A week passed in a rhythm of mud and hope. The sullen reluctance of the peasants had been burned away by the hard labor and the undeniable proof of their progress. The main drainage trench, now nearly a hundred paces long, was a thick, brown artery bleeding life back into the valley. Each morning, the water level in the bog was lower, revealing more of the priceless black soil.
Enzo, the former skeptic, had become a zealot. He worked the men with a gruff enthusiasm, his voice echoing in the valley as he urged them on. He treated Alessandro's instructions on where to dig secondary channels and how to reinforce the banks as if they were divine scripture. A fragile sense of purpose had taken root in the forgotten fiefdom of Rocca Falcone.
Meanwhile, Alessandro was adapting to the physical demands of his new life. The hands that once held only parchment were now strengthened by the daily use of the shovel. Each evening brought a profound tiredness from the exertion, but it was a feeling of productive work, not defeat. Standing on the tower's parapet to see the progress in the valley, he felt a powerful sense of accomplishment that overshadowed any fatigue. He was not just surviving; he was building.
The illusion of control shattered on the eighth night. Alessandro was in the tower's main hall, a drafty, smoke-stained room, sketching a design for a water wheel in the soot of the floor with a charred stick. Bastiano entered, his face the color of old parchment.
"My lord," the steward began, his voice barely a whisper.
"What is it, Bastiano?" Alessandro asked, not looking up from his drawing. "Has the flow slowed?"
"No, lord. The trench… the trench is a miracle." The old man wrung his hands. "It is the grain. I measured it again. The double rations for the men… it was necessary, I know, but…"
Alessandro slowly stood up, a cold dread creeping up his spine. "How long?"
"Two weeks, my lord. Perhaps less. The bottom of the last barrel is visible."
The words struck harder than any physical blow. Two weeks. He had bought them hope at the cost of time, and the bill was coming due. All his plans for the new fields, for a spring harvest that would make them rich, were meaningless if they starved to death in the snows of December.
He forced the panic down, his 21st-century mind scrambling for a solution. There was no more grain. The plan had to change.
"Tell me of the forest, Bastiano. What do you hunt?"
"Rabbits, my lord. Sometimes a deer, if a man is very lucky. But the woods have been hunted hard for years."
"And what do you gather?"
"The usual autumn berries are gone. There are some bitter mushrooms, but only the old women know which ones won't kill you."
It was exactly as he'd feared. They were living off the obvious, leaving a trove of resources untouched. Leo, the historian with a strange fascination for survivalism, took over.
The next morning, Alessandro divided his small workforce. "Enzo," he commanded, "you and the ten strongest men, keep digging. The faster the land is dry, the sooner our work is done. Speed is everything."
Enzo nodded, his trust now absolute.
Alessandro turned to the remaining five, a mix of old men and boys. "You are with me. We are hunting."
He led them not into the deep woods in a futile search for deer, but to the overgrown thickets and riverbanks. There, he ignored the rabbit trails. Instead, he showed them how to make simple, brutally effective snares from vines and sinew. He didn't have them set one or two. He had them construct a line of fifty, a nearly invisible wall of lethal loops across a dozen game trails.
Then he led them to the edge of the newly-draining swamp. "The cattails," he said, pointing to the common reeds. "You ignore them. But their roots are better than turnips if you cook them right." He waded into the mud, pulled one up, and showed them the thick, starchy rhizomes.
He showed them which trees had edible inner bark, how to leach the bitterness from acorns to make a coarse, filling flour. To the peasants, it was another revelation. He was not just their lord; he was a font of impossible knowledge, finding food in weeds and string.
The new strategy worked. The snares yielded a steady supply of rabbits and fowl. The foraged roots and nuts, while not delicious, were filling. They were still hungry, but the gnawing edge of desperation was blunted. They had stretched their two weeks of grain into a month, maybe more. A fragile, day-to-day stability settled over Rocca Falcone.
It was during this brief respite, on a cold, clear afternoon, that the sound came.
A single, clear blast from a horn, echoing from beyond the main gate. It wasn't the ragged cry of a bandit scout, nor the alarm of war. It was a formal, arrogant summons.
Bastiano scurried to the gate, peering through a spyhole drilled in the thick wood. He turned back to Alessandro, his face bloodless with a new kind of fear, one that had nothing to do with starvation.
"My lord," he stammered, "it is Brother Matteo. From the Bishop of Veroli."
Alessandro felt a chill that had nothing to do with the autumn air. The original's memories supplied the context with terrifying clarity. The Bishop was their closest, most powerful neighbor. A prince of the Church who wielded temporal power as much as spiritual.
Bastiano's next words confirmed his fears.
"He has come for the autumn tithe."
The Church demanded its ten percent. It was not a request. It was a tax on everything a fief produced—grain, livestock, wool. And Alessandro knew, with the certainty of a man staring into an empty vault, that ten percent of almost nothing was still more than he could afford to lose. He had just saved his people from the jaws of nature. Now, the jaws of politics were at his door.