The Crosstime Engineer

by Leo Frankowski

  “Sir Conrad, that brown cake you served-is there any more about?”

  “I’m afraid not, nor is there any way of making more. I was surprised at that cake of yours.”

  “Good, yes?”

  “Oh, yes. Delicious. But when all of that food and drink was flowing so generously, you were somewhat sparing with it.”

  “Of course. It had honey in it. I could have sold that honey for more than what the rest of the feast cost.”

  “Honey is that rare here? I’m surprised. It should be a natural product, easy to get.”

  “Easy enough to get, Sir Conrad, once you find a honey tree. A full-time honey hunter finds one, maybe two trees a year.”

  “Remarkable. What do you do then?”

  “Why, you smoke the bees out and chop open the tree, of course.”

  “I begin to see your problem. You know, my lord, bees can’t hollow out a tree themselves. They have to find a suitable place to build a hive. If you chop up every hollow tree, there isn't any place for them to live. No wonder honey is rare.”

  “I see. You’re suggesting that we hollow out trees?”

  “It doesn’t have to be a whole tree. A simple wooden box will do. You know, bees are very remarkable creatures. I've read a few articles on them. Did you know that they have a language?”

  “What! Insects talking?”

  “Not exactly talking, but when a bee finds a field of flowers, she goes back to her hive and does a dance that tells the others where to go.”

  “Remarkable! You say ’she.' What of the male bees?”

  So I prattled on for an hour about bees. Friends have accused me of having a garbage pit mind. Things fall in there and sort of stay around, fermenting. The upshot was that I agreed to instruct Lambert’s carpenter on making beehives, a gross of them.

  There would be nothing much to it, of course. Just a simple rectangular wooden box of about forty liters’ capacity would do. You drilled a hole of four square centimeters near the bottom, facing south, and mounted them on a pole at least three meters in the air.

  “It’s been a pleasant and educational evening, Sir Conrad. Doubly so since you wouldn't wager any money on your chess playing. But now we must rejoin the buffoonery below.”

  The end point of the evening was the gift giving. Gift wrapping was unknown, but it wasn’t missed. The only awkward moment occurred when the priest and his wife gave me a wooden crucifix and a carved rosary-the priest's own work-and I hadn't realized that they were on my Christmas list. The best return gift that I could think of on short notice was some rose seeds.

  I also got a new sword belt from Sir Miesko. The harem didn’t give; they just got. Well, maybe they did give. That night I was visited by Yawalda and Mary. They liked to work as a team.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was a relaxed afternoon.

  I was giving Lambert and Sir Miesko fencing lessons. Over their strenuous objections and at my firm insistence, we were using wooden sticks instead of real swords. Boris Novacek soon joined us, praising my previous battles.

  For men who lived by the sword, they had some odd attitudes. It was as if they didn’t believe that a sword had a point! Their fencing was strictly hack and chop. They didn't see where the lunge had any use at all.

  Finally, Boris said, “My lords, I have seen him use this thing! I saw him put that little sword entirely through a man’s neck, and he killed the German knight with a single blow through the eye slit of his helmet.”

  “Well, I haven’t seen him kill anything, Novacek,” the count said. “Let's do some killing and prove this thing properly. Bring your sword, Sir Conrad.”

  I followed Lambert apprehensively out of the building, along with the rest of the crowd. He led us to a pen containing six pigs destined to be the next day’s supper.

  “Now then, Sir Conrad. You have allowed that the edge is useful on horseback but said that the point is stronger afoot. We shall see. I shall kill that boar with the edge of my sword, and you will take that sow with your point.” Without further discussion, the count vaulted, sword in hand, into the pigpen.

  The test was somewhat unfair in that the boar was mean. Lambert’s first two-handed swing caught the pig a little in back of the “belt” line. This broke the boar's back without seriously cutting it. The boar was annoyed. Its hind legs were not functional, but it charged the count, dragging itself along on its front legs.

  The pig is a very powerful animal, and its jaws can rip a man’s leg off. All that meat is muscle.

  Lambert was back-stepping furiously, and his second blow-to the shoulder-didn’t slow down the boar at all. I was about to leap in when the count's sword crashed into the animal's skull and all motion stopped.

  “You saw the power in that blow?” Lambert was actually proud of his performance. “Your turn, Sir Conrad.”

  I hated jumping into a pigsty with my embroidered tunic and leather stockings, but there was nothing else I could do. “That sow over there, my lord?”

  The remaining pigs were all studying Lambert intently. I was trying to remember just how a pig’s ribs went. I couldn't remember whether they angled back like a man's or not. I was obviously going to have to put all the power into my lunge that I could. Also, pigs being built the way they are, I was going to have to lunge downward.

  This I did. Body upright, arm straight, blade out with the edge down.

  The results surprised me. I had never actually stuck an animal before. My sword went entirely through the first pig and halfway through the one behind it. They both dropped dead without a squeal.

  I got out of the pen and cleaned my sword in the snow. Then I started working on the pig shit on my boots, with Krystyana’s help.

  Sir Miesko said, “That was a great blow, Sir Conrad! But how real was the test? What if they were in armor?”

  “An excellent idea!” the count said. “Krystyana, Boris brought in four sets of armor. Take Mary and bring us some hauberks. Pick two that match.”

  As the girls ran off, Sir Miesko shouted, “And the gambesons! Bring two equal gambesons!”

  Boris’s objections that we were about to chop up his armor were squelched by Count Lambert: “Fear not, our smith will repair it.”

  The pigs were not minded to volunteer for this experiment, but a large number of commoners had gathered and manpower was available. At my suggestion, we did it outside the pigsty.

  Under great protest by the pigs, two of them were dressed in armor and strung upright between horizontal poles, forelegs up and hind legs down.

  The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would have been horrified, but we were going to eat the animals anyway, and I fail to see where my sword was any worse than a butcher’s knife.

  Actually, the count’s sword was a good deal worse. The rule being that all blows had to strike armor, it took him five hacks before the pig quit screaming. It died of internal concussions. The armor was never cut.

  My watered steel blade cut the wrought-iron rings easily, and again I found the heart.

  I could see Lambert’s emotions in conflict. On the one hand, here was a valuable new technique. On the other, I was refuting the experience of his lifetime. I began to worry. Had I offended my host?

  “Your blade, Sir Conrad. May I see it?”

  “Of course, my lord.”

  He grasped the cheap brass grip and swung it a few times. Then he jumped into the pen with its one remaining live pig. With a single, mighty one-handed swing, he took the pig’s head entirely off. Then he smiled.

  “Your techniques have merit, Sir Conrad, but your sword! Your sword is magic!”

  “Hardly that. But it is good steel.”

  “Could you teach my smith the way of this?”

  “I could tell him how it’s done, but the actual doing of it is an art form that he'd have to work out for himself. I wouldn't expect results for a year or two.”

  “Sir Conrad, we must talk.” But he seemed uncertain.

  As we w
ent back inside, Krystyana seemed glum.

  “What’s the matter, pretty girl?” I asked. “I'm sorry if all that killing bothered you.”

  “No, it’s not that. The second course of tomorrow's supper was to be blood pudding, and you men have just splattered the blood all over the courtyard!”

  It’s hard to keep everybody happy.

  Before supper, the count and I were playing chess atone end of the hall, and the girls had set up a loom at the other.

  It wasn’t much of a loom. There was a pole on top with a few thousand woolen strings wrapped around it. A pole at the bottom was used to roll up the cloth they made. In between, two girls were laboriously moving a shuttle back and forth between the vertical threads and then tightening the horizontal thread down with something like a pocket comb. They hadn't made a centimeter of cloth in an hour.

  “Is that something they do as a hobby?” I asked.

  “Hobby? There’s always need of cloth, and my ladies are instructed to keep busy.”

  “Then why don’t you use a proper loom?”

  “You know something of looms?” The game was forgotten.

  “Well, I’m not a weaver, but I know the process—”

  “I know, Sir Conrad. ’But not in the few weeks I'll be here!' Have you no idea of our economic situation with regard to cloth? Don't you know that the French and Italians are making vast profits in the trade? Why, at the Troyes Hot Fair alone, millions of pence change hands, much of it Polish silver going for French cloth.”

  “But why not bring some weavers here?”

  “My liege lord, Henryk the Bearded, did that very thing. At huge cost, he imported three dozen Walloon weavers and set them up, at his expense, in Wroclaw. Yet to this day not one Pole-save Henrykhas ever been in their building! And the price of cloth has not dropped a penny! Why, the cloth in that very tunic you’re wearing was woven in Flanders and dyed in Florence.”

  “I don’t know anything about dyeing, but I'm sure that I could build a loom,” I said.

  “Then that cuts it! Sir Conrad, I must have you. I want you to stay here and instruct my workmen-and women in the arts you’ve mentioned. In a scant two days, you've talked of honey and steel and cloth. You've shown me better swordsmanship, better dancing, and better chess playing than I would have thought possible. I say I want you. Now, what's your price?”

  “My price? Well, I’m not sure that I need any money. I have half the booty I took, and-”

  “Another thing-you have more than you think. This business of your splitting evenly with Novacek is nonsense! Despite the fact that he was your employer, you are a knight and he is a commoner; those spoils were taken entirely as the result of your sword arm. Oh, you might make him a gift of a twelfth of it, but any more than that would be absurd.”

  “There is the matter of booty being taken on my lands. By custom, I have the right to a tenth. But that is about the same amount as I gave you for killing that foul German, so we’ll call it even.”

  “Be that as it may, Count Lambert, I still have an obligation to Boris. I agreed to accompany him, to keep his accounts, and to defend him, my lord.”

  “Novacek is traveling from here to Hungary for wine and then back. It happens that I must send a knight to Hungary. That letter you gave me was from my wife. She and our daughter stay with her relatives in Pest. She complains, as usual, about her need for money, so I must send it to her. Otherwise she will come back here to get it. If I must send a knight-who else could be trusted?then that knight might as well accompany Boris and be paid by him.”

  “As to this accounting business, well, that’s hardly a proper occupation for a belted knight.”

  “Uh… my lord, that hits on one more problem. You see, I’m not exactly a belted knight.”

  “What! You mean to say that you have been crossing swords with me, beating me at chess, and enjoying my ladies and that you are not a true belted knight? Sir Miesko! I need a witness! Attend me!”

  “Coming, my lord!”

  “But, Count Lambert, you see… in my country, we don’t have knighthood exactly, but I was an officer-no! Am an officer, and the priest said that—”

  “Silence! Kneel, Conrad Stargard!” He drew his sword.

  Visions of the boar’s crushed skull flashed through my mind, but still I knelt. “You see—-”

  “Quiet!” The flat of his sword came down hard on my bruised right shoulder. This was followed by an equally rough blow above my wounded left arm. Apparently, I was being knighted, and the count did not go along with those effeminate taps on the shoulders so common in the movies.

  “I dub thee knight!” The last blow came against the side of my head, and I saw a strange, web-shaped visual display. I almost fell over but managed to stay on my knees.

  “Rise, Sir Conrad.”

  The girls at the looms were looking, whispering, and giggling.

  “You two!” the count said. “This was purely a formality to remove any doubts from Sir Conrad’s mind. They use a different ceremony in his country. All the same, be silent on this matter. You as well, Sir Miesko.”

  I managed to get to my feet.

  “Well, that’s settled. Now then, Sir Conrad, do you see any other problems?”

  “Problems? Well, no, my lord. But what exactly is it that you expect of me?”

  “I expect you to build such mechanisms as you feel would be beneficial here, and I would expect you to swear your allegiance to me.”

  Hmm. Actually, it didn’t sound that bad. Comfortable surroundings, friendly people who really needed me, and plenty of sex. Compared to my previous position-well, Boris Novacek had been decent enough. But in two days on the road with him, I had been involved in two murderous fights. While two is not a statistically significant number, it certainly is an indication! Luck alone had kept me from being a naked corpse in a snowy wood.

  “Very well, my lord. I will expect you to settle with Boris Novacek, to his satisfaction. I would swear allegiance, but not forever. Say, perhaps for nine years.” I was leaving myself a cowardly way out. At the Battle of a, which was not far from here, thirty thousand Christians fought a much greater number of Mongols. The Mongols did not leave a single survivor. Not one single Polish witness to the battle lived to tell of it. I wanted the option not to be there.

  “Done, Sir Conrad. And your remuneration? If not money, then lands perhaps? People of your own?”

  “Uh, let’s leave that undefined for a while. Perhaps at some later date we may agree on something. For now, I will be satisfied with my maintenance in your castle.”

  “You understand that I agree to defend you and the people on your land if attacked, but I will not be responsible for other military duties.”

  “Agreed. Boris told me of your ambivalent feelings with regard to killing, and I saw your face when you stuck those pigs. You are a strange man, Sir Conrad Stargard.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  That night’s feast was a more civilized affair than that of Christmas day. It was a sit-down dinner followed by dancing.

  It seems that I was responsible for introducing the polka into Poland. My brief dancing with Krystyana had apparently impressed everyone, and that evening the count insisted on my demonstrating it again. I spent a few minutes with the musicians, humming the tune and slapping my thigh for rhythm, and they picked it up quickly. Having no written music, they all played by ear.

  I shall make no attempt at describing the sound of three krummhorns, four recorders, a shawm, two drums, and a bagpipe playing the “Beer Barrel Polka.”

  The scheduling was less hectic, too. The common women were divided into six groups that took turns playing servant for a day; each of the groups of adults was directed by an adolescent handmaiden. Somehow, it worked.

  The count seemed to feel that it was necessary and proper for a knight to have at least two young women within reach at all times. I think they were called “handmaidens” because they were always on hand. The term “maiden” was a euph
emism, of course. When they got pregnant, he married them off and replaced them. I later discovered that this was not an ordinary state of affairs. Most of his knights, as well as his liege lord, envied his ability to get away with it.

  I was playing chess in my room with Sir Miesko when Krystyana darted in. She waved at me to follow her in an urgent, secretive way. I excused myself and followed. We went to an empty room next to the count’s chambers. She put her ear next to the wall and motioned for me to do likewise. Confused, I did this.

  I was shocked! Lambert and Novacek were discussing me! I pulled my head away and started back to my room, horrified that I should invade someone’s privacy in this way.

  Krystyana was still listening as I entered the hallway and the count stepped out beside me.

  “Ali, Sir Conrad. I wanted to speak to you.”

  “Yes, my lord. Do you realize that your servants eavesdrop on you?”

  “What? Of course! My dear Sir Conrad, either you are very naive or the servants in your own land are of a different breed of humanity. Servants eavesdrop! You might as well say that fishes swim. You can have servants or you can have privacy. You can’t have both!”

  “But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Come into my chamber. I want to finalize our arrangements with Boris Novacek. Was I correct in assuming that you wished to gift Boris with a twelfth part of your captured booty?”

  “Well, yes, at least-”

  “Excellent, because that is precisely the amount that he decided to give me as my Christmas present.”

  Boris was turning purple. “My dear Count Lambert, surely-”

  “No, not another word. You have already been too generous. Now, Sir Conrad, you recently purchased armor. I have decided to buy the armor that you captured. What did you pay for your armor?”

  “Seven hundred and eighteen pence, my lord.”

  “So, then my price of one thousand pence per set is generous.”