We held it in the church, that being the only building big enough to seat everybody.
I arranged the seating like that of the usual modern courtroom, and we were under way by noon. I started by explaining what we were doing, and that each witness could only say what he had actually seen with his own eyes. Hearsay was not admissible, which surprised people. They felt that they should say what "everybody knew."
One by one, the accused were interviewed through an interpreter, and the witnesses were heard. I could see Count Lambert getting increasingly bored and fidgety, but I kept on with it. It was almost dark when the last had been heard, and some of the witnesses had to be excused to get supper going.
The story that came out was this. The prisoners said that they had been charged by the Inquisition to go and to root out witchcraft wherever it was found. They had performed this office through Spain, through France, and then through Germany over the last year, burning, by their own admission, over a hundred people. They had no written authorization from the church, and they did not feel that it was necessary to consult with local temporal or ecclesiastical authorities.
On coming to Toszek they found the baron stricken in a manner that was certain proof of witchcraft. On questioning the villagers, they found that seven old women lived in a cluster of huts apart from the others, proof that they were up to no good. One young woman had taken on the duty of supplying them with food, and so was obviously of their number. Performing their duty, they had cleansed the world of them.
Then they had been murderously attacked without provocation by Sir Lestko, myself, and my people. They demanded justice.
The villagers said that a year ago, there had been an argument between some old widowed women and their families. To smooth things out, Baron Mieczyslaw had ordered that some huts for them be built apart from the others, and had appointed one girl, the granddaughter of two of the women, to collect food and to take it to them. Some measure of peace had resulted from this arrangement.
Sir Lestko's story told what I have said above, and each of my workers confirmed it.
We met again after supper, and Sir Bodan and I made our closing statements. He said that the prisoners were only doing their duty as they saw it, and they should be released with all their property returned.
I think I showed that the women burned were innocent of any wrong doing, and that the girl's only faults were obeying her lord and simple Christian charity.
I said that the accused had no proof that they were working at the behest of the church, and even if they did once have such proof, they had no right to take any such action without the permission of the local authorities. The Bishop of Wroclaw was never consulted, nor was Duke Henryk. Only Count Lambert had the right of high justice here, and to kill, other than in self-defense, without his permission was murder.
I demanded that they all be hanged. I then suggested that the jury members discuss the matter among themselves, and tell us their decision in the morning. Count Lambert, bored to tears, heartily agreed.
That evening, he said, "Damn but this goes slow! Did you have to bring forth every peasant to tell the story that the one before him had told?"
"Yes, my lord, I did. What if one had said that all the others were liars? What if the truth was something different from what we had been told? The lives of twenty-three men are at stake, as well as who knows how many so-called 'witches,' if they are allowed to leave unmolested."
"It would have been simpler to kill them all out of hand."
"True, my lord. But would it have been more just?"
In the morning, Count Lambert's instructions to the jury were, "Are any of you fool enough to think these bastards had the right to usurp my justice?"
Sir Stefan started to say something, but Count Lambert glared at him and he shut up.
The foreman stood and said, "No, my lord. Hang them."
Not quite proper procedure, but an improvement over the usual way of doing things. At least the accused were allowed to have their say in court.
One of the peasants in the town had been a hangman in Wroclaw, so he was given the job.
The prisoners were permitted to say confession to their own priests while ropes were slung over the branches of a huge old oak tree. Most of the condemned swore at us, and the priest who spoke Polish swore that he'd see me in hell.
"Damn foreigners," the hangman muttered. "You hang them with a new rope and still they complain!"
The sight of the Castilians being hung wasn't pretty. They weren't dropped, so as to break their necks, but were hauled up so as to strangle. Criminals were hung naked, their clothes going to the hangman as his fee.
It was an ugly sight. Most of the murderers urinated and defecated, and over half had an ejaculation, which I thought curious. Some actually died with a smile on their lips. Perhaps hanging really is a merciful way to kill somebody.
It was brutal, yet it was necessary. People cannot be allowed to take the law into their own hands. Anyway, burning eight women wasn't pretty either.
We left them hanging as we rode out about our duties. I suppose that somebody buried them.
I expected to get a lot of flak from the Church over the thing, but there wasn't a word. And in later years, when the insanity of witch-hunts was all the rage in western Europe, there were none in Poland.
The buck stopped here.
Chapter Nine
Anna found the mine site without difficulty, and we went to work. We had temporary shelters up in a few days, and then the carpenters started felling trees, the masons collecting stones, the miners digging for ore.
The mules were sent back to Three Walls to get lime for mortar, the sawmill was set up, and word was sent to the surrounding towns and villages that we were hiring workers temporarily for the summer. If they did well, they might be sworn in permanently.
There was no lack of applicants, since word had spread quickly about how well my people lived. The winter before, I'd made up some blocks and puzzles of the sort that modern psychologists use, and tried to get some idea of the men's intelligence. I tried to hire the bright ones, because there was no hiring all the applicants. Thousands came and there was only room in the budget for three gross on a permanent basis and a thousand more temporarily. I hated to send so many of them away, but what could I do?
The ore was right on the surface, so tunneling wasn't necessary. We could dig it out of an open pit, which was much safer and cheaper.
The duke had sent six knights to take care of security, so that was one headache I didn't have to worry about.
In a week, things were progressing well enough for me to leave for Eagle Nest. I left Yashoo, my carpentry foreman, in general charge, and only nominally subordinate to the duke's knight, Sir Stanislaw. I took Natasha along, since she was handy to have around, and Anna hardly noticed her weight. By evening, Anna had us at Eagle Nest.
Vitold, Count Lambert's carpenter, was in charge there and things were going well. There were probably more men available than could be efficiently administered, but they were mostly logging and digging, which doesn't take much supervision.
Count Lambert had left the day before, and the setup was his idea, so I didn't change anything. We left for Okoitz that afternoon and got there in time for supper.
One of my miners was getting the coal mine dug without problems, and the cloth factory, with its two hundred attractive and available young ladies, was going full blast.
Count Lambert rather proudly offered me a cold beer. "You were right again, Sir Conrad. A cold beer is a wonderful thing on a hot day! I'm glad you talked me into finishing the icehouse below the grain mill."
The next morning, I was at Three Walls and found that Sir Vladimir and Annastashia were the proud parents of a healthy boy.
Trivial matters delayed me a few days, and then I headed to Copper City again, this time with Yawalda riding Anna's rump.
The whole summer went that way, with me constantly racing from Three Walls to Copper City to Ea
gle Nest to Okoitz and back to Three Walls, the whole circuit taking us a week to run. Since many of my workers were separated from their families, and since they could read and write now, I was playing postman as well as roving supervisor. It was fun and exciting at first, but it got very old after a while.
By fall, things were settled down to the point that Copper City only needed to be visited once a month, and I tried to keep my traveling down to two weeks a month, staying at Three Walls as much as possible.
We had another good harvest in 1233, the third in a row. Everyone gorged on sweet corn and watermelon, honeydews and zucchini, pumpkins and muskmelon. The beehives were a great success, and the price of honey and beeswax dropped by a factor of twelve on the open market.
The grains, potatoes, and legumes I'd brought with me had done well, and I computed that in two years we would be eating them rather than keeping it all for seed as we had been. And glory be to God, we had sugar beet seeds, over a hundred pounds of them! Next fall, I'd have to worry about refining sugar.
The new plants were almost untouched by insects, which cut heavily into most crops since insecticides weren't available. Most insects are very specialized in their eating habits, and the local ones couldn't cope with the crops that I'd brought in. They'd catch up with us eventually, but for the time being we were getting a free ride.
In fact, the only sour point was the squashes. I hadn't realized that they could interbreed, and they had been planted too close to each other. The bees, or whatever pollinated them, had made a mess of things. We got veggies that were half butternut and half spaghetti squash, and every other combination possible. Lambert and I set up a breeding program at six widely separated manors to try to breed back to the original forms, but that would take time. I moved six varieties of beans to those same six manors just to be on the safe side.
Most of Lambert's knights and barons were quickly taking up his new crops and other improvements, running only a year behind him. And everyone was using wheelbarrows now, and the entire harvest was gotten in early, almost without loss.
Piotr was doing a lot more traveling than I was. He had to make a monthly visit to the inns at Cracow, Cieszyn, and Wroclaw, besides the installations at Three Walls, Copper City, Eagle Nest, where we were taking care of the bookkeeping, paying all expenses and charging Count Lambert in cloth for it, and Okoitz, where we had built a small Pink Dragon Inn at Count Lambert's request. If the duke had one at Wroclaw, Count Lambert had to have one at Okoitz.
That summer, I'd formalized the mail service, setting up a post office at every one of our inns. Besides serving our own people, we carried the mail of anybody who asked, and charged for it. It became a profitable sideline.
We never carried money or valuables, since Piotr had to travel alone and I didn't want to make him a target for thieves, but I did set up a system of postal money orders.
By spring, volume had grown to the point that I had to put on a full-time letter carrier, who made the round on about a weekly basis on a fast horse. As more inns were added, the number of letters sent increased as a cube function. In a few years, letters left each inn daily, and a letter could get to any major city in Poland in a week, for a price.
And like a modern post office, we were absolutely scrupulous about respecting people's privacy and about getting the mail through.
By late fall, the smelters at Copper City were in full production and the other facilities were just about complete. I sold the Krakowski Bros. Brass Works at a very healthy profit to Count Lambert's brother, Count Herman. I did this with the clear written understanding that I was taking the best of my workers with me to Legnica, and that we would be producing products there much like those that were made in Cieszyn.
I don't think the guy understood that people are as important as things when it comes to getting something done. It takes both the tools and the man who knows how to use them to accomplish anything, but many would-be industrialists don't realize that. He got all the buildings, machinery, and facilities, as well as two years worth of back orders and my blessings. But deep inside, I didn't think he'd be successful.
Most of the people from the brass works were moved to Copper City and formally sworn to me. They hadn't been up to that time, except for the Krakowski brothers themselves and their wives, and I wanted all the workers to be treated the same. I also swore in those workers hired that spring that had received the approval of the foremen, most of them, actually.
Thom Krakowski was put in charge of the smelting and mining operations, and being the eldest was also overseer of the whole city. His brothers had charge of the casting and machining sections. In fact they were used to working as a committee, and that's the way I set it up. Oh, they were always arguing like a bunch of kids over a game, and sometimes it got pretty loud. But somehow inside they were a smooth team. It takes all kinds.
My ladies had each spent months at the city and at Eagle Nest duplicating their own bailiwicks there. Krystyana got the kitchens going well; Yawalda had the barns running efficiently. The stores and offices were set up, and all the girls had chosen to come back to Three Walls. I was flattered, but they explained that if they stayed out in "the woods," as they described it, they might be stuck there. But things were always happening when I was around, even if I wouldn't marry them.
Tadeusz had put his youngest son in charge of running the inn at Copper City. He was worried. He was now out of sons. How could we expand further? So we worked out a training program for innkeepers, with each of his sons training a man, and with promotions to larger inns if a man did well. There was also a bonus system for the trainer.
Piotr had junior accountants at each of our installations by then so that he only had to check their work rather than doing it all himself. There just wasn't time.
The priest from Italy finally arrived, and I nearly fell off my chair when he announced his name. It was Thomas of Aquinas!
Saint Thomas Aquinas was the greatest theologian and logician of the Middle Ages, perhaps of all time! And here he was, a young man of twenty-two, running my church and school system. I tried to treat him the same as any other priest, but secretly I was in awe of him. I told him what I wanted to accomplish, but generally I let him do as he felt best, offering advice only when asked.
Interlude Two
I hit the STOP button.
"He really had Thomas Aquinas working for him?"
"Yes and no. The man's name was Thomas and he really was from the Italian town of Aquinas. But the Thomas Aquinas you're both thinking of was seven years old at the time, and no relation to Conrad's schoolteacher. Conrad's history was about as accurate as yours.
"Summa Theologica still got written in Conrad's branch."
He hit the START button.
Chapter Ten
We had just finished installing our first rotary steam engine, our first double expansion device. It turned an overhead shaft that had leather belts driving the lathes, grinders, and other machines we had lined up below it. Wicker baskets covered the belts, a safety feature.
I was getting ready to go to Eagle Nest to greet the first batch of four dozen boys when there was a commotion at the gate of Three Walls.
In front of the drawbridge was a ragged mob of some sort of foreigners, and Sir Vladimir was not about to let them in without my permission. There were over a hundred of them.
They had darker complexions than we did. Their hair was black and their eyes brown, sometimes green. They were of medium stature and had the thin, wiry bodies one associates with Armenians, or even Arabs. Yet they weren't quite exactly like either of those peoples.
Their leader, who was about as ragged as the rest, spoke only a smattering of Polish, and the others spoke none at all. It took me several hours to find out what they wanted, and I would have given up on them if I hadn't caught the words "Novacek" and "alchemist."
A year before, I had asked a merchant friend, Boris Novacek, to send me a chemist, if he ever ran across one, since I was weak in pra
ctical chemistry. Apparently, this man was the thirteenth-century equivalent of a chemist. He had with him three pottery jars of what smelled like acids, and intimated with gestures that he had made them.
Well, I badly needed a chemist. We were throwing away all sorts of things that could be useful if treated properly. Coal tar, for example, is a sticky guck that is a mixture of thousands of chemicals, some of which can be very useful. I knew that it contained aspirin and dyes and wood preservatives, to name but a few. But I hadn't the foggiest idea of how to go about purifying the stuff. But I needed one chemist, or maybe a few. I didn't need a hundred!
I tried to get this idea across, but it was slow going.
The lunch bell rang, and I was getting hungry. Looking at the crowd of refugees, for that's what they turned out to be, I realized that they hadn't eaten in days, and had had damn little in the months before. We had plenty of food, and there was no reason to be uncharitable. I invited them in for lunch, trying to communicate with gestures that this was a temporary invitation only, and that I was not permanently hiring them.
Problems started almost at once. Where I come from, when you're a guest, you eat what's put in front of you, and at least pretend that you're enjoying it. But they wouldn't touch our beer, insisting on drinking only water. Many Poles feel that you can't trust a man who won't drink with you, and to refuse a man's generosity is an insult.
The leader questioned me at length about the kind of meat we were serving, and I finally had to draw him a picture of a pig to get the idea across to him. He acted like I was trying to feed him human flesh, and on finding out it was pork he said something to his followers such that they contented themselves with bread and kasha. At least they were cheap to feed, even though they ate three times what my own people did.
In the course of the afternoon, either his Polish improved or I got better at gesticulating. It seems that his name was Zoltan Varanian, although I wasn't sure whether "zoltan" was a name or a title. In any event, I got the idea across that he and his people were welcome to stay for two weeks, but after that they would have to leave.
Conrad Starguard-The Radiant Warrior Page 60