The Mongols made Hitler look like a piker, and Stalin look like small change.
Zoltan had been master alchemist of the city, and his family had been spared so that the Mongols might have something to threaten him with. This was also the case of the others in his small group.
The young women were taken off separately and never seen again. Zoltan's group was led off in the direction of Karakorum, the Mongol capital, with a guard of twenty men.
The prisoners were forced to cook for the guards, and Zoltan Was as knowledgeable of vegetation as he was of minerals. He concocted a poison from the roots of certain desert plants, and slipping it into their food, used it to kill all the guards.
He then led his people west, and for seven years they had wandered in search of a home, constantly thrown out of Christian lands because they were Moslems, thrown out of Moslem lands because they were considered heretics and deathly afraid of going near the lands of the Khan.
Once there had been over five hundred of them, but four out of five had been lost along the way. A hundred were all that were left from a city of half a million.
It was a pitiful story, and I felt sorry for these people. But dam it, I had problems of my own! I had to make sure that what happened to Urgench didn't happen to Cracow! To do that, I needed the continued support of the Church, of the state, and of my own people. Having this crowd of refugees around wasn't going to help.
They were Moslems, of a sort, but as best as I could tell, they were all members of some heretical sect. Or at least Zoltan said that all the other Moslems were heretics, so I guess it amounted to the same thing. That was the last thing that I needed. Members of small religious sects tend to be fanatics eagerly searching for converts. The Church was already conducting an inquisition concerning me, and if they found out that I was harboring and encouraging Moslems, and heretical Moslems at that, it could go bad for me. And if the refugees started making converts out of good Christians — well, I didn't want to think about it.
I got very firm on the point that his people were not to try to talk my people into joining his Church, or whatever one does to become a heretical Moslem.
He said that this was not a problem, and went into a long theological argument which I could not follow but that apparently proved to his satisfaction that we could never qualify to join his sect, and therefore no attempt would be made to save us.
This ticked me off even more! Where the hell did he get off telling me that I wasn't good enough to join his damned sect? I was good enough to join anything, not that I'd wanted to. By that point, it was pretty late, and I felt it best to call it a night. Much longer and I would have decked the bastard, and that's not how you're supposed to treat a guest.
I spent the next morning catching up on things. Come spring, I planned to build a second housing unit (or defensive wall, depending on how you wanted to look at it), a dozen yards outside our first one. The new one would be made of brick, with a tile roof. Also, I planned a sawmill and cabinetry shop to be built outside the town proper, down where a small stream would make it easier to transport logs. Our valley was as logged over as it was going to be, the trees left being kept for decoration. Hauling huge logs uphill to our existing sawmill was silly.
And there were the hundreds of trivial things that have to be done when you play manager.
It was midafternoon before I could get back to Zoltan, but I was resolved to throw him and his people out at the end of the week. I felt sorry for them, but there was to big a cultural difference between us for it to ever work out. We absorbed a group of Pruthenians last year without much difficulty, but those were children whose families had been murdered by the Knights of the Cross. They'd needed new families pretty badly, and were fairly malleable. These Moslems, or whatever they were, were a tightly knit community. Such a group can maintain its culture indefinitely. They had to go.
I know that sounds cruel, but they were cruel times. There was a limit to what I could do, and if I took responsibility for this band of a hundred foreigners, it meant that there were a hundred Poles somewhere who could otherwise have been helped, but weren't. My own people were dying every winter, and I owed more to them than I did to someone from a country I'd never heard of before.
But while they were around, and I was footing the bill, I wanted to pick Zoltan's brain for everything I could concerning practical chemistry. This proved difficult. Part of the problem was the lack of a mutual vocabulary. Zoltan learned the Polish word for "door" when Natasha pointed at the door and said "door." A bit of discussion might be needed to make sure she wasn't talking about the door knob or the door frame, but it didn't take much time. But how the hell do you get across the concept of potassium nitrate? I couldn't say that it was the major constituent of gunpowder. He didn't know what gunpowder was. It's a white crystal? So are table salt, sand, and a million other things!
I tried to start with the simplest atom, hydrogen. After an hour talking about atoms, Zoltan allowed that he had read an old Greek text about atoms, but was sure that the concept was silly. It didn't fit into his system of moist substances as opposed to dry substances, hot versus cold, and the whole earth, air, water, and fire cosmos that he not only believed in, but that he unshakably knew was true. A thousand times he had used the theories he had been taught by his master and had gotten good results. How could anyone doubt it?
It was late when we finally called it a day with little progress made. The next four days were about as bad, although Zoltan's Polish was improving astoundingly.
The truth was that I bad a good background in theoretical chemistry, with little practical knowledge. Oh, I'd had the usual college lab courses, but they all involved taking prepackaged chemicals and mixing them according to a formula. For all the practical knowledge I gained, I might as well have been in a home economics class. It was worse than cookbooking. I hadn't the faintest idea of how most chemicals appeared in nature. A housewife at least knows what a chicken looks like!
And Zoltan knew quite a bit about practical chemistry. He had jars of hydrochloric, sulfuric, and nitric acid with him. He proved it by dissolving a bit of gold. He was also convinced that he could transmute lead into gold, once he got good enough at it. He just hadn't found the right procedure yet.
We had no common ground between us.
And my people didn't get along with his. There had already been two knockdown fistfights. and another incident where knives had been drawn before the men involved were pulled apart. And it wasn't all a matter of the rich settlers molesting the poor refugees. That damn raghead had no business grabbing a married woman, even if she did walk into the shower room naked at the wrong time of the day!
If this went on, somebody was going to get killed.
On the morning before their scheduled departure, Zoltan approached me with the idea of his people feasting some of mine. His Moslems would cook the food and provide the entertainment for, say, forty of my best men. It seems that among his people, a proper feast was for the men only. Women and children ate later from the table scraps.
Well, okay. It was my food they would be serving, but I could see where it was intended to be a goodwill gesture. If there was to be entertainment, fine. Aside from rare bands of minstrels and clowns, in the Middle Ages, entertainment was what you did on your own. Variety would be welcome. I said we would hold it that evening in the living room of my apartment.
Chapter Eleven
FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI
When I returned to Three Walls, I found strange things there. A band of foreigners had been invited temporarily within, and a notice had been posted restricting the baths to them during certain hours of the day.
I discussed this with Yawalda, whose friendship I had been cultivating in part because of her friendship with my love Krystyana. Also, she is in charge of the stables, and takes very good care of my horse. It seemed that the men all wrapped their heads in towels, and were embarrassed if any saw them without such strange garb. The women always
kept their faces covered, even around other women. They had been invited in because Sir Conrad had taken pity on them, but they would soon be forced to leave.
But Yawalda had another far more interesting piece-of news, and she swore me to secrecy before she would talk of it. They weren't sure yet, but it looked as if Krystyana was with child!
Sir Conrad's ladies had long been using a method of preventing this taught them by Lady Richeza and known as the rhythm method. Yet it appears that not all of God's children have this rhythm, for Krystyana had missed her time. This excited me, for now she would have to be married or be called strumpet! If Sir Conrad would not have her, and he had often said that he would not, then perhaps at last my suit would be considered! I might yet win out and marry my love!
I was thus in a wild mood when word came to me that I was invited to Sir Conrad's apartment in an hour's time for an evening's entertainment! But my first hopes were soon shattered, as it was to be given by the foreigners and was to be a men-only affair.
I came dressed in my best, which was quite good now that I could afford such things, and of course I wore the beautiful sword and dagger I had won in combating the Castilians.
I soon found myself sitting uncomfortably on a cushion, with Sir Conrad to my right and Ilya to my left in Sir Conrad's great hall, or living room, as he insists on calling it. This large room takes up the entire top floor of the place, is fully eighteen yards to the side and is above any other room in the whole building, the floor being higher than the adjacent rooftops.
The ceiling is more than twice that which is usual at Three Walls, which is tall in itself. There are no velvets or tapestries hanging, yet the room has a certain rude splendor to it. I know for a fact that Sir Conrad had originally planned something far more modest, for I was there when Sir Vladimir insisted that it was occasionally necessary to impress a noble guest and Sir Conrad went along with him.
The west wall is done in rude limestone blocks, and those of the north and south are in rough timber, the slabs of wood each a yard wide. The ceiling is supported by other huge logs and the east wall is the raw natural face of a limestone cliff. Into this solid rock is cut a fireplace big enough for twenty men to stand, had the fire been out. Now it was roaring high. Yet for all its roughness, the hall had a certain vibrant strength about it that suited Sir Conrad's character.
Three foreigners were playing musical instruments that I recognized as coming from our own band, but their manner of playing was extremely odd. They were far out of tune, and the music had a strange sliding quality that I disliked at first, but eventually started to enjoy.
The leader of the foreigners, their zoltan, introduced each of his men to Sir Conrad and the rest of us. Their names were all so strange to me that I could not remember a single one of them, but he gave their titles in Polish as well. This one was a master tanner and that was a master goldsmith. There were swordsmiths, pottery-makers, armorers, jewelers, leatherworkers, astrologers, bootmakers, glassblowers, and dozens of other trades mentioned, as well as some that had no word for them in Polish. And all of these men claimed to be masters of their crafts, which I took with a bit of mustard, as the saying goes. If I was in a strange land, I might claim to be a master as well, for who could catch me at it?
Sir Conrad followed suit, introducing all of his men present. Since I was by his side, he introduced me first, and the zoltan translated this into whatever language they spoke. I felt obliged to stand, as one would at a Christian banquet, but in so doing I nearly fell over. After sitting in such an unnatural position, all sensation had left my legs!
Sir Conrad said that the rest should remain seated, and continued around to Sir Vladimir, who should by rights have been first, being the only other nobleman present, but Sir Conrad often puts the last first and vice versa. Myself, I think it part of his philosophy.
Food was served after the introductions were finished, with men doing the serving rather than women, and while I knew that all of it had come from our larders here at Three Walls, much about it was strange. There were noodles that were as tiny as grains of wheat, and a sauce on the mutton that was like nothing I had ever tasted before. I thought that it might have been some foreign spicing, yet Yawalda had said that these people had come to us with absolutely nothing but the rags on their bodies. It remains a mystery to me.
We ate with brass spoons and the forks that Sir Conrad had shown us the use of, but the foreigners, being of course uncivilized, ate with their hands, and only with their right hands, I noticed. I heard later that this was because they wiped their privy parts with their left hands, not having learned the use-of hay balls, or apparently, wash stands.
The zoltan stood and made a speech in his barely understandable Polish. He said that he was thankful for our generosity to his people, and thanked Sir Conrad publicly for the food and clothing he had given so freely. Our lord would be remembered in their prayers, even if we did call God by a different name than they did.
Sir Conrad made a speech in return, but I thought he wasn't very sincere about it. He said that he regretted the necessity of their departure, but that each might take with him as much food as he could carry, and there would be a parting gift of a hundred sheep, which he asked that they not slaughter until they had left Count Lambert's lands, because of that lord's laws regarding ewes.
The zoltan then announced that as part of the entertainment, his daughter would dance for us.
The music was stately at first, or as stately as that slippery foreign stuff ever gets.
A woman came up the steps wearing one of the huge garments favored by these people. Word was they dressed that way to cheat Sir Conrad out of more cloth, for I'm sure that clothing them took six times what he had expected. She was covered from head to foot, — and even her face was heavily veiled.
After a time, the music became quicker, and she threw off her face veil, revealing a lovely face and huge green eyes. She tossed the veil at Sir Conrad's feet, for he like the rest of us had stretched out to relieve the cramps in his legs.
At my side, Ilya said, "I know that girl! Been talking with her for two weeks. Met her in the dining room."
"Why does she bother with you?" I asked.
"Because she's very discriminating! Also because I'm mature enough to talk without pawing her body every chance I get like a young buck would."
"How were you talking then? I thought that none of these people could speak Polish."
"That's mostly what we've been doing. Teaching her how to talk. I think there's a fellow from the night shift that's been helping her during the day."
"So the relationship has been purely platonic?"
"Naw, we didn't talk no philosophy. Just what words mean."
The tempo of the music increased again, and the speed of the dance with it. The girl took off her outer garment, revealing a more form-fitting one underneath. Her long black hair was flowing free.
"Not a bad body," Ilya said. "If I'd have known what was under that tent two weeks ago, maybe I would have done some pawing."
I nodded, but was too interested in the dance to speak.
Again the tempo quickened and again the dance became faster. Her blouse was thrown to Sir Conrad's feet, revealing a thing of straps that covered her breasts. She was a remarkable beauty, far more attractive than any that I have ever seen in my life, and I tour the Pink Dragon Inns monthly as part of my job. Those inns are reputed to have the most beautiful waitresses in the world!
Again it became faster, and she was stripped to the belly, wearing only a long thin skirt that had many slashes from hem to belt. Not an eye in the room was on anything else but this incredible apparition. At least I can't imagine that anyone was looking anyplace else, though I didn't waste the time to check! She was moving her hips in an incredibly rapid fashion that sent ripples down her skirt. I wouldn't have thought it possible for a woman to move so, yet there it was.
And again the music became impossibly faster, and somehow the dance quickened wit
h it. She was totally nude now, and there was not a hair on her body below the neck. Her privy parts were as smooth as a baby's.
"See how smooth she's shaven!" Ilya said. "These people must make some damn fine steel!"
I didn't bother even to nod, so entranced was I with her dance. Then suddenly the music stopped, and the girl was lying at Sir Conrad's feet, the sweat glistening on her body.
The room was silent for a moment, for we were all dumbstruck. Then the room erupted with applause that vibrated the walls and must have been heard halfway to Sir Miesko's. But the girl never moved.
The cheering went on for a long while, but finally the zoltan stood with his arms up and his palms out, and it became quiet.
"You like, yes?" he said.
Again there was great applause until it was stopped.
"And you, noble Sir Conrad. You like it also?"
"I liked it very much, Zoltan."
"This girl she is name Cilicia. She is my only daughter. She is my only family that is alive. But so great are your gifts to us, that we must give in return. I give her to you. She is your slave. Take her!"
Sir Conrad rocked unsteadily on his cushion. He paused before he said, "Zoltan, I thank you for this incredible intended generosity, but I can't accept a slave. Slavery is illegal in Poland. Last year I fought a battle to make it so!"
"Nonetheless, noble Sir Conrad, it is so. This is a most obedient woman, and always she has done what I say. Now I tell her obey only you, and she will obey me in that, though it be my last word to her."
"I'm sorry, but I may not break the law. I cannot accept a slave."
The zoltan came close to Sir Conrad, bent over and spoke privately. Since I was sitting at my lord's side, I think that I was the only other man to hear what was said.
"Please, Sir Conrad. We are now in the far north and winter is soon. We have no place to live and soon we will all be dead. I do not blame you for this. You have done us much good and you have no obligation to support a band of homeless wanderers. But you were our absolute last hope, and now we must die. But please, as a father I beg you. Let my little girl live."
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