"Save your lies for someone who'll believe them, brother! They found you four miles from your land, and that deer had an arrow through its heart. It couldn't have gone four yards!"
"What about this last one?"
"Oh, he's a bad one, he is. They caught him stealing from a merchant. He's worked off maybe half of the five years he got." Mikhail put down the food. "Your Christmas feast, brother. Share it if you want."
As we left, I said, "Five years for theft seemed severe."
"Had he robbed another peasant, it would have been only six months. But merchants have to be protected, you know. If they aren't, they might stop coming, and who would we sell our grain and hides to?"
"I see. What if someone stole from a knight?"
"Why, I can't remember such a thing ever happening, Sir Conrad. I suppose, if the knight let him live, that it would be far more than five years."
I ceased to worry about the location of my gold.
"What do you do when there aren't any criminals?"
"Well, the grain has to be ground to flour, doesn't it? There's usually a spot or two open on the mill, and the rest of us men have to take turns at it. But we keep an eye out for lawbreakers."
"I can see where you would. You keep saying 'men.' What do you do about female criminals?"
"Well, that's rare, Sir Conrad. Women are more lawabiding. But there was a time, two years ago, when a girl-only twelve, she was-stole a silver-handled dagger from the count himself."
"What did the count do?"
"Got his dagger back and told the girl's father. He beat his daughter to within a thumb's width of her life! Then the count gave the father a month at the stone for not bringing up his daughter right! As I said, it doesn't happen too often."
"What if she'd been married?"
"At twelve? You shouldn't marry a girl off until she's at least budding!"
"No, no, Mikhail. I mean, what about an older woman?"
"Why, that'd be up to her husband, of course!" Mikhail walked up to his house.
In the twentieth century, it would have been called a shed. It was three meters wide and five deep, and it was one of a long row of similar log dwellings that stretched along the outer log wall. Next to the wall and above the sheds was a two-meterwide wooden walkway, apparently a place for defenders to stand. The rest of the roof was straw.
"All this was by the count's own plans, it was. Houses next to each other keep each other warm and take less walls to build. The neighbors make noise, but that's not the count's fault." The door had no hinges but was picked up and moved aside. Mikhail went in without knocking, and I followed.
Apparently, the lack of a nudity taboo applied to married women as well. Judging by the flush of her skin, Mrs. Malinski was just back from the sauna. I guessed her to be around thirty but later found out that she was only nineteen. She was doing up her long hair and didn't bother getting up or even covering herself.
"Sir Conrad! I am sorry that I did not speak to you last night, but the baby… you know…"
"I quite understand, Mrs. Malinski." A campfire burned smokily at the center of the single room. Their few spare clothes were hung from pegs in the log walls, next to bags of food, bunches of garlic, and a single cooking pot. Bags of straw on the floor served as beds. Two small children were playing on the dirt floor. Yet Mikhail was obviously proud of his home! What had he been born in?
"We have real wooden floors going in next year, the count says," Mikhail told me.
"He is a good lord, isn't he?"
"The best! Why, he could get a dozen men for every man here if there was room for them."
I was pensive as I walked back past the latrines and the grainery. These were good people, and there was so much that I could help them with. But I would have to leave as soon as the roads were clear.
One thing remained yet to do. There was a church, so there had to be a priest. I had killed-or at least caused the deaths offive people. And there were two very young women that I had… had. Damn it! They were not rapes! I needed confession.
The church was full of commotion when I got there. The altar had been removed, along with the candlesticks, the relic-a lock of hair from Saint Adalbert, I found out later-and all of the appurtenances. The church was furnished with movable chairs instead of bolted-down pews; I half suspect that the use of pews was the result of a clerical rebellion to secular use of the church. The chairs were being rearranged, and long, collapsible trestle tables were being set up. The fact is that the church was the only room in Okoitz large enough to hold everybody.
Asking about, I learned that the priest, a Father John, and his wife (!) were in their chambers to the left of the altar.
I entered and discovered that the nudity taboo did apply to a priest's wife, at least to this priest's wife. From her accented shriek, I gathered that she was French. She was an attractive woman, better looking than any of the count's handmaidens. I turned to leave but was stopped by the priest.
"Please forgive her, Sir Conrad. She is new to Poland and not used to the local customs." His wife was still arranging a blanket around herself.
"Of course, Father. But still, I should leave."
"You may if you wish. But as a personal favor, I would prefer that you did not. You are from the west. Know that I met Francine when I was a student in Paris. She is the granddaughter of a bishop and was legitimate before the second Lateran Council forbade such marriages in the west. But these decrees were never ratified here in my native Poland, so here we are now, under God, man and We."
He turned to his wife. "Francine, we cannot bring the word of God to these people unless we adhere to the local customs! There is no prohibition against nudity in the commandments, nor in the words of Christ. Remember the parable of the lilies of the field and care not about your raiment. Now, disrobe. Please."
She was embarrassed, probably as much as I was. The whole situation was awkward. There wasn't anything that I could say, but I tried to give her a confident smile and nod. She bit her lower lip, looked at me, and stood up. Then she slowly dropped her blanket. I think she did it slowly in order to pull it up if I disapproved rather than from a desire to entice.
She really was a beautiful woman, as fine as any you would see in modem Cracow. Her hair was black, the first black hair I had seen in the thirteenth century. Her waist was tiny, her hips were full, and her breasts were voluptuous orbs topped by tiny, coal-dark nipples.
"Thank you, love. Now, Christ also talked of the virtues of cleanliness, and the sauna grows cold," the priest said.
"Yes. Sir Conrad." She nodded to me and ran through the doorway.
"Thank you, Sir Conrad. I've been trying to get her to do that all day. She objected to their nudity, and they objected to her smell." The priest paused, and we heard a roar of applause from the crowd in the church. "Damn, but I wish they hadn't done that!"
This was afar stranger priest than Father Ignacy!
His next sermon was on the importance of being kind to people who were trying to fit in. Still, he seemed, for some unreasonable reason, to be a holy man.
"I took my sauna earlier, hoping that she would join me, but no such luck. But, Sir Conrad, you came here for a reason of your own. Can I help you?"
"Well, Father, I came here for a confession."
"Of course, my son, if you need it. The church is crowded now, but we are private enough here. Would this be adequate?"
I agreed, confessed, and told him about the people I had killed, the underaged girls I had copulated with, and lastly about coveting his wife!
He passed off the first two as not being sins at all but merely the things any sensible man would do. As for the last:
"You must learn to fight the results of your training. Had you seen her fully clothed, you might have thought her beautiful, but you would not have had these sensual thoughts. She was wearing what God gave her. The sin was in your eyes, Sir Conrad."