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"Good. Next?"

The meal was over, and the servants cleared the table. Sonya brought in desert. Ice cream! Excellent, despite its lack of vanilla flavoring. You know, there are advantages to occasionally firing a cook!

"I'm going to be building forts all around the borders of the country. I'll pay for the land I need, but once bought, it will be army property, under army control and not taxable by anyone. Okay?"

"Very well. Anything else?"

"Well, there's Copper City. For years I've been running it and sending you the profits. The bookkeeping involved is annoying. I want it made mine entirely."

"I hereby grant you title to Copper City. Is that the last request?"

"It is."

"Good. Then the matter is settled, though we shall have to put it all in writing, of course. Since you dictated the terms, why don't you see to getting some fair copies made. Then there is the matter of your oath of fealty. We will want to do it again with all of your officers and my nobles present, but let us swear to each other now, while the sun is yet high."

And so together we raised our right hands to the sun and swore. And Poland again had a king. Or so I thought.

Chapter Twenty-one

Francine hit the roof when she found out that Henryk was to be the next king instead of me. She ranted and screamed for hours, not listening to a word I said, until I finally just left the room and went down to the Great Hall, which was the closest thing to a tavern that was immediately available.

I just can't tolerate a screeching woman! When I came back that night to sleep, she was still at it, shouting at the top of her lungs, with her servants cowering in the comers. It seems that she had, now found out that Henryk had started out by offering fealty to me and that I had turned him down. Castle servants talk too much! After another hour of this I left again, to find that Sonya had arranged another room for me at the other end of the palace. Women are so much nicer before you marry them!

Dammit! I never promised to make her a queen! I never promised anything except seeing to her needs, and a throne was hardly necessary for her well-being. In fact, history proves that a throne is a very dangerous possession. Too many kings-and queens-have failed to die peacefully of old age in their beds. Anyway, all this political and social aggrandizement was her idea, not mine. I mean, I'd gone along with making her a duchess, hadn't I? Wasn't that enough? What did she want to be? Empress of the known world?

The next morning Sonya told me that she had a friend who was looking for work. I interviewed the girt over breakfast, a pretty, well-built redhead who had come dressed for the job. On Sonya's suggestion, she showed up for her job interview wearing nothing but her freckles. I hired her as a second body servant. At least with servants you can fire them when they get out of line.

I never should have gotten married.

I spent the day doing administrative stuff, writing a set of building codes for the city fathers of Cracow and making a deal with them on building materials. I sold them bricks, hardware, lumber, and so on at wholesale prices and gave them three years' free credit on it. They would worry about parceling the stuff out to the citizens at retail prices and collecting payment for it. The actual construction work was up to them. I wouldn't be involved. Later, in a year or two, we'd worry about water mains and sewers, and by then, what with their profits on the building materials, they would be able to afford the utilities. A backward way to do things, but there wasn't really much choice.

A few days later Francine was calmed down enough to at least start out civil at a banquet that Henryk had insisted that I attend.

Nine years before, on the day after I had first met the then Prince Henryk, we had both joined a party hunting wild boar and bison. The regalia required for this sport included a shield, and he had been a bit offended by the motto on the bottom of my heater, which was the first line of the yet to be written Polish national anthem, "Poland is not yet dead!"

We had talked about it, and I had promised to paint it over if and when he finally got the whole country united. Our new armor was so good that a fighting man didn't ordinarily need a shield, and I hadn't used mine in years. Henryk had found it somewhere and had it brought into the Great Hall, along with brushes and a collection of paint pots. He told the story to the gathered notables and invited me to keep my word. There was nothing for it but to put down my knife and fork, scrape the old motto from the shield, and publicly paint on it "Poland is alive and well!"

It was mostly a party joke, and I mugged up my part in it to suit the occasion, the way I had to do every Christmas for the peasants in imitation of my old liege lord, Count Lambert.

This bit of buffoonery miffed Francine no end, since she felt that since I was now a duke, I should be a somber ass as well.

Later, when somebody mentioned that Henryk would be my heir for the three eastern duchies, she got downright livid! She flew totally off the handle again and was literally frothing at the mouth before we got her out of the hall.

And she accuses me of making scenes in public! She accused me of robbing my own children, by which she doubtless meant her own children, yet to be born.

At this point I had about a dozen others by various fine ladies, but I don't think that she figured that those kids counted. Personally, I have always done my best to treat them all the same. Playing favorites wouldn't have been good for them.

To my way of thinking, saddling a kid with any sort of an inherited lifetime job would be one of the worst possible things you could do to him. "Well kid, here's your role in life, written down on these here computer punch cards, ha, ha! Live out your only earthly existence precisely in accordance with the pattern that is given you from the high mountain! Make sure that you fit the cookie cutter exactly, baby!"

Bullshit! What a horrible thing to do to a little child! A kid deserves a good education and a lot of love, and on top of this, I figure that all my kids started out with a pretty good set of genes. Beyond that, you owe it to him to see to it that he has a chance to grow in the directions that suit him best, and that goes double for the girls!

And damn all these Dark Ages attitudes! I had done the best thing possible for my children, for Poland, and for me!

I didn't see Francine for the rest of the week, and to hell with her. I had two new girls to take care of me. Young ones! And what they lacked in skill, they made up for with cheerfulness, obedience, and enthusiasm.

Sonya mentioned that she had another friend looking for work.

"Sonya, just why is it that you and your friends are so eager to do the dirty work around here?"

"It's not all that dirty, your grace."

"You know what I mean. Some places that I've been, the young ladies would have been insulted if you offered them work as a domestic servant."

"Then in those places the young women must all, be fools, your grace."

"What do you mean? Come on, you know I'll never get angry at an honest answer."

"Well, it's a great honor to serve so high a lord, and a great pleasure to serve one who is so kind and so virile."

"The truth, Sonya."

"That is the truth! Or at least part of it, anyway. The rest is that, well, you have a very good record, your grace! Nine years ago Count Lambert sent you out to your new lands with five simple peasant wenches. Now, after staying with you, every single one of them is at least a baroness, and they're all rich besides! A poor priest's wife is now a duchess because of you! I've only been working for you for a few weeks, and I'm already wealthy from my share of that Mongol booty, as are both of Duchess Francine's maids and even your horses! I tell you that any woman who wouldn't warm your bed or clean your chamber pots would be a damn fool who wants to stay poor!"