Celestial Hymn 2 (Patreon)

Celestial Hymn
Chapter 2

-VB-

Rosia stared up at the tall man who was the new lord of her hometown Mallonton and the other villages, towns, and the castle of the Brownspear Barony. Standing among the crowd who’d come to greet their new lord in his tour of the lordship, she watched on with her brothers and parents by her side.

Walking instead of riding, a man dressed in blue and white fineries wandered the cobblestone streets of Mallonton, and four men armored and armed and carrying the standard of the Brownspear Lordship, a black diamond shaped tear on a background of blue.

"He looks normal," her brother, Dan, muttered from her left.

"He ain't a dragon, if that's what you are asking. That's all I care about," dad said. He fought in many battles for the Baratheon. It was how they managed to get themselves a house in a town.

She continued to look at the man who supposedly made all of the lord paramounts gawk in awe over his sculpture of all things.

“He looks plain,” she agreed with Dan.

Whatever it was that the nobles did, she couldn’t give a damn.

All she cared about was whether this new noble would be better or worse than the last.

---

She stared at the roaring lion… statue.

When she first saw it, she screamed and jumped back. It was only after her brothers laughed at her - and then got scolded because they had the same reaction and thus was mean to laugh at her for it - that she realized how realistic looking the statue was.

Standing at the center of the town plaza on top of a thick and short pillar that was engraved so intricately that while it might look like some wavy lines from afar, it was in truth a pillar filled with winged angels singing praises.

Rosia got so caught in the beauty of both the pillar's angels and the lion that when her parents shook her out of it, she hadn't even realized that time had passed.

She understood. She understood why the nobles sought his skills. Why the Lord Paramount of the Stormlands willingly exchanged title and land to have majority attention or even monopoly over the sculptor.

He apparently finished this in a week, too, and he did it to commemorate his rise to nobility. Instead of keeping it to himself, he shared it so that all of the town could enjoy its beauty, too.

She had to give it to their new lord.

He was generous, at the very least.

---

Rosia stared down at Dan's bandaged leg.

He got into an accident at work, and it was clear to everyone that he should not be allowed to work, despite his insistence that he could at least do errands.

"The answer is no, Dan!" father shouted, having run out of patience. "Your leg was snapped in half! If it wasn't for the baron who somehow knew enough medicine to save your leg, you would be a cripple forever! Do you not remember his words?! 'No walking on that leg until I say so'! What happens if you permanently cripple yourself, hmm?!"

"I can hop around-!"

Mother punched the back of Dan's head, making him curl up in pain. "Mom!"

"No means no."

"But what about the farm!?"

Father grimaced. "With you being unable to work, we'll just have to do more."

"You don't know how long we'll have to do that!"

Rosia then remembered something.

"The baron is looking for a maid."

The family turned to her. Mother and father and Dan -. Well, everyone looked alarmed.

"We don't know what he is like inside his manor! You know what happens to a smallfolk who ends up in a room with a lord!"

"But we'll starve if I don't."

"No means -."

---

"Seeing as you are an adult if only barely, I will accept this, but is it not usually a custom for the man of the house to give you permission?" Baron Alan of House Marris asked her from across his plain desk.

For a man capable of creating beauty that spurred jealousy among nobles and Kings, he possessed very plain furniture.

"A-ah, yes, that is normally how I would get a job outside of the family business, but … you wouldn't turn me away for this, would you, milord?"

He didn't even stare once at the intentionally lowered neckline of her blouse and her own impressive firm and big tits.

She was honestly impressed, though this feeling was small in comparison to the fear of being here in the baron's personal office with no one else here.

Even though she came here looking for a job, she feared that he might … do things to her.

She expected it, honestly. She knew as well as any smallfolk did that noble men would force themselves on smallfolk women. She came here despite this because there were no other jobs in the town and villages. She checked.

At least if he fucked her, them he might be more inclined to let her stay and work, if only to fuck her more.

At the very least, her family wouldn't starve.

But the baron didn't do anything like that. He just asked her for her experience, jotted down notes, and asked her his latest question.

"I see. I see no reason to not hire you. Come back early tomorrow morning. I will have written up a list of your duties," he said as he signed something and pushed it towards her.

She fidgeted after staring at the paper.

"What is it, Ms. Rosia?"

"I-I don't know how to read."

"... Goodness. Stupid of me, actually. I apologize. This is a contract. It states that you will be working as a maid -and nothing else- for the Brownspear Barony. It states your monthly salary of five silver stags."

Her mind stuttered for a moment. Five stags a month?! That was a lot! She only held silver stags a few times in her life!

"And that should a grievous injury occur as a result of a workplace accident, you will be compensated depending on your injuries. You forfeit your right to ask to take the Black or any other forms of punishment escapes. You will be punished to the fullest extent of the law if you break any written laws."

Huh?

"You will be given a month to acclimatize and learn how to do your work to my satisfaction or risk firing and termination of the contract. Should you work for me for over twenty years, then you will receive ten stags for pension for each year you have worked up to that point and for each year afterwards."

Buh-.

"Are there any problems with the contract?"

"N-no! It is perfectly fine!" she said.

He slid a box with a weird dark pad inside over to her.

"Since you cannot read or write, press your thumb firmly on the pad and then on the unsigned line next to the cross. As all fingerprints are unique to the person, it will serve as identifier and acknowledgement of agreement."

She did it cautiously but firmly as she could.

He looked at the print and then nodded. He shelved it away. "I'll see you tomorrow then. You may see yourself out."

He went back to writing something on his open and blank book, and she hurriedly left without another word.

Today was a strange day.

She got scolded really badly when she got home, but when she explained that she got a job that paid five silver stags a month from the Lord, they couldn't keep their jaws from dropping.

---

Ellamen Storms was a bastard.

He was a strong bastard and let everyone know it.

It was because he was strong that he managed to become a soldier and then a man-at-arms.

Forty-nine others - some bastards like him but most who were just normal folks - joined him in serving the new Baron of Brownspear within a month of said lord’s arrival and instatement.

The lack of knights in the baron’s retinue surprised him, though. He expected knights! Knights were the power of any army!

Yet the baron had no intention of hiring knights.

It was a mind boggling question, but one he could not ask, not when even the master-at-arms refused to do so publicly.

It’s been six months since he was hired, and most of his job consisted of training, patrolling, and “policing,” whatever that meant.

It was …

Boring.

It was a boring life.

Since he met that maid, Rosia, he couldn’t complain about this boring life, though.