Chapter 233

“Look there! A river flows alongside the new Holy Land!”

“According to the local American Indians, they call it the Willamette River—”

“The Jordan!” Manasseh shouted, drowning him out.

“······.”

“Look, there! A hill rises to the southwest of the sanctuary!”

“I heard that place is called—”

“Mount Zion!”

“···There’s more than one hill, though.”

“Heavens! Not just one holy mountain, but many! Truly, this land is blessed!”

“······.”

In the blink of an eye, the local geography was being synchronized with ancient Palestine, and Gershom found himself utterly powerless to stop it. Even the surrounding American Indians simply laughed it off with a cheerful “Ah, so that’s the setting they’ve chosen,” as if it were all a harmless game.

I have to stop this.

Gershom alone understood the gravity of the situation. This place was supposed to be a “temporary refuge,” not an eternal sanctuary where the Jewish people would nest for a thousand years. Yet, an overexcited Manasseh was busy slapping the label “Proof of the Holy Land” on every rock and stream he encountered.

If the Grandmasters of the secret orders in Europe and the renowned Jewish leaders caught wind of this, everyone who believed the Prince to be the Messiah would lose their minds and descend upon this place in a frantic pilgrimage. Gershom tried his best to talk sense into him, but Manasseh was blind to anything except the “evidence” that this was their predestined home.

Small, inconvenient differences—like the suspicious abundance of “Mount Zions,” or the fact that the original Jerusalem was on a plateau while this place sat in the middle of a valley—were neatly edited out of Manasseh’s perception. Then again, how much did it really matter what the actual landscape of Palestine looked like to a man who had never seen it? Before him lay a sanctuary prepared by the Messiah himself.

Why is the local name for this place “Refuge” in the first place? The Prince clearly said he had almost no information about this land. Could it be…

Slap!

“Gershom? Why are you suddenly hitting yourself?”

“Uh… I’m just trying to wake up?”

“Gershom, we’ve been awake for over ten hours now.”

“······.”

“······.”

Manasseh looked at Gershom with a gaze full of pity, as if he understood the “burden” the other man was carrying. Gershom felt like his insides were about to burst; he had lost count of how many times he’d been treated like a lunatic today.

“Regardless, look at this! The beautiful, verdant meadows of the sanctuary! It’s like paradise!”

“···Quite different from the arid lands of Palestine, wouldn’t you say?” Gershom muttered.

“And this moist, fragrant scent of the earth… I truly feel as if I have arrived at the Holy Land.”

“Uh, a dog just peed right there a minute ago.”

“Ah! What a magnificent blessing it is to have come to this land! O Prince of Peace who has come to us, all glory be to him!”

“······.”

Gershom let out a long, weary sigh as he watched Manasseh basking in his religious ecstasy. A cold sweat drenched his back as he wondered, What on earth am I going to do about this?

***

What on earth am I going to do?

I saw it clearly. Gershom might have kept his head, but Manasseh was definitely half-mad, his eyes gleaming with a terrifying fervor. A “New Jerusalem” (it wasn’t) served up personally by the “Messiah” (also wasn’t)—even I would be tempted to settle there if I were in their shoes.

Granted, as foreigners, they’d be wary of my moods and would likely prefer to return to their homes eventually. But it was clear that a significant number of them were going to stay, far more than I had initially anticipated.

In truth, their settlement wouldn’t be a bad thing for us. If they insisted on staying, I couldn’t exactly kick them out—nor did I want to. These people would be toiling in a strange land for years; what kind of monster would wait until the reclamation was finished and then say, “Good job, now get lost”?

Besides, what the Continental Covenant needed more than anything was people. If ten thousand—or even just a thousand—settlers moved in, I’d be nothing but grateful. Especially if they were willing to develop the far West, a region we hadn’t been able to properly colonize yet.

My one concern, however, was whether the Jewish community would truly integrate. This wasn’t some nonsense about them being inherently insular or having a “chosen people” complex. If you’ve been treated the way they have for a thousand years, of course you’d become protective of your own. A certain degree of exclusivity is natural for any religious community.

I simply worried whether they could truly get along with the surrounding Christian communities. If they remained isolated, self-sufficient in their remote corner… wouldn’t they eventually drift away, operating entirely independently of the Continental Covenant’s other nations and societies?

Wait.

Doesn’t everyone in the West already do that?

The people who had already moved to California could survive perfectly fine even if all contact with the rest of the Covenant was severed. They mined their gold and traded with Asia on their own terms. For all intents and purposes, California was currently an independent state; our influence there was negligible simply because it sat on the opposite side of the continent.

So, what about this new Jewish community? If they arrived in the tens of thousands, wouldn’t they follow the same path? It seemed almost inevitable.

I sat alone in the Council of Six’s office in Chesapeake, lost in thought. It wasn’t a dire crisis, but it was a theme worth considering early on. How could I ensure they didn’t become a “closed society” in the West? How could I weave them into the fabric of the Covenant?

Closed society? In the West?

A crucial thought seemed to brush past my mind, but I couldn’t quite catch it. I scratched my head, trying to trace the logic. West, closed society, Jews… West, closed society, Jews…

Wait… if that’s the West, what about the East?

The moment that thought struck me, I surged to my feet. I looked at the massive map of the Continental Covenant hanging on the wall, and the detailed map of Virginia pinned beneath it.

There used to be plenty of closed societies in the East, too. Virginia was once full of them—many of the dots representing settlements on this map used to be just that. I had personally traveled to the cult-like ones to “civilize” them myself. But why didn’t I see that happening in the East anymore?

The realization left me momentarily stunned. I paced around the office until my aide walked in.

“I have a favor to ask,” I said.

“Pardon? Y-yes, what is it?” The aide flinched, visibly startled. I rarely used the word “favor,” and his sudden tension showed he was caught off guard. I calmed him down before asking my question properly.

“I want to know about the Irish villages that used to be near Chesapeake. What happened to them? I remember the atmosphere there being quite… hostile.”

Unlike the English or Scottish majority, the Irish had clung fiercely to their own identity and religion. Most of them had only come to America because life back in Ireland under Elizabeth’s rule had been so destitute that they had no other choice. Consequently, they viewed everyone as an enemy or an invader, huddling together in insular communities and minimizing outside interference.

There had been dozens of such villages. They weren’t necessarily isolated by religious fanaticism, and they hadn’t rejected the crops provided by the Knights or the income brought by the trading companies, so I’d had no real reason to interfere with them.

But now…

“Oh! The Irish? There are no issues with them anymore! There’s hardly any friction with the outside world, and everyone obeys the authority of the government supported by the Nameless One!”

They had changed that much? In just a few years? Why?

Seeing my confusion, the aide hesitated before offering to bring me the relevant documents. I requested them immediately. Soon, a pile of fragmented data regarding the Irish settlements sat before me: documents from the Agricultural Knights, brief reports from the trading company, and various institutional memos.

The information was a chaotic mix—crop yields, soil analysis, complaints about poor local transportation… It was a mess. I puzzled over it for a long time, only managing to discern one pattern: the Irish, along with other previously insular communities, had begun to open up roughly three or four years ago.

That was a start. If people of different ethnicities and religions all began to drop their defenses at the same time, it likely meant they all had a similar reason for doing so. I agonized over the data for what felt like hours.

“···I can’t figure it out,” I muttered, shaking my head. I wasn’t some detective protagonist, and three or four years ago, I was across the Atlantic.

I was just about to leave the office to clear my head when the door opened.

“Ah, you’re here. I realized I left some documents behind. My old age must be catching up with me; I’m forgetting everything these days.”

“Walter.”

Walter Raleigh entered, followed by his aides. At his gesture, a secretary quickly retrieved a notebook from the corner of a table and handed it to the cane-wielding Raleigh. As he flipped through it, a sudden thought occurred to me.

“Walter? May I ask you a question?”

“Of course. Anything.” Raleigh shrugged and gave a silent nod to his entourage. His aides took the hint and filed out of the office. He glanced at the papers I was holding and asked, “Is this about the Jews?”

“Partly, but it’s a broader question.” I posed the mystery that had been gnawing at me. “Did something significant happen within the Continental Covenant about three or four years ago?”

Raleigh stroked his beard, then shook his head. “Nothing particular comes to mind. As you might have heard while you were away, things were relatively quiet—”

“Lord Roanoke?” An aide who had just stepped out poked his head back into the office. Raleigh asked what was wrong, and the aide replied, “The southern Chesapeake branch says they’ve run out of Othello coins to pay for the crops.”

“Hmm?”

I tilted my head at that. “Doesn’t the Federal Trading Company usually travel from house to house to distribute the payments?”

“The policy changed about four or five years ago,” Raleigh explained, turning back to me. “We couldn’t possibly visit millions of individual homes one by one. Ah, I must go; an urgent matter has come up.”

As Raleigh hurried out, I chewed on his words… and the answer clicked into place.

Take Michael, for instance. He was an Irish farmer who lived in a village a short distance northwest of Chesapeake. Or rather, he had been a farmer. He didn’t farm anymore. Like many others in Virginia, he had received land and now lived off the yields provided by the Knights. His only labor now consisted of making whiskey as a hobby or helping neighbors repair their houses. That was what the records from four years ago said; he seemed to have been a village elder of sorts.

Four years later, he had joined a local industrial order to work—mixing with English and Scottish laborers. His whiskey was now being sold in Chesapeake. Then there was Kieran, a leader from a neighboring village. Five years ago, his world was confined to his village; now, he was serving as a prior in Chesapeake. It was the same for William, the head of a Cornish village, and the leaders of Welsh settlements.

The change began exactly when the Federal Trading Company stopped delivering payments to the villages.

When the company stopped hand-delivering the money and required people to collect it in Chesapeake or nearby hubs, the villagers were naturally forced out into the wider world. They began to mix. Our Continental Covenant was already a multi-ethnic state composed of people from England, Ireland, Spain, West Africa, and America. Expecting a unified identity was a tall order.

And yet, a clear focal point had emerged in places like Virginia and Florida. I finally recognized what it was. The Knights and the trading company were the engines forcing these scattered, isolated villages and cities to blend together. They had unbolted the doors of these self-sufficient communities.

This explained perfectly why the West was so different. Because the Agricultural Knights and the Federal Trading Company haven’t expanded there yet.

The Knights relied on tractors, which couldn’t be transported all the way to California. The trading company made its profits from European trade, but the West was physically cut off from the Atlantic. The solution was blindingly simple.

I need to expand those two entities into the West.

To do that, I had to physically connect the East and the West. I had to ensure the smooth flow of logistics. As I pondered this, a fascinating yet weighty question took root in my mind—a question that might dominate the Continental Covenant for decades to come.

How do I connect the East and West of North America?

By rail? Or by road?