They had darker complexions than we did. Their hair was black and their eyes brown, sometimes green. They were of medium stature and had the thin, wiry bodies one associates with Armenians, or even Arabs. Yet they weren't quite exactly like either of those peoples.
Their leader, who was about as ragged as the rest, spoke only a smattering of Polish, and the others spoke none at all. It took me several hours to find out what they wanted, and I would have given up on them if I hadn't caught the words "Novacek" and "alchemist."
A year before, I had asked a merchant friend, Boris Novacek, to send me a chemist, if he ever ran across one, since I was weak in practical chemistry. Apparently, this man was the thirteenth-century equivalent of a chemist. He had with him three pottery jars of what smelled like, acids, and intimated with gestures that he had made them.
Well, I badly needed a chemist. We were throwing away all sorts of things that could be useful if treated properly. Coal tar, for example, is a sticky guck that is a mixture of thousands of chemicals, some of which can be very useful. I knew that it contained aspirin and dyes and wood preservatives, to name but a few. But I hadn't the foggiest idea of how to go about purifying the stuff. But I needed one chemist, or maybe a few. I didn't need a hundred!
I tried to get this idea across, but it was slow going.
The lunch bell rang, and I was getting hungry. Looking at the crowd of refugees, for that's what they turned out to be, I realized that they hadn't eaten in days, and had had damn little in the months before. We had plenty of food, and there was no reason to be uncharitable. I invited them in for lunch, trying to communicate with gestures that this was a temporary invitation only, and that I was not permanently hiring them.
Problems started almost at once. Where I come from, when you're a guest, you eat what's put in front of you, and at least pretend that you're enjoying it. But they wouldn't touch our beer, insisting on drinking only water. Many Poles feel that you can't trust a man who I won't drink with you, and to refuse a man's generosity is an insult.
The leader questioned me at length about the kind of meat we were serving, and I finally had to draw him a picture of a pig to get the idea across to him. He acted like I was trying to feed him human flesh, and on finding out it was pork he said something to his followers such that they contented themselves with bread and kasha. At least they were cheap to feed, even though they ate three times what my own people did.
In the course of the afternoon, either his Polish improved or I got better at gesticulating. It seems that his name was Zoltan Varanian, although I wasn't sure whether "zoltan" was a name or a title. In any event, I got the idea across that he and his people were welcome to stay for two weeks, but after that they would have to leave.
I also insisted that they take a bath before we put them up for the night, which caused other problems. My people didn't have a nudity tabu, and his did. Men and women didn't bathe together.
This caused all sorts of screaming every time one of my workers of the wrong sex walked into the shower room at the wrong time. Their men even screamed when a pretty girl went in to join them. Culture shock all over the floor.
Their clothes were in shreds and we had cloth coming out of our ears. Lambert had been paying for all the work at Eagle Nest in cloth, and I hadn't gotten-around to disposing of it profitably yet. I had Janina issue them enough cloth to make a set of clothes for each of them.
Supper that night featured lamb, and that they'd eat. We put them up in the lowest two floors of the noble guest quarters, since there wasn't room for them anywhere else. They were stacked in like firewood, but even so, if the duke paid an unexpected visit, I didn't know what we'd do. Put them up in the barns, maybe.
The next morning, I really had to get to Eagle Nest, being a day late already. I assigned Natasha to Zoltan, with the understanding that she was supposed to do what she could about teaching him some Polish. I said that I didn't expect her to sleep with him. There are limits to hospitality.
Natasha took the job with the same cheerful acceptance that she did everything else. I never decided whether she was odd for being so compliant, or all the rest of the women in the world were strange for not being exactly like her. Any man who wouldn't marry the girl was a damn fool, including myself. Of course, I got her without having to get married.
Four dozen boys were waiting for me at Eagle Nest, bright young kids about ten or twelve years old, the scions of the local nobility.
Most of them had a servant or two along, and these people expected to have the cushy job of waiting on one small person. I put a stop to that, assigning most of the servants to housekeeping, cooking, and cleaning, which freed up many of my own people for more productive work elsewhere.
The boys were assigned six to the room, and one responsible servant was put in with them, mostly to keep the kids in line. There was room for eight times the number of people we had, and each of the boys could have had a room to himself, but boys of that age are tribal in their outlook. I wanted to get them to form long-lasting friendships and a sense of teamwork. For the first few days, I let them switch roommates as they liked, but after that room assignments became fairly permanent.
Count Lambert had picked the headmaster, and I liked the man. He would be teaching two classes of two dozen each, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. He was to teach the standard subjects, reading, writing, and arithmetic. When not in school, the boys were under the supervision of one of my carpenters, a man who was good with kids.
This system gave us a morning team and an afternoon team, which was intended to create friendly rivalry. A good amount of time was spent on team sports, and competitions were set between the shifts on weekends.
I started the boys out with kites, and had them build their own. And not just ordinary kites, but controllable kites with two and three strings. By the end of the week, I told them about gluing sand to the strings, so that you could cut another kite's strings.
Competition got fierce! And hopefully the boys learned something.
Returning to Three Walls, I got to thinking that a uniform might help with the feeling of solidarity I was trying to build among the boys. Count Lambert's factory turned out quite a nice red wool cloth, and Copper City could turn out brass buttons and military doodads by the ton.
I decided on white trousers and a white turtleneck sweater, with a red open-collar jacket. The trousers and jacket would have pockets in the modem fashion, since carrying everything in belt pouches is a nuisance. Black leather boots, belt, and gloves. Brass buttons, buckles, insignia, and epaulets. And either a red or a white peaked hat, depending on which shift they were on.
At the end of the year, I'd let the boys design a class dagger, and none but them would carry one of that design. Each class would have its own, just as many schools have a class ring.
Instructors would wear a similar outfit, except they would have a black hat. Other workers would have the same, but with much less braid on their outfits.
I debated with myself on whether or not the kids should be required to sew their own uniforms, since skill at sewing was needed to make canvas-covered aircraft. I decided against it because boys of that age grow quickly. If the kid had made it himself, he wouldn't feel right about handing it down once he'd outgrown it, and the obvious economy of hand-me-downs was standard in this century, even among the highest nobility.
Natasha and Zoltan made a remarkable amount of progress in the week I was gone.. It was actually possible to communicate with the man. Some of this was Natasha's patience, but mostly it was because Zoltan was a very accomplished linguist with eleven other languages. Oh, he still had the vocabulary of a five-year-old, and.much of our time together was spent discussing the meanings of various words, but he was able to tell his story.