The High-Tech Knight

Chapter Ten

Early the next morning, I read my letters to my party and to Sir Miesko's family, since it was important that our stories were reasonably consistent.

Vladimir felt that I should add a bit more about his victories, so I added a few paragraphs in the margins praising his lancework and horsemanship to the skies. Let him take all the glory. He deserved it and it didn't mean much to me. All I cared about was getting the kids off safely.

Lambert couldn't read, but Sir Miesko promised to read my letter to him before explaining the other side of he story.

Sir Miesko said, "I've been thinking about this and I've had another look at those children. If somebody did that to my kids, well, they'd have to kill me first."

"Thinking about it, their fathers are all dead, aren't hey. Conrad, know that I'm behind you in this mess you've made."

He turned to his horse, but then turned back quickly.

"But don't expect too much! I've got my own family to think of!"

So Sir Miesko left for Okoitz, the children were sent with some trusted men to Three Walls and my original party resumed its journey to Sacz. By noon, we approached the turnoff to Vladimir's folks' place.

"I know I invited you all to my father's manor, but I wonder now if that would be wise at this time," Sir Vladimir said. "In another hour we could be at Oswiecim, and if we push on till dusk we should arrive at the monastery of Tyniec. I think the monastery might be best."

"Why a monastery?" I asked. "They'd have us sleep with the other men and the girls would be lonely."

"True. But the monastery gives us the protection of the Church, which might be needful. We still don't know, how the matter sits with Count Lambert, or what the Crossmen are going to do. Tyniec puts us beyond Lambert's territory and the Crossmen would never violate Church property."

"Never?"

"Of course not. After all, they are a religious order."

"A religious order? You call that bunch of murderers, who massacre villages, enslave children, and trade with the Moslems a religious order?"

"It does seem odd, doesn't it? But they are sanctioned by the Pope and follow the Order of Saint Benedict, except for the fighting, of course, and the merchandising."

"Painting a wolf brown doesn't make it a cow. They're a bunch of damn murderers even if they do wear crosses on their shirts."

"I still don't see why you don't want to visit your parents. We were all looking forward to it, especially Annastashia. Surely we'd be safe enough there," I said.

"Safe, yes, but the timing isn't fight. May I speak frankly? You know that I wish to persuade them to permit my marriage to Annastashia. I want them to be in a good mood when I broach the subject. But just now, I'm under something of a cloud."

"I don't understand that."

"Well, you see, my father is also my liege lord. He swore to keep the trail safe for merchants. By aiding you yesterday, I violated his oath. I dishonored him. He would be well within his fights to have me hanged! Oh, my mother would never let him do it, but he certainly won't be in any mood to grant favors. In fact, I think it best to avoid him entirely until this matter is settled and we are either proved innocent or are dead."

"If you don't want to visit relatives, fine, but the monastery is out. There must be an inn nearby."

"Not a clean one."

I'd been without fleas for months and I suppose the monastery would be an interesting experience for the girls.

As we rode into Cracow the next morning-, the guards at the gate stiffened up and saluted. The last time I was here, they had haggled with me and charged me a toll to get in. Obvious wealth and rank have their privileges.

The girls were thrilled. The big city at last! Hundreds of colorful things to see and do. Huge cathedrals, massive stone castles on Wawel Hill, more shops than anything imaginable!

To me, well, take a few dozen historically interesting buildings, put them on a hill with a fine view and populate it with a few hundred gaudily dressed nobles and you have all that was attractive to the eye.

Then surround this with a squalid town of ten thousand uneducated and underfed people and cover it all with a half yard of shit and you have the reality of the situation, With plumbing, sewers, and street cleaners, it would have made a fine tourist trap.

As it was, I preferred the forests.

But the girls deserved a treat after all they'd been through lately. They had done a fine lot of work at Three Walls and they'd seen their first bloody combat, which shook them up a lot more than they wanted to admit. And they were a lot more worried than I was about the upcoming trial, so I worked at keeping them cheered up.

The girls wanted to go shopping and sightseeing and Vladimir felt that it was important to report in at Wawel Castle as soon as possible. I wanted to go see Father Ignacy at the Franciscan monastery. He was the only friend I had in this century who knew that I was from the future. He was my confessor, and I was in need of his services. And there was a certain matter of a Church inquisition into whether I was an instrument of God or an instrument of the devil.

So we compromised. I gave the girls each a handful of silver (their back pay really, but they didn't look at it that way. They were thrilled), had Vladimir take them shopping, and agreed to meet them at the monastery at noon. Then we'd go to the castle.

A monk who had considered me a klutz when I worked here now greeted me effusively, like a combination great lord and long lost friend. The outfit, again. Father Ignacy met me in his cell and he, at least, was unchanged.

"Welcome, Conrad."

"Thank you. Father, you said that you would file a report on me with the proper authorities in the Church. How is that going?"

"Quite well, my son. I wrote my report even within the time you were still here last December, and delivered it to my abbot. He delayed it hardly at all, but dispatched it within the month to the Bishop of Cracow."

"His Excellency acted with surprising speed and tact and within two months sent the letter back to my abbot, suggesting that it would perhaps be better to go through the regular arm of the Church, rather than through the secular one. That is to say, he felt it should go, not through his office, but through the Franciscan home monastery in Italy."

"We were able to find a messenger going to Italy in much less time than you'd think, and by June the report was speeding its way to Italy."

So nine months had gone by and the report hadn't even been delivered. And I'd thought the Russians were screwed up.

"Thank you, Father. A great deal has happened to me since we last met."

"You wish to confess? How long has it been since your last confession?"

"Only about a week, Father. But-I suppose it's wrong to say this, but my confessions since I last saw you haven't felt right. It's almost as though I didn't really confess at all."

"This might be caused by the promise of silence I required of you. You could never tell the whole truth."

"That might be it, Father."

"Well, the reasons for that promise are still valid, you must live with it. But now I want you to confess since our last meeting."

And so I did. I told him of all the things I'd built, the omen I'd had, and the men I'd killed. Confession with Father Ignacy is never the rote affair it is with some priests. He digs into things for hours if need be, but always arrives at the truth of a situation. Once we were through, he looked down and shook his head.

After scolding me about Krystyana and the other ladies-in-waiting, he said, "All this fighting! I hope you realize that I never thought that you would be in such anger when I found you that position with the merchant, Novacek."

"I've never found fault with you, Father."

"You are generous, my son. So. You attained wealth, lands, and power of a scope that most men can only ream about and it seems that two days ago you threw it all away."

"What is this problem you have with the Knights of the Cross? On your first day in this century, you insulted one of them and got your head bashed in the bargain. Now you have attacked one of their caravans and caused the death of five or six of their number. You should know hat very few men are truly evil, and certainly there could not be an entire order of them. The Crossmen do valuable service to our country, keeping the Mazovian orders free from invasion."

"They do it by murdering entire villages."

"Then we both know that such an event was probably in retaliation for some atrocity by the Pruthenians."

"Father, I know nothing of the sort."

"Do you think that the northern barbarians are innocent, peaceful dwellers of the forests? They are heathens and worship barbarous gods."

"There must be better ways to convert them."

"One would think so. Many missionaries have tried it over the past three hundred years, but to no avail. Many have died, martyrs to Christ."

"It's not some simple matter of putting a new image in their church. Those people practice human sacrifice! And cannibalism! Those 'innocent children' you 'rescued' have every one of them eaten human flesh!"

"Now that's news to me, Father. But I'll make Christians out of them. And no matter what the heathens have done, it doesn't excuse what the Crossmen have done. You don't know their whole history."

"Perhaps you should tell me about them."

"Well, you know that their organization was formed forty years ago in Jerusalem, a German imitation of the Knights Templar. They soon lost interest in the Holy Lands, I suppose because there wasn't much profit in it."

"They tried to set up in Hungary, but King Andrew found out the truth about them in time and threw them out. Duke Conrad of Mazovia wasn't that intelligent. He invited them in-what? — seven years ago? — to guard his northern borders. Their way of doing that has been to murder every non-Christian in sight and to take as much Polish soil as they do Prussian."

"In the future, they will do nothing but grow and many of the most murderous battles of the medieval period-"

"The what?"

"Forgive me, Father, but that is what this current period of history will eventually be called. The middle period between the ancient world of the Romans and the Renaissance, or awakening, that led to the modem world."

"Now that is a shock. I'd always thought of this as being the modem world."

"Hmm. Then again, I don't know what generations future to mine will call my own civilization. Perhaps they won't be as polite."

"Some time you must teach me more of your history. But for now, return to your story of the Crossmen."

"Yes, Father. Eventually their murderous ways became so notorious that they were censored by the Pope. This didn't bother them a bit. They simply became a secular order and went on doing as they had been. Many long wars and bloody battles were fought by the kings of Poland against them."

"Then Poland will again have a king?"

"Of course, Father. We're but a century from the time of King Casimir the Great!"

"Praise God! But continue your story."

"Eventually, they were defeated at the Battle of Grunwald or Tannenberg, it's sometimes called. This was — will be-the bloodiest battle fought by Christians in the Middle Ages."

"The surviving Crossmen became vassals of the Polish Crown, as the Duchy of Prussia. By that time they had completely eradicated the Slavic tribe of Prussians, or Pruthenians as they are sometimes called, and had taken that name for themselves, the way a barbaric warrior takes the clothing of his victim."

"But despite their vassalage, they never became Polish. Six hundred years from now, they were instrumental in organizing and dominating all the German states."

"Their spirit was that of another German group, the Nazis, which conquered Poland as well as most of the rest of Europe. Their crimes were so horrible as to be unimaginable. Not far from where we sit, they built a death camp called Auschwitz where they systematically killed four and a half million people. That is half again as many people as there are in all of present-day Poland."

"This was not a matter of the sack and slaughter of a city, done in the heat of passion. This was a matter of Germans going to work each day for four years and killing their quota of men, women, and children."

"And that was not the only camp, and the camps were not the only atrocity. In the end, more than fifty million people died in six years. That's twice as many people as lived in the entire Roman Empire at its peak."

Father Ignacy was silent for a while. "I cannot comprehend the numbers of people you speak of, but I have never known you to lie. You are saying then that this is a great evil that must be fought?"

"Yes, I guess so, Father."

"I take it then that you are not intending to run away, as many men would."

"I don't see how I can. If I did, they'd probably take those children back and sell them to the Moslems. I can't have that on my conscience."

"No, I don't suppose you can. But you are only one man, and they are many thousands."

"I know that I can't lick them alone," I said, my eyes blurring with tears. "But I intend to do everything that one man can. If I die, well, I die. Father, you once told me that I might be an instrument of God, and I didn't believe you. Well, in this matter, I know that I have God on my side." I think I was crying a little.

"Very well, my son. For what small worth it might be, know that in this matter you have me on your side as well. Go with God, my son. I give you no penance for your sins, for I think that you will soon be punished more than you deserve, and more than you can bear."

I had to stop a while in the vestibule to compose myself before I joined the others. It doesn't do to be tear-streaked when your friends are worried about you.

But the others were in a merry mood when I joined them in front of the monastery, and the girls were prattling about all the wondrous sights they'd seen. I leaned back on Anna and soaked up their gaiety. I needed it.

Vladimir informed us that the dinner hour at Wawel Castle would be over by then, and we hadn't eaten lately. I suggested an inn that I had stopped at last fall.

A healthy-looking, well-filled-out young woman took our order, then did a double take at me.

"Oh my God! You're Sir Conrad!"

"Guilty. Then you must be Malenka."

"Oh my God! Zygmunt! Zygmunt! Quickly! Look who's here!"

She ran out of the room to get her husband.

"What was that all about?" asked Annastashia.

"Oh, once I played matchmaker," I said.

The innkeeper came back with his wife, wiping his hands on his apron and smiling. Introductions were made and he announced that the meal was on the house and so were the next five, if we'd come back.

Soon, their other duties called them away and we could eat.

"They certainly were happy with you," Krystyana said. "How did you happen to bring them together?"

"Well, I hired her."

"Hired her?"

"Hired her."

"There's more to the story than you're telling."

"You are right. But that's all of it that you're going to hear. A man deserves some secrets."

They complained, but I wouldn't say another word. Actually, Malenka had been a prostitute and I'd hired her just to keep her from being used by a young friend of mine; it wouldn't have been good for him just then.

She was very young and hungry-looking at the time, and I had to report to a new job. So I told her that she had to do honest work for the innkeeper for the three days that I had hired her. The upshot was that she married the innkeeper, my friend became a monk, and all three of them are very happy. Pretty fair mileage out of three silver pennies.

But to talk about it would only embarrass Malenka, so I kept silent.

"They must have a lot of knights to guard all these walls," Annastashia said, as we rode again through the city.

"Not really, love," Sir Vladimir replied. "Down here in the city proper, they don't use knights at all. The castle and Wawel Hill are guarded by the nobility, but in an emergency the outer walls, gates, and towers are all guarded by the commoners."

"They do that?" Krystyana was scandalized.

"Most assuredly. That tower over there would be defended by the haberdashers guild, and the gate we came in through was the responsibility of the butchers guild."

"You mean the man that saluted us when we came in was a butcher?" Annastashia asked.

"No, no. I said 'in an emergency.' That fellow was hired by the city council to guard the gate. He and a few dozen others do that for a living. But he wasn't a knight, either. At least I don't think he was. Just a man at arms."

"I thought you had to be a knight to have armor and guard things," Krystyana said.

"Not at all," Sir Vladimir said. "Anyone who can afford it can have it, in Poland anyway. I've heard that in Germany and France it's a little different, but that's the way it is here. That only nobility may stand guard is one of Count Lambert's rules, which only apply at Okoitz. He says that it keeps his knights from getting lazy and supports their rights to all their special privileges."

"What special privileges?" Krystyana asked.

"Like not having to do manual labor," I said. There wasn't much point in telling Krystyana that she was a was a special privilege.

"How about that tower over there?" Annastashia asked.

"The brewers guild, I think. Every guild has its tower or section of wall, except for the surgeons and the armorers. They'd have other duties if — the city was attacked," Sir Vladimir said.

"But who could possibly attack a city this huge?" Krystyana said.

"Well, nobody for hundreds of years has tried it. But that's because it's ready for war," Sir Vladimir said.

"Not ready enough," I said. "In eight and a half years, the Mongols will come and will burn this city to the ground."

They all looked at me aghast.

"Sir Conrad! Don't say things like that!" Krystyana said.

"Yes, Sir Conrad. That's hardly a thing to joke about!" Sir Vladimir added.

"I wish I were joking. But there's nothing we can do about it fight now."

"I'm sure Sir Vladimir knows the tale, but have you ladies heard the story about King Krak, who killed the dragon and founded this city?"

"I'd heard it was a monster, but not necessarily a dragon," Sir Vladimir said.

"Then tell it your way."

"I shall."

He launched into a windy telling of the tale that almost got us to the castle gates.

"And it's all true?" Krystyana said. "There really was a King Krak?"

"I could show you his burial mound. They named the city after him. What other proof can you need?" He said with a twinkle in his eye. He gave me a quick wink.,

There are these two huge prehistoric mounds in the area, but nobody ever found anything buried under them. The best guess is that they were used as defensive structures. Poland and the rest of the north European plain have' been inhabited, off and on, for at least a hundred eighty thousand years. A lot can happen in that time.

"And Princess Wanda really drowned herself in the river rather than marry the German prince?" Annastashia asked.

"I could show you her mound as well."

"And the monster's cave is still under Wawel Hill?" Krystyana asked.

"It is. But the mouth of it was covered over hundreds of years ago and no one remembers where it's at."

"Do you believe the story, Sir Conrad?" Annastashia asked.

"The way I heard it, Wanda turned Prince Rytygier down. He then got mad and invaded her country. Her armies defeated his, and in thanksgiving, she sacrificed herself to the gods. But far be it from me to contradict Sir Vladimir."

"God wouldn't want anybody to do that!" Annastashia said.

"This was hundreds of years ago. We were pagans then. Pagan gods want a lot."

"Thank God we're Christians," Krystyana said.

The last time I was in Cracow, they wouldn't let me on Wawel Hill. This time the guards saluted us as we entered. The uniform gets them every time.

As we dismounted, a page ran up to me.

"Sir Conrad? The duke is expecting you. Please come with me."

This startled me, but I followed the kid. The castle had little in common with the one I remembered from the twentieth century. A lot would be torn down in the next seven hundred years and a whole lot more built. But every now and then I'd get the deja vu feeling and realize I was seeing a familiar landmark from a formerly impossible angle.

Duke Henryk's chambers were straight out of a movie set, and his bearing and beard were as formidable as ever. I bowed low.

"Oh, stand up, boy! I'm too old to waste time on that nonsense. In private, anyway. They still make me do it in public. Better still, sit down. Now what's this about your chopping up a Crossmen caravan?"

"They were abusing over a hundred children, your grace."

"They were transporting a consignment of Pruthenian slaves to the Greeks so the Greeks could sell them to the Moors. Go on."

I was trying not to sweat. "Yes, your grace. I tried to free the kids and the guards attacked me. Sir Vladimir came to my aid and we won."

"Two of you kicked shit out of seven of them. I like that! How did Sir Vladimir do?"

"He killed three and wounded one more to the death, your grace."

"Ha! I knew that kid had his father's blood in him! Four men in a fair fight!"

"More than fair, your grace. In the end, he was charged twice by two knights at the same time, and he still killed one of them."

"What! Two on one? The bastard Crossman never told me about that! Yeah, I've talked to him. He came through yesterday, still scared. Ha! You could smell the shit on his britches. He said you'd killed all six of his comrades. What happened to the last one?"

"He lost his right arm, your grace, but I think I got to him in time. He'll likely live. He's at Sir Miesko's now."

"Ah, Miesko. He used to be my clerk before I knighted him…. Well. Damn good fight, boy. But it's still going to be the death of you."

"If the Pruthenians were on my border, I'd make peasants out of them damn quick, but that sluggard the Duke of Mazovia couldn't handle them, so the damn fool invited in those Crossmen. He invited in the wolves to keep down the foxes!"

"Well, I don't like them, but I'm not strong enough to beat them. And that's what it would take for me to get you out of this mess you've made. A war. I can't afford it and I couldn't win it. So I've got to stand back and let them kill you. You hear me, boy? You'll get no real help from me! The best I can do is to delay your trial a few months."

"I'd appreciate that, your grace. Maybe the horse will sing."

"Eh?"

"One of the Aesop's fables, your grace. A man condemned to death asked the king not to kill him because he was the only man in the world who could teach a horse to sing. The king was skeptical, but gave the man a horse and a year to teach it. The man's friends asked him why he had done such a foolish thing. Nobody could teach a horse to sing! The man answered, 'True. But a lot can happen in a year. The king may die. I may die. And maybe the horse will sing."' "I wish I had an education. Damn. A man comes to us from the far future and we go and kill him."

I was shocked. No one was supposed to know about that! "You know, your grace?"

"Yeah. I worked it out of your priest. Don't be hard on him, though. I can be very persuasive."

"I can believe that, your grace."

"You'd better. Even so, he had a time convincing me. What finally turned me was when he showed me that parchment you gave him and I realized the wealth of your people."

"Parchment, your grace? You mean the paper money I gave him for a souvenir?"

"No, not the miniature paintings, although that was pretty impressive, too. Any people who would use works of art for their currency instead of silver must be truly cultured! But no, I mean the parchment arsewipes you gave him."

Once, when we were walking north from Zakopane, Father Ignacy had gestured that he was going off to the bushes, presumably to relieve himself. I'd given him some toilet paper and he'd taken it without comment. I hadn't thought of it since. It appears that rather than using it, he'd kept it as a treasure from the future. "The toilet paper?"

"That's what he called it. People who can afford parchment to wipe their butts are richer than anyone in this century!"

"Your priest told me why he swore you to secrecy, and I have to agree with most of his reasons. You can count on me to keep my mouth shut."

"Look, boy, you don't have much life left, so you get along and enjoy yourself. Tell the guard to send in the castellan. I'll have him fix your party up with the best rooms available."

I bowed and the duke waved me out.

Whew! At first I thought the duke himself was going to kill me! And toilet paper is the most impressive artifact of modem civilization?