Mary Lee moved to the freezer and pulled out her very last can of frozen limeade, “First, though, I think we could use something a little more relaxing than this tea. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of a frozen margarita, have you?”
* * *
“Horace, we sort of have a problem,” Deborah Trout said, as she entered the room for the meeting that was due to start in a few minutes. “We’re basically the county seat now, aren’t we?”
“Well, I suppose so,” Horace answered. “Considering the number of problems that keep landing on my desk, I suppose we must be. What is it this time, running out of paper?”
“Don’t I just wish? Maybe if we ran out, I wouldn’t have so much of it to shuffle around. The problem is a little more serious than that, though. You know I never meant to become the tax assessor, right? And, I never really wanted much to do with organizing the finances for anything as big as Grantville is becoming, either. But, since I’m stuck with it, I want to do it right.”
“Completely understandable, Deborah. So what is the problem, exactly?”
“Money. When isn’t the problem money? Do you realize that Grantville now owns Sundremda? It was crown land. Now that we’re the government, it’s county land. We need money to run things, but we can’t exactly tax ourselves, now can we? I can assess all the taxes I want, but a property that has no owner isn’t going to pay anything into the coffers, is it? We can’t sell it either. Well, we could, but, who to? It’s surrounded by a bunch of contractual obligations that seriously limit what the owner can do with it. About the only people who would have any interest would be the tenants or the Lehen holder. Sundremda isn’t the only place like that, either. Half a dozen other villages have petitioned to become a part of Marion County.
Horace Bolender thought for a few moments, and then looked at Deborah with a grin. “You wouldn’t have come here complaining if you didn’t have a solution worked out. What do you think we should do?”
“Well, somehow or other, we need to sell off some of this stuff. To do that, we need clear title or at least clearer title. We need to either buy the Lehen or sell the land to the Lehen holder or the renters. We won’t get full price, but we’d at least get something, and taxes, eventually.”
“I’m pretty sure that Birdie Newhouse wants to own the land outright. He’s been complaining to Willie Ray about the restrictions on usage,” Horace remarked. “Tell you what; you come up with what you want to do. Write out proposals for it and I’ll see what Mayor Dreeson and Senator Abrabanel have to say. Congress has decided that they can act for Marion County in this sort of situation.”
Deborah looked at Horace with a bit of fire in her eyes. Damn it, life had gotten so complicated lately, ever since they had a real government with a constitution, instead of the emergency committee.
* * *
“Father, you must be realistic. It is the only way,” Egidius insisted. “There is nothing else we can sell that will bring in the amount of money that the Lehen will bring in. Not without taking a much greater loss.”
Claus stared at his son in disbelief. “You wish me to sell your heritage? What comes to you from William the Silent and the Counts of Gleichen? Why should I agree to this, this travesty?” Claus knew the reason, but the knowledge was burning a hole in his guts. He didn’t want this. He had been doing everything he could to avoid it for months, long before Pomeroy had died.
Egidius was looking at him with concern. “Perhaps, Father, you do not fully understand what has happened here. I know what you did was customary. It was done the way things had always been done. But it was against the law even before the Ring of Fire. Now, with the Committees of Correspondence and Herr Ritter’s connections to them, there will be no looking the other way. You have diverted public funds to private use. It is a crime with criminal penalties. If we do not replace the money, and do it very soon, you could be sent to prison. Do you think I would see you in prison for the rents on a village? Not only the disgrace, not only the lessening of our family’s position, is at stake here. You can be criminally charged and go to prison. Do you wish that to happen?”
Claus felt as though he had been slapped in the face. What he had done had been done by others for centuries. Now, he, a man of wealth and position, had no more protections. From the time the Ring of Fire had happened the world had been changing faster and faster. He had tried, with every means he could find, to prevent the life he knew from being swept away. He had failed, although he hadn’t realized how badly until just now. His son, the child for whom he had lived, worked and dreamed, had adjusted to the changes, but he had not. He still did not want this new world. He hated it, wanted it to go away.
Yet, here was this young man. Where had he come from, this tall and strong man of business? It was just a week ago that he had been laughing as he sat his first pony.
“Very well, my son, if we must, then we must. I will sell the Lehen of Sundremda, and I will sell it to that Newhouse person and the villagers,” he answered. “But the price! I know the market. It is worth twice that.”
“Yes, Papa, I know. But not to us, not for years. The rents are set. We could not change anything without buying the renters out, then buying the property from Marion County.”
* * *
Mary Lee had talked to Birdie and Ernst Bachmeier after Clara’s visit. While Birdie had been in no mood to do any favors for Claus Junker, Ernst was thrilled at the prospect. The lines of status were much more severe in the seventeenth century. Owning property, actually owning it, meant you were a person of considerable status. Not a peasant, not someone’s tenant, your own man. Nor did Ernst bear Claus Junker any ill will. He had always been fair and decent Lehen holder, understanding if the crops had been bad. Yes, Herr Junker had been harder to deal with since Birdie had leased his farm, but Ernst felt that the difficulties were partly Birdie’s fault.
There had been phone calls from the Newhouse residence to the government to try and figure out who had the authority to sell the property. Now that there was a government other than the emergency committee, Deborah Trout was apparently the person to see. Deborah had already been approached by Eddie Junker. Then followed quite a bit of back and forth, working out the various ends of the deal. The Junkers needed cash up front, Marion County wanted some of the land both for public right of way and some to sell. The village would lose almost a thousand acres. Birdie would have to give up some of his land as a right of way, which would put a public road right across his original property.
Ernst and Birdie called a meeting of the village to talk about the proposal. They discussed the pros and cons. The pros were that agreeing to the proposal would give the villagers more control over how the village was run and greater status in the eyes of most down-timers. The cons, well, there was only one con, a big one. If the village agreed to the proposal it would probably cost them more money. Their mortgage payments would run about fifteen percent over their rents. Also, part of the village property, much of the forest and some of the pasture would no longer be part of their village.
People were concerned, and rightly so, about the consequences to the village and the Gemeinde. If Birdie owned his own land why should he use his tractor to help with the plowing of the rest? What about the people in the village who didn’t own farms, the people who had been helping the farmers as part of their rent? Who would be responsible for what part of the obligations set out in their rental agreement?
There would need to be some sort of an agreement, or rather, several agreements. One agreement must be made for all of the villagers, and another agreement must be made for the farmers of the Gemeinde. It was a very long meeting, and quite loud.
Eventually, most of the villagers agreed that the prospect of actually owning their own land, even if they had to pay the bank, was just too attractive to let pass. Only two families refused.
The mason refused because he wasn’t sure how long he would be living in Sundremda. He hoped that he could continue to work in Sundremda and sell his stone work using transportation provided by Grantville. But he couldn’t be sure and was unwilling to take on such a debt.
Surprisingly, there was one farming family that disapproved of the whole business. Friedrich Schultz stood up and began speaking, after everyone else had reached agreement.
“I will not be a party to this, I will not. How do we know that this bank will be as reasonable as Herr Junker if the crops fail? How do we know that this man will truly use the tractor for the good of the village, no matter what he promises?”
Birdie stood up to answer, offended that someone would question his integrity. “My word is my bond. I always keep my promises because it is the only honorable way to be. I will sign another agreement if necessary, if it will make you happy.”
“This entire plan, it is unnatural. We are not meant to be gentry. We are farmers, good honest farmers. Why should we do this? We have always been tenants to Herr Junker and his family. He has held the Lehen for many years and has been good to us. I cannot believe that he would agree to this.”
At this point, Eddie Junker, who attended the meeting in lieu of his father, stood to answer Friedrich. “My father feels that this is a good plan. You will be free of obligations to him, free to farm as you wish. It is a good plan that benefits us all.”
Friedrich shook his head. “I am disappointed in Herr Junker. My contract is for ninety-nine years and I am the second generation. I have my contract and I will work my farm according to the terms of that contract. I cannot be removed from my farm as long as I pay my rent. I will pay the rent, but I will not, absolutely not be a party to this insanity.”
Birdie sat through that little speech dumbfounded. Birdie had always figured that Friedrich was just a suck up. Thought he was too afraid of Junker to answer back. Birdie was amazed to realize that the guy actually believed that his proper place was as someone else’s tenant. Birdie couldn’t understand how anyone could actually feel that way.
Friedrich was trying to queer the whole deal for everyone because he was terrified of owning his own property. He almost managed it, too. Before the deal could go through an agreement must be reached. Agreement took a couple of extra days of negotiations and no one was especially happy with the result.
Friedrich was unhappy because he didn’t want the mayor of the village as his landlord. And Birdie was unhappy because he was afraid he was going to be stuck as mayor and have to deal with the duckfucker on a regular basis.
* * *
Twenty four loan applications, twenty two of them using the land they wanted to buy as the collateral for the loan. All of them were from down-timers with no, or very little, credit history. Larkin Newhouse’s application, the twenty third, used the land in Sundremda plus his equity in the farm inside the Ring of Fire as collateral. The villagers of Sundremda wanted to buy their village and wanted the bank to loan them the money to do it. It was not unexpected. The twenty fourth application was from the township of Sundremda, requesting funds to buy two public buildings and one farm.
September, 1632
Ernst Bachmeier leaned against the fence post and mused. The fall of 1632 had given him no answers as to whether wheat or flax was the better cash crop. He suspected that if they’d planted dandelions then dandelions would have sold amazingly well. The lousy weather had almost been compensated for by the addition of lime to the soil. The crops were good, very good, even though Birdie claimed they were only passable by up-time standards. There was something called an “industrial revolution” getting started in and around the Ring of Fire and labor was increasingly hard to come by. But, the goods! Oh, the goods that came out of Grantville. A bed with springs in it!
Ernst once again found himself looking over the land. The land that would be his someday, his alone. The land that he would pass down to his children, someday, hopefully in the far future. Ah, such a future.
Bacon
Eric Flint
“All right, I finished it,” said Mike Stearns, the moment he strode into Melissa Mailey’s office. Triumphantly, he dropped the Economic History of Europe onto her desk. The tome landed with a resounding thump.
Mike stooped and peered at the legs of the desk. “Pretty well-built. I thought it might collapse.”
“Well, now that you’ve finished that one, I’m sure – ”
“Not a chance, Melissa!” He held up his hands and crossed his two forefingers, as if warding off a vampire. “Besides, I don’t need to. Birdie Newhouse – bless him – has shown us the way. In practice, by getting his hands dirty, just like I predicted.”
Melissa frowned, almost fiercely. “Mike, be serious! You can’t solve the tangled land tenure relations of seventeenth century Germany by simply buying the land. Even if everyone was willing to sell, we couldn’t possibly afford it. King Midas couldn’t afford it.”
Mike shook his head. “I’m not talking about that. Tactics come, tactics go. What matters is what Birdie did, not how he did it. Birdie and Mary Lee both. They got in there and mixed it up with the people on the ground, and took it from there. That’s what we need – only organized. Something like a cross between the OSS of World War II days, Willie Ray’s grangers, and – and – I dunno. Maybe the Peace Corps. Whatever. We’ll figure it out as we go.”