395
Noon, January 2, 1350.
It had taken a full three or four days for the Pilgrimage Church to finally finish taking stock of the Foundation's personnel.
Quite a few of them had virtually no fixed abode, no family, and no primary address. They came to help when needed and otherwise wandered around the East Borough looking for work, making the count quite troublesome.
The figures from this round of checks left everyone, who had stayed up for two nights, looking grim. Between sickness and death, the Foundation had lost nearly a third of its employees all at once. Had they not been located in the East Borough, with its plentiful foot traffic and labor, their processing factories and food factory would have had to shut down.
Beyond that, the loss of literate staff was the real problem.
"Daisy has agreed to come work here... but she's still in school and can only come two days a week. She'll only earn one week's wages for a month of work, as a work-study arrangement."
"We could actually give Daisy's position to someone else for now. She already has a three-penny subsidy from the fund, and now she has another fifty pounds in compensation. Plenty of people need help more than she does. By the way, is Daisy still holding a funeral for her family? Have her sister and mother already..."
"...Yes. Those who died of illness this time only received the church's collective Requiem and mass funeral. To prevent the spread of disease and curses, the cremations and burials were so rushed that the families don't even really know where their loved ones were buried."
"...Sigh."
"Besides that, we're still short at least five clerks. Can Old Kohler's daughter read?"
"Tyler can't read, and there isn't time for her to learn