Naturally, his grace and the prince got the new model helmets.
I'd also had the smiths do a lot of preparatory work, making up each of the pieces in advance, but oversized, so that they need only be trimmed down, finished, and assembled. Even this took the whole crew ten days to do, and I didn't let them off for Sunday, for fear of boring our highborn guests.
As it turned out, I needn't have worried, for the duke stayed two days longer than he had to. He was vastly impressed with the plumbing in our bathrooms. He demanded that I duplicate the system at both Piast Castle in Wroclaw and Wawel Castle in Cracow. I told him that it would be expensive, but he didn't seem to care. He wanted it, so he got it. He even paid the bill without complaining.
I showed him my plans for what I'd started calling Copper City, and he seemed pleased. "Just so it works, boy!"
We were lucky in that Ilya had just completed the first steam sawmill, or I don't think I could have gotten him to work on armor, duke and prince or no duke and prince. The walkingbeam sawmill was still in use, how ever, so I showed that to my guests first. They watched sixty women walking back and forth and the huge logs being cut into boards for half an hour. They were suitably impressed. Then we demonstrated the new steam mill, which cut more than twice as fast as the walking-beam mill, and required only a single operator. They were astounded.
"Damn, boy! That thing has the power of two hundred women!" The name of the unit stuck. At one time I had been worried that we would use "pig power" the way the Americans use "horse power," much of our early machinery being powered by pigs in huge hamster cages. But after the duke's statement, all our steam engines got rated in woman power, and operators talked about how many women they tended. I tried to stop it, but I couldn't. The best I could do was to redefine it so that it would fit into our system of weights and measures.
I'd had some of the girls trained to act as food servers, in case the duke demanded it. Fortunately he thought that eating cafeteria-style was an interesting innovation. This was good because after that, if any noble visiting us commented on our strange ways of eating, we had only to say that the duke liked it and that ended the matter. I saw no point in paying for servants.
Actually, the duke took most of his meals at the inn.
I showed them a blast furnace pour at night, when the splashing white hot iron is most impressive.
The duke ordered twenty clocks, and two of our huge kitchen stoves, but he spent most of his time at the Pink Dragon Inn. After the first night, he demanded, and of course got, the exclusive waitressing of Lady Francine. The innkeeper was no fool, and if anybody objected to losing the most beautiful waitress in Poland, he had sense enough to keep his mouth shut.
The best time of day to take a shower was just after breakfast, when most of the men were at work and the water was hot from the breakfast cooking. The place was nearly empty except for some of the women on the afternoon shift, and they tended to be younger than those working mornings. I was debating whether to invite a certain blonde to join my household when Prince Henryk walked in.
"Good morning, my lord." I bowed. It was the first time that I had seen the prince naked and I couldn't help noticing that there was something strange about his left foot. It was a moment before I realized that on that foot, he had six toes.
"Strange looking thing, isn't it, Sir Conrad?" He wiggled his left toes. "Runs in the family. My grandfather had the same thing. You needn't look so awkward. I've had it all my life."
"Yes, my lord. Forgive me for staring." I took some soft, locally made lye soap and smeared it on a luffa.
"Nothing to forgive. These hot showers of yours are marvelous things, but what do they have to do with defeating the Tartars you said were going to invade us?"
"Directly, my lord, almost nothing. Indirectly, quite a bit. These showers and the sewage system and better food and clothing are all part of a program to keep my workers healthy. I don't want to spend years training a man only to have him die of something that could be easily prevented. Then, too, it is going to take a lot of money to train and equip an army big enough to beat the Mongols. By selling plumbing parts and other consumer goods, I can generate that money. I could never sell it without showing people what it does, and where better to demonstrate it than here?"
"Interesting. That armor you're making for my father and me looks to be effective, but it's taking all your smiths weeks just to make the two sets."
"It's worse than that, my lord. They spent a lot of time doing preparatory work. But in a few years, I'll have sheetmetal rolling mills, stamping presses, and dies by the dozens. We'll be able to turn out armor fast and cheap."
"And the copper mines you'll be opening for my father?"
"Copper is needed for more things than windmills and plumbing, my lord. These things earn money for now, but the same lathe that bores out the center of a bushing can bore out a cannon."
"And what might a canon be, aside from the law of the church?"
"It's a device of war, my lord. One smaller than a man can kill a dozen men at a time. I hope to start working on them by next year."
"That sounds dishonorable and horrible. It's hardly the thing to use in civilized combat."
"True, my lord. They are horrible and I pray that they will never be used on Christians. But you and the rest of the nobility must learn that the Mongols are neither civilized nor honorable. They lie, they cheat, and they steal. They will do anything at all so long as it brings victory. One of their favorite tactics is to take enemy prisoners, especially women, children, and the aged, and put them in the front lines to shield their own men. Facing that, you must decide between letting them advance without hindrance, or murdering your own subjects. Against an enemy like this, there can be no question of fighting them as if they were an honorable enemy. You must exterminate them in whatever way is possible."
"It is hard to believe that any people could be so vile."
"You must believe it if you want to survive, my lord. They are vile. They will eat anything at all, including rats, dogs, and their own prisoners. I know of one occasion when they ran short of supplies, so they ate their own allies. They also never bathe. It is their custom to put on new clothes on the outside and let them rot away from within."
"Yes, Sir Conrad, I'd heard that you can smell them miles away. I suppose that you will have to build these cannons and doubtless other devilish devices. But you can't expect me to like it."
"On the other hand, this new church you've built is wonderful! How did you ever get such huge logs set up like that?"
"It was quite a job, my lord. You see…"
Duke Henryk and Lady Francine hit it off very well together, and it was because of her that he stayed two days longer than he absolutely had to.
She left with his party, and rumor had it that he paid her two dozen pence a day for her services, whatever they were. That was six times what my top people were paid, but nobody demanded a raise because of it.
As soon as the duke left, however, I got hit with a major protest meeting from the women at Three Walls. They had all seen the tryouts on the steam sawmill, and they were against it. Last summer, they had objected vigorously to having to saw wood. Now they were even more against losing their jobs. And their husbands were with them.