“The Mongols are a problem, my lord, but at least now you have been warned. Something can still be done -Anyway, I’m not going to lose the trial with the Crossman. I’m going to win. I’ve won every fight I’ve been through in this land, and I see no reason why I should stop doing that.”
“Your confidence only exposes your ignorance, Sir Conrad. Killing highwaymen and unsuspecting guards is one thing. Going up against a professional killer is quite another. Truth is, you won’t even make a good showing. I’ve seen your inept lancework.”
“You’ve never seen a champion in action, and perhaps you should. A trial by combat is to be held on the first of next month at Bytom, a day north of here. It’s just over an inheritance, so it won’t be to the death, but it’ll give you an idea of what you’re up against.”
“Very well, my lord, I’ll go.”
“Good. Sometimes you can get one of the champions to give you some lessons, for a price. Speaking of which, I have some new orders for you. Sir Vladimir seems to have attached himself to you, and he’s one of the best lancemen in Little Poland. From today onward, until your trial, you will work out with him every day for at least three hours. That’s on horseback and with the lance. You’ll never become good enough to win, but at least you won’t die in quite so embarrassing a manner.”
Little Poland is the hilly area around Cracow, as opposed to Big Poland, the plains area farther north and west.
“As you wish, my lord. I’d intended to practice the fight. But tell me, was the cloth I requested sent Three Walls?”
“It was, and I haven’t taken payment for it yet. I wanted to discuss the matter with you. We made a wager on whether or not your windmill would work. Well, you won. And you weren’t interested in betting double or nothing on your second windmill.”
“My lord, would you want Duke Henryk to be owing you a vast sum of money?”
“Hmmm. I can see your point. It would be awkward, wouldn’t it. Very well. What say you to taking that cloth as payment for my debt?”
“if you think the price is fair, it’s fine by me, my lord.”
“Hmmm. Well. Then how if I threw in twelve more bolts?”
The bolts of cloth were huge, a yard high and two yards wide. And cloth was very expensive in the thirteenth century. “I would think that you were being very generous, my lord.”
“Then we’ll call the matter settled. Pick out the cloth you want and have it sent to your lands on my mules. And perhaps I’m not really being so generous. After all, I am your liege-lord and, you have no heir. Once you’re dead, all of your property escheats to me. Then too, even though I’ve sent my vassals their half of the fabric in return for their wool and flax, I have more cloth than I can sell, now that your factory is working.”
“Haven’t merchants been coming around to buy it, my lord?”
“Not as many as I had hoped. Many come looking to buy wool and go away with their mules unloaded. But few come to buy cloth.”
“Perhaps you should consider setting up a sales organization.”
“A what? Well, no matter. We can discuss it in the evening. For now, I want to tour the factory with you.”
Count Lambert had about a hundred fifty knights, most of whom had manors of their own. To “man” his factory, he had asked each of his knights to send him a peasant girl or two, and each of the girls was to be paid for her work in cloth, giving her a full hope chest.
The knights, knowing their lord’s preferences with regards to attractive young ladies, had each sent the loveliest women available, usually the prettiest unmarried girl in a whole village. For a girl to be unmarried in that culture, she had to be in her very early teens.
And rather than risk embarrassment for the lady and annoyance for their liege lord, they had all explained the customs of Okoitz to the girls to be sent, so that any not so inclined could bow out gracefully and another sent in her place.
It was a hot day and there was no nudity taboo in thirteenth century Poland. Many of the girls were scantily clothed and no few of them were completely nude. That factory was like a scene from an Italian science fiction movie.
It was hard to keep my mind on the machinery. It was hard to keep my mind at all, let alone even notice the machinery.
Count Lambert was wallowing in all the beauty like a pig in mud. He wandered around, patting a butt here, pinching a tit there and smiling and flirting all the while. The girls seemed thrilled by all the attention from so high a personage, and many were actually competing for their share of caresses.
Once Count Lambert made it known that I was the favored vassal responsible for the factory and mill, I got my share of the attention, too. Distracting, but vastly enjoyable!
There were a dozen looms on the factory’s third floor. Each was set up to make a different sort of cloth, from heavy tweed to a very fine linen. Vitold had outdone himself with the fine-linen loom, taking wooden machinery farther than I would have thought possible.
It was sort of the way the printing done by Gutenberg was some of the best ever done, and the way the machining on a prototype is often so much better than that on a production item. When a craftsman knows that he is breaking new ground, he puts his soul into his work. And it shows.
The cloth that loom turned out was pretty impressive as well. It was strong and light and looked like thin nylon even though it was really linen.
“This stuff is incredible!” I said. The naked operators stopped their work and crowded around. It was hot on the third floor, but I suspect that the real reason for their nudity was that they got more petting that way. I couldn’t resist putting an arm around a redhead.
“It is good, isn’t it,” Count Lambert said with a girl in each arm and a young breast in each hand.
“Good? It’s so sheer that you could make a kite out of it!”
“And what might a kite be?”
“A kite, my lord? Well, it’s a thing made out of sticks and, I suppose, this cloth. It flies.”
Count Lambert suddenly lost all interest in the ladies he’d been fondling. The sparkle faded from their eyes. “You mean that it were possible for a man to build a thing that flies?”
“Of course, my lord. I could make you a kite this very afternoon. I simply never thought that you would want such a thing. And there are many things that fly. Aircraft, balloons, helicopters, rockets, dirigibles, and what not.”
“These others we must discuss, but later. For now I want you to immediately build me this kite thing.”
“Yes, my lord. Uh, there is the matter of the fighting practice you ordered.”
“Forget about that for now. After all, you’re going to die anyway, and I want as many of your devices saved as possible.”
So on that cheery note, I went out and flew a kite.
Vitold was pulled from supervising the construction of the second windmill to give me “every possible assistance. ” I told him to lend me a junior carpenter and sent him back to work.
I took a yard of the fine linen cloth and put Krystyana and Annastashia, good seamstresses both, to work cutting and sewing. It was done in an hour, and we gave it a thin coating of linseed oil. We set the finished kite up in the sun to polymerize the oil, then had a few rounds of beer.
It was a simple, traditional diamond-shaped kite, and there was enough of a breeze to fly it right out of the bailey. I no sooner had it airborne than Count Lambert was there. By the time twenty yards of string was out, he’d taken it out of my hands like an impetuous child, and was playing with it himself.
“That a man could build a thing that could fly!”
“Of course, my lord. You saw us make it. It’s a simple enough thing. This is probably the simplest design, though there are many others.”
“Then I must have them! Sir Conrad, could you stay on a bit past your usual two days?”
“If you wish, my lord.”
“Earlier today, you mentioned the cloth I was to have. Do you suppose that I could have a few tons of thread and yam as well? I’d like my people to have knitted underwear as well as decent top clothes.”