"I might just take you up on that, for you have gained a prize of great value. But now I am anxious to see my wife again, so I bid you good-bye, Sir Conrad, and you, my Lady Krystyana."
As Sir Miesko rode away, Krystyana looked at me. "He called me a lady!"
"You'd rather be a gentleman?"
"Of course not! But surely I'm only a peasant girl."
"Well, you'll always be a pretty wench to me, Krystyana."
"He acted as though I was of the nobility!"
"So, noble is as noble acts. Come on, let's get going."
"But I'm not noble, am I?"
"Do you expect to be beaten about the head and shoulders with a sword? I don't know if there is a ceremony for elevating a common woman, but as far as I'm concerned, you can be whatever you want to be. Let's ride."
The mill was nothing like half done, but good progress was being made under Vitold's supervision. The "basement" for the lower tank had been dug, and the new well was in. Most of the upright logs had had their sides flattened, and some of them were already in place. All according to plan. The main shaft was finished, ready for the brass collars, but here there was a discrepancy. I had assumed that the cam would be a separate piece, but Vitold had cut the cam and shaft out of a single log more than two yards across! I had allowed an extra yard in diameter to provide room for clamping the cam to the shaft, but single-piece construction let him reduce the cam diameter from three to two yards while still giving a meter's travel on the follower wheel at the end of the A-frame.
This in turn permitted raising the top of the clean tank half a yard, increasing its volume by sixty tons of water. Also, the turret could be lowered by half a yard, saving materials and work. It was an excellent improvement. Now if I could only teach Vitold to read blueprints!
"You're doing a good job, Vitold. "
"Thank you, Sir Conrad. We're way ahead of where I thought we'd be. It's these axes you showed Ilya how to make. The old axes needed sharpening every hour, but since he treated them, they last for days!"
"Hmm. Good. Tell Ilya to come to me the next time he's free."
"I'll tell him when he gets back, Sir Conrad. He's been gone for a week getting supplies."
The count's hall was humming with activity. Natalia and a girl I hadn't met were running the loom at a remarkable pace, and six other "handmaidens," most of them new, were spinning busily. Eleven huge bolts of cloth were proudly stacked in a comer, and the girls all seemed to be having fun.
Five of the count's knights were in attendance, but the count was out with a party making the rounds of his lands and the manors of his knights. The journey was partly social, visiting his subordinates; partly economic, to ensure that things were managed well; partly judicial.
The knights and barons had the right of low justice, that is, jurisdiction over offenses punishable by fines, flogging, and up to a year's forced labor, subject to the count's review. The count reserved for himself the right of high justice, and his word could have a man hanged. For eight months of the year, he was out riding circuit half the time.
Except for Sir Stefan, who was still making himself unpleasant on my behalf, the knights were essentially a decent lot, if somewhat extroverted. They tended to spend their afternoons in fighting practice, their evenings in heavy drinking, and their mornings sobering up.
I spent some of my afternoons with them, but they were slow to pick up on fencing, and I wasn't worth much with a lance and shield.
Evenings were like being back in the air force again. They were especially pleasant since Sir Stefan had the dusk to midnight guard shift. We sang songs, told stories, and swapped lies with boisterous good humor. Yet I always had to watch what I said so as not to violate my oath to Father Ignacy, and much of their conversation revolved around hunting and hawking, of which I was ignorant. Then, too, they were very heavy drinkers. While I like to drink, too much of it spoils lovemaking, and sex doesn't give you hangovers.
Following local custom, the knights had left their wives at home to manage things. There were now a dozen ladies-inwaiting, six of them new since Mary and Ilona had been pronounced pregnant and married off. This left us with plenty of variety, although Krystyana was still the best-looking of the bunch.
The other knights were courteous to Krystyana, but at bedtime they paired off with other girls. After a few nights, I got to sleeping with Krystyana regularly even though there were quite a few I hadn't sampled. I just didn't want her feelings hurt.
I looked up Angelo Muskarini, the Florentine walker.
"You have strange things going here, Sir Conrad."
"How so?"
"You told me not to criticize your loom and spinning wheels. Your loom looks crude, but it makes more clothand faster-than any that I have ever seen. And your spinning wheels are amazing! They make a hundred times the thread that a distaff can!"
"Better than the wheels in Florence?"
"There are no spinning wheels in Florence, nor any in Flanders, either. This is a new thing under the sun!"
Huh? I'd thought that they had spinning wheels in the thirteenth century. Oh, well. "I'm glad that you approve. So what's so strange about our goings-on?"
"Because, Sir Conrad, you are doing everything else entirely wrong! You have the finest methods for spinning and weaving that I have ever seen, but you aren't even sorting your wool! Your ideas of combing and carding are a joke, and no one here has ever heard of warping, or dyeing, or fulling!"
"Well, we're new at this. Talk to Vitold and Ilya about any special tools you'll need and figure out what you'll need in the way of dyeing vats and so on. The count wants a dozen looms going by winter, which means a dozen of our six-station spinning wheels. We'll need enough of the rest of this stuff to keep them fed. How are you doing for dyes and other chemicals?"
"I have plenty for now, but with a dozen looms-"
"Figure out what you'll need for a year and we'll place an order with Boris Novacek. I still owe him a favor."
I spent some of my time watching the mill go up, although Vitold really didn't need any help. Mostly I worked on the scale model of the dry mill.
The basement of that mill was to be eight yards deep and insulated with two yards of sawdust. It was to serve as an icehouse, a communal refrigerator. Come winter, two-thirds of its volume was to be packed with snow, the rest in storage shelves. According to my crude estimates, the snow should last at least twelve months. We would be able to store some of the vegetables and meat from the next harvest through the winter.
In external appearance, the dry mill looked like the wet mill, except the circular work shed was missing. The only attendant building was to house a threshing machine. The dry mill's construction was lighter, because it didn't have to support twenty-five hundred tons of water.
Internally, it was designed quite differently. The ground floor had a huge, three-yard grindstone, which was turned by a shaft connected to a ten-yard solid wheel just below the turret. Four circles of carefully placed vertical pegs rose from the wheel, and on the shaft above it were eight matching rows of radial pegs. The shaft was offset by a yard from the center line of the mill. Between these sets of pegs was a movable lantern gear with sliding concave brass rollers to mate with both sets of pegs. By moving the lantern gear, the miller could get four different speeds, both forward and reverse.
The space between the gears and the stone was mostly taken up by twelve grain hoppers. Each had a chute at the bottom to direct grain to the hole in the top of the stone. Outside, a system of pulleys and dump buckets filled the hoppers.
One of the knights, Sir Vladimir, seemed to have some mechanical ability. He got interested in the model and started helping me with it. After we had worked together for a few hours, I asked, "What's wrong between you guys and Krystyana?"