>>5410951>>5410956>>5411090>>5411180>Have Claudine give you a more thorough tour of the village and meet some of the locals, including the priests and the reeve, the manager appointed by the peasantsRather than heading up to the house, you ask Claudine to show you more of the village: if you’re to be their lord for the foreseeable future, you ought to know the peasants and familiarise yourself with their crafts. In a land such as this, having some friends at home will certainly help you settle in quicker, and the locals seem a hardy lot: having them as allies might even be crucial in future.
Claudine seems pleased with your decision and as she leads you through the cramped village she rattles off a more in depth account of incomes and expenses, and which of the neighbouring manors you have the most business with. The aged woman certainly knows what she’s talking about when it comes to the estate’s finances and administration. She no doubt has years of experience as a seneschal, and while she is neither a noble nor a cleric you suspect she has no small amount of formal education. As she introduces you to charcoal burners, carpenters, woodsmen and butchers she is treated politely, but few if any seem to be intimate friends of hers. At her side and being directly addressed, the peasants are finally forced to acknowledge your presence. Their manners are rusty, but you receive a few bows and most of them remember to address you as ‘Sir.’ However, you cannot throw off the feeling that your new subjects are deliberately guarded and reticent to say much to you.
The church is the largest building in the village proper. It’s no grand cathedral but as far as village chapels go, you’ve seen worse. One of the priests is in attendance, tending to the shrine. She’s a waxen local of the village, and from the soot on her face and the reek of smoke clinging to her you summarise that she works as one of the charcoal makers when she is not tending to the congregation. Claudine introduces her as Simonetta; she is younger than Claudine but hunched and bony looking nevertheless, and she’s even less friendly than the rest of the locals; she seems to have little patience even for the seneschal, let alone yourself.
It is not uncommon even for a small village to have more than one priest, the bureaucracy of the greater Church replicated at a smaller scale, and Claudine is just about able to gather from Simonetta that her fellow priest, a man called René, is likely at the public house; Simonetta’s disapproval is obvious
.
“The reeve will likely be there as well,” Claudine says as she mercifully ushers you away from Simonetta’s withering gaze.