Elmer declared that the stench of commerce would no longer be allowed to corrupt anyone's spirit.
Every servant's monthly wage was slashed to a single copper coin.
Only without the temptation of money, he reasoned, could people stop obsessing over profit.
Only then could they preserve their noble integrity.
My portrait was even turned into a cautionary display.
The entire household was made to remember how vulgar and base life had been when I was in charge.
The Crown Princess's Estate was renovated from top to bottom.
Crane motifs and calligraphy scrolls adorned every wall and corridor.
The place looked like something out of a painting.
You could smell the flowers from halfway down the street.
Passersby marveled: "Mr. Dickerson Sr. truly is remarkable. Look how refined he's made the princess's estate!"
Even the King heard about it and brought the Queen for a personal tour.
But nobody seemed to realize
that all this elegance
had been bought with the fortune I'd built for the Crown Princess's Estate.
It wasn't long before the estate ground to a halt.
A crowd gathered at the front gates.
They were demanding their back pay.
Elmer had burned through nearly every cent in the treasury on his little vanity project.
And even if there had been money left, it wouldn't have mattered. Elmer had already decreed: one copper coin per person, per month.
Enough to kill any illusion that work here would ever pay.
The household guards didn't truly try to stop the crowd.
After all, with no wages of their own, they could barely feed themselves.
Elmer's voice cracked with fury:
"Is money all you people care about?!"
Someone pointed at the jade pendant hanging from his belt:
"That gold-inlaid jade alone could cover every last one of our back wages! What right do you have to lecture us?!"
"Pay us! Yeah! Pay us what we're owed!"
The crowd surged forward. Elmer's face went white.
"These ungrateful wretches! That bastard Andrew must have spoiled them rotten!"
"Rush him! Strip the clothes off his back and sell them for what we're owed!"
"Go!"
"You wouldn't dare!"
Elmer staggered as hands grabbed at him from every direction, barely keeping his footing.
"Decree from His Majesty!"
A column of soldiers marched through the gates, hauling chest after chest of royal gifts into the estate.
It turned out that King Walter Craig had visited the Crown Princess's Estate recently and taken a great liking to Elmer's renovations.