Lord Conrad’s Lady

by Leo Frankowski

  “I suppose that you were right in not taking him into what is, after all, a war zone. I’d like to see him someday. ”

  “Of course, my husband. You can see him at any time.”

  “And you. Will I be seeing you again? Will you be coming home, as most wives do?”

  “Yes, I’m sure I will, in time.”

  “In time. Well. When that time comes, be sure and let me know. There will always be a place for you.”

  “Thank you, my husband,” she said stiffly.

  “You must keep in closer touch, then.”

  “Yes, my husband.”

  I turned and left. She was as cold as a killing frost and just as unsympathetic. Whatever had happened to the warm, loving woman I had married? Just because I didn’t want to be a king, that didn’t mean that I no longer wanted to be a husband! Yet she was still a beautiful woman for all her stone-cold features and stone-rigid bearing. I felt the old urges despite the fact that I had brought my servants to the war.

  Days later I went to see Bishop Ignacy, and after confession I asked, as usual, about the Church’s inquisition concerning me.

  “Oh, I’m afraid that there won’t be anything happening on that for some time, Conrad. You see, the College of Cardinals is deadlocked on the selection of the next Pope, and nothing much will happen until such time as they resolve their differences. It could be quite a while from what I hear.”

  “So the whole Catholic Church stops until they get around to doing something, Father?”

  “Not in the least! People are being christened and married and buried. Souls are still being saved. The only difference is that nothing new will happen. No high offices will be filled, and no changes will take place until we have a new pontiff. You know, I’ve never understood your anxiety to get this matter of your inquisition finished, Conrad. After all, if they decide that you are an instrument of God and a saint, well, you cannot be canonized until after your death, anyway, so why hurry? And in the unlikely event that they decide that you are an instrument of the devil and should be burned at the stake, why, isn’t it better to put off that unhappy event as long as possible? Surely there is nothing of the suicide about you!”

  “I’d just Re to have the thing settled, to not have it hanging over my head, Father.”

  “Very little in this life is ever settled, my son. It’s like that story you once told me about the little people. ‘The road goes ever on.’ One can only live life. Soon enough God will decide it is time for it to be ‘settled.’ ”

  “I suppose so, Father. To change the subject, have you been to see the Crossmen?”

  “No, but many other churchmen have. After all, you have vowed to kill them all, and you have a reputation for carrying out your vows with a vengeance.”

  “Oh, they’ll all die, all right, as soon as Henryk has milked all he can out of this conference.”

  “It is remarkable how well you two dukes are getting along, how well your abilities complement each other.”

  “He takes care of the law and the politics, and I handle the army and the factories. Neither one of us wants the other’s job. It’s a good partnership, Father, and I think the world will profit by it. But back to the Crossmen. I’m going to kill them, so don’t try again to talk me out of it. You already know my reasons, and I’ve heard all of your objections. But I don’t want any innocent bystanders killed with them. I still have nightmares about the Polish slave girls that we killed when we raided the Mongol camp at night, or even worse, the Polish peasants we slaughtered when they were forced to work those Mongol catapults. I want to know that there is no one in Turon except members of the Teutonic Order.”

  “But surely they have had plenty of time to get out.”

  “Well, maybe they can’t get out, or maybe they think the Crossmen will win, or maybe they think this will be an ordinary battle where plenty of people survive. You’ve seen those big guns I’ve had made. Do you think that one of those half-ton balls will stop and see what uniform they’re wearing before it smashes everyone before it?”

  “If you wish, I will visit Turon and examine it. Mind you, I won’t do any spying for you. We’ve talked over my opposition to this war often enough. But I will do what I can to prevent injury to the innocent.”

  “Good, Father, because I want you to convey an offer to the Crossmen for me. I will pay them one thousand pence in army currency, silver or gold, as they desire, for every noncombatant that comes out of the city on the day before the battle. I’ll pay an additional one hundred pence to each person as they leave. I’ll even pay the Crossmen one hundred pence for every domestic animal, as well, and guarantee that all these people and beasts will be fed and housed well at my own expense until the issue is settled. If you wish, I will pay the Church for their upkeep, and you can see to it that it is properly done.”

  “That is a generous offer, Conrad.”

  “I’m just trying to save my soul, Father. Those siege cannons aren’t the most deadly weapons that I have. Anyway, I’ll be getting most of it back as booty once I win the battle. ”

  “Very well, Conrad, I’ll see what I can do, and I’ll get the archbishop involved in this as well. However, I notice that you are again calling your weapons of war ‘canons.’ A canon is a law of the Church, and while your strange use of the term was funny at first, the joke has gone stale. I want you to stop it. ”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “On another matter, you have not been living with your wife. This is not good. You were joined together by God, after all.”

  “Father, she is still angry because I did not make her the Queen of Poland. I didn’t do that and I won’t do that, because I don’t want to be the king. Henryk is far better qualified than I am, and anybody sane can see it! I’ve asked her to come back and told her that there will always be a place for her. What more can I do?”

  “You could be a bit more vigorous in your invitation, my son. ”

  “You’re saying that I should use force?”

  “The Church allows it, within reason.”

  “The Church allows it, but God doesn’t demand it! I’m not going to beat her or shackle her to the kitchen stove. Good men didn’t do that sort of thing in my time.”

  “Well, think on it, my son. Meanwhile, I shall see what can be done with the Teutonic Knights.”

  The bishop returned to me the next day with word that the Crossmen had accepted my offer and he had worked out with them a system where there wouldn’t be much cheating. They also offered me their war-horses on the same terms at a thousand pence a head, with the understanding that they could get them back at any time by repaying the money should the battle prove to be protracted. I went along with that. There was no point killing dumb animals, I’d be getting the money back, and we could probably train most of those chargers to pull railroad cars. From the Crossmen’s point of view, the Church would be taking care of their horses at my expense until they were needed, but let them have their dreams.

  The time was dragging slowly, and the troops were getting antsy. Finally, I talked to my partner about it.

  “Henryk, I don’t want to rush you, but it’s been more than three weeks now. Do you realize that I am paying the salaries of over fifty thousand men while many of them sit idle every day?”

  “Yes, Conrad, and I well know how you hate waste. But this is not time wasted. Prince Swientopelk is starting to come around. The Baltic seacoast could be ours! What would you think of having not one but two seaports, one at the mouth of the Vistula and one at the Odra?”

  “It would be fine, and I’ve often dreamed of building oceangoing steamships. We could buy and sell abroad, explore the world, and spread the faith. We could even find coffee and rubber! But we could not start doing it for years yet. We have commitments that will take us years to fulfill. We are too overextended now to even consider further expansion at this time. You know that.”

  “But the iron is hot now, Conrad, and it might grow cold in five years. We need not p
romise to do much until then. Just some little show of support might be enough. Your reputation alone could do it. Have I ever told you that putting those Mongol heads up on pikes was a stroke of genius?”

  “Not in so many words, and thank you. But what can I tell my men? When can we start the battle?”

  “A week, Conrad. Can you give me another week?”

  “A week. Very well, I’ll hold them back until then. But a week from this morning I’m opening fire!”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The next week was simultaneously hectic and boring. A few dozen people tried to put their mark on history by playing the peacemaker. They ran back and forth between me and the Crossmen and Henryk, carrying absurd peace offers. None of us took these fools seriously, but none of us wished to appear to be unreasonable warmongers, either. My best offer to them was that if the Crossmen would go back to the Holy Land, where they’d started from, and never come back, I’d call the whole thing off, let them march out with their weapons and treasure, and let them all live, besides. Their best offer to me was less polite.

  Bishop Ignacy did a good job getting the noncombatants out of Turon. There were over 500 of them, servants, stable boys, and prostitutes, mostly. He also got us 1,900 horses, all of them in very good shape. It turned out that the Crossmen had sent most of their chargers away before we got there and had kept only the best, because of a lack of hay to feed all of them during a protracted siege. There were a remarkable number of dogs, cats, and caged birds that I paid for, but I drew the line at “pet” rats and mice. They figured that it had been worth a try.

  At just before noon on the scheduled day we opened up on them with our swivel guns, shooting just enough to teach them to keep under cover. Half our guns were available for targets of opportunity, but each one of the other half had its own assigned target: a window, a doorway, a space between two merlons on the wall. They were bore-sighted and packed between sandbags, and in the course of the day, by trial and error, they got their targets down pat. This was to teach the Crossmen the art of not being seen. All through the next night the sandbagged guns fired occasionally at random, teaching the same lesson at night: Stay down! The few slit windows in the outer walls were soon plugged up tight with timbers by the defenders, nicely sealing the entire structure, which was the purpose of the exercise. This stopped the bullets, because this year we were firing cartridges with far less gunpowder than last year’s. Six inches of pine could stop our rounds cold. I didn’t want to put holes in anything. Quite the opposite.

  The random firing continued the next day, except when the gunners actually had a target, an increasingly rare event. Around noon we took a few trial shots with the mortars, using dummy rounds loaded with sand. They did very little damage, but they let us know that our aim was good enough. Small-arms fire continued into the second night, and I was sure that by then the garrison was very low on sleep. An hour before midnight the small-arms fire slackened off.

  It was a sultry night and almost completely calm. It would work tonight if it was going to work at all. I had the smallarms fire stop completely and allowed the Crossmen a quarter hour to get to sleep.

  Then we opened up with the mortars, firing as fast as their crews could load them, one round a minute each. This continued for only twelve minutes and then stopped. They were out of ammunition, which relieved me. Having that stuff sit around for weeks in the sun and in public made me nervous.

  The mortar rounds were a yard in diameter and two yards high. They were made of a thin iron shell with a blown-in glass lining. When the shell struck, the glass broke and the pressurized liquid chlorine inside was released. If the lining broke in the course of being fired, it didn’t matter, for the metal shell kept it together long enough to-get the poison into the sleeping city.

  The delegates were encouraged to watch the shelling, and when it was over, I told them that I thought that we had just won the battle. When they asked me how that was possible, I told them that wars were ugly things and it was best to get them over as soon as possible. Then I suggested that they all go to sleep. Nothing else should happen until morning.

  The army troops couldn’t sleep, however. At first they stood to their guns with slow flares lit in front of them in case the Crossmen came pouring out of the city. Then they were all standing on top of their war carts in case something far more deadly than enemy troops came pouring out. More of the deadly gas might have leaked out than I had calculated. Chlorine is heavy stuff, almost three times heavier than air. I figured that it should fill the city up to the top of the walls, like soup in a bowl, and hug the ground until it was absorbed by the dew.

  The warriors heard a few shouts and screams from the Crossmen, but soon the city was quiet. They had a boring night, but I hadn’t told them to come.

  I was still across the river, safe from the chlorine. I went back to my big railroad car to sleep. At the doorway of my car a foreign knight waited, standing in the yellow torchlight.

  He was dressed in old-fashioned chain mail, though it looked to be washed with gold. There was quite a bit of solid gold on his outfit as well. And there was something very familiar about the man.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked.

  “I think it is time that we had a talk,” he said in Polish but with a strong American English accent!

  He was identical to the man I had seen killed on the battlefield a year ago, except he had all his hair. He had to be somehow connected to the time machine that had brought me here over ten years earlier.

  “Yes,” I said. “I would like that. Won’t you come in?”

  “Thank you,” he said, entering and nodding to my servants. “Perhaps it would be best if you dismissed your people. ”

  “Very well.” I motioned them all out, and they obeyed.

  “Good. I think here would be best.” He went to my stand-up clothes closet, opened the door, and walked through. The closet was standing along the wall of the car, and there was nothing on the other side of it. In fact, I had just walked past that wall, and I knew that nothing had been set up on the other side of it. Yet when I looked into the closet, there was a modem living room in there! It had wall-to-wall carpeting, electric lights, and comfortable looking leather furniture. There was even a cheerful fire going in a fieldstone fireplace. This was impossible!

  I went to the side of the closet, moved it away from the wall, and looked behind it. The back of the closet was solid, and the railroad car didn’t have a hole in it. Yet from the front, you could see ten yards into it!

  But I wanted to get some answers out of this man, and I dared not turn coward now. I took a deep breath and stepped in. The door closed behind me with a solid click.

  “Have a seat, cousin,” he said in English. “Surely you recognize me. I’m your rich American relative, Tom Kolczykrenski. I put you through college, remember?”

  I sat. “Yes, I remember now, but what are you doing here? And what is here doing here?” I said in my rusty English.

  “This room, you mean? Well, you must understand that when you control time, you control space as well. They’re really all part of the same thing, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “Then you will soon,” he said. A very beautiful young woman came into the room completely naked, carrying a tray with drinks on it. “Have a martini. I’ll bet it’s been years since you had an olive.”

  “Thank you.” For ten years a thousand questions had been racking my brain, but at the moment I couldn’t think of a single one. “What can I do for you, Tom?”

  “Well, it’s not what you can do for me but what I can do for you that matters here. You see, in a way it’s partly my fault that you were dumped into this barbaric century, and now finally I can do something about it.”

  The girl left the room, and my eyes followed her.

  “Yes, Conrad, my tastes are pretty much like your own. But she’s not what we should be talking about. Do you want to ask questions, or should I just tell you abo
ut what happened?”

  “How about if you talk, and I’ll ask questions as they come up.”

  “Good enough. More years ago than I like to think about, working with two partners, I invented a time machine. That’s how we got rich in the first place, you know, playing the stock market with next week’s Wall Street Journal in our hands. After a while, subjectively, we all grew up a bit, and we each started working on our own projects. I spent my time building a fine, rational civilization in the distant past, where it wouldn’t upset our present at all, and Jim did something similar, but with a different slant on things, being a psychologist.”

  “But Ian’s main interest was history, and he runs something called the Historical Corps, which is writing the definitive history of mankind. The Red Gate Inn that you got drunk in so many years ago was one of Ian’s installations.”

  “He usually places inns over his time transporters, since strangers aren’t much noticed around one. It was some of his people that screwed up, with your drunken help. Instead of finding the rest room, you managed to go down one flight of steps too many and fell asleep in a time transporter. You went through a series of open doors that never should have been open, and even if they had been, the site director should have noticed it on his readouts. But screwups happen, and nobody noticed you at all. More snafu happened at the thirteenth-century end of the line, and you weren’t seen sneaking out of the inn.”

  “What happened to the people who screwed up and sent me here?”

  “Oh, they were punished, never fear. Punished more than they deserved, actually. We seem to have lost them a few million years ago in Africa. The search goes on, though. ”

  “So it was all an accident? But if you have time travel, why couldn’t you go back to the time I came out of the inn and put me back into the time machine?”

  “Because of causality. You were not noticed until I went to observe the Polish defeat at the Battle of Chmielnick. I didn’t see you until you had been in this century for almost ten years! I saw you with what was, for this time, advanced technology. That was a fact, and you can’t change established facts, or so we thought at the time, anyway.”