Part 4 (1/2)

”Six hours; four hours to go. You have a full moon and a quiet river, so nothing much should happen; wake me if it does. Otherwise, wake me when the moon is high.”

Food and warmth had cheered the kid up, and soon he launched into a monologue about himself and life. His name was Roman Makowski. He was fairly well educated for the times and had attended. the University of Paris. It seems that a student had been knifed and killed in a Paris alleyway and that the town council wouldn't do anything about it. The students, blaming the merchants, had rioted in protest and had apparently concentrated their attention on the wineshops and taverns. The town militia was called out, and the drinking and fighting spread. In the end, the king's guard had to enforce the peace. Two hundred students, including Roman, were jailed, and the university was shut down for a year.

Roman's father, who had been scrimping hard to pay for his son's education, was not amused.

He paid Roman's way out of jail and then disinherited and threw him out of the house.

Roman was madly in love with three different girls without ever having touched one. He was wandering the world in search of Truth, and he hurt inside like a bag of broken gla.s.s. In short, he was a typical adolescent. Eventually, the boatman told him to shut up.

Tadaos kept his bow and arrows in a rack near the stem oar. The bow was a huge thing, taller than the boatman and as big around as a golf ball. It took me a while to figure out what was odd about it.

Tadaos was right-handed, and the arrow rest was on the right side rather than the normal left.

The arrows were well made and over a meter long. I was more than a head taller than he was, and I could only pull an 82-centimeter arrow. The next morning I saw him use the bow while I was on watch again, waiting for dinner. Two meals a day seemed to be standard for the thirteenth century, and I was used to eating a heavy breakfast. The boatman had a fis.h.i.+ng line over the side, and I hoped we weren't waiting for that.

”Quiet,” Tadaos said in a stage whisper. He crept back to his bow while slipping a leather guard over his right thumb. He had the bow strung in an instant and fitted an arrow to the string.

But instead of drawing the bowstring in the normal way, with the first three fingers of the right hand, he used his thumb. This gave him a remarkably long draw. He elevated the bow to fully thirty degrees and let fly. I had been so interested in his manner of shooting that it was a few seconds before I wondered what he was shooting at. We could be under attack! I looked out and saw nothing within reasonable range. Then suddenly a violent thras.h.i.+ng began in the bushes fully two hundred meters downstream by the water's edge. Tadaos motioned to us, and we pulled for the bank.

”That's a remarkable bow,” I said. ”What kind is it?” ”Strange question coming from an Englishman,” Tadaos said. ”It's an English longbow. I bought it from a wool merchant.”

After a little searching we found a ten-point buck with an arrow squarely in its skull. Incredible.

I couldn't have made that shot with a rifle and telescopic sights!

”Well, gentlemen,” the boatman said, ”I can now offer better fare than oatmeal.

Let's get it aboard! Quickly, now!”

Once we had manhandled the deer on board, I turned to Tadaos. ”That was the finest shot that I have ever seen!”

”Thank you, Sir Conrad, but there was a lot of luck in it. Now, with a little more luck, we'll be in fine shape.”

”What do you mean by that?”

”Oh, the baron hereabouts is partial to his hunting. He hangs poachers when he can catch them.”

”Does he hang accessories to the crime as well?”

”That depends on his mood.” Tadaos's eyes were twinkling.

The kid fainted.

I think that these people's shortness must have had a lot to do with vitamin deficiencies. They all craved that deer's internal organs. In the next three days, they ate everything in the animal but the eyeb.a.l.l.s and the contents of the large intestine. When I asked for a steak rather than broiled lung, they thought I was crazy, but took me up on it. I also pa.s.sed up the brain for some cutlets. That evening we came to the Vistula and tied up for the night. The trip so far had been all downstream, with little real work except at the rapids. But Cracow was upstream on the Vistula, and the next three days were drudgery. No mules were available although it seemed to me that Tadaos hadn't looked very hard. So, we played Volga Boatmen. Three of us walked along the bank with ropes over our shoulders, while one stayed on the boat.

The work was grueling. At one point, the poet was on the boat, Tadaos was walking in front of me with his bow slung over his back, and the priest was in the rear.

”Tadaos,” I said, ”if you must work us like horses, you should at least provide us with horse collars.”

”What do you mean?”

”You saw my backpack? Make something like that, with a strap across the chest.

Tie the rope to the back and a man could at least rest his arms.”

Tadaos pondered this for a while. ”What if you had to let go in a hurry?”

”Tie the rope in a slipknot.”

”Hmm. Not a bad thought, Sir Conrad. I'll make some up, next trip. Do you want to come along to see how they work?”

”No, thank you!”

It was late in the afternoon, and except for a tiny village at the juncture of the Dunajec and the Vistula, we hadn't seen a single habitation or another human being a day.

”I can't get over how empty this country is,” I said.

”There are people,” the boatman said, ”but the river is too open, too dangerous. They live back in the woods in little fortified towns protected by a knight or two.”

”What are they afraid of ?”

”Bandits. Wolves. Mostly other knights.”

”Why doesn't the government do something?”

”The government?” He spat. ”Poland doesn't have a government! Poland has a dozen petty dukes who spend their time arguing with each other instead of defending the country. Poland is a land without a king!”

”The last king of Poland died a hundred years ago, and he divided the country up among his five sons just so they'd each have their own little duchy to play with! And each of them divided it up still further, being nice to their children.”

”Did any of them think about the land? No! They treated the country like it was a dead man's bag of gold to be divided up among the heirs.” ”You paint too bleak a picture, master boatman,”

Father Ignacy said. ”There is a strong movement afoot to unify the country. Henryk the Bearded now holds all of Silesia, along with western Pomerania, half of Great Poland, and most of Little Poland. He has the throne at Cracow, and mark my words, his son, young Henryk, will be our next king. I can smell it.”

”You think Henryk's line can be kings? Does the Beard act like a king? When Conrad of Mazovia asked for aid against the Prussian raiders, did Henryk come to his aid? No! Henryk was too busy playing politics to help out another Polish duke, so Duke Conrad went and invited those d.a.m.ned Knights of the Cross in. They've taken as much Polish territory as they have Prussian! It was like inviting in the wolves to get rid of the foxes!”

”But politics is an essential part of unifying the country, Tadaos. At least the Polish dukes have never made war on one another the way they do in England or Italy or France.”

”No, they prefer ambushes, poison, and an occasional knifing. There'll be war with those Knights of the Cross, you mark my words on that!” There was no arguing with that statement, so the conversation died for a while.

After supper that night, I was sitting with Father Ignacy apart from the others.

”You know, Father, it was the inn. It had to be the inn.”

”What was what inn, my son?”

”The Red Gate Inn, on the trail near Zakopane. I must have come back in time when I slept in the inn. Those double steel doors on the storeroom-I had to have been in some kind of time machine.”