But why did they have to be men? A man's arms are stronger than a woman's, but this machine was worked by the legs, walking. A woman's legs are as strong as a man's. Why not?
I put it to the women one night, during supper and got a lot of cold stares. Finally, I asked why. One woman got up and talked on and on about her hardships for the longest time until it dawned on me that she was assuming that I was not going to pay for this extra work.
When I shut her up and said that I planned to pay for what I got, she turned right around and gushed so enthusiastically that I had to shut her up again.
It was the men who were against it. They'd been starving when I'd hired them and now they didn't want their wives earning extra money. Ridiculous! Finally, I got together with the foremen and we worked out a deal.
The women would each work a half day, some before noon and some after. (A half day at this time of year was almost eight hours.) They would receive half pay and their money would be paid to their husbands. Stupid, but that's the way they wanted it. And some of the bigger children could work if they wanted to, being paid by the pound.
Loading the logs into the sawmill was a job for all our men and horses, despite all the ropes and pulleys we had going. But this could usually be done in a few minutes first thing in the morning and again just after dinner. After that the ladies could work without assistance for half a day.
It had been an exhausting day, and I hoped whoever I found in my hut wasn't expecting much. Except for Annastashia, who was regarded as Vladimir's property (or vice-versa), the ladies-in-waiting had apparently decided to share me equally, with Krystyana somehow being more equal than the other three. I never had anything to do with it and I never knew who I'd be sleeping with that night. But I never asked questions because when you're in pig heaven, you don't want to make waves in the mud.
* * *
A few mornings later, there was a lot of shouting by the trail, so I went down to see.
Sir Vladimir, in full armor, was on his horse and leading two others that I recognized as being my own pack animals. Loaded on them were a lot of my steel tools and two dead bodies, former workers of mine.
I ran over to his left side. "Vladimir! What happened?"
"They stole your horses and property. I went to get them," he said in a quiet, strained way.
I was suddenly furious. "God damn you for a murderous bastard! You killed two men over a couple of lousy tools?"
He stared at me, his face white and strained.
"No. I killed them for putting an axe into my side. Now help me down."
He leaned toward me and I caught him around the waist. My hand was bloody and there was blood running down his right leg, filling his boot.
I eased him down on the ground and started shouting at people. "You! Run and get my medical kit. One of the ladies can show you where it is.
"You! I need a bucket of clean water.
"You! Get Krystyana. Tell her to bring all her clean napkins."
"Stupid of me," Vladimir said. "I didn't realize that there were two of them. I had the one at swordpoint when the other struck me down before I knew he was there. He struck me from behind, the bastard, but then I suppose you can't expect honor among thieves."
"We're going to have to get that armor off you. I think I should cut it off."
"Cut my armor? Not bloody likely! It's worth a fortune! My father had to save to buy it. Here! You peasants! Sit me up."
We had to pull his hauberk off over his head and lifting his right arm must have caused him a lot of pain. I saw his eyes bulge and his jaws tighten, but he never cried out, or even publicly acknowledged the agony.
The leather gambeson laced up the front and was easier to remove. Under it was a remarkably feminine-looking embroidered shirt.
"Annastashia's work. A pretty thing. I'm afraid I've ruined it," he said, referring to the blood.
The medical kit arrived and I went to work, washing down both the wound and my hands. It contained a bottle of white lightning, my only antiseptic.
"This is going to hurt a bit, Vlad. Would you like a shot of this stuff before I pour it on the wound? It might dull the pain a bit."
"Do what you must, Sir Conrad. As to drinking that devil's brew of yours, well, I tried it once and I would prefer the pain of the wound to the pain of the medicine."
The crowd was getting bigger and pushing in on us. "Yashoo, get these people out of here. And do something about that," I said, gesturing toward the horses, tools, and dead bodies.
I had the wound clean by the time Krystyana got there. Annastashia was with her, almost hysterical but keeping it in.
"Krystyana, your sewing is better than mine. Why don't you stitch him up? Two of his floating ribs are broken and the wound is pretty deep, but it didn't cut an artery and I don't think it penetrated to the stomach cavity.
"Annastashia, why don't you hold his head up? He looks uncomfortable."
So our gallant ladies took over, and I stood back.
After sewing him up, Krystyana put a hefty pad of peat-bog moss over the wound. The girls swore the stuff had antiseptic properties, and their mothers agreed with them. I'd long since used up everything in my original first-aid kit, so falling back on folk medicine was the only thing I could do. I suppose there was some truth to their beliefs, since we rarely had problems with infections.
This was not the brown peat moss that is sold in modern garden supply shops, but the green plant itself, cut while alive and dried. Peat-bog moss was remarkably absorbent, more so than a paper towel, and it absorbed odors as well as moisture. Besides using it to bandage wounds, the ladies used it as a disposable diaper as well as for menstrual pads.
Thinking about it, peat-bog moss doesn't rot. That's why you get peat bogs in the first place. The new generations just grow on top of the old. Maybe killing off decay organisms with some natural antiseptic leaves more nutrients available to the young. Anyway, it worked.
Yashoo came up.
"The horses are taken care of, the tools are in the shed, and Sir Vladimir's property is back in his hut except for his byrnie. I took that to the blacksmith for repair. But what do I do with two dead bodies?"
"Bury them, I suppose. I guess we should get the priest."
"For a couple of thieves who tried to murder good Sir Vladimir? Why, no priest would let them be buried on hallowed ground, even if there was any around here."
"What about their families?" I asked.
"Those two were bachelors. Never heard them mention any kin."
"Then get twelve men, take the bodies far into the woods and bury them. Best do it now."
"Yes, sir. We won't mark the graves either."
That evening, I was still feeling guilty about shouting at Sir Vladimir when he was wounded. When I visited him, all of the ladies were tending him in a style that Count Lambert would have envied.
"Sir Conrad, have you set a guard for the night?"
"Yes, there will be two men with axes awake all night. Look, about what I said when you rode in this morning—"
"Think nothing of it, Sir Conrad. You had a perfect right to be angry."
"I did?"
"Of course. Not only had I killed two of your men without your permission, but in so doing, to a certain extent I had usurped your right to justice. In truth, I only defended myself, but you couldn't know that at the time."
"Well, thank you for forgiving me."
"I said it's nothing. But if you want to do something in return, I ask a favor."
"Name it."
"Listen to my advice and heed it. I haven't said anything so far because these are your lands and you are lord here. Your ways are strange and eldritch, but that's your business. But what you've been doing with these peasants is so stupid that I just have to speak out!"
"But—what have I done to the workers?"
"Nothing! That's the problem! It is one thing to hire work done in a city or on another lord's lands. That's common and proper. But you have taken whole families onto
your lands and worked them and promised them nothing but money!
"Can you wonder why those two men this morning felt no loyalty toward you? You'd given them no place here! You treated them like lackeys to be hired for a job and then to be cast off.
"All these buildings you are putting up. Who is going to live in them?"
"Well, I figured I'd hire—"
"You'd hire. What's wrong with the men you've already got?"
"Well, nothing. But what should I do?"
"Do? Why, swear them to you, of course!"
"To me? You think they would?" I was flustered.
"They'd be damn fools not to. Your other subjects at your inn and your brass works are all becoming rich and these people know it. That and they know you're a soft hand. Why, you haven't whipped a man since we got here!"
"You think I should swear in everybody here?"
"Well, I can't swear to you, of course. I'm already sworn to my father. But everyone else, yes."
"Very well, Sir Vladimir. I'll bring it up with them at tomorrow's dinner."
"You'll do that only if you swear these ladies to secrecy! Without that, every man in the valley will be crowding you at first daylight."
And that's just the way it happened. At dawn, Yashoo came to me and asked if he might swear to me and be my man. Tomas, the masonry foreman, was on his heels with the same request. Within minutes, the whole population was crowding around me. It really touched me and I had trouble keeping the tears back.
One at a time, they raised their arms to the sun as I did by their side. They swore to serve me honestly for the rest of their lives and I swore to protect them for the rest of mine. Once all the men were sworn in, I surprised them by asking their wives if they wanted to swear as well.
Every one of them did. It meant that I would be responsible for them even in the event of their husband's death.
Krystyana was staring at me earnestly.
"Sir Conrad, do you think—I mean could we—"
"You ladies want to swear as well?"
"Oh, yes!" came all five voices at once.
"Then we'll do it."
There wasn't a dry eye in the place.
Dinner was two hours late, but somehow they got a lot more done than on any day before. Now they were on their own land, building their own homes. It showed in the way they worked and in the way they walked.
Chapter Eight
I made my monthly trip to Okoitz alone. Anna can run like the wind and it took less than an hour, whereas with the girls and their slow, docile palfreys, the trip would take all day.
The count was still being taciturn with me, and still wouldn't mention our wager. One of the knights told me that he suspected that Count Lambert was having some sort of financial problems with his wife in Hungary. I supposed that could be the reason for both the count's tightness with money and his unusually rude behavior. But I could do nothing but try to live with it.
Vitold the carpenter and Angelo the dyer had everything going smoothly. The factory was almost finished and a hundred wheelbarrows had been built to speed the harvest. Mostly, I spent my two days talking with the farmers about the new plants I'd given them.
Most were growing well enough, but how did you harvest them? Could this sort last through the winter? How do you cook this thing? And most often, what part of it do you eat?
The flowers were doing beautifully, and everybody was astounded at the size and numbers of the blossoms. Particularly popular were the sunflowers, which were three yards tall and had flowers that moved in the course of the day so as to always face the sun.
There was a wedding that day, and the bride proudly carried a single sunflower as her bridal bouquet. I was getting ready to object to this, since that bouquet cost one-twelfth of the world's known supply of sunflower seeds. But I couldn't interrupt the ceremony, so I waited.
When it came time to throw the bouquet to the bride's maids, the bride gave it a healthy toss over her shoulder. The sunflower, which must have weighed three pounds, caught one of the girls in the face, knocking her to the ground and giving her a fat lip.
I walked away. Nobody was going to waste another sunflower. Not that way, at least.
I left at dusk of the second day, and we made the run home in the night. I swear Anna can see in the dark.
Vladimir was up and around in a week, so tough was his constitution. And a week after that, he took to spending his mornings hunting with Annastashia. She turned out to be a good bowman, nothing like my old friend Tadaos the boatman, but good enough to bag her share.
I was delighted, since it put meat in the pot. Our diet was too heavy on grains and way too light on everything else.
One morning, they came back with a woebegone individual walking in front of them.
"What have we here, Sir Vladimir."
"A squatter on your lands, Sir Conrad. It didn't seem right to kill him out of hand, so I brought him to you."
"I'm glad you didn't kill him. What do you mean, a squatter?"
"He has a hut hidden on your property. He's been farming your land and hunting your forest."
"Nothing to get upset about," I said. "Well, fellow. Would you like to leave peacefully, or would you like to swear to me and stay on your land?"
"I could stay?"
"Certainly. You'd have to give me a share of your produce, of course. Say, one-fourth of what your fields yield and one-half of any game you bag."
"I could even hunt? Oh, yes my lord!"
So I swore him in and had Natalia open up a file on him. After he left, Vladimir was looking grumbly. I asked him why.
"First, that man was probably an outlaw."
"Well, I can't condemn a man on a 'probably.' Anyway, maybe he's ready to rejoin society."
"Then there is the fact that the usual terms would be half his produce and he wouldn't be allowed to hunt."
"I know, but I didn't want to lean on him too hard. As for hunting, well, there's plenty of game out there and there's no point in letting it go to waste. Half of something is better than all of nothing. Look, he won't cost us anything, and if he works out, well, we have a lot of mouths to feed around here."
"The decision is yours, Sir Conrad, but the other lords won't love you for charging less than they do."
The squatter came back two days later with six deer, a wild boar, and a bison. He had with him his wife, three children, and eight of his friends, squatters who also wanted to swear to me.
They were rough, sturdy-looking fellows and each carried an axe in addition to his belt knife. The axe was a Slavic peasant's universal tool. With it he would build his house, slaughter his pig, and defend his land. It was just the right length to double as a cane, and the single-bladed axe head was shaped to be a convenient handle. They carried them everywhere, even on dress occasions. They even danced with them, at least in some of the men-only dances. It made a formidable weapon.
Once, in a museum, I saw an ancient Egyptian axe of almost exactly the same design. Oh, the Egyptian one was made for a prince, and was covered with gold decoration, but the basic shape was identical. Some things are hard to improve on.
By the end of the month, a total of twenty-six squatters were turned into yeomen. I never stopped buying food, but they sure helped.
Of course, my relationship with the yeomen wasn't all one way. I invited them regularly to Three Walls for holidays and less formal social events. There weren't any serious problems in the first few years, but if there had been, I would have had to do something about it. The only time-consuming thing I had to do was visit them all once a year. That took an entire week.
Vladimir said that I ought to have a bailiff or foreman for so many men, and thinking about it, he was right. I contacted one of the yeomen and told him to get together with his friends and elect a leader. The yeomen were delighted with my faith in them. Vladimir was scandalized.
By this time the miners and masons enlarging the old mine were down to the water level. The pumps were working
around the clock, but the rock around the shaft was porous and completely soaked. We not only had to pump out the mine, we had to pump out the mountain as well. We were gaining on it, but the miners alone could not keep up with our progress.
I put six of the masons to cutting grindstones from a nearby sandstone outcropping. We'd been sending our supply mules back empty, so transportation out was essentially free. There wasn't much profit in grindstones, but there was some.
The rest of the masons went to work cutting limestone blocks for the foundations, basements, and firewalls of our main building. Limestone isn't the best material to use for a firewall. Fire will eventually ruin it. But it will hold for a while and that was all we needed. Anyway, we had a lot of limestone and we were short on sandstone, which would be needed for the blast furnaces.
Things were settling down and starting to run smoothly. Even the brewery was doing well. With little else to drink, people in the Middle Ages drank an awesome amount of beer. Per capita consumption at Three Walls was over a gallon a day, and that's counting women and small children as well as the men. We went through three huge thousand-gallon barrels a week. Oh, it was weak and flat, but the volumes involved were still frightening.
Nothing I could do about it, though. These people wouldn't mind if I whipped them, and giving me free use of their daughters was just the expected thing. But if I had reduced their beer supply, I would have had a revolution on my hands. I'm just glad that I didn't have to pay a liquor tax on what we made.
Next Sunday evening, I announced that we would be throwing a dance on the following Saturday night. We'd be inviting the yeomen, and anyone who could play a musical instrument could take an hour off each evening for practice.
I soon had to retract that last offer. Over half of the people there could play some sort of instrument. After a lot of haggling and argument, we eventually settled on a band master. He was to choose twelve people and they could have the hour off, but I couldn't have half the workforce gone every afternoon.
They mostly had to make their own instruments, and I noticed some of my old parchment drawings turn up as drumheads. At first the band was pretty heavy on percussion and woodwinds, but in time they became a fairly professional outfit.
Conrad Starguard-The Radiant Warrior Page 34