It turned out that I was completely wrong about the usefulness of some of these. Goldenrods were an excellent insect repellent, and people ate some of the flowers. And roses were their major source of vitamin C. The Japanese roses grew into a huge, tangled mass that became an excellent military defense, vastly superior to barbed wire! They also kept cattle out of the crops.
Then, there were plants that wouldn't grow in Poland at all. I had two packages of rice, six kinds of citrus fruits, and a package of cotton seeds. I didn't know why that redheaded bitch had sold them to me, but she had, and they were useless in Okoitz.
But Boris was going into the warmer lands of Hungary; I knew that rice and oranges would grow there, and who knows? — maybe cotton would, too. I felt guilty about Lambert's settlement with Novacek, and the gift of seeds was a way I could help make it up to him. If he played his cards rightand Boris was no fool-those plants could make him rich.
The cotton was especially important. Cotton is better than linen, and it takes much less labor to make it into thread. In this clothing-conscious age, cotton could make Boris the vast fortune he so much desired.
Now if there had only been some tobacco seeds…
The last pile was of plants about which I had no idea how they reproduced. These were mainly root crops: carrots, turnips, radishes, and beets, along with the cabbage and its sisters cauliflower, broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, and kohlrabi. The last six are all really the same species and can be interbred. The best I could do with that pile was to turn it over to the count, and we'd try our luck. I was troubled because the sugar beets were in the last pile. With the incredible prices paid for sweets, sugar beets could be a very valuable cash crop for the count, but I didn't know how to make them reproduce.
The party went off fairly well. The people were all willing to try something new, and the count was willing to invest a few hectacres for seed production. The next spring, Father John and 1, the only literate people in the fort, were kept busy reading and rereading seed packages for people.
It is annoying and time-consuming to be surrounded by illiterates. You can't leave a note for someone. You must find a messenger and trust his memory. You can't give written instructions. And somehow there's something wrong about illiteracy.
I found Father John working on a wood carving, a statue of a saint.
"Father, I think that we should start a school."
"Indeed? And teach what?"
"Why, reading and writing, of course."
"Now, what possible good would that do for my parish?"
"What possible good? These people are all illiterate! They can't write their own names, let alone read."
"And if I taught them to read, Sir Conrad, what then? What would they read?"
"Why, books, of course."
"The only books in Okoitz are a not particularly legible Bible and my own copy of Aristotle. These I can recite from memory. As for writing their names, where would they have need to sign them? On latrine walls?"
"But surely literacy is more important than a carving!"
"Indeed? Consider that the peasants tithe, but they give me only a tenth of what they sell to merchants, which is perhaps only a tenth of what they grow; they eat the rest. The count provides me with food and shelter but little else. I have a wife with… expectations. I can sell my carvings, and I cannot sell learning."
"Okay. I get your message, Father. How much do you earn by carving?"
"Five, six pence a week, sometimes."
"Very well. I will pay you-or, rather, donate to the Church-a penny a day for your teaching. Teach a dozen students, the bright ones, five days a week, from dinner until sundown during the winter. I especially want the Kulczynski boy, Piotr, taught. He has learned arithmetic in two weeks, and a mind like that must not be wasted."
"There will be expenses. Parchment, ink, wax tablets."
"Buy them. I'll give you a fund to pay for them. If you need other things, Father Ignacy of the Franciscan monastery in Cracow can provide them. He knows me."
"And I can still carve in the mornings?"
"Yes, damn it!"
"Then we are in agreement."
As I left Father John, I saw Count Lambert talking to a newly arrived knight. The fellow was very splendidly dressed in purple and gold. His armor was gold-washed and of very small links, the kind you see in museums. His embroidered velvet surcoat matched the velvet barding worn by his fine white charger, and the trim on his helmet and weapons looked to be solid gold.
I was just in blue jeans and sweater, but I went over to introduce myself.
"Ah, Sir Conrad," Lambert said. "I introduce you to Sir Stefan. Sir Conrad is my newest vassal; Sir Stefan is the son of my greatest vassal, Baron Jaroslav. The two of you will be serving together until Easter."
"I am honored, Sir Conrad," Sir Stefan said, somewhat taken aback by my size and strange clothing. "I had thought that I would be serving with Sir Miesko. Still, anyone who can do guard duty for the other half of a long winter's night is warmly welcome."
"Well, uh…" I stammered.
"Sir Miesko is on a mission for me in Hungary," Lambert said. "As for the rest, you touch upon a problem, Sir Stefan. You see, my arrangement with Sir Conrad is that he will have no military duties save in an actual emergency. I regret that this means that you will have to take the night guard by yourself."
"Dusk till dawn, seven nights a week in the winter, my lord? Surely that is excessive!"
I had to agree that he had a point. At Okoitz's latitude, there could be seventeen hours of darkness in the winter. Three months straight of night duty under those circumstances could make a man crazy and old before his time. I felt sorry for the young knight, but not enough to volunteer my time. It wasn't my job. I had my own work to do.
"Count Lambert," I said. "Can't you get another man to help him out?"
Lambert shook his head.
"For another knight to come, he would have to make arrangements with yet another warrior to look after his own estates; then that man would have to make similar arrangements, all of which would take time. It probably couldn't be done within three months, by which time it would no longer be needed. No. The lots were drawn last Michaelmas, and I won't upset the schedules for anything less than death or the threat of war."
"I resign myself," Stefan said. "But Sir Conrad, couldn't you occasionally help out?"
"Well, I'm sorry, but there are a lot of other projects I have to work on."
"Sir Conrad will have his own duties which only he can perform," Lambert said. "I am afraid that you are left with an arduous task, Sir Stefan."
"But alone, my lord?"
"Damn, man! I've explained it to you. Who else is there? The place must be guarded! I can't leave guard duty to a peasant. They'd start thinking that they were our equals. And surely you don't expect me to do it. It is more than sufficient that I must be awake during the day. I am your father's liege lord! Enough of this! It is settled!" I think Lambert felt as guilty as I did.
Sir Stefan glared at me as though it were all my fault and stalked off to the castle.
My first task was to get a gross of beehives built. There was really no hurry since bees don't swarm until June, but I wanted to establish a good working relationship with the carpenter before we started building a loom.
It was soon obvious that I was going to have difficulty with the man. Vitold had to be competent; he had supervised the construction of the entire fort. Yet when it came to sawing up some boards and building some simple boxes, he had a great deal of difficulty understanding what I wanted. I drew pictures on the snow, but three-view drawings were incomprehensible to him. He asked innumerable questions about bees and what it was that we were trying to accomplish. That went on for hours, and I was losing my temper by suppertime. We agreed to discuss it the next day. Admittedly, we were talking about a gross of the things and it would probably take a month or two to get them nailed together, but a box ought to be a simple thing.