"Why, nothing. Everyone has been most polite to her."
"You've been polite, but you haven't taken her to bed. 130 you think that I have some exclusive right to her?"
"No, it isn't that. It's just-oh, I don't know."
"But she's the prettiest one there."
"I know, but-well, it just wouldn't seem right. She doesn't act like a peasant girl. You don't just grab a lady and drag her to your room-"
"I've never seen a wench here who needed dragging. Anyway, you know she isn't noble. Her father is a peasant right here in Okoitz."
"I know, I know. But you've asked me and I've answered you, so let's let the matter drop," he said. "Now, explain again why it is necessary for the rollers on the lantern gear to be able to slip sideways."
After about a week of monogamy on my part, Krystyana sort of withdrew. I put this down to feminine moodiness and continued my sampling for a week.
Ilya the blacksmith returned with five men and fourteen pack mules loaded with hematite, a red iron oxide. A small placer mine some thirty miles away made a limited amount of bog ore available. Ilya had spent much of the winter preparing to make charcoal from the branches of the trees we had cut, but somehow I had never realized that he actually made his own iron out of ore and fuel.
To make charcoal, Ilya and his helpers cut and split wood, which he piled in a single huge stack. As soon as the weather broke and the ground thawed enough for digging, the stack was covered with a full yard of dirt. Only a small hole was left at the top and an even smaller one at the bottom. Then he lit the stack. Over the next few days, he dug sampling holes to see how the burning was progressing. When the wood was completely charred, he filled in all the holes, let the fire smother, and went off for iron ore.
"Got a hundred pairs of hinges that I promised people, Sir Conrad, plus I figure you'll need some iron for that thing." He gestured toward the half-completed mill.
"You're right, Ilya. Later on we'll talk about a saw blade. I saw those axes you made. Nice work. I'm amazed that you made so many of them in only five weeks."
"Five weeks? That didn't take me five days! Those are the same axe heads we used last winter, only I cemented them. Cementation didn't change the shape of the iron bars I made into steel, and the old axe heads already looked like axe heads. I took the handles off and put them in the count's last pickling crock with plenty of charcoal and heated it up. Didn't go a whole week, though. A kid I had keeping the fire going fell asleep the third night, and the crock was cold in the morning. I still haven't found the bastard; he's been hiding from me. But those axe heads hardened up all right, so I guess it's okay."
"Congratulations, Ilya. You have just invented case hardening. What you have is steel on the outside and iron on the inside. Not a bad thing for an axe."
"Heh. Thought it might be something like that. This saw you want, does it have to be steel?"
"It sure does."
"Then you better find me some more clay pots. There is not one left in Okoitz, and the cooks are not happy. Neither will be the count if he gets a taste for sauerkraut."
"I know just the place. There's a brass foundry in Cieszyn where they use a lot of fire clay. Some of the workers should be coming here in a few weeks to deliver fittings for the mill. I would have sent an accountant to them by now, but I think I need the count's permission to swear the kid in. Maybe you know him, Piotr Kulczynski."
"Know him I That's the bastard that let my fire go out. You're going to be shy one accountant if I find him!"
"Not a chance, Ilya. You hurt that kid and I'll hurt you. Like I said, I need him. Anyway, he taught you something about steel, so call it even."
"Well, seeing as how it's you asking, I'll let the kid off. I'll be busy making iron for a month, but after that I'll need those crocks."
Ilya actually made wrought iron in the same crude forge that he used for everything else. He layered charcoal on the bottom of his forge higher than the nozzle of his bellows. Then he carefully put lump ore on the side away from the bellows and more charcoal on the near side until the forge was heaped high.
He started a fire and worked the bellows gently for two hours, adding a mixture of fine ore and charcoal as the mass in the forge was consumed. Then he called for assistants, who worked the bellows hard. After three hours of this, constantly adding ore and charcoal, he dug into the burning mass with large pincers and pulled out a glowing spongy mass.
This was immediately placed on the anvil, and three burly men beat on it vigorously with sledgehammers. Ilya kept turning the mass so that it was shaped into a crude rod.
When the rod cooled, it was put back into the fire; another spongy lump was fished out, and then the process was repeated. Two men were still working the bellows and adding ore and charcoal.
Each rod was pulled and beaten and reheated four times before being set aside to cool. By the end of the day, six men working twelve hours had consumed forty kilos of ore and two hundred kilos of charcoal. But they had made less than ten kilos of wrought-iron bars.
"You know, Ilya, once we get the wet mill built, we'll have machines to work the bellows and a trip-hammer to beat your iron. We'll build you a bigger forge, and you'll be able to make ten times the iron working alone."
"Bellows that work themselves? Hammers that swing on their own accord? You might as well tell me that fishes can fly!"
"I know of one that does."
"Sir Conrad, if you hadn't been right about steel, I'd call you the greatest liar in Christendom. As it is, well, you tell me what you want and I'll make it. But I'll believe those hammers and bellows when I see them!"
Krystyana was still acting standoffish, so finally I asked her about it.
"Sir Conrad, it's not that I'm putting you off, it's just… oh, you'd call it a superstition."
"Try me, pretty girl."
"Well, it's something that Lady Richeza told me about."
"Yes?"
"Well, she said that if you count the days after your… your time and sleep alone from the end of the first week to the middle of the third, you won't get pregnant. I know it's silly, I know it's superstitious, but I don't want to get pregnant and I don't want to marry a peasant and I don't want to be old at twenty and dead at forty and-" She was in my arms, crying uncontrollably.
Once I got her calmed down, I said, "Don't worry, pretty girl. You don't have to be anything that you don't want to be. As to this abstention during certain times of the month, well, in my country it's called the rhythm method, and the Pope has approved it. It works most of the time."
She cried some more, and after that I settled down to a program of fifteen days a month with Krystyana and the rest of the time spreading myself around.
I had a model of the cloth factory built by the first of May. We were running out of room in the bailey, so I made it a threestory building, as high as the church.
The top floor, with a high, peaked roof, was filled with a dozen looms. The middle floor held the spinning wheels and the combing and carding equipment. The ground floor was for washing and dyeing, with additional space for storage. I added a treadmill-powered lift to carry materials up and down.
I wished that I could have done something about windows, but glass was hideously expensive. Even a few small glass windows would have cost more than the rest of the building put together. The lack of glass or decent artificial light was serious. It cut our available man-hours by a factor of three at least. Poland is at a high latitude. In the summer, it can be light for eighteen hours a day. But in the summer, except for two months after planting, most people had to spend most of their time in the fields.