"Yeah, I suppose so.-What about Baron Vladimir?"
"I tell you that no man but you could be trusted. This much power would tempt any other man."
"Then why trust me?"
"Because you don't want to be duke in the first place! Your very arguments defeat themselves. Darling, this is your duty to your country. You must not fail Poland!"
I'm a ponderer by nature. I can usually come up with the right answer, but it takes me a while. I never was one of those glib, fast-talking sorts who can sell farm machinery to Mongols. I'm not really quick thinking on my feet in a confusing situation. As I was trying to sort this one out, Francine knelt down at the communion rail, and so I just naturally knelt down beside her, out of habit, I suppose. As I did so, the Bishop of Plock put the ducal crown of Mazovia on my head! The crown of Sandomierz was quickly put right on top of that, and the crown of Little Poland was promptly placed on top. I was stood up, wondering how the Church that I had trusted could do this thing to me. I was turned around, and everyone in the big, crowded church started cheering. I tell you, it was annoying!
Chapter Seventeen
I stared at the shouting crowd, and it was all that I could do to not scream right back at them. I took the crowns from my head and looked at them. Someone had modified them so that they all interlocked into the silliest- looking thing imaginable. I handed the contraption to Francine.
"Here! You wanted it! You take it!" I said. She was so shocked that for once she didn't have anything to say.
"But you must keep it!" the bishop said, horrified.
"The only thing I must do is die, and I have some say-so as to when that's going to happen! And as for you, your excellency, there are fourteen tons of gold and jewels that I was going to donate to the Church. You're not going to get them now I trusted the Church, and you went and pulled this shit on me!" I turned from him and looked to the back of the church. "Silver! Come here to me!" I called out in English.
Somehow she heard me above the crowd and came straight in. Silver didn't have Anna's religious side, and the church was just one more building to her. The people had been taken aback by my taking off the crowns, and even more so by my speaking in a strange, harsh foreign language, but they got out of her way as Silver came straight up the church aisle.
I mounted up and rode out.
At the church door Captain Wladyclaw was still standing there, dumbfounded. I took back my helmet from him and said, "As for you, Wladyclaw, you have been telling me lies all day long. If your father wasn't one of my oldest friends, I'd have you court-martialed! As it is, well, you'd better stay far out of my way."
The inn was almost empty when we got there. Everybody except the innkeeper seemed to be out in the streets, cheering. The door of the place was big enough to ride through, and that's just what we did.
"My lord!" The innkeeper looked up at me, shocked and afraid.
"Right! I want your best room. Send up a meal for me and my mount. - And bring up a pitcher of beer, a pitcher of wine, and pitchers of anything else you have around!"
He knew better than to argue and led the way to a room marked DUCAL SUITE. I ripped down the sign, dismounted, and told Silver that no one but the innkeeper was allowed in.
She nodded YES.
Someone else's things were in the room, but the innkeeper just picked them up and went out with them. To hell with him, whoever the last tenant was!
The innkeeper returned quickly with four nearly naked waitresses carrying food, six pitchers of potables, and fresh sheets. I had to tell Silver that the waitresses were okay before she'd let them in.
"What's this stuff?" I asked, pointing at one of the pitchers.
"You said to bring some of everything that I had, my lord. That is from a barrel that was sent to me years ago from your inn at Cieszyn. It's called 'white lightning,' but no one liked it. Still, you said. "
I poured some into a glass. It had been clear white when I'd made it nine years ago, but it was a golden amber now. I tasted it and smiled for the first time in a while. Nine years of storage in an oak barrel had done amazingly good things to it.
"Good. Now go out and find me a block of ice! This stuff is just what I need!"
The innkeeper made the sign of the cross and left. The waitresses scurried about, changing sheets and towels. This suite had its own bathroom, a rarity. Finished, they hurried off after their boss, frightened.
I started in on a monumental drunk.
I was too upset to sit down, and so I paced the room with a glass in my hand. A waitress came in with some ice, cut from the river during the winter and stored in one of my icehouses. I put some in my drink and told the girl to sit in the comer and be quiet, since I might want something else later.
After a while I was over being absolutely angry and could think again.
Now, what was I going to do about this mess? Unifying the country was certainly important, but dammit, I'm an engineer, not a politician, and certainly not a hanging judge! All I wanted was to be left alone to do my job, the truly important job of getting this country and this century industrialized. I had neither the talent nor the ability nor the inclination to wander about the countryside playing God in a gold hat!
There was some commotion out in the hall, but I ignored it. Everybody I knew was smart enough not to argue with a Big Person who had her orders, especially one who didn't understand Polish!
I'd played at being a battle commander, but only because it was absolutely necessary. Without my army, my training, and my weapons, we'd all have been killed! But I hadn't been very good at it. In fact, I'd screwed up a lot of times and had come through on sheer luck. Well, that and the fact that the enemy 'was even dumber than I was. Some recommendation!
What to do about the election? Well, I could take the job of duke and then delegate away 411 the power. Set up men in each duchy as my deputies and let them do things their way.
Right. And in ten years' time the men I had delegated would effectively be dukes, and all their cronies would be counts and barons. Eastern Poland would stay feudal and backward. Peasants would stay peasants, and the infant mortality rate would stay such that half the kids born wouldn't make it to their fifth birthday, and it would be all my fault.
It got louder outside the door. I sent the waitress out with the message that if they didn't quiet down, I'd have the entire inn cleared. It quieted down.
Damn them all! Or I could take the job and do to these duchies what I'd done to Baron Stefan's barony: put in schools where there weren't any, subsidize the new farming methods, and bring the people into the industrial sector as fast as possible.
Except that eastern Poland doesn't have the natural resources that Upper Silesia has. This area never would be heavily industrialized. Damn.
Since most of the nobility was dead, probably most of the land would escheat back to me if I were duke. I could just parcel the land out to anyone who wanted to farm it and make the area a land of yeoman farmers. That might be the best bet. But to do it, I would be involved with lawsuits with every fifth cousin of the previous owners. Thousands of lawsuits! It would be a full-time job for the next twenty years, and I'd never get the chance to work on electric lights.
Well, if I did take the job, the first thing I'd have to do was to take a survey of just what lands and properties were mine. Probably a good job for Baron Piotr, with Sir Miesko's help. The school system under Father Thomas Aquinas probably had information as to which major family had what. We'd pulled all the schoolteachers west in February, so they were all still alive.