The Crosstime Engineer Page 22

  “Of course. But don’t tell anyone that I have any ownership in the place. Swear the witnesses to secrecy.”

  “As you wish, my lord.”

  “Hey, the rumor campaign won’t work if they know that I own the Pink Dragon.”

  “As you wish. I have talked with a seamstress. She will have no difficulties with most of the costumes-think; it will be like a continual carnival!-but she wants help with the stockings.”

  I didn’t accomplish much at the foundry that afternoon, and when I got back for supper, the inn was packed. Word had gotten out that the most beautiful maidens in the city would be there. Fully a hundred young males showed up to see what was happening, along with some thirty young hopefuls. I was embarrassed, and the innkeeper expected me to do the choosing.

  Stalling for time, I said, “Are you sure that all of them are virgins? Have your wife check it.” I ate a meal and drank a pot of wine at the small table that had been reserved for me. I had in mind that his wife should simply ask them, but she felt obligated to actually check for an intact hymen. She passed fourteen of them. How many left because they were embarrassed, I don’t know. Apparently, room and board was good wages for a maid. Twelve pence a week on top of that was fabulous.

  “And now will you choose the six, my lord?”

  Well, one of them was attractive, up to Krystyana’s standards. The rest of them were hopeless ducklings, and I felt sorry for them. “No. Let the crowd choose one of them. You talk to them. Have them choose the best five, then the best two, and then a final vote.” It seemed the fairest way, and it didn't get me involved.

  “But only one?”

  “Just do it all again for five more days. Remember what I said about entertainment? Well, this is entertainment.”

  They took in four hundred pence that night, and afterwards the crowds got bigger.

  A week later, as I ate dinner, I got a visit from a local priest, a Father Thomas. I offered him wine, but he refused and immediately got down to business.

  “I am worried about your actions, my son, and about your soul.”

  “But why, Father?”

  “You have been responsible for the hiring of young women-virtuous, Christian women from good families—and parading them half naked in a brothel.”

  “A brothel? By no means, Father! They are waitresses at a good inn, which is the farthest thing from a brothel. They live most virtuous lives, on threat of dismissal! There is no convent that protects its nuns better than we protect our waitresses.”

  “Aside from the morality of it-and both the innkeeper and I are moral men-aside from it, I say, running a common stews would be bad for business. There are a lot of them in your parish, and they aren’t very profitable.”

  “That others sin is well known. They are not the subject of this conversation.”

  “But why don’t you try to do something about the real fleshpots? Why come to an honest inn?”

  “The fleshpots, as you appropriately call them, are sanctioned by their own guild and to a certain extent by the law, if not by the Church. What you are doing is new and is best nipped in the bud.”

  “Father, we do nothing more than serve food and drink. The waitresses are pretty, but that’s the way God made them, and 1, for one, appreciate His good work. We do offer lodging, but we do not offer bed partners.”

  “You dress them in a manner that encourages lechery.”

  “We dress them in an attractive manner that fully covers their breasts and privy members. Any man wanting to see more may simply go to the public baths, Father.”

  “The baths have their own guilds and sanctions. The Church will close them down in time. You evade my charge Of lechery.”

  “Father, it is normal for men to appreciate the beauty of women. If looking at pretty girls is a sin, then every normal male in Poland is doomed to hell!”

  “Please go and inspect the waitresses’ rooms. Talk to the girls. Prove to yourself that we are moral.”

  “I fully intend to make such an inspection,” he said, and left.

  I was just finishing my meal, washing down my cheese with beer, when the priest returned.

  “Sir Conrad, I admit that the situation is much as you described it. If anything, the girls complain of the restrictions placed on them.”

  “The price of morality, Father.” I made a mental note to see just how serious their complaints were. “While you are here, there is another matter that I would like to discuss. One of our waitresses has become fond of a local boy. I have talked with him. His intentions are honorable and his character good. Since she is employed by the inn, it seems fitting that the inn should pay her wedding expenses. Would it be possible for you to perform the ceremony?”

  “Why, I suppose that this is quite possible. In fact, I would be delighted.”

  “Wonderful! I expect that most of our waitresses will soon be married. Virtuous and attractive young ladies don’t stay single for long. Perhaps we should discuss group rates.” In the next hour, I made an ally of Father Thomas.

  As he left, I said, “Father, how did you know that I owned the inn?”

  “The Church has its own sources of information, my son.”

  It was early afternoon, and only one waitress was on duty. Troubled about the waitresses’ complaints to the priest, I went back to the girls' dorm, what had been “the ducal suite,” even though the duke never slept there. Actually, almost- no one had ever slept there since it was priced beyond the means of the usual guest. It made sense to convert it. If it was more magnificent than necessary, well, young girls like that sort of nonsense.

  I had arranged inexpensive group rates at a local bathhouse-early afternoons only-for the inn’s staff, at the inn's expense. Our people were encouraged to take a daily bath, and the waitresses were required to.

  When I called on the girls, the five of them were in various stages of undress, with a preponderance of full nudity. They let me in without bothering to dress. Perhaps their status as untouchables, along with their recent adolescent discovery that men noticed them and that they liked it, was the cause of this display.

  I didn’t like it. On the one hand, I could hardly break my own rules with regard to their virginity, and, well, a really decent man simply doesn't take a virgin in a casual way. I think that half the world's frigid women are the results of a klutzy male on their first night. Properly done, it takes patience and warmth and a great deal of love. Back in the twentieth century, I'd had two virgins. They'd both left me as wonderful lovers. I was rather proud of my workmanship.

  But just then I was horny as hell. I had been three weeks without, and the last thing I needed was five pairs of budding nipples staring at me.

  “Put some clothes on, damn it! You’d think we were running a brothel here!” I shouted.

  They scurried to cover themselves with towels and blankets. “We were just back from the baths,” one of them said. “We were hot.”

  “Yeah, sure. Fourteen years old and hotter than hell. Now, what are these complaints you’ve been making about your jobs?”

  “Complaints, Sir Conrad? We have no complaints. The pay is wonderful, and the work, I mean, it’s like being at a party,” the short redhead said.

  “Then why were you complaining to the priest who was here today?”

  “Oh, that,” said a well-endowed blonde, managing to drop her blanket below her belly button. “We were just doing what Mrs. Wrolawski told us to do.”

  “Cover your breasts. Now, what exactly did the innkeeper’s wife tell you to do?”

  “She said that if we didn’t act as pure as nuns in a convent, the Church would shut down the inn and we'd each be lacking our twelve silver pence per week.”

  “She also threatened to send us to a nunnery if we weren’t convincing,” the redhead added.

  So Mrs. Wrolawski had eavesdropped on my conversation with the priest and had set things up. Well-a-day. All’s well that ends well.

  “Okay. But put some clothes on, damn i
t!”

  Most of the waitresses found suitable husbands within six months. The inn paid the wedding expenses, and there was always a “new hiring” the day after. This happened at least once a month and often once a week. For most of our customers, it was their first experience with voting. In my own mind, I could never sort out the morality of it a.

  I had no difficulty with the morality of a situation that occurred much later that evening. The inn had closed for the night, but I was up in my room, drinking and doodling with some ideas about a gear-cutting machine. I do much of my best thinking late at night over a bottle. Oh, in the sober light of dawn I throw out three-quarters of it, but the quarter that is left is often very creative.

  My room was directly above that used by Tadeusz and his wife. The cooks lived out, the waitresses were fourteen-year-old girls, and it happened that at the time there were no overnight guests. The only men in the inn were Tadeusz, the guard, and myself when the innkeeper’s wife screamed. I was shocked sober in an instant.

  “Guard!” Tadeusz shouted.

  “Shout all you want. Your aging guard has been detained,” a sinister, gravelly voice said.

  There were more shouts, accusations, and then screams as I flew for the doorway, down the hall, and down the steps. I was wearing the embroidered outfit given me by Count Lambert, and my glove-leather boots made my approach fairly quiet, at least compared with the commotion coming from the innkeeper’s room.

  A beefy stranger was guarding the doorway. He had a long misericord, and I belatedly realized that I had left my sword belt in my room.

  I am not a master of the martial arts, but I had taken the standard military courses in unarmed combat. The important thing is to hit hard and fast. Hesitation can get you killed.

  The thug came at me with a clumsy overhand swing. I blocked his dagger with my left forearm and kneed him hard in the groin. He bent over, presenting the back of his head to my clenched fists and his face to my knee.

  I took advantage of this opportunity; his nose and teeth gave way with a crunching sound. He fell heavily to the floor, still gripping his knife. I don’t like people who pull knives on me in dark hallways, so I stamped hard on his knife hand. Too hard. The bones smashed, and splinters of knuckle bones were driven through the thin soles of my boot, lacerating my foot. Pain shot up my leg.

  I picked up the misericord and limped into the room, ducking my head to get through the doorway. “What the hell goes on here?” I inquired.

  Two Mafia types were in the room beside the Wrolawskis. The leader of the pair grinned evilly and said, “Just a bit of guild business, stranger. Get out and you’ll live longer.”

  Tadeusz was bleeding from the nose and mouth. His wife’s dress was torn, exposing bruised, aging breasts.

  “They’re from the whoremasters guild!” Tadeusz said, contempt and fear in his voice.

  “If your business was honest, you’d come in the daytime,” I said. “Now I'm telling you! Get out fast and you'll live.”

  The leader signaled to his subordinate, and the man came at me with a wide-bladed dagger. He used the same stupid overhand attack as his associate in the hallway.

  The misericord is a long, narrow, thrusting weapon designed to pierce chain mail. I blocked the thug’s attack as before, but this time at the expense of a slash in the embroidery on my cuff. Gripping him by the shoulder with my left hand, I aimed a gutting thrust at the man's stomach. He pulled his body back, and my knife continued upward, catching him between the chin and neck. The thin blade went entirely through his brain, and a few centimeters of it stuck out from the top of his head.

  Over the man’s shoulder, I saw the leader hauling back to throw a knife at me. With my hands still on the shoulder and the grip of the knife, I yanked the body upward as a shield. The dead man was much lighter than I had expected, or perhaps the fury of combat increased my strength, but in all events I bashed the thug's head into a low roof beam. The misericord stuck in the wood, and the corpse hung there, the leader's knife in its back.

  The leader came at me with his fists, but his sort of hoodlum lives more by fear than by fighting ability. Equally weaponless, I hit him twice, hard, in the stomach.

  “Sir Conrad!” Tadeusz shouted.

  Suddenly the Mafia type froze, rigid. I was too furious to stop; grabbing him by the shoulder, I chopped viciously with the edge of my right hand, once on each side of the neck, breaking both collar bones.

  “Sir Conrad?” the man gasped, his arms hanging unnaturally low.

  “Yeah.” I was breathing hard.

  “The noble knight that killed Sir Rheinburg with a single blow?”

  “Among others.” I was returning to normal.

  “I knew him, sir.”

  “You look the type.”

  “We had heard rumors that you were associated with this inn, but the whoremasters guild felt-”

  “Well, you felt wrong.” The noise had awakened the waitresses, and they were clustered wide-eyed around the doorway. One had a blanket wrapped around her, but the rest were naked.

  “Those girls are servants, not whores,” I said. “We have nothing to do with the whoremasters guild.”

  “Yes, sir. That is obviously true, sir.”

  “So?” I said.

  “I may live, sir? I may leave?”

  I had to think for a minute. “Yeah. You can live. But you damn well owe us for damages.”

  “Of course, sir. We always pay our just debts.”

  “Tadeusz,” I said. “What do they owe you for what they’ve done to your property, for the injury caused to you and your wife?”

  “Who can say, Sir Conrad?” the innkeeper said. “But is this wise?”

  “Name a number!”

  “Perhaps five hundred pence?”

  “Good,” I said. “Okay, whoremaster. You owe us five hundred pence, not to mention the mess you’ve made on the floor and the fact that your thugs cut up and bled all over my best outfit. Get out!”

  “As you command, Sir Conrad Stargard.” He left with as much dignity as he could muster.

  “Are you insane, Sir Conrad?” the innkeeper said. “Now they will come back!”

  “I doubt it. That kind knows when it’s licked.”

  “But they will! Girls! Quickly! Run to Sir Conrad’s room. Bring back his weapons and armor!”

  Six naked teenagers scurried off, the one with the blanket having dropped it in the blood pooling under the body that was still stuck to the beam.

  “At least bring my wine!” I shouted. I dropped heavily into a chair. The action was over, and I was starting to get the shakes.

  I got my wine, but shortly six pretty, nude girls, at Tadeusz’s insistence, were stripping off my outer clothes and lacing me into padded leather and chain mail.

  “This is stupid. They won’t be back,” I said, but I was wrong.

  Once I was fully armed, we searched out and found the inn’s guard. He had a huge knot on the side of his head and was bound, gagged, and furious. He smiled at the corpse stuck to the ceiling, and when the other thug started moaning, he took particular pleasure in tying the man up.

  “Yes,” the guard said, gripping his sword. “Let them come back.”

  “Hey,” I said. “If you people are that worried, why not send for the count’s guardsmen?”

  “Certainly, Sir Conrad,” the innkeeper said. “But who would dare go out into the night?”

  “Oh, hell. I’ll do it myself,” I said. “And have these girls get some clothes on. They act like this really is a brothel!”

  “And leave us defenseless?” one of the girls squealed.

  “Shit.” I sat down and took a long pull of wine. There was nothing for it but to wait until they all calmed down and went back to bed. Anyway, my injured foot was throbbing.

  The girls were passing out knives from the kitchen, which was absolutely stupid. If you don’t know how to use a weapon, you are much better off without it.

  In their excitement
, they had forgotten my instructions to get dressed. Or perhaps running around naked with knives seemed more adventurous to them. Mrs. Wrolawski, who usually kept them in check, was sitting, stunned, on her bed.

  She hadn’t even made an effort to cover her bruised breasts. Her husband was sitting in the other chair in a blue funk, blood still dripping from his nose. The guard was looking for an excuse to kill somebody, the girls were working out a set of heroic passwords, the body was still stuck to the ceiling, and my foot hurt.

  Damn, what a lunatic night! My mother told me I should have gone to the beach.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Everyone in the room froze. Even the previously murderous guard was suddenly sweating.

  “Never mind,” I said. “I’ll get it.”

  I limped down the hall to the main door. One more piece of insanity and I was going to scream. I did take the precaution of drawing my sword before opening the door.

  “Ali. Sir Conrad Stargard, I believe,” said the welldressed gentleman before me. “Please note that we come unarmed and with goodwill. We wish to make amends for certain unpleasantries that occurred earlier this evening.”

  There were six of them, two men and four women. They presented Tadeusz with a purse containing five hundred pence, removed the dead and wounded men, and, with buckets of warm, soapy water that they had brought with them, cleaned up the blood on the floor.

  “These, of course, are yours by right of combat,” the gentleman said, presenting me with the newly cleaned misericord, the wide-bladed knife, and the leader’s throwing knife. All three were sheathed. He must have brought the leader's sheath with him.

  “Certain other amends will be made at the earliest opportunity. In the interim, I wish you a pleasant sleep and our assurances of our continued goodwill.”

  And they left.

  “That’s it, gang. Back to bed,” I said, and took a long pull of wine.

  A week later, a messenger delivered to me four complete outfits, all beautifully embroidered and one almost an exact duplicate of the one that had been damaged. He also brought a red velvet barding for Anna and a matching surcoat for me, both embroidered with gold thread.