It was early spring, and we left the next morning to go to Poland on foot, for my young husband was almost as poor as I was. We traveled all spring and summer across France, over the many Germanies, through Bohemia, and into Silesia, that westernmost of Polish duchies. We made the trip barefoot for lack of the price of shoes, and indeed we were often hungry, yet as I look back on it, we had a good time. We were young, we were in love, and we were traveling through a world that was forever new.
Yet our love was not physical in the carnal sense of the word. John did not seem to want to talk of it, and I decided that he did not want to burden us with a child until such time as he could properly support it. This made his actions seem pure and noble to me, and of course I did not press him further.
At length, in the fall, we got to the city of Wroclaw and reported to the bishop there at his palace. Compared to that of my grandfather, it was an inferior place, yet for two ragged and barefoot travelers, it seemed sumptuous indeed!
The Bishop of Wroclaw was a pompous old man, with a character far different from that of my beloved grandfather. He acted not at all pleased with his two new ragged guests. Indeed, we seemed to embarrass him. He gave us each a new set of cheap clothes and sent my husband on to a new post within days.
This was at the new town of Okoitz, which Count Lambert was then just starting to build. When we arrived, there was nothing but a clearing in the woods with a half-finished wooden wall and a few huts built against it. And in this we had to survive a cold Polish winter!
My husband still did not properly consummate our marriage, yet it seemed to me that to endure pregnancy and childbirth in those difficult conditions would be dangerous indeed and that poor John was again sacrificing his pleasure for my own welfare. I loved him all the more for it.
Count Lambert, on the other hand, had no such inhibitions. His wife stayed on their other lands in Hungary while the count merrily swived every unmarried peasant girl in the village, and did this somehow without a bit of complaint from their parents! In truth, my husband never chastised him for his actions, either, in part because had we been sent away by the count, we might have had a hard time finding another parish that would take us in. Though the marriage of the clergy was legal in Poland, yet was there much prejudice against it.
And so the years went by at Okoitz. In time, a large wooden church was built adjoining the count's rustic pal ace, and we had a decent enough room adjoining the church. Our situation be(came comfortable and secure, and I began to yearn for a child. Also, the count's example with his eager peasant girls convinced me that physical lovemaking must be as enjoyable for the woman as for the man, and it was a pleasure that I still had not partaken of!
After many long, tear-drenched conversations, my "husband" finally admitted that his abstinence was not the result of the nobility of his mind. It was the result of the inability of his body! He couldn't properly play the man's part in the game!
There was no one with whom I could talk this problem over. Indeed, the women of the village all came to me with their difficulties, but as the wife of the priest, I wasn't supposed to have any troubles of my own. I had to be sweetness and light and wisdom, me, an aging virgin of seventeen! Slowly I decided that I was perhaps not a married woman at all, for by the laws of the Church and of the state, a marriage must be consummated to exist.
Then Sir Conrad came to Okoitz out of the east, burdened by some geise that he might not tell of his origins. All the town was buzzing about his prowess as a warrior, for he had single-handedly rid the county of an entire band of outlaws that had been murdering the people and stealing the cattle.
Yet when first I saw Sir Conrad, I thought that I was looking on a messenger of the Lord! He was incredibly tall and handsome, with a true hero's litheness of body, with fine, broad shoulders and — dare I write it? — the most lovely posterior I had ever seen! And there was about him such an astounding aura of wisdom and learning and kindness that my heart went out to him in that instant. In truth, I remember that I let out a little squeal of delight, despite the fact that my husband, John, was in the room with us.
In the months that followed, I tried to convey to Sir Conrad that I would be eager to do anything that he desired, but such was his sense of honor that he would not even think sexual thoughts about a woman that he thought to be married. And since Count Lambert let Sir Conrad make full use of his peasant girls, there was no need for Sir Conrad to look farther afield. Not to mention the fact that those girls were all years younger than 1.
Sir Conrad had an almost magical horse that could run at an amazing pace for hours on end. It could answer questions by nodding or shaking its head, and it never soiled its stall but went out in the bailey like a well-trained dog. It was astoundingly gentle to all, even the smallest child, unless it felt its lord was in danger, at which time it became the most deadly of beasts! I greatly admired this animal and often visited its stall.
Sir Conrad was a great master of all the constructive arts, and he built for the count great windmills and an entire cloth factory. He brought with him hundreds of types of seeds that grew into vastly productive food plants and radiantly beautiful flowers. He knew a thousand songs, and I was sure that he thought them up on the spot, though he denied it. He could dance a dozen new steps, and I thrilled to be in his arms for his waltz, his mazurka, and his polka. He could tell a thousand wondrous stories of lands and times far, far away. Many were the nights that he talked until midnight of the adventures of ninefingered Frodo or of Luke Skywalker. He loved children and was always telling them some new story or teaching them some new game or making them some new toy. He was a master of the sword, the chessboard, and the pen. How could I help but love him?
For all this work, and to encourage him to continue it, Count Lambert gifted Sir Conrad with a vast tract of lands in the mountains to the south of Okoitz. Sir Conrad went to these lands with a half dozen of the count's peasant girls, and I feared at the time that he was leaving my life forever.
He returned monthly, but not to visit me. He did it in feudal duty to the count, to oversee all the new construction at Okoitz. I watched from a distance and hoped. My relationship with John was steadily deteriorating, and it got so that I could hardly bear to be in the same room with him, let alone the same bed. Yet such was as it had to be, for while we had food, clothing, and shelter, we had very little money. I wanted to leave John and again try my luck in France, but in years of scrimping I had hardly saved a small handful of silver pfennigs. To travel takes money, and to establish oneself in France takes even more.
Things finally came to a head with John one winter's night. I left our room the next morning and found that a merchant's caravan was leaving Okoitz immediately. They were going east instead of west, but it might be long before another caravan came by, and I leapt at the chance to leave, no matter what the direction. Of course, I did not tell John or anyone else that I was going.
One of the merchants mentioned that there was a new Pink Dragon Inn at Sir Conrad's new industrial town of Three Walls. I had heard long before that the waitresses at these inns could earn more money than at any other trade, no matter how sordid. They required that a woman be beautiful and a virgin, but I qualified on both those counts. They required that a waitress wear a costume that consisted of little but high-heeled shoes and a loincloth, but the barbarians of this backward land have no shame for their bodies, and indeed, the only way to bathe among them is to sit naked together in a sauna, so I was well used to exposing my body in public.