Lord Conrad’s Lady

by Leo Frankowski

  “You mean that I would be your heir?”

  “Yes, insofar as those parts of the duchies that are not settled by the army are concerned. You, or your heir, will inherit the fealty of those lands and peoples that remain under the conventional nobility. The army will keep its own lands and choose its own leader, although I haven’t worked out how yet,” I said.

  “Then, of course, I completely agree. Next?”

  “Primogeniture. This business of dividing the country UP between the sons of the last king has got to stop. An equal division among the heirs of lesser titles is fine, but the country, once united, must be indivisible.”

  “I had planned such a change myself. Granted. Next?”

  “The lands that I have inherited border on Little Poland. I want them combined with my duchy here.”

  “Very well, although bear in mind that the law in each of the duchies of Poland is different. There will be a certain reluctance to change on the part of the people living there. ”

  “That’s another thing. I want a single, simple set of laws that is the same throughout the land. I want that law to be administered by carefully trained and very honest men, and not by the local lord of the manor. We need a system of police and judges and courts that honestly and fairly enforce the law, not the barbaric hodgepodge that we have now. ”

  “Now, that will be a hard thing to do. People resist changes even when they are for the better. Furthermore, it will be expensive.”

  “I’ll be responsible for the salaries of the people involved, if necessary, but the rest is your job. You write the laws, and you administer the system. Only check with me before you publish those laws. I don’t demand veto power or anything like that, but I do want to have a chance to give you my advice.”

  “I will agree to this in principle, although we both know that it will be many years in the doing. What about your army? Will these laws cover it as well?”

  “If a warrior breaks a civil law, he will be punished by the civil courts. There will be military laws as well that the warriors will be subject to, but civilians won’t. I’ll worry about military law.”

  “Good. Next?”

  The meal was over, and the servants cleared the table. Sonya brought in desert. Ice cream! Excellent, despite its lack of vanilla flavoring. You know, there are advantages to occasionally firing a cook!

  “I’m going to be building forts all around the borders of the country. I’ll pay for the land I need, but once bought, it will be army property, under army control and not taxable by anyone. Okay?”

  “Very well. Anything else?”

  “Well, there’s Copper City. For years I’ve been running it and sending you the profits. The bookkeeping involved is annoying. I want it made mine entirely.”

  “I hereby grant you title to Copper City. Is that the last request?”

  “It is.”

  “Good. Then the matter is settled, though we shall have to put it all in writing, of course. Since you dictated the terms, why don’t you see to getting some fair copies made. Then there is the matter of your oath of fealty. We will want to do it again with all of your officers and my nobles present, but let us swear to each other now, while the sun is yet high.”

  And so together we raised our right hands to the sun and swore. And Poland again had a king. Or so I thought.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Francine hit the roof when she found out that Henryk was to be the next king instead of me. She ranted and screamed for hours, not listening to a word I said, until I finally just left the room and went down to the Great Hall, which was the closest thing to a tavern that was immediately available.

  I just can’t tolerate a screeching woman! When I came back that night to sleep, she was still at it, shouting at the top of her lungs, with her servants cowering in the comers. It seems that she had, now found out that Henryk had started out by offering fealty to me and that I had turned him down. Castle servants talk too much! After another hour of this I left again, to find that Sonya had arranged another room for me at the other end of the palace. Women are so much nicer before you marry them!

  Dammit! I never promised to make her a queen! I never promised anything except seeing to her needs, and a throne was hardly necessary for her well-being. In fact, history proves that a throne is a very dangerous possession. Too many kings-and queens—have failed to die peacefully of old age in their beds. Anyway, all this political and social aggrandizement was her idea, not mine. I mean, I’d gone along with making her a duchess, hadn’t I? Wasn’t that enough? What did she want to be? Empress of the known world?

  The next morning Sonya told me that she had a friend who was looking for work. I interviewed the girt over breakfast, a pretty, well-built redhead who had come dressed for the job. On Sonya’s suggestion, she showed up for her job interview wearing nothing but her freckles. I hired her as a second body servant. At least with servants you can fire them when they get out of line.

  I never should have gotten married.

  I spent the day doing administrative stuff, writing a set of building codes for the city fathers of Cracow and making a deal with them on building materials. I sold them bricks, hardware, lumber, and so on at wholesale prices and gave them three years’ free credit on it. They would worry about parceling the stuff out to the citizens at retail prices and collecting payment for it. The actual construction work was up to them. I wouldn’t be involved. Later, in a year or two, we’d worry about water mains and sewers, and by then, what with their profits on the building materials, they would be able to afford the utilities. A backward way to do things, but there wasn’t really much choice.

  A few days later Francine was calmed down enough to at least start out civil at a banquet that Henryk had insisted that I attend.

  Nine years before, on the day after I had first met the then Prince Henryk, we had both joined a party hunting wild boar and bison. The regalia required for this sport included a shield, and he had been a bit offended by the motto on the bottom of my heater, which was the first line of the yet to be written Polish national anthem, “Poland is not yet dead!”

  We had talked about it, and I had promised to paint it over if and when he finally got the whole country united. Our new armor was so good that a fighting man didn’t ordinarily need a shield, and I hadn’t used mine in years. Henryk had found it somewhere and had it brought into the Great Hall, along with brushes and a collection of paint pots. He told the story to the gathered notables and invited me to keep my word. There was nothing for it but to put down my knife and fork, scrape the old motto from the shield, and publicly paint on it “Poland is alive and well!”

  It was mostly a party joke, and I mugged up my part in it to suit the occasion, the way I had to do every Christmas for the peasants in imitation of my old liege lord, Count Lambert.

  This bit of buffoonery miffed Francine no end, since she felt that since I was now a duke, I should be a somber ass as well.

  Later, when somebody mentioned that Henryk would be my heir for the three eastern duchies, she got downright livid! She flew totally off the handle again and was literally frothing at the mouth before we got her out of the hall.

  And she accuses me of making scenes in public! She accused me of robbing my own children, by which she doubtless meant her own children, yet to be born.

  At this point I had about a dozen others by various fine ladies, but I don’t think that she figured that those kids counted. Personally, I have always done my best to treat them all the same. Playing favorites wouldn’t have been good for them.

  To my way of thinking, saddling a kid with any sort of an inherited lifetime job would be one of the worst possible things you could do to him. “Well kid, here’s your role in life, written down on these here computer punch cards, ha, ha! Live out your only earthly existence precisely in accordance with the pattern that is given you from the high mountain! Make sure that you fit the cookie cutter exactly, baby!”

  Bullshit! What a horrible thi
ng to do to a little child! A kid deserves a good education and a lot of love, and on top of this, I figure that all my kids started out with a pretty good set of genes. Beyond that, you owe it to him to see to it that he has a chance to grow in the directions that suit him best, and that goes double for the girls!

  And damn all these Dark Ages attitudes! I had done the best thing possible for my children, for Poland, and for me!

  I didn’t see Francine for the rest of the week, and to hell with her. I had two new girls to take care of me. Young ones! And what they lacked in skill, they made up for with cheerfulness, obedience, and enthusiasm.

  Sonya mentioned that she had another friend looking for work.

  “Sonya, just why is it that you and your friends are so eager to do the dirty work around here?”

  “It’s not all that dirty, your grace.”

  “You know what I mean. Some places that I’ve been, the young ladies would have been insulted if you offered them work as a domestic servant.”

  “Then in those places the young women must all, be fools, your grace.”

  “What do you mean? Come on, you know I’ll never get angry at an honest answer.”

  “Well, it’s a great honor to serve so high a lord, and a great pleasure to serve one who is so kind and so virile.”

  “The truth, Sonya.”

  “That is the truth! Or at least part of it, anyway. The rest is that, well, you have a very good record, your grace! Nine years ago Count Lambert sent you out to your new lands with five simple peasant wenches. Now, after staying with you, every single one of them is at least a baroness, and they’re all rich besides! A poor priest’s wife is now a duchess because of you! I’ve only been working for you for a few weeks, and I’m already wealthy from my share of that Mongol booty, as are both of Duchess Francine’s maids and even your horses! I tell you that any woman who wouldn’t warm your bed or clean your chamber pots would be a damn fool who wants to stay poor!”

  “Hmph. You know, I’ve never thought of it that way, but I suppose that a young person has to look out for herself.”

  “Of course, your grace. And a bright girl takes care of her friends as well. You can never-tell when you might need a return favor. Did you want to see Kotcha?”

  “Why not?”

  And then there were three.

  Well. Baron Wiktor was settling into his new job nicely, and before long we had things reasonably under control. Within a week it was time to visit Mazovia and get that business over with.

  Duke Henryk-well, he wasn’t crowned yet-suggested that he go along and that we visit the battlefields on the way. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Francine still wasn’t speaking to me, so I left her behind.

  We loaded our entourages, Big People and all, onto one of the three steamboats I had left on the Vistula, Baron Tadaos’s Enterprise, and headed downriver. A few months ago, there had been three dozen of them! Not one Vistula boatman in four dozen was still alive. There were so few river boatmen left that the boat was “manned” largely by the baron’s many wives. Training boatmen was another thing to worry about.

  Tadaos proudly demonstrated his favorite bit of war booty, a huge leather-covered recurved Mongol bow that he claimed was better than the English longbow he’d lost when his old Muddling Through had been burned.

  We stopped at each of the major killing fields on the way, told the story of what had happened there, and watched Henryk being properly impressed by the huge squares of mounted human heads. The ants and carrion birds were still having royal banquets, feasting on flesh and eyeballs. An ugly sight, but better the Mongols should do that duty than us. Anyway, it wasn’t as though we had invited the bastards here.

  At the first such stop Henryk mentioned the big pile of Mongol weapons and equipment that was stacked there.

  “That stuff?” I said. “That’s what was left after we sorted through it. The best trophies were all taken to Three Walls to be divided out among the warriors as spoils. This pile will be taken back as scrap metal when we get around to it. If you or anybody here wants to pick through it, feel free. ”

  The duke’s pride wouldn’t let him touch it, but most of his men picked up a sword and a dagger or two. Our servants all did likewise. Even Sonya got to wearing a dagger on her loincloth for a few weeks until she decided that it was silly. I passed the word that if any of the returning peasants wanted any of it for their personal use, they should feel free. It’s not as though we were short of scrap iron. Weeks later, Baron Novacek, my sales manager, was angry about these gifts, and he sold much of what was left at a healthy profit.

  The next day Henryk and I were standing apart from the others on the top deck of the boat as we were approaching Sandomierz. Tadaos was taking us carefully past the wreckage of yet another Mongol bridge.

  “Henryk, when were you planning on having your coronation?”

  “I am not sure, Conrad. In a year or so, as soon as the Pope confirms it, I suppose.”

  “The Pope? What does he have to do with it?”

  “Well, everything! Poland is a papal state, after all.”

  “Poland is a papal state? You mean like all those little countries in Italy? I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

  “Well, as a mere baron, you have never had to pay Peter’s pence. It is no small tax, I assure you.”

  “But I still don’t understand. You mean to tell me that Poland is subordinate to Rome? When did that happen?” I asked.

  “Why, almost at the beginning, more than two hundred years ago. At the time it was a wise political move, since we were being invaded by the Germans and it gave us a certain moral force against them that we lacked up until then. Now it has become more of a tradition than anything else, although I reaffirmed our status with Rome a few years ago for much the same reasons that my ancestors had. It gives us moral support against the Germans. In theory, Poland is a member of the Holy Roman Empire as well, though neither my father nor I have ever paid taxes to Frederick II. I suppose that he could crown me as easily as the Pope, but talking Gregory IX into it will be an easier job. It is better politically as well, what with all the troubles that Frederick has been having. I would prefer to be associated with him as little as possible, even though I married one of his nieces. He has been excommunicated more than once, you know.”

  “I guess I don’t know. I’ve never paid much attention to world politics. ”

  “By our agreement, it is all more my worry than yours, Conrad. If you really want an education in it, talk to that wife of yours.”

  “Whether we ever talk again remains to be seen. I never thought that she’d react to our agreement the way she has. ”

  “And that is all more your worry than mine. But if I may make bold a suggestion about your domestic life, I would say that you should leave your wife at home, as I customarily do and as my father did before me. That way, when you do get back, you will be warmly welcomed, and when you are away, you will be unencumbered with emotional baggage that you do not need.”

  “I’m afraid that Francine will never make a contented housewife. She’d rather be a world power.”

  “Again, my friend, it is your problem, though it might solve itself once she has a child in her arms. It often has a calming effect on them. If that does not work, I remind you that the Church allows you to beat her so long as you do not use too big a stick.”

  “I don’t think that I could do that. The customs were a little different in my time. Back to this business of your coronation. Do you really think it’s wise to let the Pope, or any other power, for that matter, crown you? If he can make you a king, can’t he unmake you as well? And as to your paying this Peter’s pence-that’s in addition to the tithing you do, isn’t it? Well, Poland has just saved all of Christendom from the greatest danger that ever threatened it! It seems to me that our military services should be taken in place of that money. We saved France and the rest of the wealthy countries to the west from total destruction. Let them pay Rome’s
bills!”

  “Those are two very interesting suggestions, Conrad. I particularly like the idea of getting out from under the taxes. They would double on me, you know, since our agreement has you paying no taxes to me and someone would have to pay the Peter’s pence on the eastern duchies. I think I will do it! At the worst, Gregory will scream too loudly, and I might have to back down. But it is certainly worth a try.”

  “If you did get off that hook, you could afford to pay for the new legal system, couldn’t you?”

  “I suppose I could, but first let us see if it can be done.”

  “And what about my other suggestion? What if I were to crown you?” I said.

  “Now, that would require more thought, Conrad. Politically, it might be dangerous. Yet I must say I like the concept.”

  The boat had made the usual U-turn and was coming upstream to the landing at Sandomierz. Doing it any other way was just about impossible with a stem-wheeler.

  “Well, you think on it, Henryk. For now we just have time to visit the battlefields west of here if we are still to get to the palace for supper.”

  I went with Henryk and his three guards to the battlefield, since we were the only ones on Big People. Everybody else went directly to the palace.

  A city of round Mongol felt tents had sprung up on the old battlefield, housing not only the remaining sick and wounded and the troops attending them, but also the arms and property of the Christian knights who had fallen there. So far not much of it had been retrieved by the heirs of the dead.

  By accident, I came across the gold-plated armor that I had once given to my former liege lord, Count Lambert. Since I was his heir, I gave orders that the armor should be sent to my jeweler for repair and then on to Baron Vladimir. Vladimir had worn that armor as my best man at my wedding a half year ago, and it had fit him well. It seemed proper that he should have it now.