Chapter Twenty
FROM THE DIARY OF CONRAD STARGARD
My session with Bishop Ignacy was one of the longest that we ever spent together, and the vespers bell rang long before we were done. We had supper sent up to us, and my confession continued well into the night. With most priests, confession is a fairly short, perfunctory affair, but it is never so with Bishop Ignacy. I was deeply troubled, and he took all the time that was necessary to dig into all the bloody, crowded doings of the last month.
In the end he gave me his usual scolding about my sexual affairs, but absolved me completely for all that had happened in the course of fighting the Mongols, and for the Lubinska business as well. I felt clean for the first time since we had headed out for war. Clean, but still I bore scars within that would always be with me.
When we were through, I said, "By the way, what did you think of those inquisitors that I had sent to you, Father?"
"What inquisitors? I have met no one from the Holy Inquisition. "
"Well, the day before we marched out to war against the Mongols, two members of the inquisition came to speak to me. "
"And what did they have to say?"
"I'm not at all sure, Father. You see, neither of them could speak Polish, and I can speak neither Italian nor Latin. Furthermore, they had apparently been forbidden to speak of the matter with anyone else but me, so they could not explain the thing to our translator. Also, you have forbidden me to talk about my transportation to this century with anyone but you, Father. Therefore, I made sure that they had a good map to Cracow and directions on how to get here and told them that they should talk to you. Now you say that they never got here. "
"Well, that's reasonable enough, seeing as how you probably gave them one of your 'army maps' with south at the top and everything else topsy-turvy. No wonder they got lost! Everybody knows that east belongs at the top of a map! After all, the Garden of Eden was in the east, and we are all descended from Adam and Eve, who lived there. Since we are descended from the east, it must be above us, and therefore it belongs at the top of the map. It's perfectly logical!"
"Yes, Father. So you haven't seen them?"
"No, and by this time I think it unlikely that they will arrive. They have either been killed by the Tartars or they are going back to Rome in disgust! Now I will have to write a formal letter of inquiry, explaining what little I know of this matter and asking what happened to the inquisitors. "
"Yes, Father. Could you please ask them to send someone who speaks the language next time?"
"Good night, Conrad."
A sleepy castle page showed me the way up to the suite that had been reserved for me, the duke's apartment. I found that Francine was already asleep, but Sonya was waiting up for me, good little servant that she was.
In the morning, bathed and shaved, I was having breakfast, when Francine joined me.
"Good morning, Francine. You slept well?"
"Yes, my love, though perforce alone." Sonya brought us some more sausages and hotcakes, and I could tell that Francine was trying to ignore her. She had accepted Cilicia and had offered me her own maids on occasion, yet she didn't seem to like me having one of my own, somehow. Oh, well. Women are strange. It was best to ignore the situation and wait for the horse to sing.
"Well, you were sleeping when I got back. I didn't see any point in waking you."
"You took so long in confession?"
"I had a lot to confess. Millions of people are dead because of me," I said.
"And many millions more yet live because of your diligence and prowess. Have I ever told you how much the whole of Christendom owes you?"
"Hmph. I'm just a man who's trying to do his job."
"Then there is more work yet for you to do, my love. Duke Henryk is in the castle."
"And we're in his old room. I guess I'll have to have it out with him today, though I can't say that I'm looking forward to it."
"Much of the way has been cleared for you, my love. Baron Wiktor and I talked long with him yesterday. There is much to the baron that I had not seen before."
"He's a good man, though his brother Gregor is the truly wise one of that bunch. That's why I'm giving Gregor command of Mazovia. Sonya, would you please go to Duke Henryk and ask him when it would be convenient for him to talk with me today? And, uh, put a dress on first. Henryk has this problem with feminine skin. "
"Wait!" Francine said as Sonya was about to leave. "is that wise, my love? You command here, and you should tell him when it would please you to meet. And if it pleases you to have your wenches nearly naked, you should not change your custom to suit a visitor."
I shook my head and said, "Okay. We'll compromise."
"Sonya, ask the duke if he would join me here for dinner at noon and don't bother dressing up for the occasion. After that, tell the cooks to have a meal for two sent up at three sharp and remind them that I fired the head cook at Sandomierz. You know my tastes in food."
As she left, I said, "Satisfied?"
"With you, always, my love. You might want to dress in one of your army uniforms to remind the duke of your bond with him and the fact that you head the Order of the Radiant Warriors. "
"As you will." It takes so little to keep her happy sometimes.
I spent part of the morning with Baron Wiktor, getting things organized in Cracow, and then saw a delegation of the city fathers.
They wanted me to redesign the lower city for them, since it had mostly been burned to the ground. Yet at the same time, they wanted to start rebuilding immediately, without waiting to install sewers and water mains. And once we got into it, they didn't want a new street layout, either, since that would mean that all the existing building plots would change, and who would know who owned what? Somehow they wanted me to bless it and make it all better, but not to change anything!
My own private thought was that it would be easier to simply build a new city. As for the old one, well, there had been a half yard of organic fertilizer on the ground there for centuries. If they would put a plow to it, they'd have the richest farmland in the world! But I couldn't tell them that, so I told them to think over what they really wanted and promised to meet with them later.
I knew that in the end what we would do was come up with some new building codes, requiring fireproof materials for the walls at least, and plan to put in the utilities later in a piecemeal fashion, the way things are normally done. It would be more efficient to build from scratch, but there wasn't time. The people of Cracow had to have a place to live now. But best for them to come to that realization for themselves.
I had Natalia make a note to tell the factories to get into full production of all building materials as soon as possible. She was Baron Gregor's wife and would soon be leaving me to join him at his new post in Plock. She was trying to train one of the other girls to take her place, but she had been with me for nine years, and training a replacement to know what I wanted without being told every little thing wasn't easy.
It was a pleasant spring day, and I had lunch set up on one of the battlements that served as a balcony. I was surprised to see that the duke also wore one of our red and white army dress uniforms, probably for the same reason that I did. Francine had been fight again.
"Welcome, your grace, " I said. "Have a seat."
"Thank you, your grace," he said, looking pale from his recent illness. "I want to start by offering you my apology. I formulated a poor battle plan without your advice and consent. I ordered you to follow it even though you knew that it was foolish. And in anger, I have not answered your many letters and messages. For these things I ask your forgiveness."
"I accept your apology, your grace. 1, too, need to apologize, since I deliberately disobeyed your direct orders. But let's just say that these unpleasant things never happened. "