Thus far, I’d let the carpenters build whatever they liked, since it was all only temporary. But I had some definite ideas about what I wanted for the permanent buildings.
The valley had about a square kilometer of flat land and was surrounded by a sloping wall that eventually became quite steep. The only entrance was between two cliffs about two hundred yards apart. The obvious structure to build was a combination apartment house and defensive wall between them, about six stories tall. It would have to be of wood, of course, good enough against animals and thieves but worthless against Mongols. But the cliffs were more than two hundred meters long and the land sloped down considerably as the cliffs fanned out. We could build now at the narrowest point and later build another wall, or several walls, that were taller and made of masonry.
I knew we had coal and limestone and that meant that we could make mortar with existing technology. I was confident that with clay and sand and much higher temperatures, we could make cement and with that we had concrete!
Enough concrete will stop anybody.
The valley was filled with huge trees. Oh, nothing like what you would find on the west cost of America, but hundreds of them were well over two yards thick at the base. Poland had many such trees at the time and for a very good reason.
It was extremely difficult to fell a really big tree with only axes. Once you did have it down, without machinery it was very hard to move. For the small groups of woodcutters common at the time, it was impossible.
And then, what could you do with it? Medieval Poles made boards by splitting logs and then planing the wood smooth. That doesn’t work on a log that is as big around as you are tall.
For many centuries, they left the big trees alone and took only the small ones.
I’d had a dozen steel crosscut saws and ripsaws made, some of them four yards long. We had big timber, and fasteners were very expensive. The price of nails was absurd. But the bigger the parts, the fewer the fasteners. My plans called for the floors, doors, and shutters to be made with wood slabs a yard wide and the outer walls of boards a yard wide and a half-yard thick with the bark left on. It would be good insulation and indestructible except by fire.
Eventually I was to regret this plan. With no civil engineering experience, I had no idea how much a big piece of green wood can shrink. Every winter, a crew had to caulk the walls; I don’t think that a single door ever fit right. It would have helped if I had laid the outside slabs sideways, in the manner of a traditional log cabin. But, no, I had to put them all vertically because it looked better structurally.
Furthermore, it doesn’t matter how well your walls are insulated if you have to open a window to the wind when you want to see. In the winter, without artificial lights or window glass either you are cold or you are blind. I began to see why architects are such a conservative bunch. But I get ahead of myself.
The carpenters objected and were vocal about it. But not one of them mentioned the shrinkage problem and I chalked up their complaints to stick-in-the-mud conservatism. I paid the bills and got my way. As the old capitalist saw goes, “Him what pays, says.”
It’s remarkable, some of the things you have to do to build socialism.
They objected even more to the climbing spikes. These are the things that strap to a man’s legs and feet and let him, with a sturdy leather belt, quickly climb a tree to cut the top off. A big tree has to be topped, otherwise it will shatter when it falls.
But my people were lumberjacks who had never left the ground. They thought being fifty yards off the ground was scary.
Of course, they were right. Hanging fifteen stories up while trying to saw through the tree you’re hanging from is scary. But I couldn’t let them think that, or we’d never get the place built.
When the first of the teams flatly refused to climb more than ten yards up a tree, I called them down.
“Come on down, you cowards!” I shouted, tossing my sword to a bystander. “Yashoo, let’s show these little boys how to do their job.”
The foreman came to me and whispered, “My lord, I’ve never, I mean I can’t! I’ve never done anything like this before!”
“I’ll let you in on a secret,” I whispered back. “I haven’t either.”
“Then how-”
“If these people can’t do the job, I’ll have to send the lot of you back to Cieszyn and find another batch. But if you do it and I do it then they’ll have to do it. Now, what say we both go up there and pretend like we have more courage than brains?”
He thought a few seconds. “If I die, you’ll take care of my wife?”
With the rig we were using, if one of us came down, the other would come with him. But Yashoo needed assurance, not logic.
“On my honor.”
“Then let’s go.”
It was a huge tree and even fifty yards up it would take two men to pull a saw through it.
With a two-man rig, each has spikes strapped to his legs and feet. Each has a hefty belt around his waist, and a long, thick belt goes across each back, around both men and the tree. The long belt fastens to each personal belt twice, with sturdy loops. It’s really two shorter belts end-to-end, with a buckle by each right hand. The big belt has to be shortened periodically as the tree is climbed.
Technology is not a single thing. It’s a lot of little things that add up. Things as simple as a new way to climb a tree, something we’ve been doing since before we were human.
I’d watched men topping trees at a lumberjacks’ festival and I’d thought out how it had to go. The men had to work as a close team, taking two steps in unison and hitching the big belt up together.
To make matters worse, they had to be on opposite sides of the tree, where they couldn’t see one another. If either moved without the other, they’d come down. Maybe not the whole way, since you shorten the belt as you go up. if the belt is too short to let you slide all way down the tapering trunk to the ground, you just might get to live.
But the least you got was a faceful of bark and a bellyful of slivers.
Seeing something and thinking about it is a far cry from actually having done it. Having to do something dangerous the first time in front of an audience doesn’t help much either.
As we strapped on our gear, with the thick new leather squeaking about us, we rehearsed our moves and discussed each step. Yashoo’s hand was shaking, but I figured he’d steady down once he was actually up the tree.
“I’m frightened, Sir Conrad,” he said desperately, as we passed the belt around the tree.
“Of course you’re frightened. Only a fool wouldn’t be. But a man does his job for all of that.” I took a few steps up. It wasn’t bad. Sort of like climbing a ladder.
Yashoo made an elaborate sign of the cross, which ruined the effect I was trying to create, started up, and then seemed to slow down.
“Come on, Yashoo! Just like a dance! Stomp your spikes right into the tree. Left foot, right foot, raise the belt! Left foot, right foot, raise the belt!”
“But I can’t dance either, my lord!”,
“What ‘either’? You’re climbing! And I bet Krystyana could teach you how to dance.” We were maybe ten yards up. “Maybe I could ask her. What do you think about throwing a dance Saturday night? Do we have any musicians?”
“Please don’t talk about dancing. I fell down on a dance floor, too.” He talked like a coward, but he was keeping right up with me.
“Cut that out! We’re almost there.”
The saw was tied to my belt by a measured length of rope. When it started lifting, we were high enough. I leaned around to where I could see my partner. He was white, bone white.
“Yashoo, I think there’s enough of a breeze blowing so we won’t have to take a wedge out. We’ll do a back cut on my left first.”
Yashoo didn’t answer, but I could hear him praying. He took his end of the saw and did his part. We worked in silence, getting the feel of each other’s rhythm. After the blade started binding, we cut from the other side.