Everyone else in the room was trying to act as though it was perfectly normal for a beautiful woman to undress at the table of an inn, for to anger the duke was not wise.
"Boy, you do seem to collect the beauties! You've near outdone me this time, but not quite!" He gave Lady Francine's hand a squeeze.
Lady Francine, who understood why I had done what I had done, quietly said, "Thank you, Sir Conrad. Thank you for everything."
"Yes, it's a style I like," the duke said. "I may not be the rutty buck I once was, but I can still admire good girl flesh. I've half a mind to dress all the serving wenches at Piast Castle this way, just to improve the scenery. In fact, seeing these two ladies side by side, I've got all of a mind to do it!"
"It looks nice on truly beautiful women such as our ladies here, your grace, but it's not a style that would suit every woman."
"So what? If any of my wenches are — ugly or too droopy, I'll just replace them with girls who aren't!"
"Then, too, your grace, they keep the inn here warm because of the waitresses' costumes, or rather their lack of them. Your castle is pretty drafty. Wouldn't it be better to wait until spring?"
"Wait? Boy, I just turned seventy. I don't have time to wait! In fact, I'll do it right now. Sir Frederick! Attend me!"
A knight in full armor set down his bowl of soup and came briskly over. "Your grace?"
"Ladies, stand up. Take a good look at these women, Sir Frederick, then go back to Piast Castle and tell the castellan that I want all the serving wenches at the castle looking the same way when I get back."
"Yes, your grace. I shall leave immediately. But… these two ladies are the most beautiful that I have ever seen in my life! Where below heaven is the castellan going to find two hundred like them?"
"There aren't two hundred like them in the world! I didn't mean that they had to be this pretty, you ninny! I meant that they should dress this way! I want to see their tits!"
"And don't leave now. It's dark out there. Go back to your supper and leave first thing in the morning."
I thought that Count Lambert got away with a lot, but the duke could do anything that didn't offend the majority of his major supporters. If the servants didn't like the change in outfits, tough. Their vote wasn't taken.
"Yes, your grace." The knight beat a speedy retreat.
"Sit down, girls," the duke said. "You see what I have to work with, Sir Conrad?"
"He seemed a most courteous and obedient vassal to me, your grace." This was as close as I dared come to criticizing the duke.
"Yeah, but he's stupid. Men like you are rare."
"Your grace, I think that any difference between Sir Frederick and me has more to do with education than with basic ability."
"That makes it rarer, boy. There aren't any schools here like the ones you went to, but I hear that you're working on it."
"Yes, your grace. We now have nine dozen primary schools operating in Count Lambert's county. There is one in almost every town and village."
"Almost? Why not all?"
"Your grace, you must remember that I am a mere knight. I can only try to persuade a baron to do things my way. If he's against me, what can I do?"
"You're talking about Baron Jaraslav, Sir Stefan's father, aren't you."
"Yes, your grace."
"He's a hard-nosed bastard, but he's served me well on the battlefield. "
"I'm not speaking against the man, but in this case he's wrong. Education is important! It's not as though those schools will cost him anything. I'm putting them in at my own expense, with the help of the peasants."
"Boy, I don't see why you're pushing this reading and writing business so hard. What good is that going to do a peasant?"
"As things stand, very little, your grace. But things aren't going to stay as they are for much longer. Right now, most people are spending most of their time simply doing grunt work, generating power with human muscles. But you saw that steam-powered sawmill of mine. You said it had the power of two hundred women. Well, the women who used to walk back and forth on the walking-beam sawmill aren't doing that anymore. They're all doing other work now, more skilled work."
"That's just a start. Tomorrow, I'll show you the steam engines we're installing to turn the machines in the shop here, and the others to knead the clay for the mold shop and pump the bellows of the smelter."
"Every time one of those machines goes in, we need fewer dumb peasants and more skilled men. What's more, the skills needed are changing too quickly for men to get by simply by learning the trades of their fathers. They'll have to learn them in schools and out of books. They have to be able to read."
"I'll grant you're right when it comes to factories, boy, but most commoners are farmers. It has to be that way if we're all going to eat!"
"True, your grace, but only so long as we stay with current farming methods. I've already started to change things. There was another bumper harvest at Okoitz this year, but this time they got the entire harvest in, despite more rainy days than usual. The difference was as simple a thing as a wheelbarrow. They have a thresher attachment on their windmill, and they were able to store the entire harvest in their existing storage bins threshed. Had it still been in the shucks, as is usual, half of it would be on the ground. In the next few years I'll be introducing new plows, reapers, and other harvesting machines. The era of the dumb peasant is over!"
"Interesting. But how far can this go?"
"Quite a ways, your grace. I once spent four years in a country called America. That nation was the greatest seller of agricultural products in the world, and its people are among the best fed, Yet only one man in fifty was a farmer! Most of the rest worked at trades that are unknown in this country. There aren't even words for them."
"Yet somehow all this troubles me, Sir Conrad. I keep asking myself if it's all really worth it."
"They seemed to think so, your grace, Tell me, would you like to live in a home that was warm in the coldest weather, that was as cool as you wanted it on the hottest day? Would you like to have fresh fruits and vegetables available at any time, no matter what the season? Would you like to have an instrument called a telephone that would let you speak to any of your vassals, though they were a hundred miles away? To any duke or king in Christendom? Would you like to have doctors so skilled that they could keep you healthy for many years to come? Would you like to be able to walk on board a great silver ship that could fly you to China in an afternoon, while a pretty waitress brings you drinks as you look down on the clouds below? And would you like to have these things not only for yourself, but for the least of your subjects?"
"Tell me, your grace, are these things worth it?"
"Maybe, boy. Maybe. But your priest has told me of the terrible wars your people have, of weapons so mighty that one man, pushing a button, could destroy whole cities. Of hatreds, and of famines when there was no need for famines. What do you say to that?"
"I say that I'm an engineer, your grace. I can build machines that can heat your home, harvest your crops, and flush your shit. It's not fair to expect me to make you love your fellow man as well. That's not my job!"
Chapter Thirteen
I spent the morning giving the duke and his party a tour of the facilities at Copper City. He seemed most impressed with the eight steam engines we were installing, two of which were already operational. They were all single expansion units, and not very efficient thermally, but I had a use for the waste heat. All the buildings had steam radiators in every room, which condensed the steam back to water to be pumped into the tubular boilers again. Cogeneration. Come spring, we'd be installing a leather tannery to use that excess heat in the summertime.