“Those are some strange plants you gave me. What are these things here?”
“Maize, my lord. Sometimes just called corn. I gave you several varieties and I’m not sure which this is.”
“It’s growing as high as my chest! What do you do with it?”
“It’ll grow taller, my lord. It grows an ear, there’s one there, that contains a sort of grain. Some kinds make good animal feed, some are good for human consumption. One kind pops and makes a good snack. It goes well with beer.”
“Pops? What do you mean?”
“That’s a bit hard to explain, my lord. I’ll have to wait and show you in the fall.”
“And what’s this thing here?”
So I spent the whole afternoon lecturing from my meager knowledge of agriculture.
Before supper, Lambert led our party, his knights, and his current twelve “ladies-in-waiting” for a dip in his new swimming pool, the bottom tank of the new mill.
The bathing suit was thought up by the sick minds of the late Victorian era and of course hadn’t been invented yet. It wasn’t missed since the nudity taboo hadn’t been invented yet, either.
Some of Lambert’s ladies were remarkably attractive and skilled at frolicking. Indeed, I frolicked with two of them that night, Krystyana being indisposed.
Yet I was angry at this use of the tank. It was adjacent to the new well and seepage from the tank would get into the well water. We weren’t using that well for drinking yet, but I’d planned to.
But all I could get out of Lambert was, “Sir Conrad, You take things too seriously.”
Count Lambert never mentioned paying me for having won our wager over the mill, and his mood was such that I thought it best not to bring the subject up.
It was a relief to return to Cieszyn.
Chapter Five
“Krystyana, go back to the inn and tell Tadeusz to send out a breakfast for six hundred people. Tell him I know it’s impossible, but I want him to do his best. This mess will take hours to sort out.”
It was dawn and I almost despaired as I looked over the mob scene outside of Cieszyn’s north gate. The three dozen pack mules I had bought were there and the Krakowskis had them loaded with tons of tools fresh from heat-treating, along with all the other supplies I had bought. Sir Vladimir was in full armor and the girls were ready.
And the hundred and forty-odd men I had hired were there, dirty, ragged, and skinny. But they had their wives and children with them, who were equally dirty and ragged, and even skinnier. I hadn’t counted on being responsible for so many people.
“Darn it, Yashoo,” I said to the carpentry foreman, “I never said that you could bring your families!”
“But what else can we do with them?”
“How should I know? But don’t you realize that we are going out into the middle of the woods, where there isn’t a single building for miles?”
“It’s early summer, Sir Conrad, and these people are tougher than they look. We have the protection of you two good knights. It will work out.”
“It will work out, will it? Just what do you plan to feed them? Pine needles? Because that’s all you’ll find in that valley!”
“Merchants will come. They always do.”
“And I suppose you expect that I will pay them.”
“Well, my lord, you did agree to feed us while we worked for you.”
“You, yes. But not four-hundred-and-fifty extra people. No, the whole thing’s impossible. They’ll just have to stay here with relatives or something.”
“My lord, look at us. Do we look like the kind of men who would have relatives rich enough to feed our loved ones? If we leave them behind, they will die.”
It went on for hours, with the other foremen and Vladimir getting words in. I was being conned and I knew I was being conned. In the end, I gave in, knowing full well that I would end up footing the bill for all the food that six hundred people ate all summer long.
I mean, otherwise I would be sitting there trying to eat my breakfast with starving children staring at me.
But I didn’t like it.
By then, Tadeusz’s food started arriving and we ate. It looked as if he had scraped the cellar of every inn and bakery in the city, but what the food lacked in quality was compensated for in quantity. There was actually some left over, even after the poor wretches had come back for second and third helpings.
“The best I could do, Sir Conrad,” Tadeusz said. “I did it, but I don’t know what to charge for it.”
“Why don’t you just bill me for anything you spent and put the rest down to charity.”
“That might be the easiest thing to do.” The innkeeper surveyed the crowd. “It would surely be the truth. The charity, I mean. A sad group of wastrels.”
It was almost noon before we finally got moving. The going was slow. Some of the people were sick, many of them were unused to traveling, and most of them were lethargic after having eaten their first decent meal in some time.
The girls soon lent their palfreys to some of the worst cases and were walking alongside their horses. I would have done the same, but Sir Vladimir absolutely forbade it.
It seems that we were on guard duty and to be off our horses would be failing in our duty. I had to agree with him, but it felt funny, riding while some poor woman limped along beside me.
Finally, I had two small children riding on Anna’s rump,- with the understanding that they had to jump off if any trouble happened.
It was dusk when we finally got to Three Walls. Everyone was so tired that they just collapsed where they were on the forest floor. I managed to get my little dome tent set up, the first time I’d used it since the previous fall.
While some of the men were getting horses and mules unloaded, Sir Vladimir came with a sack of flour over his shoulder.
“A good idea, that pavilion. It might rain and some of this food has to be protected from the wet.”
Again, I had to agree and in minutes my tiny tent was packed solid with flour and grain and hams. There was nothing for it but sleeping in the open. I opened out my bedroll, stripped off my armor and was lying down under the stars with Krystyana when Vladimir came over again.
“What now?”
“I was wondering if you would start a fire for us. That ‘lighter’ thing-of yours is faster than flint and steel.”
“Yeah, okay.”
That chore done, I went back to find Krystyana already asleep which was just as well. It had been a long day.
It was a long night, too. It rained.
We spent the night half dozing in the darkness with the sleeping bag over us and with cold water trickling down all over. You would just be falling asleep, when you would become aware that there had been some part of your anatomy which had been dry, but had now been discovered by some minor river. And it was cold.
Not an auspicious beginning.
I woke in the gray dawn to find Sir Vladimir still awake and still in his armor, sitting by a smoking fire with Annastashia asleep by his side.
“Did you stay awake the whole night?” I asked.
“Someone had to do it. There are wolves in these hills and wild boars. And worse things. I thought you’d have a hard day’s work set for you, getting these peasants busy. I wouldn’t be much help there.”
“Well, thank you.” I was embarrassed. I hadn’t even considered security.
The woods of twentieth-century Poland are mostly friendly places, and nature itself is regarded as charming. Most people see nature through their television tubes, with cute little animals doing cute little things while a narrator tries to make them seem as anthropomorphic as possible. They do this as they sit in their air-conditioned houses, without a wolf or a bear or a poisonous snake within hundreds of miles. They walk through carefully manicured gardens and tell each other that nature is wonderful! Or they go out and really rough it, staying at a public “wilderness park” at nicely prepared campsites, with park rangers to stop anything rude from occurring.
Oh, they all say that they love nature, but they would sing a different tune if hungry wolves stalked their front yards!
In the thirteenth century, nature was the enemy.
Nature was wolves, wild boars, and bears that would kill you and eat you if ever they got the chance. Nature was the cold wind that froze you solid in the winter, the blinding heat that fried you in the summer, the poisonous plants and snakes that would quickly end your life if you were not vigilant. Nature was hunger and thirst that could only be fought back by the endless toil of mankind. It was the domain of the devil.