The news of the Legion's imminent return to the valley had already reached the valley, and the families of the soldiers living in the wooden fort could not wait to prepare for the triumph of their men, especially the relatives of the new soldiers of the Welsh Legion, who had not yet adapted to the fear of men when they went out to fight, and were glad to learn that their families had not been killed or wounded in battle.

Outside the wooden castle, in a low hut made of thatched branches near the north side of the road, a little boy with snot running down his mouth looked at the middle-aged woman who was busy by the wooden bed, and the woman dragged out the broken wooden box under the wooden bed with a thick linen wrapped around her head to protect against the cold, and took out a money bag sewn from worn-out linen.

In this money bag is the military salary that the man has accumulated for several months, and the mother and son basically spend less than half a puff every day to buy some barley oats from the grocery store, and then go to the mill to grind them into flour and bake some simple food with firewood, not that they have no money, the monthly salary of the legion soldiers exceeds 60 pfennig, and if it is only for the mother and son to eat and drink, it is already very surplus.

The main reason for the women to save money is to build a decent wooden house in the wooden fort as soon as possible, this shack was built by the civil administration for the relatives of the soldiers of the Wells Legion, and after the shack can only barely put down a wooden bed and a small wooden table, the mother and son can only share a stove with the relatives of the newly recruited foreign soldiers next to the shack, and the men's salaries are all sent back to the house to accumulate, and the woman herself takes care of the children while doing some chores for the families of the officers and the wealthy lords in the wooden fort.

However, after learning the news that her husband was about to return home, the woman still ruthlessly took out seven copper fennigs from the money bag and pinned them into her belt, then closed the wooden box, pulled through the wooden door, and walked towards the inner wall of the wooden castle with the child.

The woman took the child to the Woodburg bakery to buy a few sticks of flour bread, and cut a piece of bacon ham from the grocery store, and after a long thought, she bought a whole pot of Valley's own Welsh beer for the man who was about to return. After doing this, the woman walked out of the inner castle with a large stack of wine and food with a satisfied face, and the boy beside the woman held a small apple given by Ms. Emma in his hand, and jumped up and down as he ate.

As he walked out of the corner of the outer wall of the wooden castle towards his small shack, the little boy bumped into a man wearing a cotton robe, a steel knight's sword hanging from his waist, and a brocade box in his arms.

The woman was about to step forward to help the child up, and when she looked up, she was so frightened that she hurriedly held the wine and food and was about to kneel, "Lord Baron, forgive the child for bumping into you." ”

Art handed the brocade box to Ron behind him, picked up the frightened little boy who fell to the ground, and patted the boy on the head, "Young man, it's really strong, if you were taller, you could break through the enemy's wall." Go, go back to your mom. ”

The little boy pinched the dusty half of the apple and hid behind his mother.

"Get up, is Madame in the wooden castle?" Art asked softly to the woman who was on her knees.

"Back to the Baron, Madame did not go out in the mansion."

"Okay, you get up." As he spoke, Art bypassed the kneeling woman and walked towards the wooden castle, and several of the castle people who saw the lord's return wanted to run loudly to tell each other, but were stopped by Art......

In the lord's hall on the first floor of the Wooden Castle Mansion, when he learned that the Legion was about to return, a servant was cleaning up the long table in the hall, and the Baron liked to hold a council at this long table.

In the lord's office on the inside of the lord's hall, the baroness's personal maid, Ollie, opened and sorted out the account lists sent back by the Northland caravan one by one and put them on the wooden table. Camille, the little maid, stood on the other side, carefully sharpening the incision of the quill with a short, sharp blade carpentry knife, then placing the sharpened quill in the corner of the wooden table, and then picking up another smoothed quill and repeating; In the upper left corner of the wooden table, in addition to a row of five or six freshly sharpened quills, there was a glass vial containing a precious ink called iron gall ink, which was purchased by the caravan at a high price, it was a sap extracted from the gall of oak gall or other trees, mixed with copper powder, and it also required the addition of some gum as a thickener, which was of course not cheap, but the handwriting was also very clear and not easy to fade.

Behind the wooden table, on a covered chair padded with wool, sat Lottie, the mistress of the valley? Hugue. In August of her pregnancy, Lottie's belly was so bulging that she could only write with a slight leaning back.

After the cold winter of January, the two caravans in the north and south stopped trading and entered a period of recuperation, and Lottie also took this opportunity to check and calculate the accounts of all the teams under Art's command for a year, including the two caravans in the north and south.

Lottie held a quill pen in her hand, sometimes dipped in ink and wrote a quick book, sometimes stopped, pinned the quill behind her ear, picked up the account book and compared it repeatedly.

"Ollie, pull out the penultimate sheet of the stack of ledgers on the bottom right-hand side of the wooden shelf." Lottie found that a South Korean store in Lucesin in the Northland had an error in the number of accounts last June, which was a full 500 pfennig, and needed to be compared in detail.

Ollie pulled out the parchment with the dense numbers and words and gave it to Lottie, who took the parchment with her left hand, picked up the results of the liquidation with her right hand, and carefully compared it to find that Luces's shop had indeed spent a "hawkeye salary" in June, with Kenneim's signature on it, so that the account books were matched.

Lottie picked up a quill pen and copied the contents of the corner notes to the shortfall in the general ledger, and blew the ink with satisfaction, "The shop's account books have finally been reviewed. ”

After speaking, he began to pick up the transit tax account book of the border post.

Ollie saw that Lottie opened the next account book again, and persuaded, "Madam, you should rest, anyway, the account book will not run and be calculated tomorrow." ”

Lottie put the quill into the ink bottle, rubbed his sore waist, and replied: "I have to settle the general book in these two days and hand it over to Uncle Cooper, who will discuss and confirm at tomorrow's meeting, that Art will be back soon, and I hope that when he returns, he will see the results of last year's account verification." ”

............

"Sir? "The kitchen servant who doubled as a handyman in the mansion was wiping the long table with rags, and when he saw Art suddenly appear at the door of the mansion, he screamed in surprise.

Ron stepped forward and covered the kitchen's mouth, "Don't be silent, where's Madame?" ”

The cook was confused, and raised his hand to point to the office inside, Ron nodded to Art, who was holding the brocade box at the door, and Art stood on tiptoe and quietly walked towards the office.

Ollie was the first to spot Master Art, who slowly pushed open the door and poked into half of his head.

"Shhhh

Ollie gently walked over to Camille, covered her mouth and pulled her out of the office. As Camille walked by, Art reached out and patted her on the head.

Behind the wooden desk in the office, Lottie was still calmly and intently settling the books of the border outpost since last spring, and the tax collector at the outpost was really not very good at writing, and Lottie had to concentrate on identifying it.

Lottie uses the algorithm in the "Book of Calculations" to calculate the accounts, which requires a lot of calculations, and the manuscript paper used is all waste straw paper made by the Valley Workshop, which is too rough and discarded, so the sharpened quill pens wear out quickly, and Lottie has replaced several of them.

"Camille, don't be lazy, sharpen out the worn nib." Lottie wrote intently in the account book and said softly to her side.

After another long day of writing, the nib of the quill pen became flatter and flatter, and when Lottie was about to change another one, she found that there was no spare at all, "Camille! ”

Lottie turned her head sideways to ask the maid, and handed it over with a thick hand holding a quill, Lottie was startled and slowly raised her head to stare.

In a moment, Lottie got up and slapped Art in the face, then pounced on him and hugged him tightly......

In the bedroom on the second floor of the mansion, Lottie was lying on a special chaise longue, rubbing the silver thread pearl and gold bead necklace pendant brought back from Paris around her neck with a happy face;

On the edge of the chaise longue, Art bent on her knees and leaned her head on Lotilon's high belly, feeling it thinly, and the five finger prints on the other side of her face were clearly visible.

Suddenly feeling a fetal movement, Art raised his head and looked at Lottie excitedly, "It's moving!" He's moved, he must be a bad boy......" He rested his head on Lottie's stomach again.

..........

The warmth of the southern valley could not drift in the wind and snow of the northland, and the northern land of Burgundy was in chaos at this time.

A week earlier, the Inquisition of Inquisition sent by the Inquisition of Paris was stationed in Besançon, consisting of a bishop and three priests of the Inquisition, as well as a clergy and religious bodyguard, and the Church of the Duchy of Burgundy accompanied the investigation.

Now that the clerical power of the Kingdom of France is weakening, the Holy See urgently needs to rebuild its authority through a series of actions, and the heresy of the Count of Burgundy that happened before Christmas has become a cause for the Holy See, and it is said that His Majesty Pope Boniface VIII personally inquired about it.

After arriving in Besançon, the leader of the Inquisition, the bishop refused the warm reception of Archbishop Fabio of Besançon, and after learning the news that the dead bodies of Dean and his son were on the way to Besançon, he directly led the Inquisition to the Assasin lair in the city of Thorne, which was only two blocks away from the cathedral of Thorne, where heretics grew under the bishop's nose, and Bishop Thorne could not shirk his responsibility.

As for the owner of the mansion, the wealthy merchant had already been nowhere to be found, but the inquisition court immediately declared that the wealthy merchant and his family had committed a heretical crime, and not only to confiscate all the family property and confiscate it into the church's public treasury, but also to arrest the wealthy merchant and his family throughout the church.

Father Robert, who accompanied the Inquisition, complained to the Inquisition that he was pursued and killed by Viscount Errol, the governor of Thorne, and the garrison army when he left with the heathens, and the Inquisition immediately turned the finger to Erol, but after two days of investigation, no direct evidence was found that Viscount Erol had anything to do with heresy, so Viscount Erol paid a huge "commitment money" to the Inquisition and barely escaped.

However, he escaped the judgment of the church but did not escape the attacks of his political opponents, and a book of taxes and taxes of the Saône for the past years miraculously appeared in front of the sickbed of the marquis of the court, and the sick Marquis of Ivrea was furious and ordered the court to investigate the matter.

The Count of Bernard had no choice but to throw Erol out......

The Inquisition spent five days in the city of Thorne, arresting several clergy, city nobles, and merchants who might have been involved in the heresy, and even the owner of the shop that provided food and vegetables to the mansion of the wealthy merchants became implicated in the heresy.

In mid-February, the bodies of the Dean father and son arrived in Besançon, and the Dean father and son were convicted of heresy and murder by the Inquisition, and their stiff bodies were tied to the cross and burned at the stake.

Under strong pressure from the Inquisition, the Holy See ordered a nationwide search for the members of the Dean family, and within two days the bodies of the elder Mrs. Dean and Dean's illegitimate son, Qíng Fù, were quietly delivered to the entrance of the Basilica of Besançon......

Dean and his son were punished again, the family was destroyed, and many of the powerful people involved in the heresy were killed.

The Earl of Bernard suffered a heavy setback and his arrogance was greatly reduced, and Balwyn took the opportunity to manipulate the Council of Ministers to cut off several barons and a viscount under Bernard.......

The Inquisition, which had caused a storm of heresy in the Northlands, turned its attention to the South again, and demanded that the Dean family's property and fiefdom be confiscated as church property.

Bernard and Balwin were unanimous in their opposition to the seizure of the territorial fiefdom, and finally the trial court demanded the recovery of all the property of the Dean family, but Arter, who received the news, submitted a series of reports, insisting that no property had been found in the territory of the Dean family, and implying that all of the Dean family had been transferred to Bernard, and offered to hand over some farm tools, livestock and grain goods for confiscation.

The Inquisition, who was not a merchant farmer, had no interest in farm implements, livestock, and grain goods, and the Bishop of Orlof and the Earl of Balwyn were committed to defending the "hero" Baron Arter.