Chapter 16
“Ilida,” Ian said, stepping into the Lockwood larder. “Nele said I might find you here.”
The steward stood in the center of the small room, a stack of parchment atop the ledger resting against her arm. In her other hand, she held a charcoal pencil she was using to point at wheels of cheese on a mostly empty shelf.
She held up the charcoal as if to signal for silence.
Ian waited, watching her count the cheese wheels and then mark something on the top parchment.
“Ian,” she said, turning to him with a quick smile.
Knowing that her time was valuable, Ian immediately stated his business. “I did not come to Lockwood empty-handed,” he said, pulling a small bag from the pocket of his trousers. It clanked as he lifted it.
Ilida’s eyes lit up, then went from the bag to his face. “We only take half,” she said, the words erasing her smile.
“This is not some skirmish on the roads,” Ian replied, glad he had come to Ilida and not directly to Robin—who had barely accepted the few coins he offered that day when he first arrived.
“I am offering this freely. And truly, do not be too excited, it is not much. Just what I brought to travel with.” He held it out, shaking it again to intentionally clank the coins within.
“You will put it to much better use than I ever could.”
Ilida reached for the bag, but at the last second she dropped her hand. “Come with me,” she said.
Closing the larder door behind them, she led Ian deeper into the manor beyond the great hall to a small room he had not yet seen.
Inside the room, an older man with a beautifully groomed white beard sat behind a large, mostly empty desk. A single parchment lay in front of him, with an inkwell to its side.
“Uncle,” Ilida said, not bothering to knock. “Have you met the prince?”
The old man lifted his eyes from his work, seemingly accustomed to Ilida’s interruptions. “I have not.”
“Ian,” Ilida continued, before the man had even finished speaking, “this is my Uncle Bernard. He is the treasurer of Lockwood and the man who actually raised Robin when the king decided he wanted nothing to do with her.”
Bernard raised one eye at Ilida, not appearing fully shocked at her statement but also making Ian aware he had noticed it.
“Ian has brought a contribution,” Ilida said, gesturing Ian forward.
Ian handed over the small bag of coins to the older man.
Bernard set aside the parchment and emptied the bag onto the open desk. He meticulously counted out the two dozen coins, separating them by size. “It will take us some time to pay you back,” Bernard said, looking up at Ian from under bushy white eyebrows that matched his beard.
“I am not expecting this to be returned,” Ian said. “It is a gift.”
“We are a money lender, not a charity,” Bernard explained.
Ian assumed Bernard was speaking as the treasurer of River’s Talon, not of Lockwood, but he was not sure if there was or could be a distinction between the two.
“The loans?” Ian asked. “You really expect those to be paid back? I assumed they were Robin’s way of getting people to accept charity.”
“They are.” Ilida and Bernard spoke at the same time, frustration marking their voices.
“But,” Bernard continued, “they are meant to be so much more, and they still can be.”
Ilida tapped her charcoal pencil against Bernard’s desk, leaving little specs of black dust on the spotless wood. “Let him see the books. He is like to know a good bit about managing coin, likely more than all of us. Except for you.”
Bernard grunted, twirling the end of his mustache with his finger. His eyes remained fixed on the charcoal pencil still tapping against his desk.
Ian looked between the two. “I have spent a significant amount of time working with the merchant houses to ensure that their loans and interest rates are set on fair terms.”
That seemed to convince Bernard. He pulled his gaze away from the charcoal and looked up at Ian, waving him closer to the desk.
Ilida lifted her pencil and gave them both a nod. As she left the room, she quietly closed the door behind her.
Ian used the pad of his finger to wipe the charcoal dust from the desk as he walked around to stand behind the treasurer.
Using a key from around his neck, Bernard unlocked a drawer on the desk itself and pulled out a massive tome.
When Ian left the small study an hour later, his mind was racing with ideas.
Taking the gold Robin had received each season from Frederich, Bernard had created an intricate system of disbursement throughout the local communities. The loans were small, just enough to purchase a farm animal or repair some equipment that allowed the recipient to expand their own business.
These loans were paid back on a very generous timeline with little to no interest. And as soon as the coin came back to Bernard, he immediately lent it out again, building an endless loop of gold that slowly uplifted the entire community.
It was a brilliant idea that had merit, but with the recent storms consistently destroying crops—and now Gareth’s thieving soldiers—the entire operation was under too much strain. They were out of coin to lend and could not count on any to come in for some time.
Still, however, Ian thought it was an incredible undertaking. If he could apply a similar venture in the capital city, it would take less than a season to see genuinely beneficial results.
But that was a plan for a future that they did not have yet. What he could do was find a way to support the already operable system that Bernard had created.
He only wished he had brought more gold from the castle to give to Bernard immediately.