"Up now, Conrad. Get up!" Father Ignacy was shaking my arm. I was in a dark, smelly, smoky hut. It had log walls, a dirt floor, and a straw roof. Memory came back. The barefoot saint. The snow. The thirteenth century.
"Yes. Yes, Father. I'm up. What's wrong?"
"Nothing is wrong. God has seen fit to grant us another day. As good Christians, we must not waste His gift. Come, we must be off."
"Oh. Yes. Certainly." I started putting my gear together. "The coals are still warm. Let's make breakfast and have some coffee before we go."
"What? Eating on waking? What a slothful habit! Come now. I have already bid our good host good-bye, and there is need of haste."
I find it hard to be assertive before breakfast, and soon we were walking north in the gray dawn. The snow grew thinner as we approached a river, the Dunajec. There we found a small wooden dock but no boat.
"What was the great hurry, Father? Has the boat left without us?"
"It has. Yesterday morning, in truth, and it was the last boat of the season. You should not have lost consciousness so early, Conrad."
"I fell asleep."
"To me, it appeared that you had fainted. Afterward, I heard the confessions of good Ivan and Marie and said a mass for the family. They told me of the boat."
"But what good does an absent boat do us?"
"Absent, yes. But with a crew of only two. The boatman and a wandering poet, a goliard—worthless sorts. Despite the recent snow and rain, the river level is still low, and six men would make a better crew than two. It might be God's will that we shall find them snagged on a sandbar and in need of our aid." We walked along the river path.
"If you say so. The truth is that I no longer have a pressing need to go to Cracow. It is no longer on my way home. I no longer have a home. Or a mother. Or a job." The reality of being stranded was hitting me again, and I was holding back sobs with difficulty.
"We shall pray for your mother, my son. But remember that she is not dead, she is merely elsewhere. As to your home, why, it is only a material encumbrance and can be replaced at need. As to your job, that too can be replaced. You are an educated, healthy young man—if overly large—and it should not prove difficult to find gainful employment. In fact, already an idea occurs to me.
"I have told you that I have an appointment in Cracow. That appointment is to take over the copying department at the Franciscan monastery. I am ordered to expand the number of copyists and to found a proper library.
"Now, you can read and write, and you have told me that you know something of the new Arabic system of numbers and of the arithmetic that is used to manipulate them. You have knowledge of Euclid and of the algebra, as well."
Not to mention analytic geometry, calculus, and computer programming, I thought. "You are suggesting that I work for you as a copyist?"
"And why not? You have told me that much of your previous work was at a drawing board, which you describe as similar to a proper copying table."
"Hmm." The idea of a steady job did have merit. I had grown up in the arms of a reasonably benevolent government that was founded on sensible socialist principles. While such a system discouraged the acquisition of fabulous wealth, it did ensure that all people were fairly well taken care of. But from what I remembered of my history courses, in the thirteenth century they actually allowed people—their own countrymen—to starve to death! "Your suggestion has merit, but I see some problems. For one thing, I do not think that I am ready to take Holy Orders."
"I agree with you, my son. You are not ready for so momentous a decision, nor need you be. You could be engaged as a lay brother, without any vows at all."
"The next problem is that I do not know if I would be competent as a copyist. It is different from what I have done."
"I don't know that either, my son, so my offer is tentative and temporary—for the winter at least."
"Then there is the question of remuneration, Father. What does the position pay?"
"I have no idea of what the rates are in Cracow. When demand is high and copyists are few, the pay can be excellent. But in any event, you are guaranteed a roof over your head and food in your belly."
"Very well, then, Father. It is agreed that I shall work for you for an indefinite time on nebulous terms." The snow was gone by then. The sky was a rich blue, and evergreens gave the landscape some color.
"Excellent! I'm glad that this is settled, for I was worried about you. Now then! I have several thousand questions to ask. Yesterday, as your confessor, I was obligated to concentrate on your sins. Today, as your fellow traveler and future employer, I have the right to ask questions to my own liking. Now, tell me if I am correct. You were born in the year of Our Lord, nineteen fifty-seven?"
"True, Father."
"The twentieth century! Tell me of the church, my son. Does the Pope still rule from Rome? Do the Germans dominate him?"
"The Pope is supreme in the Vatican; he is dominated by no secular power. The Germans have been pushed north of the Alps and west of the Odra."
"And the Pope himself—what of him?" The man was trembling with excitement.
"He is John Paul II, and—this you will love—he is as Polish as you are, and born Karol Wojtyla. A fine man and a great Pope."
"Oh, glory! My son, you make my heart rejoice!" That incredibly tough man, who could walk barefoot across the Alps and pray kneeling in chest-high snow, that man had stopped on the river path, and tears were streaking his windburned cheeks.
Some time passed before we started, once more, down the river road to Cracow. We were silent for a while. Then:
"And my own order, my son. Tell me of the followers of Francis of Assisi."
"Gladly, for this too is a happy thing. I know of him only as Saint Francis of Assisi. The Franciscans are alive and well in the twentieth century. I knew one personally and counted him a friend." He had been on my college fencing team and was a fine hand with a saber, though I could generally beat him with an épée.
Ignacy stopped, hugged me solidly, yanked my head down to his level, and kissed both my cheeks. I felt awkward about it. In the time of my birth, men were abandoning the ancient Slavic custom of kissing each other; perhaps it was because homosexuality was tolerated, if not socially acceptable, and healthy men did not want to be associated with anything that they did.
"I see that I have offended you, my son."
"Well, it's okay. But, you know, customs change."
"Forgive me. What else do you remember?"
"About the Franciscans? Wait. Yes, I remember reading an ancient copper plaque that told of a great church, a cathedral almost, that had been built by Henryk the Pious for the Franciscans in 1237. That church still stood in Cracow."
His arms went out again, but he did not touch me. Then he said quietly, "And of me? Do you know anything of me?"
"I'm sorry, Father, but no. Please, understand that I know as much about this age as you know of the fifth century. If you chance-met a man of that age, what could you tell him about himself?"
"You are quite right, my son. Please forgive my asking."
"It might be that you are well known to the historians and theologians of my time."
"And it might not. Again, forgive me. Tell me instead of the wondrous mechanisms that your age has wrought. You spoke of machines that can fly in the air, of ships that navigate without sails or oars, and of the varieties of mechanical land beasts, buses and trains."
So I answered his questions, and we talked out the morning. I answered all his questions truthfully but did not really tell him the whole truth. He never brought up the subject of the Protestant Reformation, so neither did I. And why should I want to mention the Inquisition to a living saint? Because Father Ignacy was a saint. He was also a powerful man, an intelligent man, and by the standards of his own age, a very well educated man.
By the standards of the twentieth century he was quite thoroughly out of his mind! He was concerned—actively worried—about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin! To him, that was a major theological dispute. He was worried about the exact anatomy of incubi and succubi, and he worried if it was proper to take communion on Friday since, by the unquestionable doctrine of transubstantiation, the baked wheat flour of the Host and the wine, after being taken, were transmuted into the body and blood of Christ. And was this not meat? And was not meat forbidden on Friday?
All I knew was that I was attracted to the man, although not at all in the same way as I had been attracted to the magnificent redheaded bitch of Zakopane.
It might have been ten o'clock when we started thinking about dinner.
"Conrad, how much food are you carrying?"
"Three, maybe four days' worth at normal rations, which is a lot more than I've had recently."
"And it is all of that cold-dried variety that keeps indefinitely?"
"Freeze-dried. Yes, most of it. Some candy, but it'll keep too."
"Ah, yes. I meant to ask you. What was that incredible confection you distributed last night?"
"It's called chocolate."
"Marvelous stuff. If you can make more, your fortune is made without recourse to being a copyist."
What an incredible thought! Conrad Schwartz, the capitalist confectioner! Maltreating the women and children slaving away in my chocolate factory! But still, one must eat. Chocolate is what? Mostly milk, sugar, and cocoa beans, isn't it? But cocoa beans came from South America. Or was it Indonesia? I would have to look it up.
No, I would not look it up, because I could not look it up, because I was in the thirteenth century, and a good library here consisted of a Bible, two prayer books, and a copy of Aristotle.
"No, Father. It's impossible. It needs a kind of bean that does not grow around here."
"A pity. Well, keep the rest of it; you may someday have to impress a princely patron. For today's dinner I suggest that we finish off my supplies of cheese and sausage and keep yours for an emergency." With that, he pulled out the remains of his sausage, which might have weighed a kilo. He was about to cut it in half but reconsidered and divided it in proportion to our heights, giving me the larger piece. Half an hour later he did the same with his cheese. He refused to stop for lunch, and we ate on the march.
Again I felt queasy about the unsanitary food, but I was living in the thirteenth century and would have to get used to it. He slapped his now-empty pouch. "The last of my Hungarian food."
"Then what do you keep in the other pack, Father? Spare underwear?"
That was the first time I heard his laugh, a good sound. "Ah, Conrad, I know that you have an exalted opinion of my abilities as a traveler, and I confess that I take an improper pride in them myself. But no, I would not carry anything superfluous over the High Tatras, let alone the Alps!
"No, this is my gift to my new abbot. I have in here a copy of Euclid, a complete Aristotle, and Ptolemy in Latin, my own translation into Polish of de Bivar's Poem of the Cid, and letters. There are fully three dozen letters, one of them from His Holiness, Pope Gregory IX himself!
"So, you see that there can be no faltering along the way."
"You mean you have nothing at all but your cassock? It might take us weeks to walk to Cracow!"
"You worry overmuch about material things. We shall ride to Cracow and be there in five days, and we shall be well fed along the way. I can smell it."
I could smell nothing at all but more snow coming. I kept silent.
At perhaps two in the afternoon we heard the boat. A high-pitched voice was singing through the bushes:
Despite the recent rain and snow,
The river is still far too low!
This tub to Cracow will not go.
Let's plant the grain and watch it grow!
"How's that, brother boatman? It scans well, don't you think?"
"I think that if we don't get this boat off these rocks, we'll be iced in by morning and spend the winter here! My only pleasure will be in seeing you starve to death right next to me. Now pull on that rope, you foppish twit!"
"What? Starve while sitting on a hundred sacks of grain? That would take more ingenuity than a poet could muster. Let's see . . .
While starving on a mound of rye,
I saw a maiden floating by.
She said . . ."
"Shut your goddamn trap and pull!"
"Hello, friends," Father Ignacy shouted.
"Who goes there?"
"A good Christian priest and a good Christian knight, come to assist you!"
As we forced our way through the brush toward the river, I whispered, "What do you mean calling me a knight? We don't even have knighthood!"
"And you are doubtless better off without it. But you are an officer in your military, aren't you? And a king's man besides? Knighthood would seem to be the equivalent."
"We don't have kings! There's an elected body that—"
"An excellent system. Oh, yes, don't mention the future to these men. It might frighten them. If they ask, tell them that you're Spanish."
"With blond hair?"
"Why not? Many Spaniards have blond hair. Or better yet, tell them you are English. You could easily pass for an Englishman."
Before I could reply, we broke through the brush and were on a rocky beach. In the middle of the river, a boat was securely wedged between two large rocks. The boat was about eight meters long and three meters wide and was pointed at both ends. A brightly garbed slender youth, wet to the waist, was clambering on board. Another man, in a wet gray tunic, was standing at the stern and looking at us. He held a longbow in his left hand and had an arrow fitted. There was something odd about the way he held it.
"Put away your weapon, boatman! We mean you help, not harm!" Father Ignacy held his book pouch above his head and waded into the water.
I unslung my pack and belt, held them high, and followed. That water was cold! I would have been prepared to swear in a court of law that it was below -10°C, if there had been any courts. My legs were numb before we got to the boat. Father Ignacy put his pouches aboard and clambered on after them. I did the same.
"Good afternoon, good boatman. I am Father Ignacy Sierpinski, and this knight is Sir Conrad Stargard."
"Good afternoon, good father and good sir knight. I am Tadaos Kolpinski, and I am at your service."
"A pleasure, Tadaos Kolpinski. We are bound for Cracow. What is your destination?"
"The same as yours, Father. Down the Dunajec and up the Vistula. Always ready to take on paying passengers, that's my motto, sirs." He ignored the poet.
"Well, you must understand our means are limited." Father Ignacy sat on a sack of grain. "Sir Conrad, I believe we were talking about Saint Augustine. Now, in The City of God—"
"But Father," Tadaos said, "you understand that we are having this difficulty—"
"And you feel that we should work for you, to help you out of it. This is acceptable to us, and there is only a slight matter of agreement on our wages."
"Ah, Father, I am a benevolent man, and if you will both assist me on our way to Cracow, I will feed you as well as I feed myself and depend only on your generosity for my remuneration."
"But surely it is written that a workman deserves his wages, and we are hardworking men, but poor. Yet we can get to Cracow on foot without the burden of hauling your grain. Shall we say food and six silver pennies per day per man?"
Tadaos gagged. "Please understand, Father, that I too am a poor man and that I have a wife and five poor children to feed. Surely you would not want to take food from their mouths with winter coming on. But perhaps one penny."
The bargaining went on for better than twenty minutes, with the boat hung up on the rocks and all of us sitting down. I could see that it would be difficult to get the rational principles of socialism across to these people and, further, that if I wanted to survive, I had a lot to learn. In the meantime, I set my mind to the technical problem of freeing the boat.
Eventually they settled on the wages of food and three pennies a day. Much later, I discovered that this was an excellent wage for an experienced boatman, which I wasn't but which Father Ignacy was. He turned to me and said, "Now then, Sir Conrad, have you solved our problem?"
"No, but I know what to try. Do you have a block and tackle? No? Then the first thing to try is brute force. We all get into the water and try to pull it off the rocks."
This is what Tadaos had in mind, so there were no objections except from the poet. It was mutually agreed that his opinions didn't count, so we all went over the side. The poet—with assistance—went head first. I mean, Father Ignacy was already in the water when the kid, who was standing between the boatman and me, began to make some rhymed objection. The boatman looked at me, and I nodded. We picked up the poet and threw him in.
It was freezing. We tried lifting from the front, but the boat wouldn't budge. We tried pulling from the back, but no go. We rocked. We jerked, but it was no good. Stuck.
Shivering, we climbed back aboard.
"Well, that didn't work," I said to Tadaos. "How much rope do you have aboard? And do you have any grease?"
"I have some cooking lard and maybe a gross of yards of good rope."
"Okay. Give me the lard and tie this rope to the back of the boat."
"The stern."
Yachtsmen are the same everywhere. They've got to have their own idiot language. "The stern. I'll be back soon." I had picked out a rounded vertical rock perhaps fifty meters upstream of the boat. I went over the side and waded toward it. Damn, but the water was cold! Small bits of ice were floating in it! The rock was just what I wanted—rounded on the upstream side and slightly concave. I greased the surface liberally and pulled the rope around it. Then I greased about ten meters of the rope, from the rock toward the boat, keeping the rope taut.
The boatman jumped into the water and shouted, "Okay, here we go, you men!"
"What are you doing?" I yelled. "Get back into the boat!"
"What do you mean? We have to pull ourselves off!"
"Yes, but the place to pull from is inside the boat."
"That's stupid, sir knight! We'll add our weight to the boat and make it harder to pull!"
"True, but our weight is small compared to the weight of the boat and the grain. And if we're inside the boat, we double our leverage. Be reasonable. Do it my way."
"Okay! We try it your way, just to show how dumb you are!"
I handed the rope up to Father Ignacy, and we struggled aboard.
"What do you think we'll do when this doesn't work?" the boatman asked.
"If this fails, we unload the boat one sack at a time and carry it to the shore. Then we try this again, and if it works, we load the boat back up again."
"That would take days! We'd lose half of the grain by dropping it in the water!"
"I know. So we try this first. Line up, you men. Pull!"
The boat moved, a centimeter at first, then two, then ten. Once off the rocks, it moved easily. After ten meters, the boatman belayed the line around the sternpost and ran up to the bow. "She's not taking in any water!" Soon, the line cast off and hauled in, we were on our way.
I soon noticed that along with the normal oarlocks on the sides, the boat had additional locks on the bow and stern. Their function was explained when Tadaos set an oar in each. He took the stern oar and put Father Ignacy on the bow. They used these to paddle the boat sideways in order to avoid obstructions in the river. Once he was sure that all was well, the boatman motioned me over to him.
"The good father knows his job well, and as for you, sir knight, that was as fine a piece of boatmanship as I have ever seen. I hope you'll accept my apologies for the rudeness I showed to your knightship."
"No problem. We were all under stress. Your apologies are accepted, sir boatman."
"Well, hardly that, Sir Conrad, but I have had my share. Why, there was this girl from Sandomierz, a blonde she was, that . . . but that's not what I want to talk about. I want to find out why you think that we pulled twice as hard standing in the boat as we did standing on the bottom."
"I wish I had a pencil and paper."
"Huh?"
"Some way to draw pictures for you. It wasn't that we pulled twice as hard; we didn't. Look at it from the point of view of the boat. We were pulling the rope, right? So at the same time we were pushing on the boat with our feet. Right?"
"Okay."
"Also, the rope went around the rock and came back and pulled on the boat, right?"
"So, we pushed it and pulled it at the same time. We got twice as much for nothing!"
"No, we didn't. When we pulled that rope for one of your yards, the rope pulled the boat only one half a yard. We got more force but less distance."
"So we broke even."
"Less than that. We lost some power rubbing the rope against the rock. It would have been better if we could have had a wheel on the rock."
"Like a pulley, you mean?"
Now, how in hell can an apparently intelligent man know about rope and pulleys and not about mechanical advantage? "Yes, like a pulley. Would you mind if I got out of these clothes? I'm freezing."
"Do what you will, Sir Conrad." Water was running off his clothes onto the floorboards and freezing there.
I couldn't do anything to help his wet clothes, but it would have been stupid for me to be uncomfortable with no gain for the others. I went to my pack and dug out my tennis shoes, light trousers, spare socks, and underwear. I changed quickly and stretched my wet things out on the grain bags. Actually, most of my things were wet.
I took stock of my gear. A pair of lightweight 7 X 25 mm binoculars. A Swiss army knife. A small hatchet. A good Buck single-bladed jackknife in a leather belt pouch. A canteen. A dented cooking kit. A compass. A few days' food. A sleeping bag. A ripped knapsack. A sewing kit. A first-aid kit. A stub of a candle. A few coins that might be worth something. Some paper money that probably wasn't. A smashed flashlight that I pitched over the side. With these few things, my total worldly possessions, I was to face the brutal thirteenth century.
I laid all of it out to dry.
At the bottom of the pack, I found the idiot seeds. That incredible redhead! It seemed like years ago rather than only forty-eight hours.