“Your thanks are accepted. Have someone wake me when food is cooked.” And with that Vladimir lay back and was asleep in seconds, still in his armor.
Shouting, I got the mob awake and busy. I put Janina and Natalia in charge of issuing tools.
“These are my tools,” I shouted, “and they are going to stay my tools. But I’m going to issue them to some of you, and you’re going to be responsible for them. If you lose them, it comes out of your pay! You got that?” They looked like they took me seriously.
Then I assigned tasks. Some I sent to bring water from the old mine shaft. Some I sent for firewood and four more to digging latrines. I put Krystyana in charge of the kitchen and Yashoo in charge of building some temporary shelters, the understanding being that if there weren’t enough up by nightfall, the carpenters would sleep outside again.
The masons went to work on an oven for cooking bread and I said that if it wasn’t big enough, they wouldn’t eat. In short order, everybody was running around, looking busy.
I found a comfortable spot and sat back. About every ten seconds, somebody would run up with a question that he should have figured out himself, but I suppose that that is what management is all about.
I sometimes chose at random between alternative answers. The truth is that when a subordinate comes to you for a decision, he has already debated the pros and cons of the matter and they are pretty much equal. If one way or the other was obviously better, he would have felt justified in making the decision by himself. Since one way has as much chance of being right as the other, a random guess is as good as anything else, and it gets things moving. Thus do they call you wise.
What with Lambert’s changeable moods, I’d decided not to risk sending him the big kettles I’d damaged to make that still. I’d brought them along and ordered new ones made for the cloth factory.
Krystyana put the old ones to use for cooking. By ten, some food was actually ready. Just kasha, a boiled, cracked-grain dish, but filling and plentiful. And only water to drink. I made a mental note to buy some milk cows and told the carpenters that after the shelters were up, they should start on a brewhouse. No argument on that one.
I forgot to send some food to Vladimir, but of course Annastashia didn’t. He just got up, ate and sacked out again. An earthy fellow, but a decent and useful one, within his limitations.
Another meal was served at six, just kasha again, with mushrooms and wild vegetables thrown in. Nobody complained about the poor fare, which was good. Despite my considerable wealth, I was worried about my ability to feed six hundred people. If I had to maintain the standards of Lambert’s table, I never would have made it.
It was weeks before I discovered that the people thought that the food was wonderful! They actually got enough to eat!
Keeping track of so many people was beyond my ability, so at supper I called Natalia aside. She had very good handwriting and was one of those compulsively neat people who make good secretaries and clerks.
“Natalia, I have a special job for you. I want records kept on everybody here. I want a separate sheet of parchment for every man. Put down his name and the names of his parents and his grandparents and as far back as he knows. Put down his wife’s name and her ancestor’s names and their children’s names. I want to know everybody’s age, when and where they were born and married and when we hired them. And write small, because we’ll be adding things later.”
“All that? Why do you want to write such things down? If you need to know, why not ask them yourself?”
“Because I don’t have time to, and I couldn’t remember it all anyway.”
“Why should anybody have to remember all that?”
“Pay records, for one thing. How can I remember how much I owe each man?”
“Pay them every night or every week and then you don’t have to remember it.”
“That would be very time-consuming. Everyone would have to stand in line for an hour every day. I am talking about permanent records. It is important that we know everything about our people.”
“We can’t know everything. Only God in heaven knows everything.”
I tried two or three other lines of argument, and always ran up against the same unshakable logic. But there are more ways than logic to get your way.
“Natalia, would you please do this for me as a favor?”
“Why, of course, Sir Conrad! You know I’d do anything for you.”
So Natalia became our records-keeper and eventually my secretary, but she still thought records were a silly waste of parchment. But these would be permanent records and records are important. Aren’t they?
By nightfall, the camp had some semblance of order. I had a hut of my own, thatched with pine boughs. There was one for Vladimir and a third for our spare ladies. I’d told them to make two latrines and they’d assumed that I meant one for nobility and one for commoners, rather than one for men and one for women. But there was no point in arguing about it.
Everyone else had at least room under a roof. All told, I was pleased with our accomplishments, considering that we had started out with nothing but a mob of wretched, underfed people without enough sleep.
In the morning, I left with Yawalda and one of the men for Sir Miesko’s manor to buy food. I bought grain, eggs, and veggies and made arrangements for my man to come by three times a week for more supplies. I also bought a milk cow, the only one available, which was a mistake.
It was dark before we got the silly animal back to camp and we had to stop and squirt the milk on the ground because we didn’t have a bucket with us and I refused to lend my helmet for the purpose. At that, we were lucky, since Yawalda knew how to milk a cow and neither of us men did. I didn’t even know why it was bawling and refusing to move. The joys of the pastoral
By the end of the next day, they had built a complete, If rustic village. The blacksmith was set up and making barrel hoops for the brewery and the masons were cutting a huge millstone that would be turned by two mules. Carpenters were at work making a gross of beehives. There was a hut for every family and all the outbuildings we needed for storage, cooking, and eating. We even had tables and benches, made from split logs, under the dining pavilion and enough new bowls, trenchers (a sort of board you ate off of), and spoons to go around. It is amazing how much six hundred people can accomplish when they’re motivated.
There were splinters in everything, of course, and enough wood chips to pave the place, which was exactly what we used them for.
The next day was Sunday, and that afternoon Sir
Miesko’s village priest showed up and said mass under the dining pavilion.
Anna watched the mass intently and came closer to listen to the sermon. Thereafter, each week she became more interested and was soon kneeling, sitting, and standing with the faithful.
The priest was obviously disconcerted, but didn’t know how to bring up the subject of a church-going horse.
Just as well, because I didn’t have any answers.
Interlude One
I hit the STOP button.
“Tom, that horse is one of your critters, isn’t it?”
“She’s an intelligent bioengineered creation of my labs, if that’s what you mean.”
“Then what’s an old atheist like you doing designing religious animals?”
“In the first place, Anna’s not an animal in the sense you’re using the word. She’s intelligent. In the second, I didn’t design her. That sort of thing takes a big staff a long time to do. And in the third place, it was as big a surprise to me as it was to you.”
“It was?”
“Those horses are very literal-minded. They will always take every word that an authority figure says as the absolute truth. Nobody ever thought that one of them would be told deliberate lies.”
“Tom, you’re an old heathen!”
“I’m also your boss and your father. Now shut up.”
He hit the START button.
Chapter Six
FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD SCHWARTZ
I hadn’t thought to pay anybody, so none of the people had any money. The collection basket came back empty. To cover the embarrassment, I paid the priest. This set another precedent. Conrad pays the priest.
Now we could get down to real work, building permanent housing and getting the valley productive. I put the masons and the miners to enlarging the old mine shaft. Medieval miners cut shafts that were barely crawlspaces. I wanted the shaft big enough for a man to work in and there had to be room for a steam suction pump.