I spent the next morning catching up on things. Come spring, I planned to build a second housing unit (or defensive wall, depending on how you wanted to look at it), a dozen yards outside our first one. The new one would be made of brick, with a tile roof. Also, I planned a sawmill and cabinetry shop to be built outside the town proper, down where a small stream would make it easier to transport logs. Our valley was as logged over as it was going to be, the trees left being kept for decoration. Hauling huge logs uphill to our existing sawmill was silly.
And there were the hundreds of trivial things that have to be done when you play manager.
It was midafternoon before I could get back to Zoltan, but I was resolved to throw him and his people out at the end of the week. I felt sorry for them, but there was to big a cultural difference between us for it to ever work out. We absorbed a group of Pruthenians last year without much difficulty, but those were children whose families had been murdered by the Knights of the Cross. They'd needed new families pretty badly, and were fairly malleable. These Moslems, or whatever they were, were a tightly knit community. Such a group can maintain its culture indefinitely. They had to go.
I know that sounds cruel, but they were cruel times. There was a limit to what I could do, and if I took responsibility for this band of a hundred foreigners, it meant that there were a hundred Poles somewhere who could otherwise have been helped, but weren't. My own people were dying every winter, and I owed more to them than I did to someone from a country I'd never heard of before.
But while they were around, and I was footing the bill, I wanted to pick Zoltan's brain for everything I could concerning practical chemistry. This proved difficult. Part of the problem was the lack of a mutual vocabulary. Zoltan learned the Polish word for "door" when Natasha pointed at the door and said "door." A bit of discussion might be needed to make sure she wasn't talking about the door knob or the door frame, but it didn't take much time. But how the hell do you get across the concept of potassium nitrate? I couldn't say that it was the major constituent of gunpowder. He didn't know what gunpowder was. It's a white crystal? So are table salt, sand, and a million other things!
I tried to start with the simplest atom, hydrogen. After an hour talking about atoms, Zoltan allowed that he had read an old Greek text about atoms, but was sure that the concept was silly. It didn't fit into his system of moist substances as opposed to dry substances, hot versus cold, and the whole earth, air, water, and fire cosmos that he not only believed in, but that he unshakably knew was true. A thousand times he had used the theories he had been taught by his master and had gotten good results. How could anyone doubt it?
It was late when we finally called it a day with little progress made. The next four days were about as bad, although Zoltan's Polish was improving astoundingly.
The truth was that I bad a good background in theoretical chemistry, with little practical knowledge. Oh, I'd had the usual college lab courses, but they all involved taking prepackaged chemicals and mixing them according to a formula. For all the practical knowledge I gained, I might as well have been in a home economics class. It was worse than cookbooking. I hadn't the faintest idea of how most chemicals appeared in nature. A housewife at least knows what a chicken looks like!
And Zoltan knew quite a bit about practical chemistry. He had jars of hydrochloric, sulfuric, and nitric acid with him. He proved it by dissolving a bit of gold. He was also convinced that he could transmute lead into gold, once he got good enough at it. He just hadn't found the right procedure yet.
We had no common ground between us.
And my people didn't get along with his. There had already been two knockdown fistfights. and another incident where knives had been drawn before the men involved were pulled apart. And it wasn't all a matter of the rich settlers molesting the poor refugees. That damn raghead had no business grabbing a married woman, even if she did walk into the shower room naked at the wrong time of the day!
If this went on, somebody was going to get killed.
On the morning before their scheduled departure, Zoltan approached me with the idea of his people feasting some of mine. His Moslems would cook the food and provide the entertainment for, say, forty of my best men. It seems that among his people, a proper feast was for the men only. Women and children ate later from the table scraps.
Well, okay. It was my food they would be serving, but I could see where it was intended to be a goodwill gesture. If there was to be entertainment, fine. Aside from rare bands of minstrels and clowns, in the Middle Ages, entertainment was what you did on your own. Variety would be welcome. I said we would hold it that evening in the living room of my apartment.
Chapter Eleven
FROM THE DIARY OF PIOTR KULCZYNSKI
When I returned to Three Walls, I found strange things there. A band of foreigners had been invited temporarily within, and a notice had been posted restricting the baths to them during certain hours of the day.
I discussed this with Yawalda, whose friendship I had been cultivating in part because of her friendship with my love Krystyana. Also, she is in charge of the stables, and takes very good care of my horse. It seemed that the men all wrapped their heads in towels, and were embarrassed if any saw them without such strange garb. The women always kept their faces covered, even around other women. They had been invited in because Sir Conrad had taken pity on them, but they would soon be forced to leave.
But Yawalda had another far more interesting piece-of news, and she swore me to secrecy before she would talk of it. They weren't sure yet, but it looked as if Krystyana was with child!
Sir Conrad's ladies had long been using a method of preventing this taught them by Lady Richeza and known as the rhythm method. Yet it appears that not all of God's children have this rhythm, for Krystyana had missed her time. This excited me, for now she would have to be married or be called strumpet! If Sir Conrad would not have her, and he had often said that he would not, then perhaps at last my suit would be considered! I might yet win out and marry my love!
I was thus in a wild mood when word came to me that I was invited to Sir Conrad's apartment in an hour's time for an evening's entertainment! But my first hopes were soon shattered, as it was to be given by the foreigners and was to be a men-only affair.
I came dressed in my best, which was quite good now that I could afford such things, and of course I wore the beautiful sword and dagger I had won in combating the Castilians.
I soon found myself sitting uncomfortably on a cushion, with Sir Conrad to my right and Ilya to my left in Sir Conrad's great hall, or living room, as he insists on calling it. This large room takes up the entire top floor of the place, is fully eighteen yards to the side and is above any other room in the whole building, the floor being higher than the adjacent rooftops.
The ceiling is more than twice that which is usual at Three Walls, which is tall in itself. There are no velvets or tapestries hanging, yet the room has a certain rude splendor to it. I know for a fact that Sir Conrad had originally planned something far more modest, for I was there when Sir Vladimir insisted that it was occasionally necessary to impress a noble guest and Sir Conrad went along with him.
The west wall is done in rude limestone blocks, and those of the north and south are in rough timber, the slabs of wood each a yard wide. The ceiling is supported by other huge logs and the east wall is the raw natural face of a limestone cliff. Into this solid rock is cut a fireplace big enough for twenty men to stand, had the fire been out. Now it was roaring high. Yet for all its roughness, the hall had a certain vibrant strength about it that suited Sir Conrad's character.