Sir Conrad-or rather I should say Baron Conrad, for Count Lambert had enlarged him-was in Cracow, and gifted the new duke with four of his marvelous horses, that they might protect him against assassins. While testing these horses, I persuaded Baron Conrad to let me go with the party, riding apillion. When we were racing through the fields, an attempt was made by three crossbowmen to kill the new duke, and Baron Conrad drew his wondrous sword and killed all the assassins while the duke's bodyguards took their lord to safety.
There was something unbelievably exciting about the chase and the fight with the assassins, bouncing behind Conrad and holding him tightly while he dealt death to the attackers. When we dismounted in a secluded wood to see if we could identify the bodies, well, to state it simply, I seduced him. I suppose I should be ashamed of myself, but in truth I was then twenty-six years old, and that is a perfectly stupid age at which to be a virgin. And how could I ever regret the wonderful pleasure that he gave me and that I had so long been denied!
Baron Conrad was then not maintaining a harem in the manner of his liege lord, Count Lambert, but was contenting himself with a single woman, a dancer from the far cast who wasn't even a Christian. I had met Cilicia often, and she was a pleasant enough person, but I thought that I would have little difficulty displacing her in Baron Conrad's heart. I traveled with him to Three Walls, part of the way on his new steam-powered riverboat, an almost magical contrivance.
Yet he would not dismiss the foreign girl, but tried instead to make us join together into a single household! A foolish attempt-of course it did not work. My love, so wise in all things technical, is like a little boy when it comes to solving the far simpler problems of people. He needs my help so much and so often!
But at the time I could accomplish nothing with his other paramour, Cilicia. She seemed to think that she had prior claim on him, and indeed she was again pregnant with another of his children. After a month of trying, I left for my own estate.
Conrad contrived to visit me there at least once a month and often twice. And always I gave him a warm welcome. I wanted more, much more. I wanted a proper marriage and children by him, but I settled for what I could get.
In his own way, he was generous with me. I remember best the time when forty men and as many loaded mules came to my manor gate and announced that they were my birthday present. Since they were from Conrad, I bade them do as they would, and they fell to it with a will. One band of them put glass in every window of my manor, on frames with hinges that could open out and with screens of a coarse metal cloth that fended off insects in the summer but let the breezes through.
Another band took the roof off my highest tower and mounted there a small windmill and a huge water tank with a new well below it. Yet others dug pits and trenches in the kitchen garden and buried clay pipes and even a small stone room. My kitchens were rebuilt with a big copper stove and sinks with running water, but my favorite was the bathroom, with hot running water and a huge porcelain tub large enough for two! We used it often together, Baron Conrad and I. For years I spent much of my life waiting for his return.
Then, just prior to last Christmas, Count Lambert did a remarkably stupid thing. His wife, whom he had not seen in twelve years, died in Hungary, and his daughter, a girl of fourteen summers, came north to live with him. The count decided that Baron Conrad would be the perfect match for the girl and ordered Conrad to marry her. This at a time when Conrad was making final preparations to defend the land from the Mongol invaders! Conrad refused, saying that he had never met the girl, and anyway, they didn't even speak the same language. Count Lambert became incensed and ordered Conrad off his lands. Conrad, disgusted, packed his saddlebags with gold and headed west like a knighterrant in a story, without so much as a change of underwear.
Fortunately, he stopped at my manor on his way, and I was able to talk. some sense into my poor little dumpling. Count Lambert wanted him to marry his daughter, and to be sure, young Duke Henryk wanted Conrad to marry somebody and to stop living in sin with a Mohammedan. I suggested that he marry Cilicia, knowing full well that it was impossible. This made Conrad say that he could never become her sort of heathen and that he had been a failure at trying to convert her to the true religion. Therefore, no priest of either persuasion would ever marry them, nor a Jew either, for that matter.
I then suggested that he marry me. This would satisfy the duke, and Count Lambert would no longer force the issue if it could not possibly bear fruit. Conrad decided that a small wedding would be all that was needed and that things could go on pretty much as before, with nothing changed but one small ceremony. 1, of course, knew all the players in the game, and I knew that nothing of the kind would take place. But a wise woman always knows when to keep her mouth shut!
In the morning he, asked me to be his wife, and I consented with all my heart. His proposal was particularly welcome since I had twice missed my time and knew that I was heavy with his child.
We rode to Cracow to talk to the duke, who, after all, was my legal guardian, and he gave us his blessings, along with a promise to have a serious talk with Count Lambert. Conrad was enlarged to count, since a mere baron could hardly marry a countess. We had a beautiful wedding in Wawel Cathedral, and all the nobility of Poland attended it. Indeed, there were so many that the heralds could find room in the cathedral only for barons and above, and my husband's party was almost excluded for being mere knights! He solved this problem by enlarging his entire party to baronies.
Our marriage has had no time to be blissful, for my husband has spent the months since our wedding almost exclusively in preparation for war with the invading Mongols. Conrad is facing grave political difficulties as well as military ones, yet despite the fact that I am far more adept than he at anything concerning people, he will not let me help him with politics.
The duke has invited many foreign knights to aid us against the Tartars, and he bade all the fighting men in Poland to rally to him near Legnica, where provision has been made to support so large an army. The dukes of Sandomierz and Mazovia have refused to do this, as it would involve abandoning their own lands and peoples to the Mongols and: hen having to reconquer them again. Further, the nobles of Little Poland were also loath to abandon their estates and start the war by retreating hundreds of miles to the west. They left Duke Henryk as a group and swore to serve under Duke Boleslaw of Mazovia, despite the fact that they had once sworn fealty to Henryk.
And Conrad, with the biggest and finest army of all, though none will credit it, felt that he could not follow Duke Henryk either, since much of his force was with the riverboats on the Vistula River, and these could hardly go west overland to Legnica. There were flying machines that flew from Eagle Nest, near Okoitz, but they could not fly from
Legnica, needing the catapult to launch them. Further, Conrad's huge land army needs the railroads that have been built for the purpose along the Vistula. They cannot fight efficiently in the west. And lastly, Conrad was loath to abandon his factories and cities to the enemy. My love therefore felt obligated to disobey Duke Henryk and rather go to the aid of young Duke Boleslaw of Mazovia, who was leading the Polish forces of the east.
But Duke Boleslaw is a boy of fourteen who has heard too many tales of knightly prowess and sees no need of saddling himself with "a lot of peasant infantry."
If ever there was a blood-soaked need for some adept political maneuvering, this is the time! Further, I seem to be the only person about with the political skills necessary to unite the military forces of this confused and barbarous land.
Yet Conrad is so naive and helpless at all things political that he does not even realize how stupid he is! I could not persuade him to let me smooth his path. He treats me like a pretty child who needs protection rather than as the one person who could solve at least some of his obvious problems. A few weeks ago it got so bad that he even had a guard posted at my door "for my protection," he said, but in fact to keep me from going to Duke Henryk and Duke Boleslaw and bringing them together as the old duke certainly would have done.