In the meeting hall of Flint's Finger Castle
Rickard Flint asked his mother after obtaining her audience "Mother, I want to help you out with the bookkeeping and other miscellaneous matters of the castle and the fief. Please grant my wishes."
Laina Flint stared intently at the Rickard for a few moments and then looked at the vassals of the House Flint and asked them
" Do you agree with request? " Vassals nodded in response. she continued "Rickard Flint, I'll allow it. You can do it but our treasurer will check after your work."
"Thank you for trusting me. I won't disappoint you." Rickard answered humbly.
°°°
Rickard started to manage the books of tge castle at first. He did so easily and accurately. He wanted to change how the accounts were organised. This required lot of persuasion on his behalf. This was a medieval world; any change would be scrutinized heavily. Whether it was required and so on. He first tried to persuade the treasurer. The first problem any change was people were used do doing things certain way. They would be resistant to change because they might have hard time learning the new way and their years of experience would account for naught and they would be on par with newcomers. But House Flint didn't have massive bureaucracy that would make change impossible. As long as he convinced the treasurer he can push his changes through his mother. Convincing the treasurer took more than 4 months. Then it took another 2 months to master the new techniques. After that modern bookkeeping format was introduced to the fief.
Rickard wasn't going to stop modernising his future fief. While every lord knew approximate number of people in his territory the proper census procedures were not yet invented nor implemented. Rickard knew any large scale census project would be time consuming and needed many bureaucrats to carry it out. This prompted him to ask his mother another audience.
In the meeting hall Rickard requested to Lady Laina "Mother, I want to you to expand the number of scribes in our castle. I want to use them record number of people in our castle, their basic information and their livelihood means."
Lady Laina asked "We already know how many people are living in our keep. Why would we need to spend money that we don't have on things we already know?"
"While we know how many people are in the castle, we don't know exactly how many are living around the castle. Also, we don't have the exact documentation on how many are doing what kind of job, how much earth is planted each year? and what kind of crop is best suited where. I would like collect these along with all of our subjects name, age and gender, where they live, and what kind of condition are they living in. The scribes will get experience about how to handle documents. We would know how to increase the yield of the crops by telling farmers to grow perfect crop for their fields. " Thus Rickard Replied.
Lady Laina acquiesced to her son. This was mostly from her motherly love rather than any deep understanding in statecraft. Her son was also smarter than any ordinary boy she had seen. She said " I'll allow you to do it but you'll only get two scribes."
She would have given more if she could but circumstances would only allow for this much. Rickard on the other hand knew the situation House was in. He didn't quip and accepted the outcome. It would be very hard task to carry out census with only two people helping him. He wasn't freed from his duty of bookkeeping and he still had martial training and lessons to attend. He would be needing years to complete this task. But once completed he could form detailed plan for the development of his fief.
"Thank you very much, Mother." answered Rickard.