The Crosstime Engineer Read online

  Ilya actually made wrought iron in the same crude forge that he used for everything else. He layered charcoal on the bottom of his forge higher than the nozzle of his bellows. Then he carefully put lump ore on the side away from the bellows and more charcoal on the near side until the forge was heaped high.

  He started a fire and worked the bellows gently for two hours, adding a mixture of fine ore and charcoal as the mass in the forge was consumed. Then he called for assistants, who worked the bellows hard. After three hours of this, constantly adding ore and charcoal, he dug into the burning mass with large pincers and pulled out a glowing spongy mass.

  This was immediately placed on the anvil, and three burly men beat on it vigorously with sledgehammers. Ilya kept turning the mass so that it was shaped into a crude rod.

  When the rod cooled, it was put back into the fire; another spongy lump was fished out, and then the process was repeated. Two men were still working the bellows and adding ore and charcoal.

  Each rod was pulled and beaten and reheated four times before being set aside to cool. By the end of the day, six men working twelve hours had consumed forty kilos of ore and two hundred kilos of charcoal. But they had made less than ten kilos of wrought-iron bars.

  “You know, Ilya, once we get the wet mill built, we’ll have machines to work the bellows and a trip-hammer to beat your iron. We'll build you a bigger forge, and you'll be able to make ten times the iron working alone.”

  “Bellows that work themselves? Hammers that swing on their own accord? You might as well tell me that fishes can fly!”

  “I know of one that does.”

  “Sir Conrad, if you hadn’t been right about steel, I'd call you the greatest liar in Christendom. As it is, well, you tell me what you want and I'll make it. But I'll believe those hammers and bellows when I see them!”

  Krystyana was still acting standoffish, so finally I asked her about it.

  “Sir Conrad, it’s not that I'm putting you off, it's just… oh, you'd call it a superstition.”

  “Try me, pretty girl.”

  “Well, it’s something that Lady Richeza told me about.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, she said that if you count the days after your… your time and sleep alone from the end of the first week to the middle of the third, you won’t get pregnant. I know it's silly, I know it's superstitious, but I don't want to get pregnant and I don't want to marry a peasant and I don't want to be old at twenty and dead at forty and-” She was in my arms, crying uncontrollably.

  Once I got her calmed down, I said, “Don’t worry, pretty girl. You don't have to be anything that you don't want to be. As to this abstention during certain times of the month, well, in my country it's called the rhythm method, and the Pope has approved it. It works most of the time.”

  She cried some more, and after that I settled down to a program of fifteen days a month with Krystyana and the rest of the time spreading myself around.

  I had a model of the cloth factory built by the first of May. We were running out of room in the bailey, so I made it a threestory building, as high as the church.

  The top floor, with a high, peaked roof, was filled with a dozen looms. The middle floor held the spinning wheels and the combing and carding equipment. The ground floor was for washing and dyeing, with additional space for storage. I added a treadmill-powered lift to carry materials up and down.

  I wished that I could have done something about windows, but glass was hideously expensive. Even a few small glass windows would have cost more than the rest of the building put together. The lack of glass or decent artificial light was serious. It cut our available man-hours by a factor of three at least. Poland is at a high latitude. In the summer, it can be light for eighteen hours a day. But in the summer, except for two months after planting, most people had to spend most of their time in the fields.

  In the winter, nothing could be done in the fields. There was often less than six hours of daylight, and that was useful only to those who worked outside or next to an open window. Oil lamps burning animal fat were hard to work by, smelly and expensive. The animals of the thirteenth century were skinny, and fat was scarce. In Cieszyn, a kilo of fat sold for twice the price of a kilo of lean meat.

  Farming occupied six months out of the year. Two months in the late spring were available for other work, but without a good source of light the four winter months were largely useless.

  Although electric lights were out of the question, kerosene lamps were possible. The world’s first oil wells were drilled in Poland by Ignacy Lukasiewicz, who built the first petrochemical plant and invented the kerosene lamp. But I saw no possibility of getting our technology to that level in the next five years.

  Beeswax candles? It would take thirty candles to light the factory poorly. I estimated that it would take six hundred beehives to produce enough wax to keep them burning all winter.

  In short, I was designing a factory that could be operational only two months out of the year.

  When I explained the problem to the count, he solved it in moments in his own typical way. He simply told each of his 140 knights to send him a peasant girl or two from just after Easter to just before Christmas. The girls were paid in cloth, and everybody was happy. But I get ahead of myself.

  Chapter Twenty

  Count Lambert returned on the morning of May 1, which was yet another holiday. With him were about thirty knights and a number of dignitaries, one of whom was Sir Stefan’s father. I thought it best to leave Lambert with his guests until I was summoned.

  In the early afternoon I was watching an archery competition; the peasants were shooting at targets about fifty yards away with a skill that was about equal to that of modern archers.

  Suddenly, Count Lambert was standing beside me. “Well, Sir Conrad, are you going to teach us the proper way to shoot arrows?”

  “Not I, my lord. But I know a man who could.”

  “Indeed? And who is this man?”

  I told him the story of how Tadaos the boatman had shot the deer.

  “A single arrow into a deer’s head at two hundred yards from a moving boat? You saw this yourself?”

  “Yes, my lord, and helped him eat the venison.”

  “Hmm. I could use such an archer to train others. Could you get him here?”

  “I could write Father Ignacy and ask him to tell the boatman of your needs. Perhaps he will come.”

  “Do so. I will affix my seal to the letter. Now then, I have talked to this Florentine cloth worker you sent me. Does he really know his trade?”

  “I think so, my lord, but we won’t know until we see his cloth.”

  “Hmm. You swore him to yourself. Would you transfer his allegiance to me?”

  “Gladly, my lord. I engaged him for you. But could I ask a favor in return?”

  “Name it.”

  “There’s a boy here, Piotr Kulczynski. I would like him to swear to me.”

  “Certainly, Sir Conrad, if the boy and his father are willing. In fact, as long as someone is not sworn to me, you really don’t need my permission. Even sworn, a man always has a right of departure, provided his debts are paid. What do you want with him?”

  “He’s a bright kid, my lord, and has picked up accounting very quickly. I want him to keep an eye on some commercial interests I have in Cieszyn.”

  “Do these commercial interests include ownership of the Pink Dragon Inn?”

  “Yes, my lord. Do you object?”

  “Not in the least. It’s just that some remarkable rumors have been circulating about your adventures in Cieszyn. Did you really seat one of my peasant girls at the head table in my brother's castle?”

  “Yes, my lord. I’m sorry if I've offended you, but-”

  “Sir Conrad, my only objection is that I wasn’t able to see the expression on his wife's face.” He laughed. “That bitch has always hated me.”

  “Well, come along. I want to introduce you to my liege lord, and I want you to
explain your mills and the new cloth factory.”

  As we entered the castle, Sir Stefan was talking heatedly with his father. I couldn’t hear them, but twice he pointed at me. As my American friends would have put it, the shit was about to hit the fan.

  Duke Henryk the Bearded was one of the most remarkable men I had ever met. He was almost seventy years old, and his face was cracked and wrinkled like old timber, yet his back was straight and strong. His thick white hair brushed his shoulders, and his thick white beard was huge. It was wider than his chest and extended below his sword belt.

  But more important than his appearance was his-I don’t want to say aura, because that implies something mystical, and this was an immensely practical man-but a feeling of power was almost tangible about him, as if, had he decided to walk through a wall, the wall would have apologized and scrambled out of his way.

  Even more impressive, though in a totally different way, was his son, who would eventually be called Henryk the Pious. Young Henryk was just over forty and approaching the height of his powers. He could read and write and did a lot of both-rare among the nobility. Whereas the father was a tough politician, the son was a prince, every centimeter of him. His bearing and his look and his tone of voice were a chant that said, “Duty, justice, order, and restraint; honor, vigor, and discipline.”

  We looked each other in the eye, and I knew that this was a man I would follow into hell, fully confident that he could lead me out again. I had found Poland’s king and my own.

  Henryk the Bearded looked at me and said, “So, you are Sir Conrad the Giant. I have heard much about you.”

  “I hope nothing too bad, my lord.”

  “Mixed. But all of it is impossible, so most of it is lies. Your loom works faster than anything the Walloons own. They brought nothing like your spinning wheels. Now, tell me about these mills you’re building.”

  The mill tower was now up, the tank floors were in, and the circular shed was completed. Work was under way on the turret. With the five-story-tall structure and my two-meter models, I was able to explain what I was doing, yet their questions kept me hopping. Our two visitors might be statesmen and warriors by profession, but they were not stupid when it came to technical matters. They went over things point by point. almost as thoroughly as Vitold did.

  After the mills, we started on the cloth factory. The looms and spinning wheels were already understood, and I referred them to Angelo the Florentine when they asked about the dyeing vats and the combing and carding equipment. They jumped on me when it came to the washing fine. After all, everybody understood washing.

  “Why twelve tubs? Why not one big one?”

  “A single big tub would have to be brass, with a fire under it. Using a dozen small tubs, only two tubs need to be heated. The rest can be of wood. Also, wool needs not only to be washed but to be rinsed several times. With a single tub, we would not only have to heat three tubs of water for each batch of wool, we would have to throw away a lot of cleanser with the rinse water.”

  “Explain that.”

  “We call this the reverse-flow system. The wool moves from north to south along the line of tubs. The water moves from south to north, overflowing from one tub to the next. The water comes in cold and clean and goes out cold and dirty. The wool comes in cold and dirty and goes out cold and clean.”

  I could see that I wasn’t getting through.

  “Let’s follow some wool as it goes through the tubs. Dirty wool is dumped into the first wooden tub, and a worker stirs it with a wooden fork. The water is only warm, and it's dirty. Most of the cleanser has been consumed, but some dirt is easily removed. Excess water goes out this drain, and fresher water flows in through this pipe from the second tank.”

  “The wool is scooped up and into the second tub, and more raw wool is dumped into the first. In the second tub, the water is hotter and cleaner.”

  “This goes on until the sixth tub, which is made of brass. It is set in stone, and there is a fire beneath it. The water is very hot. Cleanser is added here.”

  “The seventh is the first rinse tub. The water is warm, and cleanser that is washed off the wool flows with the water into the sixth tub.”

  “Tubs eight, nine, and ten are additional, progressively hotter rinse tubs. The eleventh tub is also of brass and is heated boiling hot.”

  “The twelfth tub contains fresh, cold water. Its purpose is to cool the wool while warming the water before it flows into the boiling rinse tank.”

  “The washing line is followed by these draining and drying racks.”

  “Hmm. So the same water is used many times, and fuel is saved. Interesting.”

  The reverse flow is one of those beautifully simple things that were invented remarkably late. It was first applied to heat exchangers in the 1930s and was Albert Einstein’s major contribution to engineering. Since then, it has been applied to hundreds of industrial processes.

  “Sir Conrad, you keep saying cleanser. Aren’t you using soap or wood ashes?”

  “Soap is a boiled mixture of ashes and grease. The wool already has grease on it. It is what we are trying to remove. Raw ashes have a lot of solid particles that would make the wool dirty.”

  “Instead, we leach the ashes first. We put them in a barrel with a cloth bottom and run hot water through them. The water that drips out contains sodium hydroxide, lye, which is a stronger cleanser.”

  “So there is a worker at each tub?”

  “Probably not, my lord. Working all day over the two boiling tubs would be arduous. We plan to have each worker follow a given batch of wool up the line.”

  This grilling went on for hours before Duke Henryk called for beer and I could slake my very dry throat. We were seated in the count’s hall.

  “Sir Conrad, as you have described the washing line, it seems to me that it can wash more wool than your wheels can spin.”

  “True, my lord. It will be free much of the time for other things. Washing clothes, for example.”

  “You have explained what you -are doing but not why you are doing it.”

  “Why make cloth, my lord? So that people can wear it!”

  “No. I mean, you are a foreigner among us. What do you want? Is it money?”

  “I have plenty of money, my lord. More than I want for myself. And I am not a foreigner. I know that my accent is strange to you. I grew up in… another place. But all of my ancestors were Poles, and I am a Pole, and this is my country.”

  “Indeed. I am told that you may not discuss your place of birth, and I will not press you. But why are you doing what you are doing?”

  “Because Poland is divided and backward and weak! Because our people are cold and hungry and illiterate! They die like snowflakes touching a river.”

  “And because the Mongols-the Tartars-are coming! They want to kill all our people and turn our fields into grazing lands for their war-horses!”

  “Calm yourself, Sir Conrad. It is good that you are concerned with the lot of our people. These mills, these looms of yours, they are good things. I will see that their use is encouraged. But as to the Tartars, why, Genghis Khan died five years ago, so why worry about them?”

  “Genghis had sons, and his sons have sons. They will come.”

  “When?”

  “In nine years. A little less than that.”

  “Hmm. You know their plans so far in advance?”

  “They will come, my lord.”

  “If you believe that, then why are you wasting your time on these peaceful pursuits? Why are you not building weapons of war?”

  “I will build weapons, my lord. But who will use them? In Poland now it takes a hundred peasants and workers to support a single fighting man, a knight. When the Mongols come, they will come with every man in their tribes under arms. By numbers alone they will overwhelm us. My machines will give all the people the time and the weapons to train for war. Poland can survive only with a citizen army!”

  “You would arm commoners? That would
upset the social stability.”

  “You are right, my lord. But there is nothing as stable as a dead man. He just lies there and doesn’t move at all.”

  “You are a strange man, Sir Conrad the Giant.”

  And so I was dismissed. As I walked away, I knew that I had blown it. I had gotten so wrapped up in technical details that I had forgotten what it was that I should have been trying to accomplish. I was like the engineer who became so involved in fighting alligators that he forgot that his job was to drain the swamp.

  It didn’t matter what the duke thought of my mills and factory. They were already being built, and he would not be likely to stop them, no matter what he thought.

  The important thing I needed was his approval on a grant of land. Without my own land, everything I had done so far would be trivial.

  And I had come across like a lunatic prophet of doom’ I couldn't have done worse if I'd been carrying a sign proclaiming the end of the world.

  I was in a black mood when I learned that the Krakowski brothers had arrived with a packtrain loaded with my brass mill fittings. City folk didn’t pay much attention to most of the country holidays. When there was work to be had, they worked. The collars were so big that they had to be slung between two mules each, like sedan chairs.

  I called Vitold, Ilya, and Angelo away from a sort of soccer game and introduced them to the Krakowski brothers. We discussed our mutual needs: the fittings for the dry mill, tubs for washing and dyeing, axles and bushings for wheelbarrows.

  Fortunately, the Krakowski brothers understood my technical drawings, and I had a thick stack of parchment for them to take back.

  It took Vitold a long time to grasp what a wheelbarrow was all about, but he agreed to make a gross as soon as the sawmill was done. They would help in getting in the harvest.

  Then there were the clay crocks for Ilya’s steelmaking. The brothers agreed to make them but insisted on understanding the cementation process. They already had the clay and the charcoal and the ovens. They were impressed by Ilya's axes and wanted to get into the cementation business themselves. I gave them my blessing.