“Oh, yes!”
“Then keep him shut up while we work out how that can be accomplished.”
“But she’s not my daughter.”‘ I said.
“She can be. Her parents are both dead. You can adopt her. Once she’s your daughter and heir, even Baron Jan isn’t going to stop his son from marrying the wealthiest heiress in the duchy.”
“Oh, I know that your funds are low now, but I’ve seen what you’ve accomplished in a few months at Three Walls. In a year, you would have been the richest man in Poland. Even without you, what you’ve started there will get fabulous wealth. Any man with brains can see it.”
“So Annastashia gets the man she wants, Sir Vladimir gets a wife of his choice and more wealth than he’s ever dreamed of, and you, Sir Conrad, get an heir who can carry out your plans.”
There was no arguing with his reasoning, so Sir Miesko got out parchment, pen and ink, and drafted both a letter of adoption for Annastashia, and a will for me, in which I specifically gave my blessing on the marriage of my daughter to Sir Vladimir.
“You really should get yourself a seal,” Sir Miesko said. “A bit late now, though.”
Everybody present signed everything, and Sir Miesko affixed his own seal and promised to get the duke’s seal on both instruments the next day.
As the party was breaking up, I announced that I had some presents to distribute. I gave Sir Miesko and Sir Vladimir wolfskin capes like my own. “I’ve had a dozen of these made up,” I said. “I’ll be giving them to the highest-ranking people who show up at the fight. It takes six wolves to make one of these. I figure that if I can make wearing wolfskin popular, it will give people more incentive to exterminate the wolves.”
“Actually, wolfskin is a very sturdy and warm material. It has two different kinds of hair in it. There are the long, stiff hairs you see on the outside and there are shorter, finer hairs, much like wool, next to the skin. A wolf really does have sheep’s clothing, underneath.”
“Lady Richeza, I couldn’t bring your present with me. Indeed, you won’t get it until spring. But I’ve left the design of a complete home water-and-septic system at Three Walls, along with written orders to build one for you.”
“You’ll have hot, running water in your kitchen as well as a new stove, a complete bathroom, and a small, windmill-operated water tower.” She was speechless. Actually. I’d owed her something nice for a long while. That, and I needed somewhere to set up a showplace for our plumbing products, and nobody missed stopping at her house when they were in the area. I was a socialist becoming a miserable capitalist.
“As to you girls,’ I know what you want.” I gave Krystyana, Yawalda, Janina, and Natalia each a purse of silver. They each poured it out on the table and squealed their appreciation.
I kept the purse intended for Annastashia in my hand. “As for you, daughter, you’ve been sleeping with a man before wedlock, and you’ll get nothing more out of me until you mend your sinful ways!”
FROM THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIR VLADIMIR CHARNETSKI
For weeks my soul had been troubled. All things for me were reaching a climax, great forces were moving about me, yet there was nothing I could do to affect their resolution.
My friend Sir Conrad was going to his death, and in his dying I would be failing in my oath to the duke to protect him with my life.
My brother Jan had visited me at Three Walls, informing me that my father’s anger was even greater than I had feared. Months after the battle with the Crossmen, he was still shouting for my damnation. Never would he bless my marriage to Annastashia or to anyone else.
And lastly, my love was with child. Our child, perhaps my son, was growing in her, and unless I soon took bold action and defied my father, my son would be born a bastard, to be scorned all of his life, and my love would be labeled a strumpet.
I could not stay and marry her in defiance of my liege lord, nor could I go to some foreign country, either. The sum of my wealth was the nine silver pence that I had carried from my home last Easter. Not a penny had I spent since leaving that blacksmith. And nine pence might buy us a single night’s lodging on the road. If we left, we would starve within the week.
If I asked it, I knew Sir Conrad would lend me money-rather give it to me-for once he was dead, there would be no way to repay him.
But part of my oath to the Duke Henryk was to report to him anything needful of Sir Conrad’s doings. While I had seen the need to report nothing, I was in fact spying on my friend. How then could I with honor accept his money?
Then in but an hour at Sir Miesko’s table, all was resolved. Sir Miesko’s wisdom and clerkish knowledge and Sir Conrad’s goodness days before his own death had resolved my impossible difficulties. I was in something of a shock, and perhaps did not behave quite properly. Even after it was all over, they had to raise me up to put Sir Conrad’s death-gift fur cloak on my shoulders.
I had thought Sir Conrad’s withholding of the purse from Annastashia to be a mere jest, and in fact he told me later that it was. He wanted to assure Krystyana and the rest that they were not being dropped from favor.
But when I put my arm around my love to lead her to our room, she became quite stiff. She removed my arm and told me that I was acting in unseemly fashion. Then she went off and slept with Yawalda.
We arrived at Okoitz the next day as the sun was setting.
The town was vastly overcrowded, and had not arrangements been made in advance for the housing of the peasants, they would have had to stay outside and freeze.
The entire membership of the Franciscan monastery from Cracow was there, along with many other citizens from that city.
Perhaps a third of the nobility of the entire duchy had arrived or had said that they would come. The Bishop of Cracow had come, and it was said that the Bishop of Wroclaw would soon be arriving.
And of course, merchants of every stripe and product had come sniffing after the profit to be made. Every one of Count Lambert’s noblemen was there or would arrive on the morrow, and most brought their wives. This host included my father and mother, but thanks be to God in heaven my Uncle Felix was with them.
“Greetings, my father and my liege,” I said to my father formally.
I “Vladimir. So you’ve come to watch the mess you’ve made,” he said coldly.
“Father, the duke-”
“I’ve talked to the duke, as well as to the count! Somehow you’ve gotten them both on your side. But to think that my own son would make an oathbreaker of me, it’s-”
He suddenly turned and walked away. My mother looked quickly back and forth between us, then fled after my father without saying a word.
Uncle Felix looked at me and said, “I’ll talk to you later, boy. Keep your nose up.” He went after them.
Sadly, I stared in the direction they had gone. Perhaps I had underestimated my father’s anger and intransigence.
I had left Sir Conrad’s party to speak with my parents, and in that incredible crowd I did not soon find them.
I know that most of the people had come to see God’s will done, that is to say, for a serious purpose. But when old friends meet after months or years, the meeting must needs grow jovial, and the place had the feeling of a carnival wherein I was the only stranger.
As I passed a niche between the church and the castle, where Count Lambert had set some benches, I heard familiar voices speaking. I kept to the shadows and listened.
“I tell you, the man saved my life three different times. Remember when my boat was on the rocks on the Dunajec River, kid? If Sir Conrad hadn’t come along our bones would still be there!”
“And a few days later at Cracow, the night I paid you off, he was there with a candle and woke me just as three thieves were about to cut my throat and steal my goods!”
“I hadn’t heard about that, Tadaos,” Friar Roman said.
“Just like him not to say anything about it. I tell you, Sir Conrad is a saint.”
“Well, that’s for the Church to say. But there’s no doubt that this whole mess would never have occurred if he hadn’t heeded my pleadings and gone to Sacz to get you out of Przemysl’s donjon,” Friar Roman said. “He led me to God! I was a sinner before I met him! I was a Goliard poet who sneered at the Church and all that is holy. But his goodness was the example that turned me from my old ways. And his generosity! Do you realize that every day for a week he took every penny he earned working at a job that did not suit him, and gave it to me so that I could eat and have shelter at night? And in return, I brought him the message that will result in his death.”