"Heh heh heh! Don’t be jealous of my natural-born talent, Brother!"

"Who’s jealous of whom? Hey. Hello?"

"Ah, why did the archangel Gabriel see fit to make me a woman? If I had been born a man, I would have won fame as a writer whose name lived on in the duchy’s history forever. What a shame."

"Damn it. With Angela gone there’s no one left to rein her in."

The handmaids who came from Offenburg with Lily had married men from the order and now worked indoors, so aside from Angela there was no one left who could keep Lily in check.

Lily’s pride seemed to have swelled higher than the Alps. She’d assumed that becoming crown princess would force her to give up her hobby, but the response had been so good that she now insisted she couldn’t let her talent die.

"You’ll have to persuade His Highness yourself."

"Do you think that straitlaced man would ever allow it?"

He was straitlaced, but he’d give Lily the shirt off his back if she asked, so why wouldn’t he allow it? The crown prince’s outlook had broadened since the war, so he might well support her secret hobby.

"Give him a kiss and he’ll cave right away."

"Brother! I am not that kind of vulgar woman!"

"Vulgar or not, I have work to do, so would you mind clearing out?"

"You should treasure me and my sister more than your work, Brother!"

"Daniel! Get this hellion out of here!"

In the end Daniel and Sabine came in and hauled Lily out at the very peak of her excitement. Only then did peace return to the dignified office of the lord. I should tell Arzt to develop a sedative. Or an anesthetic.

Lily and Hilda would handle everything to do with the novel, so I turned to matters outside. The Streit gunners were currently organized into two companies, with Gustav appointed as their new commander.

Gustav had been serving as the leader of Rosenheim’s young men, so the young men were quite pleased to see him made company commander. The additional one hundred and twenty pikemen sent by Viscount Loewenbert joined up, and training picked up speed.

By now the troops attended to their duties faithfully without my having to give orders. Next I checked a letter from August. Reading the meticulously written report, I frowned.

What was bound to come had finally come. I clicked my tongue.

I summoned the Gale Knights scattered across the territory.