Chapter 1.2

Chapter 1: The Ruffian Lady (2)

It takes about ten days to get to the Caliente territory from the Capital riding a carriage. Our territory is pretty wealthy due to its forests and fertile lands. We have good harvests, we get plentiful meat and fur from the animals in the forest, and transporting timber to the Capital is also a good source of revenue. We have good relations with the neighboring nation, so trade is also prosperous. But even with all this wealth, it wasn’t enough to cover the costs of raising all of an aristocrat’s children. How scary.

The Marquis ‘ residence is located on the outskirts of the territorial capital. It’s like a castle: its vast premises are enclosed by towering defensive walls and during emergencies, it actually serves as a stronghold. The residence truly lives up to the marquisate’s expected dignity and power.

But, with that said,  I didn’t actually grow up in this residence. Naturally, maintaining such a grand residence costs a fortune. So, if they hired servants to tend to the residence year-round just for me to live there, it would cost an unbelievable amount of money. Money that doesn’t exist for a broke marquisate. For that reason, the smallest possible section of the residence was cleaned and prepared twice a year, when Father and Mother came to visit. Other than those times, the residence was shut down.

I lived in the gardener’s house that was right outside the residence’s walls. It was a small, thatch-roofed house where Baron Kiggs, the lord governing the Caliente territory, lived as well. Basically, I was entrusted to this baron couple.

Baron Kiggs was originally the residence’s gardener, but since the previous governor disliked the countryside and never came, he reluctantly did their job instead. While he continued to serve as the unofficial interim governor, he became familiar with the territory’s finances and business, so Father granted him the title of a baron once he found out about the situation. As a vassal, he listened to his broke lord’s orders well while continuing his job as a gardener, and even accepted the unreasonable order of raising his lord’s daughter — he did all of this without batting an eye. Even though he is being paid a handsome salary, he continued to live frugally in his small house.

Baron Kiggs was thirty years old when I was entrusted to him. His wife was three years younger. Since they didn’t have any children, they treated me as if I were their real daughter. I called them Papa and Mama. When I was young, I truly thought they were my parents.

By the way, Father and Mother had no intention of neglecting me, so when they came to visit twice a year, they would call me over to the residence and treat me affectionately. From what I’ve heard, in high-standing noble families, even if the parents and children lived together, it wasn’t rare for the parents to leave all the child-raising to the nanny and rarely spend time with them. So, my parents weren’t treating me terribly at all. Since I was born so late, they treated me affectionately like I was their grandchild, and brought many treats and souvenirs from the Capital. I really liked Father and Mother from the Capital who have always been nothing but kind to me, such that I would always look forward to their visits. Especially since Mama and Papa were really scary.

Okay, so it’s true that Mama and Papa were strict, but at the same time, I was also an incredibly unruly child. To be honest, if they didn’t scold me as strictly as they did, who knows what sorts of serious mischief I would’ve been up to? Actually, even with all that scolding, I still continued to get myself in a whole lot of trouble. Yep.

When I was entrusted to Mama and Papa, they were told that in the future, I would be getting married to a commoner. As such, “try to get her accustomed to living with the commoners,” was what they were told. And though my parents didn’t explicitly say that they didn’t have the funds to raise me as an aristocrat, Papa knew, since he was the one who knew Father’s financial situation the best. So, Papa decided to raise me like a commoner’s daughter without reservation.

In order to marry into a commoner’s family, you need to be able to do all the housework and know the commoner’s lifestyle well. So, Papa’s decision wasn’t wrong at all: in addition to the basics — how to cook, do laundry, and clean —, I also learned how to spin yarn, weave cloth, and make clothes from Mama. At the same time, I would accompany Papa to the woods and learn about the herbs, mushrooms, and other wild plants that grow in the forest. This was all common knowledge to the commoners living in this region. The problem was that my insatiable curiosity led me to know about a lot more than what was considered normal.

After I was able to go outside by myself to play, I ran around the mountains, playing and tussling around with the neighborhood kids. And then I began to learn about things I didn’t need to know: I would follow a huntsman around and learn the prey’s behavior, then I learned how to hunt, starting from making easy traps and using the bow-and-arrow. It came to the point where I would bring home animals that I hunted every day. Of course, there are some local kids who can hunt too, but I was able to hunt down a deer all by myself at the age of ten, which is pretty impressive if I do say so myself.

It didn’t stop at hunting. I dove into the river and speared fish, I climbed trees and collected fruits and nuts, I scaled cliffs to collect medicinal herbs, and to test my courage, I climbed the town’s largest windmill, which caused a ruckus in the town and ended with Papa hitting me. I was agile and athletic, so I learned how to move like a hunter, and I also learned swordsmanship and martial arts from a local retired soldier, which made me a lot stronger than the local boys. Actually, before I knew it, I somehow had become the leader of the local gang of troublemakers. My nickname was the Ruffian. Monkey. Not the types of nicknames a girl would be happy about, right? Well, some people did say that there was monkey blood flowing in my veins. To be fair, I was really good at climbing trees and I did hop from branch to branch to move around the forest freely.

Leading my underlings, I wandered around the territorial capital and the neighboring villages, causing trouble everywhere. After working together with a huntsman, I would take home more than half of the prey we captured because he looked down on me for being a child; my gang and I would “volunteer” to help harvest at the local orchard and eat most of what we harvested; I would bring and release a lot of cats where the mean fisherman was drying his fish; I would sell plants that look really similar to a rare medicinal herb to a trade merchant; I would herd around ten cows and pigs and have them fight each other; and, well, I did a lot of bad things that weren’t a laughing matter. I’ve done too many things for me to list everything I’ve done.

Don’t get me wrong though, I’ve done good deeds too! When a large bear appeared in the area, I coordinated with my gang to hunt it down and kill it, and while Papa’s face was strained, everyone praised us. When some bandits invaded the territory, we struck while they were sleeping and caught them all in one fell swoop, which was heavily appreciated by the soldiers who were protecting this territory. Mama fainted though…