"Wow. It looked like they were piled that deep when we were shooting them, but I'd convinced myself since then that it couldn't possibly be true. Well, get yourself settled in and send for your wife and family. I'll be leaving here in perhaps a week, and you can take this chamber for your own then."
The next few days were spent getting organized. Word came that two Big People had been killed in the war, both while carrying couriers from the battlefield near Sandomierz. Judging from the mess we found around their bodies, they and their riders had spent their lives very dearly, but they had spent them nonetheless. Jenny and Lucy were gone, and they would be missed.
Of their remaining sisters, ten Big People were assigned to the postal service, and the mails started to move again. Six other Big People were assigned to the Detective Corps, since crime was on the rise in the wake of the social disruption of the war. The rest of them were assigned to the scouts, since I was still worried about our borders, and the few planes we had up couldn't be everywhere.
Captain Wladyclaw was sent to patrol the eastern marches, a good place for him. I got the feeling that he was more attached to my wife than to the army, and nonsense like that belongs in The Three Musketeers, not in Poland. He was promised the twenty Big People that would be coming of age in the fall, but for now he was just going to have to make do with what he had. I kept Silver, of course, and Anna seemed to have attached herself to Francine, so I let them stay together. And there were still four Big People with Duke Henryk.
I'd never thought to stockpile farm machinery, war production being what it was, and major orders for plows, cultivators, and harvesters were placed with the factories.
The last of the booty was finally sent to Three Walls, and Baron Piotr was put in charge of counting it. Working with the Moslem jeweler we'd picked up years ago, he simply had it all melted down, refined it into bricks of pure gold and silver, and then weighed it, except for some pieces that were judged to have sufficient artistic merit to be worth saving. Silver City, the zinc smelting and casting works in the Malapolska Hills, was put into full production making coins. We'd decided that the men should be paid in standard army currency rather than in actual silver and gold. One currency around was-enough.
Jewels were sorted as to size and type, and some wooden warehouses were thrown up to store the war trophies. Just how those fancy swords and armor were to be divided was still unclear. Was it worth sending the entire army back to Three Walls just so each man could take his pick?
After much discussion, we decided that each warrior should be paid his back pay and one thousand pence as an advance on his share of the booty. Knights would be paid two thousand, and so on up the line. Not that they had to draw that much immediately, but they could.
A major headache was determining which men wished to stay with the army and which wanted to return to the semicivilian life of the reserves. And after that there was a major reshuffling of personnel to make up the three battalions of troops that we were keeping on a full-time basis.
None of this concerned the people who worked at my factories, of course. They were aboard forever!
There were crowds of refugees that needed to be fed on their way home and thousands of lost or orphaned children that needed taking care of.
The details kept us up night after night.
Francine was being very quiet and subdued, realizing that she had overstepped her bounds by far in conning me into taking the dukedoms. I finally got it through to her that had she let me in on the plan from the beginning, there wouldn't have been any problem. But you shouldn't surprise a guy that way!
Anyway, she didn't say a word about Sonya. Whether this was because she thought it normal for a nobleman to have a servant or because she was just afraid of another row, I don't know.
Sonya had shown up at the palace in a waitress outfit, and my only comment was to tell her to get rid of the rabbit ears. She worked that day topless, not having her other clothes with her, and the next day all the rest of the women working at the palace were doing the same, even Francine's maids. Old Duke Henryk, the father of the current duke of that name, had in his last years ordered that all of his palace serving wenches should bounce around bare-breasted, and I guess the local girls figured that old Duke Henryk's styles were back. While I never told anyone that she should work with her top off, I knew better than try and stop women when they pick up on a new fad. I just passed the word that the style should be restricted to unmarried girls over twelve or so, and then only in warm weather, saying that there was nothing pretty about a girl who was freezing to death. A bit of sanity returned.
In a week the worst of the trivia seemed to be beaten down, and it was time to go to Plock. I invited Francine along, since I knew that some politicking might be needed there. Plock hadn't been hit by the Mongols, and the German Crossmen had their main base of Turon not far away. If I was going to have any resistance, I'd be getting it there. Then I changed my mind. Plock might be the most politic place to go, but I was way overdue for confession. We went instead to Cracow and Bishop Ignacy.
Chapter Nineteen
FROM THE JOURNAL OF DUCHESS FRANCINE
In the early morning we were set to visit Plock, the capitol of Mazovia, when Conrad abruptly changed our destination. Baron Gregor was removed from my carriage to take the horse ridden by his brother, Baron Wiktor Banki. This worthy knight was put into my carriage to join me, my maids, and that annoying little trollop Conrad had picked up for a servant. The others were told to follow us along the track, but Conrad insisted that we should run to Cracow immediately. The other four carts of our party, being pulled by ordinary horses, might be able to get there by sundown if they could find a change of horses, but the Big People could run us up to Wawel Castle an hour before dinner. Conrad laughed off the idea that we wouldn't be safe without a bigger escort, saying that his sword was better than most, and anyway, the Mongols were all dead or gone. Of course, he was wrong.
Conrad had made such a horrible scene at his coronation that I refuse to write about it! It was all I could do to convince the leaders of the three duchies that he was still suffering from the war and get them to wait on him the next morning. Fortunately, by then Conrad had gotten his wits about him and had done the sensible thing. After accepting the crowns, he went about taking control of Sandomierz with a wise program of ignoring the existing power brokers who had elected him, since he no longer needed them, and putting the whole place under the control of his own trusted men, his army. Those men would follow him into hell-or go there alone if he commanded it! I was so proud of him that I didn't complain about his new blond-haired chippy.
Sometimes he is absolutely brilliant, and at other times such a total fool! Or could it be that the whole scene in the Church of St. James was just an act to get them to accept his new program absolutely and without question? Could he actually be that astute? So many times he has done such seemingly dumb things, yet always he ends up on top. No! It was impossible! He was just lucky! I think.
He wasn't so lucky when we were attacked on the road. Conrad was a few gross yards ahead of us when two Mongol warriors rode out of the bushes a gross yards from the road and attacked him in the early morning. Baron Wiktor had his sword out as soon as he saw them, and vaulted to the top of our carriage to defend it. But from there he could accomplish nothing, for Anna had already gone alone to Conrad's aid, and the Mongols were putting all their efforts to the killing of my beloved husband!