92 – The Old Leathersmith"s Book
“Uncle Phil wants a son?” Jesse was first taken aback before immediately nodding, “I seems to be the case. I heard him complain that he has no son, no one to take care of him were he to fall sick.”
Liszt looked at Jesse.
Before suddenly asking: “Jesse, if I remember correctly, you are an orphan, right?”
“That"s right, Master. I grew up in the Coral City"s orphanage. Thanks to the Tulip Family"s generosity, we orphans could survive.” Said Jesse sincerely.
Orphanages were inst.i.tutions where the aristocracy gathered orphans. There would always be commoners meeting with accidents, leaving a few children unattended. In order to display their kindness, some well-off aristocrats would establish orphanages in their fiefs to gather those orphans and then have them work in their castles after growing up.
Jesse was such an orphan.
“Is Old Leathersmith currently at the leathersmith shop?”
“He is, Master. I wanted to invite Uncle Phil to take a stroll, but he refused.”
“Then, Jesse, come with me to go see Old Leathersmith. There is something I need him for.”
“Alright, Master. I will go prepare your mount.”
On the horse field outside the castle, there was a crudely built shed, where Philip and Xavier stood guard. As retainer knights, they could not have a day off.
Seeing Liszt atop Firedragon, they each mounted their horses and followed Liszt.
Going together to the leathersmith shop.
Each town had its own leathersmith shop. Leathersmiths were craftsmen who manufactured leather, sew and repaired leather wear. They could be divided into helmet leathersmiths, armor leathersmiths, shoemakers, and so on. Generally, though, most of them were shoemakers.
Flower Town"s Old Leathersmith Phil was a shoemaker.
In big cities, shoemakers were often well-off freedmen. But in small towns, shoemakers had it though as only few people could afford to wear leather shoes – most serfs and freedmen wore wooden shoes and straw sandals.
Of course, even more people wore no shoes.
“Is it you Jesse?” The old leathersmith"s somewhat hoa.r.s.e voice came from behind a desk. He was currently repairing a pair of shoes. Although he was blind, but his hands were still nimble.
Jesse hurriedly replied: “Uncle Phil, Sir Lord is here, there is something he needs you for.”
“Ah, Sir Lord, I, Old Phil, give you my regards.” The old leathersmith hurriedly stood up, bowed in salute, and alike an average commoner, had his hands tremble from nervousness.
Liszt sized up the narrow, dark leathersmith shop. He could see that the shop had not been repaired in years. Through the roof, he could see the sun in the sky.
Alike the old leathersmith, the shop brimmed with signs of old age and decay.
“Old Phil, don"t be nervous, I am here just to talk to you.”
No emotional changes could be read from the old leathersmith"s turbid eyes.
But Liszt detected that the other"s hands had quickly stopped trembling – it was not that he had become less nervous, but was more like he stopped pretending. The previous nervousness might just be a farce. This was quite easy to understand. After all, aristocrats liked to see the commoners tremble before them.
The old man had long since learned how deal with others: “Sir Lord, it is an honor for me to talk to the n.o.ble you.”
“Ten years ago, you begged to settle down in the Flower Town. Where are you from originally?”
“I was born on the Dodo Island, Sir Lord.”
“The Dodo Island?”
“It was a deserted Island, without a lord, to the north of the Coral Island. Dodos, birds that couldn"t fly, lived on the island. They made ‘dodo" sounds when they called. There were also very tall trees with a very terrifying name, called skull trees. The fruit they bore was called skull fruit.”
“Skull trees?”
“That"s right, Sir Lord. Its fruit was very white and from the distance, resembled human skulls. But it tasted very good. The island"s indigenous people satiated their hunger with the skull fruit. Dodos also ate the skull fruit, but they themselves, however, were very unpalatable. Life on the island was very difficult.”
Dodos with calls that sounded like dodo.
They made Liszt recall dodos, birds that were already extinct on Earth.
It was unknown whether the dodos in this world were the same as the dodos on Earth.
“So, how did you get to the Coral Island from the Dodo Island? As an indigenous person of the Dodo Island, do you know where the indigenous people came from?” Inquired Liszt.
In the outskirts of the Sapphire Grand Duchy, there were still many unexploited, deserted islands. The Dodo Island should be one of them.
“Although I am an indigenous person of the Dodo Island, but I don"t know where we came from. Everyone whom I knew was born on the Dodo Island. Later, the Dodo Island"s volcano erupted, destroying a large number of the skull trees. Without food, we had to cut down the trees to make them into canoes and drift along the sea… I was taken to the Hotspring Island, where I became an apprentice of a leathersmith shop.”
Subsequently, the Hotspring Island was met with the chaos of war and he was sold as a slave to the Coral Island. On the island, he was bought by a baron. Later, the baron followed the count into the battlefield, never to return. When all of the fief"s sprite worms died, fearing being punished, the serfs started to flee.
The old leathersmith also fled.
Going all the way to the Flower Town.
“At the time, there was a rumor among the serfs that the baron had died in battle because he was betrayed by his serf-born retainer knights, that the baron"s followers were very angry and had decided to kill all the serfs in the fief to avenge the baron…” The old leathersmith sighed endlessly as he spoke of these past events, perhaps lamenting his ignorance from that time.
This was a lowly rumor, not to mention that aristocrats attached great importance to serfs.
The correct att.i.tude should be – the baron died in battle and had no heir; therefore, the lord he followed, which was the count of the Coral Island, reclaimed the ownership of the fief, including its serfs.
In short, the old leathersmith"s life had no ups and downs, he had no interesting past, and even his sight was naturally lost during his time in the Flower Town.
What was barely worthy of interest was his ident.i.ty of the Dodo Island"s indigenous person.
Liszt carefully inquired about the circ.u.mstances of the Dodo Island. He discovered that it was just a very small island with no more than three hundred inhabitants and that in the end, it was destroyed by the volcano eruption. Apart from the few skull trees, there was probably nothing worth exploiting.
He was a bit disappointed.
He had believed that a person specifically mentioned by the smoke mission should be a bit mysterious, but unexpectedly, the other was just an plain indigenous person.
He still intended to complete the mission and get rewarded the book. The reason he brought Jesse along was so that he would make him the son of the Old Leathersmith. An orphan and a widower without any relatives, the two were definitely kindred spirits and should easily form bonds of son and father.
But suddenly, he had a brazen idea.
“Why should I follow the smoke mission to the letter? I am not its puppet! I can just ask Old Leathersmith to give me the book directly instead of getting it through the mission!”
Liszt didn"t think that the old leathersmith would have a lot of books.
Therefore.
He said directly: “Old Phil, I heard that you have collected some books, is it true? I hope that you can sell them to me.”
As it was the sir lord who asked, the old leathersmith didn"t dare to not comply, agreeing at once: “It is true, Sir Lord. However, I have just a single book. I will offer it to Sir Lord as a tribute.” When he finished speaking, he bend down and, with the help of Jesse, took out a wooden box from a cabinet filled with leather shoes.
“Jesse, the book is in the box. Quickly take it out and give it to Sir Lord.”
Jesse opened the box, took out a very thick book, and handed it to Liszt. Liszt swept it with a glance. He discovering that the book was not printed, but was handwritten instead. On the cover, there were Serpentines along with symbols from a foreign language.
He didn"t knew the foreign language.
The Serpentines stated – [Diary of Philip Sunprogeny].