by Eric Flint
Tuesday was when the townswomen did their laundry. Barnabas took each woman's bucket, filled it and received a token in return. Margarete sold the tokens while she took bathhouse entrance fees. A simple enough process but one which drove Barnabas crazy on those occasions when Margarete had been ill.
* * *
Katerine Paffenburg handed him her bucket. "How are you today, Barnabas?"
Barnabas placed it on the stand and opened the stopcock. "Not bad, not bad, Katerine. How's your husband? I hear he's back to working as a regular crewman on the river."
The sturdy woman gave Barnabas a grudging smile. "Yes. He's transporting coal downriver to Magdeburg. They need tons of it every day."
He gave a sour grunt. "Tons of coal and the prices of firewood are going up every time I buy. Too bad I can't . . ." He stopped, his mind racing faster than he could put together coherent speech. If Magdeburg was using tons of coal every day, then either the city was richer than Croesus or . . . coal was dirt cheap.
"Well, I for one wouldn't want to use coal at home," Katerine sniffed. "Willi brought home a sack of it last week and threw several chunks into our fireplace while I was out. Our entire house stank by the time I got home! I tell you, I gave him a piece of my mind!" Her red face was pinched in memory of her anger.
"Umm, I think I heard about that. Hadn't heard the details though." In this town, everyone knew almost everything about their neighbors, whether it happened outside or inside the walls of their home. Katerine was not known as a mild, submissive wife who had nothing but adoration for her husband. She'd given him much more than her opinion.
On this occasion, she chased Willi out of the house and down the street, screeching and hitting him with her broom every third or fourth step. Gossips of both sexes had a gleeful field day and last Saturday the bathhouse was filled with reports of the incident.
Barnabas gave Katerine an appreciative smile as he handed her the bucket of steaming water. "Well, now I'll know not to do that myself."
* * *
The day went smoothly. Barnabas only had to drain and replace the bath tank water once. The heating tank, on the other hand, had to be topped off frequently.
"What are you thinking about?" Margarete asked as they sat facing the fire after supper that evening. "You're normally complaining about your back or how slow Lucas and Peter refilled the reservoir."
He gave a sigh. "Like I told you, the price of firewood went up again. I think it will keep going up as long as they're building in Magdeburg."
"Well, I think Titus is overcharging. I've looked at the records and we've never, ever paid that much, except when Tilly's army was nearby, seizing all the available firewood for their own fires. Well, and during the middle of winter. But it's certainly not that now."
Barnabas shook his head. "Same or better price than the other woodsellers. I checked. What we need to do is change over to coal. I hear it burns hotter and is cheaper."
Margarete disagreed. "And it stinks. This bathhouse has been in my family for over a hundred years and we've always used wood. Besides, where would we get coal? Our customers would smell of coal fumes when they finished their baths. Surely you heard about Katerine and Willi the other day."
He rubbed his tired eyes. "Okay, you tell me. How much money did we make today, what with having to pay more for firewood?"
His wife's lips tightened into a pucker. "Not nearly enough."
"I'm going to Magdeburg to find out how to use coal to make hot water."
* * *
"Lignite," Willi, Katerine Paffenburg's husband, told him Monday morning, taking a rest from poling as the barge floated down the Elbe. "That's what we're hauling. Not the best kind of coal. That's anthracite. Almost as hard as rock and black as pitch. This isn't as hard and doesn't burn as hot, but for most purposes it's good enough. There are boats coming from elsewhere bringing anthracite to Magdeburg."
As soon as the boat docked in Magdeburg, the boatmen began shoveling coal as fast as they could onto the waiting carts. Barnabas jumped off and ran to talk to the first teamster whose cart was nearly full.
"Yeah, I'll take you to where I take this but you'd be better off to run over to the building over there. He pointed to a series of tall brick smokestacks belching a dark brown smoke.
"Heating water?" the foreman asked over the din of men shoveling coal into fiery openings behind him. "That's all we do here. See those fires? "Inside the firebox, just past the fire is a cluster of water-filled tubes. Water flows from a feed water tank through the tubes. Gets boiling hot and powers its machine through steam pressure."
"No, no, that's not what I meant," Barnabas broke in, uncomfortably aware that the boat would soon be empty and, as his fare, he had to help pole it back upriver. "I operate a bathhouse. How hard would it be to heat water using coal?"
"Easy as pie. Same operation, but you don't need to keep it under pressure. You'll have to be careful to fill the feed water tank before firing the furnace. That's number one. You'll probably want cast iron tubes for a more efficient transfer of heat. Never, never let them go dry with a fire under them. Number two, you'll want a smoke stack. Not as high as these because you're not going to do that much volume. But high enough to be taller than any chimney in town. That way the wind will blow the smoke away from town. Otherwise you're going to have a lot of unhappy neighbors. They won't like the smell of coal smoke, anyway, but that's the price you have to pay."
"Right. Thanks. I really have to leave. What's your name?"
"Krupp. Andreas Krupp. I'm from Essen but didn't want to be a gunsmith."
* * *
"Cast iron water tubes in the furnace and a tall chimney?" Margarete repeated. "That has to be expensive. Very expensive. We simply don't have the money."
"What if we got a loan?"
"Papa always said never to take out loans because it gives the lender power over you."
"Well, I guess we could raise the price of the baths and the water. Or did Papa Lutsch have something against that?"
His wife thought for a few moments. "No, not really. But we'd practically have to double our prices at a minimum. As it is, we charge two pfennigs per bucket. Add a third and you've increased the price by half again. We'd have the same problem with baths. I don't know what people would do but it wouldn't be nice. Probably riot." The corner of her mouth turned in a way that told him she really wasn't worried.
"Margarete, honey, wait. Could we increase the one and not the other?"
She shook her head and then reconsidered. "Bathing, yes, we could do that but not the hot water. Women would simply start a fire earlier in the day. Baths are a luxury, a social gathering and a necessity. No one wants to smell bad. Yes, we could raise that price."
"But that wouldn't solve our problem," Barnabas persisted. "The price of firewood is going up and up. So we'd have to keep raising our prices. Why not take out a loan and just pay that? It's bound to be cheaper to operate."
Margarete gave her head a quick, determined shake. "No. And that's the end of it. Interest rates are far too high. What would happen if we defaulted because of war or a plague? I'd lose the bathhouse, that's what would happen." Barnabas noted it was only she who would lose something.
"Here's an idea. If we said we were putting in a new, improved heating system, wouldn't they pay more for that?"
"Ha! How many years have you been living here? As long as the old system works, they'll stay with it."
"Okay, let's assume we raise the prices enough to cover the cost of the firewood. Everyone knows its price is going up anyway. How long can we continue to raise prices before people stop coming every Saturday and just wash off at home with water they've heated?"
His wife frowned. Then clenched her teeth. Then shook her head and sighed. "A little over a year. Maybe more. Even after construction is finished, Magdeburg's going to need a lot of firewood. The land where they'd been getting their firewood was cleared during the six months of its siege."
Barnabas' m
ind was made up. "I had hardly any time in Magdeburg before the boat was leaving. This time I'll stay overnight and take the boat back Friday."
* * *
"To put in a smokestack won't be cheap but you can get some of new brick at a much lower cost than ever before," Paul Detleff, the first journeyman mason Barnabas ran into, told him. "I know the master mason who owns the best kilns in the city. Caspar Maurer. It's not firebrick, but you only need that for the firebox. Which you'll have to rebuild because no way will a firebox built for wood will survive the high temperatures of coal. He can supply the firebrick as well."
In his small office at the mason's hall a short while later, Caspar Maurer gave Barnabas an intense look and then a wry smile. "All this for a small town bathhouse?"
"Yes, Herr Master Mason," replied Barnabas stiffly. "I like wood. I enjoy the smell of wood, but it's getting too expensive. My wife tells me—she keeps the books—that at the way prices are rising, despite owning the bathhouse, we'll be out of business in a year even if we raise our prices. The people just won't pay enough to cover the costs and give us a living. So we'll have to borrow money for the new furnace, boiler and the smokestack. But what choice do we have?"
Caspar had given him an inscrutable twist of the mouth when he mentioned that his wife kept the books. "I know of a bank that makes such loans for small businesses. Reasonable rates. Okay, let's assume you keep the same size bathing tank but replace your stone heating tank and firebox." He paused. "You might want to reconsider how many days you heat your water for bathing. Presuming you have some margin of profit each time. Helps pay off the loan faster. How many gallons does your current heating tank hold?" He scratched out a grid on a piece of paper.
* * *
"Master Maurer learned the Grantville advanced mathematics," Paul told him as they walked away with a preliminary estimate for the new construction. "He was already a master mason but taught himself more about using mathematics to determine, among other things, precisely how to draw the smoke from a fireplace all the time, not just most of the time. As you may appreciate, coal smoke is much better far up in the air than down where you're breathing.
"This coming winter the apprentice and journeymen masons here in Magdeburg will be attending classes on physics and mathematics and how to apply them to our work." The young man gave Barnabas a bright smile. "I plan to study as hard as I can so Master Maurer will hire me."
They arrived at another small office a few minutes later. The bell on the door rang as they entered and several heads lifted from the papers being worked on. "Is Catherine Menz around?"
A red-headed woman in her mid-twenties whose dimensions could only be called statuesque came out of a doorway a few moments later. "Did I hear my name called? Oh, hello, Paul."
"Fraulein Menz, this is Barnabas Kitchner. He and his wife own a small bathhouse in a town upriver. They want to upgrade their heating plant."
Catherine gave him a doubtful look and sighed. "No doubt Caspar wrote the estimate. Otherwise you wouldn't be here. Now run along and play. I'll talk with Herr Kitchner."
"Jawohl, former chairwoman Menz." Paul bowed deeply to Catherine's obvious exasperation. She made a comic half-hearted swing at the back of his head and he was gone.
"Paul only made journeyman this year," Catherine explained. Which didn't explain anything about the content of his remark. "Come. Sit and tell me about your operation."
Within minutes Barnabas found himself telling Catherine all about the bathhouse, his wife and his town. She was the pleasant kind of woman men liked chatting with. Not only was she willing to listen with genuine interest but she also kept asking him intelligent questions.
"How much do you know about the Committees of Correspondence, the CoCs?" she asked with a warm smile. When Barnabas shook his head, she went on. "They're primarily social and political organizations, set up to protect the rights of ordinary working people. Among other things, this one provides loans to small and start-up businesses."
Barnabas tried not to squirm in his chair. "I don't get into politics and I don't really want to join any organizations."
Catherine gave a charming smile that warmed the inside of his chest. "You don't have to. One of the founding directors of this bank made it more than clear that our real business was not to make loans but to make money. So we make loans to reliable people with small businesses. Based on what you've told me, you and your wife fit that category. Naturally there will be an appraisal and several documents you and your wife will have to sign, but right now I don't see a problem, especially with Caspar being in charge of the construction."
"The master mason, Fraulein Menz?"
"My future husband. Someday. After certain legal impediments have been removed. But yes."
Suddenly, and for the first time, Barnabas completely understood the term "covet" and why it was prohibited in the Ten Commandments.
* * *
"So tell me more about this red-headed hussy you met in Magdeburg," Margarete demanded after Barnabas returned from his two-day trip. He had not been able to remove his enthusiasm for Catherine from his report.
"Nothing much more to tell. That was the first and last time I saw her during my visit. Less than an hour. She's just . . . a really nice person who knows how to listen. When she wants," he added with haste. "I told her all about you and the town."
His wife gave him a baleful glare. "So I'm not a nice person who doesn't know how to listen?"
"No, not at all. You're my wife," he babbled, desperately trying to escape what he knew would be a disaster.
"So the only reason I'm acceptable is because I'm married to you? Is that it?" she raged, coming to her feet and hurling aside Caspar Maurer's estimate.
Barnabas had learned through years of frustration and bitter experience that the only way to survive when she was in this kind of a mood was to first say he was sorry, apologizing for anything he might have said. Second, to leave. There was a nice tavern not far away from where they lived. But he couldn't leave before she'd had her say.
* * *
"Being out of town the past two days, you couldn't have heard the big news." The tavern keeper grinned as he handed a mug of beer to Barnabas. "Ursula Futter, the burgermeister's widowed daughter, is going to get married again." He paused.
"Who's the poor ba . . . uh, lucky fellow?" Barnabas asked, taking a large swig.
"Augustin Ramminger." Beer sprayed from Barnabas' nose and mouth.
"You bastard!" Barnabas was both choking and laughing. "You timed that deliberately!"
Johann could hardly disagree, as hard as he was whooping with laughter.
Once he regained his composure, he said, "From what I heard today, they've been seeing one another regularly—in his office—for the past year or more. Yesterday her father and another man entered and caught them doing more than just kissing. Just what exactly they were doing depends on who you talk to. The marriage contract hasn't been written and the banns haven't been read, but it'll happen, sure as the sun rises in the east."
Barnabas was still chortling. Ursula Futter had certain less than desirable traits in common with Katerine Paffenburg. Dear Augustin. Oh, dear, dear Augustin, who after so many years of flirting with Margarete and others, was about to enter the dangerous world of matrimony. Dangerous to him, at any rate.
Barnabas took another deep swallow of beer and leaned forward over the bar. "I guess it's either marry her or leave town. When the burgermeister dies she'll have some inherited money and property to add to what she got from old Carl Wetter. She was his second wife and he had four children from his first. All she got was a widow's portion. But that's far more than Augustin would have if he left town."
Johann lifted his eyebrows and gave a sly smile. "Wasn't Augustin always flirting with your wife at the bathhouse? Wasn't he another suitor for her hand back in the day?"
Feeling all was right with the world, Barnabas responded with a broad grin. "Sure. But she and her father both knew that if he'd
married her, one of his first acts after Papa Lutsch died would be to try to sell the bathhouse. If there's one thing that she'll never do, it's sell the bathhouse. So flirting, yes, but I knew that's all it'd ever be," he lied. "It kept her feeling young and desirable, so why not?"
He finished his beer and put the mug on the bar. "I think I'll go home. Margarete will surely be in need of some deep consolation, losing Augustin so suddenly and in such a tragic fashion." No wonder she'd been so . . . testy this evening. He gave Johann a big evil grin. "Somehow I don't think he'll be allowed to flirt with her any more."
* * *
Barnabas stopped outside the door to their house and took a deep breath. Then lifted the latch. Margarete was waiting in her usual chair near the fire. "You heard, didn't you?" Her voice was dry and cold.
The corner of his mouth wrinkled. "It's a small town. News that exciting doesn't stay secret for more than a day." He brought his chair next to hers, where she sat with her hands together in her lap. He put his hand over hers. "How do you feel?"