Vig chewed his pigeon pie while Ulf leaned in, his voice low.
"How deep is the crown's debt?" Ulf asked. "Don't look so troubled—say it straight. At least ten thousand pounds, yes?"
Vig offered a helpless half-smile. Ulf took a small sip of wine and shook his head.
"So much for my five hundred pounds… I'd better not hold my breath."
News of the treasury's state spread like smoke. There were no secrets left in the kingdom: what the cabinet discussed in the morning was gossip in the taverns by afternoon. Vig had long ago learned that such things could not be kept.
Conversation returned, as it always did with Ulf, to finance.
"They call you the 'gold-sniffing raven' nowadays," Ulf chuckled. "You chase coin like a raven chases carrion. Ha—luckily I know you; you don't stoop for petty gain. If anyone in Dover was running those tricks, they wouldn't get a feast, they wouldn't even pass my gate."
Vig didn't argue. He listened while the minstrels struck up a livelier tune: a lute's thin strings, a wooden pipe's high note, a drum's blunt beat—an evening's entertainment to set the mood.
Two ragged players leapt into the square. The tall one brandished a wooden sword; his hempen cloak snapped through the air.
"See! The dragon's flame seared the church steeple!" he cried.
The pipe answered with a long sharp note; the candle flames bowed. The short player flung himself up and tore his throat raw:
"But the shepherd's heart is harder than mail!"
The crowd roared the refrain: "He leaves, unstinting, for the princess's love!" The piece—The Lucky Bojack—was a simple comedy: a shepherd slays a dragon, claims treasure, wins the girl.
After the performance, Ulf threw a handful of silver into the crowd. When the minstrels withdrew, Ulf returned to the matter at hand.
"Tell me the truth—do you think you can pull the realm back from this brink?" he asked.
Vig swirled wine in his cup; the red liquid turned like a small, stubborn planet.
"It will be difficult," he admitted. "Pascal left a tangled mess. I can hold things together for now—no more."
Ulf wore a look that did not believe it.
"You've been busy meddling in London. You've made enemies. If you can't fix it—run. Plenty of men would pay to take your place." He laughed, but there was steel at the edge of the joke.
Vig's shadow flickered on the wall as the fire bobbed.
"I know the dangers," he said quietly. "A minister must be the example of firmness—just as a commander must be the example for soldiers. If I show myself weak and avoid conflict, how can I command respect?"
Being chancellor was thankless work—and a rare chance. Governing a realm that now enclosed the British Isles and parts of Scandinavia was a trial by fire. Success would sharpen him; failure would ruin him.
He thought in numbers, as he always did. England held about 1.2 million souls; Wales roughly 200,000; the Northlands under his direct rule 270,000; Ireland about 500,000. Across the British Isles and the annexed Nordic migrants, the total population was roughly 2.2 million, of which some 300,000 were Norse settlers.
Scandinavian figures were harder to fix by any account. Denmark—more agriculturally productive after migration—likely ranged thirty to forty thousand; Sweden, ravaged by the North-Sword conflicts and the year of strife, was down to twenty to thirty thousand; Norway's stability and slow immigration had pushed its numbers closer to Denmark's. (Vig's private note: the whole lot still paled beside West Francia.)
"Production is the problem," he told Ulf. "If only clover, turnips, and the new machines could raise yields, we could sustain larger populations."
When he returned to London, Loch brought worse news: the treasury was empty yet again. Vig had to take one more loan—this time from the Rus merchants, a thousand pounds repayable over five years for a total of sixteen hundred, and with permission for the Rus to expand their trading quarter.
After signing, Vig paused Loch in the doorway.
"Can we cut court spending anywhere?"
Loch sagged and steadied himself against a table, then spoke with a sudden, earnest gravity.
"Master, I beg you—do not attempt wholesale cuts the way the late chancellor tried. It made matters worse."
Vig raised an eyebrow and Lo chie hurried on.
"As your secretary my wage is two pounds a year—more than most. Ordinary clerks get forty to eighty pennies. Why not start at court? The queen's pet dog has two attendants, a velvet bed changed fortnightly, drinks fresh goat's milk and eats mutton. The royal estates keep swans, peacocks, hawks, greyhounds and mastiffs—costly. The palace steward actually ordered two lions from the Berbers; they should arrive by next month."
Loch's litany was almost comic, and it convinced Vig to keep his hands off wholesale economy—at least for now.
Next day's council produced more concrete suggestions. To Vig's surprise, Horst proposed converting certain grain remittances into coin at harvest—sparing the crown the expense of moving grain to London.
Good, he thought—until Goodwin, the justice minister, cut him off.
"No! Flooding the market with grain will collapse prices. Farmers will be ruined: ten pence for five bushels becomes ten pence for eight. Cheap grain means the tax in silver bites harder. Better to raise taxes directly if you must."
They argued until the hour was late, and Vig, after a long, winding speech about money supply and silver circulation, simply refused to overturn the whole tax order. Reforming agrarian tithes would require a sturdier administrative backbone than the realm presently possessed.
So he postponed it. For now, the kingdom would continue as it had—wary, strapped, and waiting for the spring of better yields.
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