1453: Revival of Byzantium

Chapter 255: Silver Handed

What do you think a court should be like?

One must have always imagined the court is a solemn place, with a grand judge on both the physical and moral high grounds over watching the people beneath him making the final judgement with that hammer of his. A group of serious looking juries at the sides providing legal advice and evidence and the lawyers on both sides engaging in vigorous verbal debate with each other professionally through the codex of laws, however, most of these are non existent in these times, at least not in the lands of Antonius. 

After getting motivated by Alexios and is now determined to rebuild the legal system in his lands, Antonius re opened the judicial civil court after decades, and spread the news around the city that the admiral himself is going to handle court cases for the mass public bringing justice to the weaker helping them against the strong, only for today of course. The news spread around like a whirl of wind and by noon almost half of the population have received this piece of news by noon. 

That is when the nightmare of Antonius began. 

The first case came in to the government building is regarding an old lady who accused her neighbour for breaking in to her chicken coop and stole a hen which is used for laying eggs, a domestic animal that is considered a valuable asset in these times, and baked the hen alive eating it. With this she demands the neighbour to pay back the hen and compensate her for the loss. 

Antonius greeted both sides with enough patience and smile dealing with this case, ordering the thieving neighbour to return the old lady an egg laying hen and two more roosters as compensation.

The second case is that a young adult that came from a rather well off back ground accusing his parents for being way too harsh, often making him study until the middle of the night , and some times even taking physical punishment if he does not meet their expectations in academic fields, which is another thing that is pretty common in this era. 

But the thing is Antonius does not have any law to rely on to judge this case as this act is a family issue not under any categories of theft, murder or stealing in the current law system to handle this. Thus, all he could do is to verbally comfort the student and reprimand the parents making them promise they will not do it again, and that is all he can do. 

The third case Is two women, who accused each other of gossiping on each other behind their back, the case concluded with verbal comfort.

The fourth  is about a town folk accusing another person of stealing his sheep. 

The fifth one is about a citizen reporting a merchant who refused to pay him rent for more than a year. 

Just five cases took Antonius the entire afternoon, and as the sun goes down he is already exhausted, lips and tongue dried from talking for hours with out stopping, hands and legs sour for seating down there in the same position for way too long, and his eye lids are getting heavier wanting to close itself as Antonius just wants to doze off for a while after enduring through al those gossips, nonsensical arguments and illogical sentence of defence. 

Finally, the sixth case today is a little bit more interesting, a farmer, a tenant farm worker to be precise, made a run out of the farm in to the city hearing the ongoing trial, and reported his lord abusing his fellow farmers not giving them food to eat, forcing them to do labour for hours and not paying them the tenant fees that they once agreed on. What makes the problem even worse is that these tenant lands they were seeding on land that used to belong to them initially, only forced to sell it to the land lords after the Ottomans came for protection. 

It is already close to evening when this case started, and after reading through the case spurred Antonius' interest making his mind came back to alive as he started reading all the various documents and evidence supporting the farmers, and sent a decade men led by Fisnik and Helio to go to the mansion and arrest the land lord bringing him in here for trial. 

After Helio and Fisnik dragged this clumsy land lord out of the comfort in his mansion out in to the unbearable heat in the summer, and venturing all the way in to the city. 

However, after Helio and Fisnik escorted the land lord back in to the city awaiting his trial, it seems like some thing happened to Helio as he approached his pal hesitantly. 

"Fisnik" 

"What?!" It seems like Helio scared Fisnik a little bit as the later almost jumped in fright when the prior was calling his name. 

"Look at this" Helio took out his old shabby leather purse, and revealed to Fisnik what is inside. And it is six metal ingot tangerine silver in colour, yes, it is two ingots of silver. Small in size, but this amount of silver is still some thing that Helio should not have considering it would take at least a decade for him to save up his salary without spending to save up for it. "I received this from the house keep of the land lord just now, saying that this is a gift from them for me to buy wine and mead Fisnik! This is the first time I have seen so much silver on my hands in my entire freaking life!" 

Fisnik gulped and asked. "Did he mention what does he want you to do?" 

"Yes." Nodded Helio. "He wanted me to convince the admiral to keep the land lord alive, and try to save him from any criminal charges, because the man say that his master can serve greater purposes outside than inside as an inmate." 

" Did you agree?" Fisnik grew even more nervous. 

"No, I refused him." Helio lowered his voice with a pale face. "You see, we all knows that the admiral is a demanding man who wants every thing to be morally clean in his eyes, and if we think about ourselves, you see, we cannot match Yuri in terms of strength, we cant compete with Julian in terms of courage, we cannot compete with Abdullah in terms of intellect, we cant compete with Anjelo in experience, neither can we compare with Alexios in economics, and yet we occupied high position in office as captains" 

"What do you mean?" 

"I mean that we can actually be replaced." Helio rubbed his hand palm feeling anxious. "If the admiral or others ever found out that I have accepted this kind of dirty money, will we be kicked out of the fleet? Is it really worth it? You see, we must look in to our future, and juding by the rate of the admiral's power growth I bet that we have much more to gain if we work hard in our post rather than thinking about this kind of dirty money What do you think?" 

"I." Fisnik felt like his tougue is tied up. "I think I agree with you, but what are you going to do then?" 

"I prepare to hand these silver ingots in to the admiral." Helio replied rubbing the golden ingot in his hands trying to remember the feeling of the touch. "I have always been educated that stability is the most important thing, and I want a stable job under the admiral that is already sufficient to feed my family with out any other troubles." 

Fisnik nodded repeatedly. 

"What about you? Come on pal, I know that the house keep must have gave you some gold too, it is not possible that he gave me and didn't give you." 

"I" After hesitating for a while, Fisnik felt around his pouch and took out one golden ingot. "I only received two piece of silver ingot Fine, I shall listen to you! I shall hand it over to the admiral with you" 

Helio heaved a sigh of relief, firmly nodded his head and gave Fisnik a tight hug thanking him for his support. While Fisnik could only make a bitter smile behind Helio's back and sighed silently. 

Then after that it is all the usual thing Antonius has been doing in the past, forced to compensate all the losses to the tenant workers at once, return their land and let them cultivate safely. Actually, it is a fortunate day for him that the tired and frustrated admiral did not bother taking this man's life like his counterparts in the Marmara, as although the land lord conducted many sinful deeds to the farmers, but at least he kept his bottom line of moral humanity not murdering these poor folks. 

The farmers went away thanking Antonius countless times, saying that they shall remember his kind and just deeds for life even building a shrine for him. Antonius just smiled waving them good bye, and before they go, he gifted them the seeds necessary for next year's crops. 

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