The High-Tech Knight

by Leo Frankowski

  Sir Conrad was talking intently with Lady Richeza.

  “Yes, Sir Conrad, Gretch arrived safely and the girl’s a wonder! This new mathematics of yours is a fascinating thing. I have no doubt that we'll have a dozen good instructresses by Christmas.”

  “And how about the schools?”

  “It goes well. Eight villages are fully committed, and by winter I think that the problem will be the lack of educated teachers.”

  “A dozen the first year is better than we had hoped. Textbooks?”

  “We’ve made a start, buying supplies out of Cieszyn. But at the rate it's going, we won't have four dozen sets in time.”

  “That’s skinny. Haven't you heard from Father Ignacy?”

  “Not yet. But there was a delay in finding a merchant going to Cracow.”

  “Well, if you don’t hear from him in a few weeks, inquire about professional copyists in Cieszyn.”

  “But that’s expensive, Sir Conrad, and we're already close to your budget.”

  “Well, going over budget is not as bad as blowing the whole project. We need the books.”

  “Excuse me, Sir Conrad,” I interrupted. “What is all this about?”

  “Lady Richeza and I are organizing a school system. We’ll have a dozen schools going next winter, from Christmas to spring planting.”

  “Schools? To teach what? To whom? By whom?”

  “Schools! Reading, writing, and arithmetic for starters. For Lambert’s people. By Lady Richeza`s gallant ladies.”

  “For the peasants? With some peasant women teaching them?”

  “Sir Vladimir. May I point out that you show all the signs of being in love with a lowly peasant? That you are under the roof of a man who was born among these unfortunate people? And, while I am at it, that in the long run, the truly important thing is that women bear children and raise them properly-which includes education-and that the best that we males can do is to support them in that function? Now start apologizing and start with Lady Richeza.”

  Damn! Damn and thrice damn! But I had sworn to protect the man. Fighting him was out of the question and there was nothing for it but to apologize.

  I had only begun when Sir Miesko came in and Conrad called to him.

  “Sir Miesko! Say hello to your new neighbor!”

  “What? You, Sir Conrad? What is this?”

  “Count Lambert has granted me lands adjoining yours.”

  “Congratulations! But… that can only be in the hill country. There’s not much good farming land up that way.”

  “True. But I plan to make mortar from limestone and coal, do some lumbering, and perhaps raise some sheep.”

  “Well, it might work. But how are you going to feed your people?”

  “Obviously, I’ll have to buy food, which is one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you. I hope to be your best customer. ”

  “Well, I’d rather sell to you than a Hungarian merchant, but this wants talking. I have a new vat of beer in need of breaching. Let us retire to my chamber.”

  Lady Richeza was in rapt conversation with Krystyana, with most of the others gathering around. Soon they moved off to the kitchen. I thought I was abandoned, but, no. I had my Annastashia.

  Chapter Three

  The next day, on the road to Cieszyn, I said, “Sir Conrad, you were speaking of a machine with vapors…”

  “A condensing steam engine. Yes?”

  “Tell me the way of it. This is something that you’ve seen before?”

  “Well, I’ve seen a walking-beam engine in a museum, but what I've seen won't work in our situation. You see there is an existing mine shaft that slopes down at about a forty-five degree angle.” Observing my facial expression, he gesticulated, drawing the angle in the air so that I understood. “I don't know how far the shaft is straight, but I think that I have an even simpler mechanism that should work.”

  “Indeed. I have seen a walking-beam and to my eyes it was no simple thing.”

  “Have you! Where?”

  “At the salt mines near Cracow.”

  “Sir Vladimir, we are going to have to visit that place. But back to my engine. Imagine a barrel with two holes in the bottom and one in the top. One of the bottom holes is fitted with a valve that will let water in but not out. It has a long pipe on it that leads down into the water. The other bottom hole has another long pipe on it-say about eight yards long-that leads up to another barrel with another valve on the bottom that lets water in but not out. These valves can be simple pieces of leather that loosely cover a hole.”

  “I can imagine that.”

  “Okay. Into the top of each barrel, we run a pipe from a boiler, a big kettle with a good lid. Between the kettle and each barrel we have a valve that is open and shut by hand. Still following me?”

  “’Yes.”

  “Right. Now we open the steam valve which fills the lower barrel with steam. Air in the barrel is forced out into the upper barrel.”

  “Uh… oh. You have a fire under the kettle.”

  “Of course. Now we close the steam valve. Steam in the lower barrel cools, condensing back to water which takes up much less space than the steam. The valve in the upper barrel will not let air back in so water is sucked up the pipe to fill the lower barrel.”

  “Uh…”

  “Have you ever drunk through a straw?”

  “A straw? No, but once when I was ill my mother had me drink hot beer through the shaft of a heron’s feather.”

  “Same thing. As the lower barrel is filling, we purge the top barrel of air as we did the lower barrel. Once the lower barrel is full, we open the bottom steam valve again and close the top one. Thinking about it, these two steam valves could both be worked with the same handle. The water runs out the lower barrel and up to the top one, having been lifted sixteen yards. Closing the steam valve repeats the process.”

  “Now, I don’t know how deep that mine is, but I'm sure it's more than sixteen yards. Still, I see no reason why we can't cascade any number of barrels, each feeding the one above it. We'd only need two steam lines, one for odd barrels and one for even.”

  “Why, that sounds wondrous, Sir Conrad.” We rode a while in silence as I tried to digest it all. Then I said, “But why would you need many barrels? Why not just put a longer pipe on the first one?”

  “Well, there’s a limit on how hard you can suck. Actually, I've said 'suck' because it's easier to visualize. In truth, you can't pull on water. Fluids lack tensile strength. What we're really doing is lowering the pressure in the barrel and letting atmospheric pressure push the water up.”

  “Atmospheric pressure… ?”

  “Yes. Consider that we live at the bottom of an ocean of air…”

  “At the bottom of an ocean!” There are times when Conrad pushes too far!

  “Of air. Come on now, Vladimir. Can you really doubt that you are surrounded by air? What do you think wind is, but the motion of air? What do you think you’re breathing?”

  “Well… yes. But I’ve never thought of it in those terms.”

  “Okay. Now air has weight and…”

  “There! You are doing it again! If air has weight, why doesn’t it fall down?”

  “Huh?” Conrad said.

  “It’s up in the air, isn't it?… or maybe I can't say that, but it's up there, isn't it? If it weighs something it should fall down!”

  “But… it has fallen down. It’s on Earth, isn't it? It hasn't drifted off to the Moon, has it?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “Well, it hasn’t. If you go to the Moon, you must take your air with you.”

  “If I go to the bloody damn Moon! Dammit, Sir Conrad, I am trying to engage in a simple, civil conversation. We are talking about accomplishing the mundane task of getting water out of a flooded mine. I may not have your education, but I am no idiot child to be fobbed off with tales of fairies and dragons and trips to the Moon!”

  The girls had dropped back as our argument heated up.
We rode in silence for a bit, letting our tempers cool down. Then Conrad said, “Okay. I’m sorry. I didn't intend to insult you. Now, we were discussing atmospheric pressure. Let's suppose that you were walking at the bottom of a lake- No! Let me take that back. Suppose that a turtle was walking on the bottom of a lake.”

  “Very well,” I said.

  “Now, the turtle can look up and see the water above him, right? But you know that water has weight, always flows downhill, and settles in the lowest spot possible. Right?”

  “I see. So if I could stand like an angel above the world, I might see you riding at the bottom of an ocean of air.”

  “Well put, Sir Vladimir. Now, air weighs very little, but it is many miles deep. The weight of it over a single square yard is something like ten tons. Hey, don’t fly off the handle again!”

  I said with some resignation, “My back must be half of a square yard. Please explain how it is that I can carry five tons of air on it with ease, when one ton of stone would squash me flat?”

  Sir Conrad rubbed his neck with his fingertips, grimaced at the dirt of them and muttered, “Two weeks without a bath,” then said, “A fluid pushes equally in all directions. While it is pushing down on top of you, it is also pushing up from the bottom. Those two areas must be the same, so they cancel out. The push down equals the push up and you don’t feel anything.”

  “I have tons pushing down and tons pushing up and doubtless tons pushing at all sides! Were that true, I would surely be squashed!”

  “Without the air pressure on you, you would quickly die. You might say that you are already squashed, that you are used to being squashed.”

  “My mother would not be delighted to hear it.”

  And so it was that we talked out the morning.

  Conversation with Conrad can numb the mind more than all the wine of Hungary! My one moment of glory was when Conrad thought that a “walking beam” was a log that somehow had a walking motion, whereas in truth a walking beam is a beam that a man walks on. A small victory, but something to hang the pride on.

  The none bells were ringing as we entered the gates of Cieszyn. I started heading for the castle, as was my custom, but Conrad directed us to the Pink Dragon Inn.

  “You and I would be welcome at the fort,” he whispered. “The girls would not.”

  I saw the wisdom in this. I had heard that Conrad owned the Pink Dragon Inn, and I suppose that I expected it to be filled with more of his mechanical contrivances. What I found surprised me. The place had a large carved wooden sign, as brightly painted as a statue in church. It had a large and fat pink dragon, beer mug in hand, staring with great lechery at a small and remarkably feminine pink rabbit. This strangely proportioned rodent was grinning back at the dragon.

  We were met at the door by Tadeusz, the innkeeper. He was a huge man, as round as a ball, with a full beard and a clean white-apron, yet for all his size he moved with remarkable speed.

  “Sir Conrad! Welcome, my lord! It is joyous to see you again!”

  “Nice to see you, too, Tadeusz.”

  “This noble lord and these fine ladies, they are your guests, my lord?”

  “Oh, yes. They lodge at the inn’s expense.”

  I was relieved to hear this. You see, while my father is hardly a pauper, his expenses in recent years have been high. Not only had he provided three sons with horse, arms, and armor, but he had provided a total of seven large dowries in the course of getting my six sisters married. (It happened that one prospective brother-in-law had the effrontery to drop his dowry into the Odra River while on a ferryboat. To his credit, he did try to retrieve the sack, but was unfortunately wearing full armor at the time. Or perhaps fortunately, for had he not drowned, my father would surely have dealt the fellow a less honorable death. I suppose every family has a skeleton or two about.)

  Be that as it may, my father does not see fit to provide lavishly for a son who has remained a bachelor. My services to Lambert had been in discharge of feudal duty, so of course I had not been paid. The duke had not mentioned money, so I could hardly broach so mundane a subject to so high a personage.

  The result was that I had in my possession a total of nine pence, enough perhaps for a meal and lodging for a night. After that, well, I would always be welcome at Cieszyn Castle, Count Herman’s wife being my mother's second cousin. Also, since my father is one of eleven living children and my mother one of seventeen, there was always a relative nearby who would be happy of company. In fact, I once computed that it would be possible to spend four and a half years visiting them all without spending a pence, without overstaying a welcome, and without imposing on the same relative twice. My family may not be wealthy, nor high in the nobility, but we are prolific.

  The duke, however, had charged me to stay with Conrad and this would have proved difficult had not Conrad himself paid my way.

  Conrad and I dismounted and helped the girls down. A half dozen stable boys scurried out and took away our horses.

  “Curry them down and feed them of the best!” Tadeusz shouted. “The very best, mind you!”

  Conrad stopped the boy who was leading off his horse, removed his small, heavy saddlebags and draped them over the innkeeper’s shoulder, which visibly sagged under the weight.

  “See that these are put in a safe place, Tadeusz, and have something sensible done with our baggage.”

  Conrad introduced his party, but the innkeeper became increasingly fretful.

  “But you did not let me know that you were coming, my lord.”

  “Well, it’s not like I could phone ahead.”

  The innkeeper paused to let that strange statement pass, being perhaps more used to Conrad than I was.

  “Business has been extremely good, my lord. The inn is full.”

  “That’s wonderful!”

  “It is wonderful that I cannot provide my liege lord and each of his noble guests with rooms?”

  “It’s wonderful that our inn is doing well.” At the time, I was shocked by Conrad's use of the royal plural, but on getting to know him better I found that he thought of the inn as belonging to both himself and the innkeeper. Conrad owned it legally and Tadeusz managed it, so it was “theirs.” He actually thought that way.

  “We don’t all need separate rooms,” Conrad said, rubbing at the dirt on his neck. “What about the room that you were supposed to keep reserved for me?”

  “Why, your accountant, Piotr, uses that, my lord. I know! Those merchants from Prague! I shall evict them. I never liked Bohemians anyway!”

  “Hey, none of that! If we’ve rented them rooms, the rooms are theirs. Look, for tonight, put Piotr up with the stable boys, find a second bed and put it up in the room for Sir Vladimir and Annastashia. Three of our ladies can sleep with the waitresses.”

  “Ah, my lord. Some of these maidens wish to be waitresses?”

  “I’m afraid that they don't qualify. For now I want a tall beer and a warm bath before supper.”

  I later found that to be a waitress at the Pink Dragon Inn, a maiden must needs be a true intact virgin; a thing my Annastashia had ceased at months ago.

  Although the sun was still high, the common room of the inn was full of customers. At a whispered word from our host, a party of young men quickly smiled, bowed and vacated a table for us. It seems that they worked at the brass foundry, which Conrad also owned.

  A pair of fast-moving waitresses quickly cleaned the table and brought us pitchers of cool beer from the cellars. They were maids of exceptional beauty and most immodestly clad.

  To start from the bottom, they wore shoes with extremely high heels; two or three fingers high. They wore no dress, but a tight fitting cloth that barely covered their breasts and privy members. The back of this skimpy garment had an absurd puff of fur, like a rabbit’s tail. Their legs were covered with tight hose of a material suitable for netting small fish. There were bands of cloth at their necks and wrists -suggestive of shackles-and a, strange sort of hat, reminiscent of a ra
bbit's ears. And that was all.

  I found myself staring at these lovely apparitions until Annastashia kicked me, quite painfully, in the shin.

  Conrad didn’t bother to sit as cool beer was placed before us. He simply downed his mug with a single pull, said, “To the showers!” and went out the inn's backdoor.

  “Can he do something to make it rain?” Natalia asked between gulps of beer.

  “No,” Krystyana said. “He just means that we should follow him to the bathhouse.”

  “Oh, good! I’ve always wanted to take a bath!”

  Count Lambert’s castle town had a sauna for use in the winter and there was a nearby stream with a swimming hole for use in the summer. But there was no bathhouse. The girls had heard Krystyana's descriptions of the glories of soaking in a hot tub and they scurried eagerly after Conrad.

  I, perforce, mounted rear guard and showed admirable foresight in securing a pitcher of beer from the table to take with us. The bathhouse was an establishment separate from the inn, but adjoining it. Conrad did not own the place, but had made special arrangements with it for the convenience of the inn’s servants and guests. A brass token from the inn paid our fare.

  The baths were of the traditional sort, with men and maids bathing together. There is a fad, prevalent in some of the larger cities, that separates the sexes. An annoying modernism, it spoils the scenery; and how is a man to get his back clean?

  As I entered the changing room, Sir Conrad was already walking out, having left his clothes and armor scattered on the floor.

  “A wise thought, that,” he said, noticing my pitcher. “Boy! Run to the inn and bring back a few more pitchers of beer! And mugs!” He stumbled into the darkened bathroom.

  The girls, having seen Conrad scatter his clothing and equipment about the room, naturally assumed that this was the proper way to do things. Soon stockings and embroidered petticoats were scattered atop chain mail and leather.

  Now, my arms and armor were worth three hundred times the money in my purse. To treat them in this careless manner was painful to me but I did it, to keep up appearances. As I finished stripping, an old female attendant came in, shook her gray head at the mess, and started folding things. I wanted to tell her to take special care with my armor, but didn’t, fearing that she would expect a gratuity.