Part 11 (1/2)

”At twelve? You shouldn't marry a girl off until she's at least budding!”

”No, no, Mikhail. I mean, what about an older woman?”

”Why, that'd be up to her husband, of course!” Mikhail walked up to his house. In the twentieth century, it would have been called a shed. It was three meters wide and five deep, and it was one of a long row of similar log dwellings that stretched along the outer log wall. Next to the wall and above the sheds was a two-meter wide wooden walkway, apparently a place for defenders to stand.

The rest of the roof was straw.

”All this was by the count's own plans, it was. Houses next to each other keep each other warm and take less walls to build. The neighbors make noise, but that's not the count's fault.” The door had no hinges but was picked up and moved aside. Mikhail went in without knocking, and I followed. Apparently, the lack of a nudity taboo applied to married women as well. Judging by the flush of her skin, Mrs. Malinski was just back from the sauna. I guessed her to be around thirty but later found out that she was only nineteen. She was doing up her long hair and didn't bother getting up or even covering herself. ”Sir Conrad! I am sorry that I did not speak to you last night, but the baby ... you know...”

”I quite understand, Mrs. Malinski.” A campfire burned smokily at the center of the single room.

Their few spare clothes were hung from pegs in the log walls, next to bags of food, bunches of garlic, and a single cooking pot. Bags of straw on the floor served as beds. Two small children were playing on the dirt floor. Yet Mikhail was obviously proud of his home! What had he been born in? ”We have real wooden floors going in next year, the count says,” Mikhail told me.

”He is a good lord, isn't he?”

”The best! Why, he could get a dozen men for every man here if there was room for them.”

I was pensive as I walked back past the latrines and the grainery. These were good people, and there was so much that I could help them with. But I would have to leave as soon as the roads were clear.

One thing remained yet to do. There was a church, so there had to be a priest. I had killed-or at least caused the deaths of five people. And there were two very young women that I had ... had.

d.a.m.n it! They were not rapes! I needed confession.

The church was full of commotion when I got there. The altar had been removed, along with the candlesticks, the relic-a lock of hair from Saint Adalbert, I found out later-and all of the appurtenances. The church was furnished with movable chairs instead of bolted-down pews; I half suspect that the use of pews was the result of a clerical rebellion to secular use of the church. The chairs were being rearranged, and long, collapsible trestle tables were being set up. The fact is that the church was the only room in Okoitz large enough to hold everybody.

Asking about, I learned that the priest, a Father John, and his wife (!) were in their chambers to the left of the altar.

I entered and discovered that the nudity taboo did apply to a priest's wife, at least to this priest's wife. From her accented shriek, I gathered that she was French. She was an attractive woman, better looking than any of the count's handmaidens. I turned to leave but was stopped by the priest.

”Please forgive her, Sir Conrad. She is new to Poland and not used to the local customs.” His wife was still arranging a blanket around herself. ”Of course, Father. But still, I should leave.”

”You may if you wish. But as a personal favor, I would prefer that you did not.

You are from the west. Know that I met Francine when I was a student in Paris. She is the granddaughter of a bishop and was legitimate before the second Lateran Council forbade such marriages in the west. But these decrees were never ratified here in my native Poland, so here we are now, under G.o.d, man and We.” He turned to his wife. ”Francine, we cannot bring the word of G.o.d to these people unless we adhere to the local customs! There is no prohibition against nudity in the commandments, nor in the words of Christ. Remember the parable of the lilies of the field and care not about your raiment. Now, disrobe. Please.” She was embarra.s.sed, probably as much as I was. The whole situation was awkward. There wasn't anything that I could say, but I tried to give her a confident smile and nod. She bit her lower lip, looked at me, and stood up. Then she slowly dropped her blanket. I think she did it slowly in order to pull it up if I disapproved rather than from a desire to entice.

She really was a beautiful woman, as fine as any you would see in modem Cracow.

Her hair was black, the first black hair I had seen in the thirteenth century. Her waist was tiny, her hips were full, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were voluptuous...o...b.. topped by tiny, coal-dark nipples.

”Thank you, love. Now, Christ also talked of the virtues of cleanliness, and the sauna grows cold,” the priest said.

”Yes. Sir Conrad.” She nodded to me and ran through the doorway. ”Thank you, Sir Conrad.

I've been trying to get her to do that all day. She objected to their nudity, and they objected to her smell.” The priest paused, and we heard a roar of applause from the crowd in the church. ”d.a.m.n, but I wish they hadn't done that!”

This was afar stranger priest than Father Ignacy!

His next sermon was on the importance of being kind to people who were trying to fit in. Still, he seemed, for some unreasonable reason, to be a holy man. ”I took my sauna earlier, hoping that she would join me, but no such luck. But, Sir Conrad, you came here for a reason of your own. Can I help you?” ”Well, Father, I came here for a confession.”

”Of course, my son, if you need it. The church is crowded now, but we are private enough here.

Would this be adequate?”

I agreed, confessed, and told him about the people I had killed, the underaged girls I had copulated with, and lastly about coveting his wife! He pa.s.sed off the first two as not being sins at all but merely the things any sensible man would do. As for the last: ”You must learn to fight the results of your training. Had you seen her fully clothed, you might have thought her beautiful, but you would not have had these sensual thoughts. She was wearing what G.o.d gave her. The sin was in your eyes, Sir Conrad.”

I thought about it, and he was right. I eventually got to know Francine as the unique and creative human being she really was. I learned that my initial impressions of her had been entirely wrong.

She was not a shy and modest housewife. There was something of the wh.o.r.e in her and much of the b.i.t.c.h. But I get ahead of myself.

I went away with a penance of a single Pater Noster and three Ave Marias. I was somewhat surprised by that as I left the priest's chambers, but my surprise was increased when I saw Francine walking back, nude, through the crowded church. She smiled at me with her back straight. She strutted! Her actions had much in common, I think, with the religious conversion of the goliard poet.

Half an hour later, we were seated behind a trestle table on the dais, near where the altar stood.

There were five of us: Count Lambert, Sir Miesko, myself, Father John, and Francine. There were also six empty chairs that I found were for Krystyana's gang. They wouldn't actually be using them, since they were in charge of the banquet, but they had the right to sit at the head table even if they didn't have time for it.

Try to imagine six modem fourteen-year-olds being in charge of a sit-down banquet for two hundred people. Yet they did a fine job!

All the adult commoners were seated at long, narrow tables, sitting at only one side. A s.p.a.ce was left between each pair of tables for the ”servants” to walk. Actually, the servants were the peasant women. An elaborate schedule had been worked out such that each woman helped serve a certain course but most of the time played guest.

Everyone was there. The gate to Okoitz was not only left unguarded, it was left open! Had a known outlaw walked in, he would have been served along with the rest, until the festival was over.

Afterward they might have hanged him. The children were seated through the door in the count's hall. Part of the serving orchestration kept them fed, too. The babies were farther back, in the hallways and in some of the unused guest rooms. A stream of mothers flowed back and forth, but our six bright harem girls kept it all going and the food coming besides. Even the cooks took their turn at playing guest. The girls never did, the first night. But after, for the next two weeks, they were administrators, grand ladies!

Boris was down among the crowd with acceptable ladies seated on either side. He waved. I waved back, and the crowd applauded.

I had a normal place setting before me. There was a long tablecloth that doubled, I discovered, as a napkin. Ihad a spoon, a cup, a bowl, a large pitcher of wine-beer for the commons-and a salt shaker made of a hard wheat roll with a finger hole punched in the top.

We at the head table each had these to ourselves because of the six empty places. Among the commoners, each pair shared a setting, almost invariably a man and a woman. Not that there was a scarcity of place settings, it was just one of those things one did at a banquet. You shared a spoon, shared a cup, shared with your sister or your wife.

Musicians took turns playing--a recorder, a shawm, a pipe and tabor, a krummhorn, a bagpipe.

Not the Scottish war pipes, of course, but the higher-pitched, more friendly Polish version. They had obviously practiced long for the occasion. Only when the banquet was over did they play in concert. Father John said an elaborate grace.

The first course was a stew. Somebody's grandmother ladled it out to most of the people, but we at the head table were graced with Krystyana's service. I winked at her, and she winked back.

Stew was followed by broiled steaks. Janina placed before me a thick slab of bread directly on the tablecloth, and a girl named Yawalda, to whom I had not yet been introduced, put a juicy slice of meat on it. I found out much later that it was from the horse we had lost in last night's snowstorm. It wasn't bad. Course followed course, usually a meat thing followed by a grain thing.

There were no fresh vegetables at all.

On the final course, the count himself got up. He took a huge tray from Natalia and Janina and personally handed a small piece of cake to each person in the room, laughing and joking continuously. He got halfway through the church and then went into his ”hall,” where he personally gave a piece to each child. He went up and down the hallways, putting a small piece in each baby's hand, or at least on his bedclothes. Then he came back into the church and pa.s.sed out cake to every commoner he had missed before.

He returned to the head table, where he placed a piece in front of each chair, including the vacant seats of the ladies-in-waiting. He stared as if aghast at the pieces left on the tray and then went up the table again, doubling the ”n.o.bles”' portions, to the applause of the crowd. Reaching the end, he put the five remaining cakes in his hand and pretended to count the crowd. Then he stuffed them into his own pouch, and the commons roared their approval. I was so intent on this performance that I had not tasted the cakes. When Count Lambert sat down next to me two empty chairs were between us-he said, ”Well, eat up, Sir Conrad.”

So I bowed and smiled and bit into one of them. It was good enough, but it was really only ordinary honey and nut cake. Nothing like the glories they make in modern, Torun. I waved Krystyana over.

”This is excellent, my lord, but I too have something to contribute to the feast.” When Krystyana got there, I said, ”Now, quick like a bunny! I have a piece of brown stuff wrapped in silver and some brown paper. The last I saw of it, it was on my bed. Bring it here quickly!” She was off like an arrow. ”This is some cake of your own?” the count asked.