So I stood there while they screamed gibberish at one another for a quarter of an hour. I envied the UN people with their headsets and their real-time translations, but Henryk seemed to be doing his best, and I didn’t want to break his stride.
Eventually he turned to me and said, “They don’t seem to have grasped the extent of what you have done with the Mongols. What say you have some of your people give a delegation of theirs the tour that you just gave me.”
“Fine, just so long as I don’t have to do it myself. Their stench is overpowering me!”
After another long babbling match, with more gutturals than could have been manufactured by three dogs fighting over a dead pig, Henryk said, “Good. They will have twenty men ready to go tomorrow.”
“Done,” I said, though that meant that we’d have to spend days hosing their stench out of one of our only three riverboats. “I presume that you will be escorting them, your grace.”
“I seem to be stuck with the task, your grace, being the only one handy who speaks German. Sovereignty is a demanding profession.”
“And one that you are welcome to,” I said.
That evening Henryk came to my quarters. “You know, Conrad, fighting the Crossmen is not going to be as straightforward as beating the Mongols. The Knights of the Cross are in theory a religious order, and they have papal sanction. Certain factions in the Church are not going to be pleased with us when we kill them. Then, too, Emperor Frederick Il has conferred on them an imperial charter, and he won’t love us either if our plans go well.”
“Are you saying that we should back off on them?” I asked.
“No. I think that we have to get rid of them or they will be a thorn in our side forever. But I think you should know that this is an issue where for the first time in a century, the Pope and the emperor will agree on something. We may well have a further war with the empire on our hands, as well as papal sanctions against us. I for one would not like to be excommunicated.”
“Nor would I. Well, then, I’d say that you have your work cut out for you. You must see what you can do about gaining support for our cause in the Church and in foreign courts. ”
“How right you are, Conrad. And you must see to it that not all of your forces face the east. The next war may come at us from the west! ”
The next morning they went away, the Crossmen and the king, and I was able to get another boat the next day, the RB47 Millennium Falcon. Later, as I was pulling into East Gate, I got a radio message from Henryk.
CONRAD. THE CROSSMEN ARE BOTH FRIGHTENED AND ADAMANT THAT THEY WILL NOT LEAVE. I ASSUME THAT YOU WERE SERIOUS ABOUT GIVING THEM ONE YEAR TO GET OUT, FOR THAT IS THE ULTIMATUM THAT I HAVE GIVEN THEM. HAVE I DONE RIGHT BY YOU?-HENRYK.
After thinking about it a bit, I had them send back:
HENRYK. FINE BY ME, BUT GIVE THEM UNTIL THE FIRST OF JUNE 1242. THAT WILL GIVE MY TROOPS TIME TO GET THE SPRING PLANTING IN. CONRAD.
Thus, I had a year before I had to worry about any more military or political nonsense, and I was eager to get back to some simple, sensible technical problems. At the time I didn’t think it would take much to throw out the Crossmen, not when I had an army that had kicked shit out of the Mongols! Of course, I screw up pretty often.
The Riverboat Assembly Building had been completed, and work was under way on the construction of four new steamboats. Two of our existing Vistula boats were doing patrol and transport duty, but the third had been fitted with a derrick and was engaged in salvaging what it could from the boats that had been lost in the war. Already, the engines, boilers, and all the major hardware needed for the boats under construction were on hand and being rebuilt, and more salvage was coming in every day. Plenty of seasoned lumber was available, and the boatwrights were sure that we could replace our war losses by late fall.
East Gate was now manned by a company of regulars, most of whom worked as boatwrights and the rest as mule skinners on the railroad.
My first inclination was to go straight to Three Walls and dive into some refreshing engineering work, but on reflection I realized that it was important that the folks at the other installations see me. Best to make as fast a tour as possible. I sent my entourage to my home by mule-drawn carriages while I went out ahead alone on Silver.
My first stop that morning was at Sir Miesko’s manor. His wife, Lady Richeza, had been instrumental in starting and running the school system, and when the war had come, she had invited all the lady teachers in eastern Poland to weather the Mongol advance behind the strong walls of the manor. Most of them were still there, since commercial transportation had only recently resumed operation.
She said that her husband was in Hungary, fighting the Mongols for King Bela, and that I would know better than she where her older sons were, since they were all members of my army. I assured her that her boys were all well, and she served me a nice dinner. During the meal, she and her fellow schoolteachers proudly told me every detail concerning how the Mongols had attacked the manor and about how the ladies had shot them all down with the swivel guns that Sir Miesko had provided in such abundance.
They got quite animated in the telling of the tale, pantomiming themselves in battle with a degree of showmanship surpassed only by Baron Vladimir when he was a young man! It is surprising how much bloodthirstiness lurks in the heart of the gentlest of schoolteachers. After dinner they proudly displayed the booty that they had taken, the sacks of gold and silver as well as saddles, arms, and bloodstained armor. They had decided to keep it and divide it up among themselves, since the school system was more than well enough funded. They even had the enemy heads up on pikes in the gruesome army fashion!
It was mid afternoon before I could bid these charming, learned, and remarkably brutal elderly ladies good-bye and ride to Okoitz.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Okoitz had been the seat and home of my liege lord, Count Lambert, and I had built him a magnificent castle there in return for six years of output from the cloth factory that I had designed for him. Lambert had been a libertine and cocksman par excellence, though in a very friendly sort of way, and the girls “manning” his factory were remarkably loving and giving. The biggest Pink Dragon Inn I owned was at Okoitz, having been enlarged three times over the years. You see, this was where the boys came to meet the girls working at the factory. And why were so many girls eager to get work at the cloth factory? Because this was where the boys were, obviously!
The castle had room for the hundred peasant families that farmed the land in the area and worked at a part-time sugar mill in the winter. There was also room for the six hundred attractive young ladies who worked at the cloth factory and the hundred-odd servants, cooks, and repairmen who did all the work needed to feed so many people and keep the place livable.
But all these people together occupied only half the living space at Okoitz. On certain occasions Count Lambert liked to invite all the nobility in the county over for a festival, and to make this possible, there was rather posh living space here for an additional thousand people.
The count was inordinately proud of his castle, but no sooner had it been completed and furnished than he had been killed and I had inherited the place.
The problem was, What to do with it?
I toured the town, starting with the factory, looking at it with new eyes. The machinery was mostly of wood and at least eight years old. I had been pretty proud of it when I had first designed the place, but now, compared with my other installations, it was behind the times. Everything was very labor-intensive, and for a good reason. Every time I had suggested some improvement to Count Lambert, he had always found reasons why it should not be done. The truth was that he didn’t give a damn about efficiency, but rather he looked at every job eliminated as one less girl he had in his fabulous harem! Eventually I had stopped trying to sell him on improvements altogether. The factory was far superior to its competition, anyway, even though there were a dozen similar operations going now in Poland alone, owned and o
perated by men Lambert had proudly shown through his factory.
But now, while I certainly didn’t plan any reductions in the work force, there was always the need for more production, and the local herds had increased such that during the last two years the county had actually been selling raw wool to outside buyers. New factories were definitely in order—two new factories, one for linen cloth and one for wool. The old one was made of wood and lacked proper foundations, anyway. It was showing signs of rot.
Okoitz was built above the huge Upper Silesian coalfield, one of the biggest in the world, and there was already a working mine on the property. Steam-powered factories were obviously the way to go.
Of course, developing the new machinery would have to be done here, where the problems involved with working with fibers could confront the designers directly. Designing at a distance, as the Russians usually do things, is inefficient and can lead to disaster. This meant that we would have to build a machine shop here first. Not a production shop, but a research and development shop.
So why not move the entire R&D section from Three-Walls to Okoitz? Three Walls was getting overcrowded, and we were starting to run out of building space there.
R&D was probably the easiest group to move, and it would give us something to do with all the extra space we had in the castle. My own household was outgrowing my old apartment at Three Walls, since everybody seemed to be sprouting body servants, and Count Lambert’s vast apartment might suit me very nicely. Yes.
All this was going on in my subconscious mind as I toured the factory. My conscious mind was mostly on the hundreds of sexy young ladies who were working the machines. They were all flirtatious and tended to wear as little as the temperature permitted. Another good reason for moving R&D here was that the apprentices who made up two-thirds of the teams would surely appreciate the scenery hereabouts. I certainly did!
Mulling through my thoughts, I tried to have supper quietly in the big cafeteria, but the manager of the factory, a Florentine named Angelo Muskarini, insisted that I give a speech to those present. There was nothing for it but to oblige him.
“Thank you,” I said when the girls and farmers had quit screaming at me. “As you doubtless all know, the war is over, and the good guys have won!” This brought on more cheers. When they died down, I continued. “The important fact for all of you ladies to know is that except in the river battalion, our losses were small, and that if your favorite young man has not gotten back yet, he will likely be coming here soon.” More cheers and bouncing up and down.
“I suppose that you have all heard that my liege lord, the noble Count Lambert Piast, died honorably in the defense of his country. You also know that I was named his heir. I simply want to say that I intend to make very few changes around here, and those will all be for the better. We will be expanding our cloth-making operations, since for the last two years our shepherds have actually been selling raw, unprocessed wool to foreigners, to be spun and woven in foreign lands instead of here. To counter this trend, we will be hiring more workers and making better, more efficient machinery for you to work at. This will mean putting a new group of intelligent young men to work here to design and build the new equipment, but I expect that you fine ladies can keep these poor lads from getting too lonely!” Again, more cheers.
“Perhaps, if you make them welcome enough, we’ll move all of our research groups here. Well, we’ll see. There is one other major change that I would like to make, however. Up until now you fine ladies have been working for cloth, not money. That is to say, you have been working on a barter system. What would you think about being paid in money instead? Then you could buy cloth, at special prices, if you wanted to, but you could also buy anything else you wanted as well.” The reaction was mixed. Some cheered but they were probably doing that out of habit. Most didn’t do anything, since this was a new thought for them.
“Well, you think about it, and we’ll talk it over again when I return in a few weeks. You might want to elect four or five representatives to negotiate for you. Also, what would you farmers think about my dividing Lambert’s farmland up among you, thus having your own land doubled, paying taxes or a fee on it to pay for what you and your families eat here in the cafeteria and then selling your crops to the kitchens here for money? I’m not saying that we have to do it this way, but I want you to think about it. That’s about it. I want to finish my dinner now, even if it has gotten cold. I’ll be back in a few weeks.”
Of course, a lot of the girls had all sorts of questions and they had no qualms about shoving the peasants aside and putting their scantily clad young bodies out in front. After a while I tried to get away and pleaded fatigue, but four of them sort of invited themselves to talk further with me in Lambert’s old chambers. They were all pretty. A plain girl wouldn’t have dared to be that pushy, fearing rejection.
There is a limit to how many times a man can say no, and I passed it. I was bleary-eyed the next morning and told myself that I was getting too old for this sort of thing.
I met Muskarini for breakfast and told him about the rest of my planned changes. Lambert had been running the entire factory on a barter system. Wool and flax were provided by his vassals, and like the workers, they received a portion of the finished cloth in return . The problem was that wool comes in various grades, of different values. The long wool from the sides of the animal is far more valuable than are the short hairs that grow on the legs. And some sheep grow much finer wool than others do. The workers had various skill levels in different crafts, and we produced hundreds of grades and types of cloth, again worth all different amounts. The accounting required by all of this was so ridiculously complicated that I doubt if anybody really knew what was going on.
There was a very good reason why Lambert had done things in this strange way. By the terms of his separation with his wife, he had to send her one-half of all the money that he took in. Not half of his net income but half of the cash that he grossed. When he had made this agreement, it had been reasonable enough, since most of what little money Lambert got he received from selling his surplus agricultural products, what was left over after he and his peasants had eaten most of it. His old castle had been built for him by his people out of local materials. His smiths made many of the things that he needed. Cash money was just something with which to buy occasional luxury goods from the merchants, not something that was needed for life itself. Also, Lambert’s wife had very extensive estates of her own in Hungary to support herself with, so she wasn’t hurting.
But all this changed when I built him a productive factory. He could hardly pay her one-half of the gross cash worth of the products of his factory, since the cost of materials and labor was well over half the sale price. Running the clothworks with a conventional accounting system would have put him quickly out of business. Indeed, for several months, until he came up with the barter solution to his problem, he was very difficult to work with!
I was under no such liability, and I wanted to know what was happening financially, so I ordered the factory changed over to a sensible money system. We would buy our wool and flax with money, pay the workers with money, and sell all our output for money. Well, we’d offer special discounts to our workers and vendors to keep them happy, but it would now be an accountable system.
Muskarini was not at all pleased with my changes and came up with all sorts of ridiculous reasons why we couldn’t convert to a cash system. This made me suspect that he had his hand in the till somehow. After two hours of arguing with the man, I told him that he would do it my way or I would send him back to the garret that I had found him in nine years before. That quieted him down some. On leaving him, I went to the inn and sent a message ordering a team of accountants and time-study men to descend on this place, ASAP!
I saddled Silver to get to my next stop, Eagle Nest, before lunch. The medieval world had no great collection of restaurants available to travelers, and you generally had to time your trips around the hours when food was
served at the manors and factories if you didn’t want to miss a lot of meals.
As I was leaving, one of the girls who had spent the night with me was waiting by the drawbridge. She smiled and reminded me that Eagle Nest was an all-male institution, and didn’t I really want some companionship tonight? I decided that if I didn’t give her a lift, she’d probably hitchhike there, putting herself into all sorts of danger. At least that was how I rationalized it to myself. I pulled her aboard and set her on the saddle bow. She was the prettiest of last night’s group, with incredibly soft skin for so slender a person and the longest legs I’ve seen this side of a Hollywood musical. Her name was Zenya.
I found that I rather liked having a girl sitting in front of me, where we could talk easily, as opposed to having her behind, riding apillion. I resolved to have a saddle made up with a more comfortable seat for a woman up front.
The boys at Eagle Nest were always enthusiastic, bustling about wherever they went, and their mood was infectious. They had eight planes flying now, and many more were being built. Their eagerbeaver attitude toward whatever they were doing was a joy to watch. It was such a pity that I was going to have to slam them down hard!
On being told that all the aircraft were brand-new, except for the engines, I said, “But there are the nine planes that were still intact after crash-landing on the battlefield at Sandomierz. They were sent here immediately after the battle. What happened to them?”
We asked around, but no one had any knowledge of them. They had received the thirteen engines that we had hauled back with the booty, but whole planes? No, sir!
What bothered me worse than losing the planes was the fact that each of those planes had been strapped to the top of a war cart that had been manned by a full platoon of warriors. Where were all those men?
Lord Conrad’s Lady Page 18
