1637_The Volga Rules

by Eric Flint

  “And we will take the looms and spinning wheels. The miners will need clothing as well as tools.”

  “Are you crazy? Do you know how big a loom is?”

  “No, tell me. I spent all of last winter in front of one. Do tell me how big they are. A loom may be taken apart and the parts can be stowed in a wagon, just like a blacksmith’s tools.”

  Life moved on. Gradually, other villagers were brought into the plan, each one adding to the chance of discovery and making Stefan more nervous. He was still arguing for a small group. But Vera seemed to be assuming that the whole village would be coming.

  “We don’t have enough wagons for the whole village,” Stefan insisted. “And if we start building wagons, everyone is going to know that something is up.”

  “Well, think of something,” Vera said.

  Stefan’s mouth fell open. What does she expect…? Never mind.…He knew perfectly well what Vera expected. She expected him to come up with some device or plan so that the needed wagons would just appear when needed.

  She gave him a hard look. “That’s your job.”

  Grumbling, Stefan went off to think of something.

  Izabella failed to notice the first period she missed. Her cycle wasn’t all that consistent. She had a tendency to notice them when they happened, but was able to mostly ignore them. When she missed her second, she stopped and counted back. Her last period was over sixty days ago. And she had had no appetite in the morning for the last month and more. She didn’t want to believe it, but she was adding things up and they were working out to a baby on the way. Izabella didn’t panic.

  She started thinking about how she could get out of this mess. Papa wasn’t going to be understanding. Part of the reason she had started up with Yulian was that Papa was so busy trying to figure out where he was going to sell her virginity to get the most value out of it. That, and the fact that Mama was already fucking Yulian. She paused in her thinking. That, in a way, was good news. There wasn’t much Mama could do, considering that Papa would likely just send Izabella to a convent…but he’d kill Mama. She mulled the whole matter over for a day or so, then went to talk it over with Yulian.

  “Father Yulian?”

  “Yes, my child?”

  “You’re going to be a father.”

  Father Yulian felt his eyebrows lift. Izabella had come over to relieve herself of lustful thoughts, so that she might free her mind for more spiritual matters and they had spent an enjoyable hour on that endeavor. She was lying on his bed with a blanket half over her and giving him a very straight look. This wasn’t the first time that Father Yulian had heard such news. For instance, it was fairly likely that Kiril’s daughter, Irina, was in fact his. But Irina’s mother was married, and so matters could be managed fairly straightforwardly. And Liliya, when she had realized, had quickly married young Makar, so that had worked out. But that wasn’t going to be an option in this case. Izabella was of the lower nobility and her father wasn’t a reasonable man.

  “What do you want to do, Izabella? Don’t wonder what is possible for the moment. Imagine that everything is possible, and tell me what you want. We will work from there.”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think I can separate what I want from what’s possible. I want to not be pregnant, I guess.”

  “That is possible, but dangerous,” Yulian said. He was reasonably well educated, having spent a couple of years at a monastery before he took up his duties here. He could read, write, and figure. He even had a fairly decent little library with no fewer than eleven books, including the Bible, of course. And for the past few years he had been reading every technical pamphlet that came out of the Gorchakov Dacha. There were pamphlets on medicine. “Some of the pamphlets discuss pregnancy and both what you need to do if you want to keep the child and what to do if you want to lose it. None of the options to lose the child are safe, not done here on our own. The techniques that are discussed in the pamphlets might work, but if something went wrong, you could bleed to death.”

  Izabella shook her head. “It’s not that I am afraid, but as much as I wish I wasn’t pregnant, the idea of killing it…No, I don’t want to do that.” She thought for a minute. “I don’t know what is going to happen when I start to show, though. Father is going to want to know who the father is.”

  Yulian looked at the girl. She was vain and self-centered, but beneath that, of good heart he thought. More importantly, she was smart. Surprisingly smarter than either her mother or her father. And, in a way, her situation was just as perilous as a serf’s, if rather more comfortable. Bringing her into the conspiracy was a risk, but it might well be the least risky option. Besides, if she was on their side, there were opportunities there. He wasn’t sure what those opportunities were yet, but he could smell them. “There might be another option. I will need your oath that what we discuss will not be shared with anyone. Lives are at stake.”

  She nodded and he explained about the plans to escape.

  “But why?” she asked.

  And, for a moment, Father Yulian really wanted to hit her. “You know about the factory and that many of the men were sent to work in it over the winter. You know that it decreased the cloth that the village could make.”

  At each statement she nodded, but still looked uncomprehending.

  “You know that the excess cloth the village produced was traded for things like food and boots, for tools, and vegetables that the children, especially, need to grow up healthy.”

  The nod came more slowly.

  “Because of that factory, half the children in the village are sick or have been. And the whole village is malnourished, often hungry. We are running because your father is treating us worse than animals—like tools to be used up and thrown away.”

  “I didn’t realize.”

  “You chose not to.”

  As she walked through the village on the way back to the house, Izabella noticed the thinness of the villagers and the slowness of their movements. She had seen the same thing yesterday, but now she noticed it and—combined with her own troubles—it started a change in the way Izabella looked at the world.

  Stefan, as instructed, thought of something. “Father Yulian, can we talk?” Sunday services had just let out and for a moment Stefan thought the priest would put him off. The colonel’s daughter, Izabella, was hanging back, probably hoping for some “private instruction.”

  But Yulian must have seen something in his face. “Give me just a minute, Stefan.”

  He went over and said a few words to Izabella, then to the colonel’s wife, and they headed back to the big house.

  “What can I do for you, Stefan?” Father Yulian waved Stefan into the priest’s cottage.

  “Vera wants me to make sure there are enough wagons for the village, but if I make the parts for a bunch of wagons it will quickly become obvious…”

  “I understand. But how can I help you?”

  “The factory we worked in last summer used a stamp press. That’s basically a big hammer that was cranked up and then let fall. It was very efficient, and much more flexible than it might seem. What it made depended on the shape of the dies on the hammer and the anvil. In Poltz, the dies made shaped iron plates, which could then be used to make the shells for oreshki, which were sold as far away as Moscow. But the same techniques could be used to make clamps and bearings and a variety of other metal parts needed to make a wagon.”

  “Excellent, Stefan. But, again, what do you need me for?”

  “I’m getting there, Father, but you need to understand how this works for it to make any sense.”

  Father Yulian scratched his beard, then nodded for Stefan to continue.

  “If I made the parts themselves it would make our plans obvious, especially if I made several sets of bearings, say. On the other hand, having the stamp forge and the dies wouldn’t, because the dies could be used as needed over the course of years.”

  Stefan continued before Father Yulian could interrupt again. “I need
some reason to make the dies, Father. I need an order for the parts for a wagon, preferably two or three wagons. A farm cart, a troika, something else. I don’t know. Just enough bearings and hasps, brake pads, springs…enough so that it’s plausible that I would take the extra time to set up the dies for the drop hammer. Then, when we’re ready, I can make the parts for the rest of the wagons quickly.” For that matter, if he could manage it, Stefan wanted to take the dies when they left.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Father Yulian said.

  Izabella crept into her father’s office and stole his seal. Colonel Utkin was literate, but barely, and he did as much as he could with stamps and seals. Generally, orders and legal documents were written by a clerk, or often Father Yulian, and then the colonel would pull out his stamp to make it official. The colonel’s signature was a scrawl that was omitted as often as it was included. What was necessary to make a document or instructions legally binding was the seal, and there was a spare seal in his desk.

  “It’s a letter from Papa,” Izabella said, holding up the letter. “He says you’re to build a troika-harnessed carriage that has ball bearings and leaf springs.”

  Stefan wiped his hands on his trousers, then took the letter. Stefan couldn’t read. At least, he wasn’t what an up-timer would consider literate. But with effort he could make out words one at a time. And by now he could interpret design drawings of the sort that were published by the Dacha. These designs were particularly clear to him because he had worked with Father Yulian in making them. He wondered how Yulian had gotten the seal, and it didn’t occur to him that Izabella might have something to do with it. He made something of a show of examining the sheets.

  Then he called Anatoly from the wood shop and discussed the possibility of getting a troika made, casually mentioning that he was going to make dies for several of the metal parts.

  Anatoly wasn’t thrilled, but Izabella stomped her foot. “These are my father’s orders. He says we’ll be going to Moscow after harvest and we are to have a modern carriage with springs.” She turned on Anatoly. “And it’s to be double walled for insulation. Like Czar Mikhail’s.”

  They learned a fair amount from making the troika carriage. They learned to make two-walled wooden panels that were lightweight and provided excellent insulation. The wagons they had decided on were roofed and walled like a gypsy wagon. They had easier access to wood than cloth this year, but they did use strips of cloth, painted with rosin, to cover gaps. They had never heard of a prairie schooner or a Conestoga wagon. The wagons they knew were freight wagons for carrying grain or gypsy wagons for carrying people. That led to a new set of instructions from Colonel Utkin.

  “…so the modules are to be made a consistent size of four feet by eight feet, double-walled with an air space of four inches. All as shown in the accompanying diagrams.”

  “Why do we need to build a new barn?” complained Kiril Ivanovich, but not until the colonel’s lady was out of earshot.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.” Stefan shrugged. “But the orders are clear.”

  Even Stefan didn’t know how those instructions had gotten into the pouch. He was fairly sure that they had been written by Father Yulian, but the priest hadn’t been anywhere near the packet that the messenger handed to the colonel’s daughter.

  Ruzuka, Russia

  June 1636

  It was, Stefan had to admit, a really stupid way to build a barn. On the other hand, with the materials for the barn, it would take only a couple of weeks this fall to build a dozen wagons and run. He watched Anatoly splitting a log to make planks then handed the newly sharpened plane to Petr, Anatoly’s ten-year-old.

  “Thank you, sir,” Petr said, with less than full enthusiasm. The plane blade was case hardened and sharpened on Stefan’s grinding wheel, but pushing the plane along the planks wasn’t going to be fun. Stefan knew that and sympathized with the boy, but not too much. They were all working hard. He heard a horse and turned to see a rider coming into the village. “That’s Konstantin Pavlovich, the post rider from the telegraph.”

  Anatoly looked up from the log he was splitting. “That horse has been ridden hard.”

  Stefan began to worry.

  Elena held out the papers to Father Yulian with shaking hands and he took them with concern. The document was purportedly from Czar Mikhail, and according to it, Sheremetev was attempting a coup d’etat and had committed treason. That was a disaster for the colonel and their whole family, because the colonel was a client of the Sheremetev family. What she had barely noticed in amongst the papers was the grant of liberty to all serfs who joined the czar in the east. In fact, it—by royal decree—freed all the serfs in Russia. Not that the decree was going to hold sway here. But if they could get to the east…Elena was wringing her hands, wondering what was going to happen to the family.

  Father Yulian reached out and pulled her to him, kissing her gently and murmured to her to calm down and be at peace. The world was working out to God’s plan, just as it should. It took him several minutes to get her calmed down and send her home. Then he sent for Stefan, Vera, Dominika, Anatoly, and Klara, the ringleaders of the escape plan. He also sent for Izabella.

  “This doesn’t change anything,” Stefan said. “The czar is running for his life and this is just to spread chaos behind him to try and keep Sheremetev occupied while he escapes.”

  “I think you’re right, as far as you go,” Anatoly said. “But so what? It will make trouble everywhere and that will make it easier for all of us.”

  “But we aren’t ready, not unless you want to leave half the village behind,” Stefan was saying as the door opened and Izabella came in.

  Stefan and the rest were all suddenly silent.

  “Thank you for coming, my child,” Father Yulian said. “Have you read the documents?”

  “No, Father Yulian,” Izabella said. “Mother started reading, then ran out of the house.”

  Father Yulian passed them over, then he turned back to the group. “Please continue, Stefan. You were saying something about us not being ready to run?”

  Stefan looked at the priest, then at the spoiled daughter of the colonel, then back at the priest, then over at Vera.

  “So that’s how the instructions for the new barn got into the message pouch,” Vera said.

  Izabella had been working through the dispatches, making slow going of it. Izabella wasn’t a reader by preference. Stefan looked over at her with surprised contemplation. In spite of the realization, he couldn’t bring himself to speak about this in front of her. For several seconds it stayed like that, Izabella struggling through the information and Stefan looking back and forth between her and the priest, with the rest of the group looking at Stefan.

  “Father said that Sheremetev had taken steps to put the Dacha and Bernie Zeppi under control. I guess they didn’t work.” Izabella’s expression was half-amused, half-disgusted. “The politics have gotten weird since the czar went into seclusion. And from what we’ve heard, Sheremetev was getting everything organized just as he wanted it. Father and Nikita were both insufferably pleased with themselves, as though it was all their doing.”

  “What will happen now?” Father Yulian asked.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out, and I’m not sure. A lot of Director-General Sheremetev’s power had to do with the fact that he had the czar in reserve. It’s likely that there were troubles in the duma when the news hit. I don’t know if the director-general has kept control. For all I know, he could have proclaimed himself czar by now. Or he could be out of power and another faction may be in charge. Father is with the Moscow garrison and, from his letter, he doesn’t expect to be released anytime soon. There may be fighting in Moscow between the factions.…” She stopped, her face going white. “Oh, my God. With the radios, the Poles and the Swedes already know, or they will within days. Invasion!”

  The location of their village, as it happened, wasn’t quite on the direct line between Smolensk,
the Polish border fort, and Moscow. Not quite. But they were considerably too close to that direct line for comfort.

  “We can’t afford to panic,” Stefan said, feeling more than a little panicked just at the moment himself. “We will need wagons. We should wait, just as we planned.”

  “In a month this place could be garrisoning a Polish army,” Anatoly said. “And it will be more than a month before the rye is ready for harvest.”

  “What would you have us do? Try and pack the whole village on our backs?”

  “If we have to,” Anatoly said. “Better than still being here, putting the finishing touches on our preparations, when the Poles arrive. Or having the colonel show up with his whip.” Anatoly had been severely beaten by the colonel’s order on his last visit.

  “What about a compromise? We spend the next week getting ready as fast as we can, building wagons and loading them with everything we can carry, especially food…what there is of it. Then we go,” Father Yulian said.

  “I don’t think we can build even eight wagons in a week, Father Yulian, even using the drop hammer to make the iron parts.”

  “We will make what we can.”

  “What about the ones who don’t want to go?” Vera asked. “As soon as we get started, everyone in the village is going to know what we’re doing.”

  “We tell them the Poles are coming. Or that Father thinks the Poles are coming. Or might be coming. And he wants us to get ready to evacuate if they get too close,” suggested Izabella.

  “It’s worth a try,” Stefan said.

  “I’ll write the instructions, and we will insert them into the package that the colonel sent,” said Father Yulian.

  For the next five days, the villagers worked like demons. Stefan’s drop hammer turned out flanges and bolt blanks and bearing facings and axe heads. The ax heads were to chop the trees to make planks for the bottoms and sides of wagons.