June 24......

Antwerp spent a joyous feast of St. John the Baptist, witnessing the crowd of peasants arriving from the farms of the territory to pay the meat tithe, and when the caravan from Nijmegen arrived, we packed our bags and went home for the upcoming wedding.

According to Flemish tradition, the wedding date is set on the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary on August 15, which is a month before the harvest of crops, and the locals often gather to thank God for the merciful harvest in sight, and the vassals will also rush to Ghent from their respective castles to witness the Flemish duke's symbolic cutting of a lock of wheat to represent the supreme possession of the land, and then everyone can return to the fiefdom happily to plan their autumn harvest.

After consulting the wedding customs that prevailed in this era, I was once again shattered with beautiful fantasies about medieval weddings, yes, no flowers! There is no church! No wedding dresses! I do not exchange rings! There are no angelic flower girls and bridesmaids either! There will be no holy wedding overture!

Everything that is constructed in those movies, the seemingly happy wedding scenes, are just a game of the rich burning money, and the marriage customs that are commonly used all over the world in later generations will probably take a few hundred years before they gradually appear and improve, and people are now more concerned about whether the upcoming year 1000 AD is the end of the world, and how to get God's salvation from the chaos of secular life.

"Are you sure you want to have a wedding as you describe it?"

The Count of Baudouin was still not convinced by me, and he took me by the hand to say goodbye, and gave his opinion with trepidation:

"This may be considered heretic by the Holy See, and if it is serious, the black magistrate will burn you at the stake!"

Heterodox? Burning at the stake? Please, I'm just describing a description of a wedding in the afterlife, how can it be condemned as a heretic, the most willing to make a living in the world's churches?

I shook the hand of the bearded man and shook it vigorously, smiling and comforting him: "Rest assured, the Holy See will definitely enjoy this pious ceremony of praising God throughout the whole process, and besides, as newcomers, our heartfelt offerings to God are not a small amount. ”

"Then I'll go and prepare as you say."

The Count of Baudouin let go of his hand, watched me mount his horse, and waved goodbye slowly, the flat green grass was easy to find, but that long red carpet required some effort, weaving and dyeing alone was enough to keep busy for a while, and no one had ever made such a long and brightly colored carpet.

I reined in my horse, which was about to gallop with its hooves up, and said confidently to the Count, "It will be a grand wedding that will be talked about for a long time, and the bards will adapt it into beautiful verses that will be recited everywhere, and everyone will envy the strength of Flanders and the richness of your Earl, including those who are self-righteous servants of God!" ”

"That's exactly what I'm looking forward to, don't let me down, Randy."

The Count of Baudouin nodded at me, and with a natural paternal affection in his tone, I rolled my eyes, tried to squeeze a knowing smile out of my face, returned the salute respectfully, and rode my horse at a gallop.

The farther I got from Antwerp, the more comfortable I felt, breathing freely in every pore, freed from the creepy control of Count Baudouin, and feeling cheerful for no reason.

The road to Nijmegen has been artificially widened, and now it has developed into a busy trade route, and many merchants come and go in caravans, and when they see our procession all respectfully abandoning the main road, they bow down respectfully on either side.

This trade route is estimated to be the safest road in the whole of Europe, and the bandits in the forests on both sides who once made people talk about tigers are either absorbed by Jensen with their old connections, or ruthlessly exterminated, and the remaining fish that have slipped through the net have also rolled up and run away, far away from this place where the robbers died, and at the same time reminded their peers not to touch the mold of Nijmegen.

Therefore, the merchants no longer had to rely on the lord's troops to ensure safety, and the transfer to the German interior through Nijmegen has replaced the trade routes to Limburg and Brabant, becoming the first choice for more and more people, not to mention that the young earl of Nijmegen never levied a variety of tolls, which is so precious, just like the legendary dragon as rare and excellent lu5!

On the way back, I took a detour to inspect the construction of Nijmegen Castle, a stone town on a rocky cliff in the river bay, which was the base camp that I painstakingly designed and operated, and spent a lot of money to build it in strict accordance with engineering standards.

On the periphery of the construction site, where people come and go, a small town has been formed, like a child who spends his days rolling in the mud and playing, although it is messy but vibrant.

The people who gather here to work also need to eat, drink, and lazar in their daily lives, so the merchants who smell the opportunity to make money come and set up camp with their own needles and threads, seize the most powerful positions to set up tents, and operate everything from daily necessities to taverns.

They specially selected wheat or other miscellaneous grains that had just been paid for their labor and had earned a total of their working hours, and started with the peasants who had never seen the world, and then loaded the wheat in exchange and transported it back to Nijmegen to sell to the Count's Castle, which bought a large amount of grain.

"This must be Leonardo's idea, those merchants may be his people, and they are doing vampire business on their beheels."

I learned about the situation from the captain of the guard, who was supervising the construction and was also responsible for weeding out suspicious people and ensuring that the castle's defenses would not be stolen by unknown spies, and shrugged my shoulders half helplessly and half approvingly.

"Only he can grasp even the slightest business opportunity so accurately, not to maintain the good reputation of Nijmegen without arrears of wages, but also not to do the most with the least money, Wizard!"

This is one of the reasons why I would rather cut military expenditures than ensure the investment in the project, and hundreds of peasants and ownerless serfs who used their leisure time to earn extra money worked day and night under the supervision of more than 100 skilled workers of the professional stonemason's guild.

They unloaded the neatly cut stones from the ship by means of simple pulleys, and then used the original rolling logs to slowly transport them to the construction site, building them upwards layer by layer, and the inside and outside of the two layers of stones were filled with tamped cooked red clay, so fine that even water could not penetrate it.

I can pat my chest and assure that before the invention of artillery, it was basically difficult for any siege weapon to break through such a strong wall.

Standing on a section of the city wall that has been completed, the heroic feelings of the chest and stratus clouds are instantly filled with my heart, I stroked the smooth wall tiles, and suddenly felt like Helian Bobo, who established the Xiongnu Daxia regime during the period of the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms, and the requirements for the city wall construction are almost perverted.

"Lord Earl, the foundation of the outer city has begun to be excavated, but the amount of work you have requested is too great, and we have to allocate more manpower to dig the trench, not only the shovel is seriously damaged, but the deeper you go, the more time-consuming it will be, and there are broken stones everywhere, and it is almost a sure thing to delay the construction period."

The chief engineer in charge of the construction, the master of the stonemason's guild, stood next to me with a sad face, fiddling with the big man trained by the heavy stone hammer all the year round, beating his chest and complaining in a pleading tone, the contrast was definitely greater than Brother Chun's sudden snort.

"Some people can't bear the hardships and secretly flee in the middle of the night, personnel are losing every day, there is a serious gap in the number of workers, and I am afraid that so many more people will have to be recruited to complete the work on the drawings."

"I'll solve the problem of shovels for you, and I will gradually replace wooden or iron-clad tools with iron drills and shovels, but the number will not be too much, and you know how expensive it is to build an iron tool, and I don't sleep with gold bricks in my arms every day."

I stared at the worker not far away, annoyed by the man who had lost the broken wooden shovel in his hand, gritted my teeth and decided to have another luxury.

"As for the workers, they can only be recruited as much as possible, but you can put them into formation, put them into use in phases and batches, and in addition, the construction of the inner and outer city walls can be completed before winter, so that I can live in a warm castle, and the rest of the huge project can be gradually improved, and there is no hurry."

The master listened to my words, crossed his fingers and simply estimated the time, but still shook his head and said that it was difficult for him to do: "Even so, it is impossible to complete the construction of the main castle before winter, and the complex water supply and drainage facilities on the drawings can simply drive people crazy!" Unless you want to stay in a traditional castle for the winter. ”

He scratched the back of his head frantically, glanced at the guards following behind him, and said helplessly: "Actually, you don't have to worry about us selling the construction plan of the castle to other lords, because no one can completely carry it, Nijmegen Castle's complicated defense system and intricate underground water pipes, the enemy who wants to sneak up on it will definitely get lost, and then rot in a puddle of stinking dirty water, never to see the light of day again." ”

I raised my eyebrows and looked into the distance, the river flowed slowly under the city, forming a wide water surface, there were tidal flats formed by sand silting at the bends, between the grass, a few river gulls jumped and chirped happily from time to time, flying low across the river and quickly picking up small fish, the picture was beautiful and gentle.

"Let's stop digging the foundations of the outer city first, and concentrate on finishing the construction of the lord's castle before winter, and now that there is enough time, I ask for another moat to be dug outside the inner city, twice as wide as the outer city."

The master Fu was about to open his mouth to refute, but I was rudely interrupted: "I know what you have to say, but this is not a bargain, it is an order that must be completed, the funds invested will be increased, and the standard will be raised accordingly." ”

"This is an impossible task, my lord, the amount of work is too huge, even the Italian architectural guild may not dare to pat its chest and guarantee that it will be completed on time."

The master completely collapsed, and said with a sad face: "What's the use of just giving money, what I need is people who can work, living people!" ”

"The standing army of Nijmegen then arrived, and they were disciplined and unpaid."

What I like most is to see others being tortured into hysteria, grinning with a scowling expression: "When this work is done, the reputation of the Nijmegen Masons' Guild will surely spread throughout Europe, and then those lords will cry and cry and beg you to build a house, which is called bitter first and then sweet!" ”

"Bitter before sweet?"

The master put the parchment roll under his armpit and pondered the words I had just uttered: "Wait, sir, did you just mean the Nijmegen Stonemasons' Guild?" ”

"That's right, Master Merlin, you're not old and faint."

I walked over and patted the master on the shoulder encouragingly, and gave him an affirmative answer: "Do you think I will let go of such a fine stonemason?" In the future, the headquarters of the guild will be located in Nijmegen, and the Earl's court will give you the most direct and powerful support to help you defeat your peers and become the king of the construction industry! ”

Master Merlin has died foaming at the mouth............

(End of chapter)