Part 9 (2/2)

”Sir Conrad, you once talked of thetrials I would see how it is done

You will be in charge of toe and these noblemen shall be jury The other offices you shall appoint yourself Have it ready by ood night Sir Bodan will set up the guard schedule”

Later, I saw Natasha going to Count Lairls seemed to think that it would be most improper-and a waste-for hi, after Sir Lestko orn in, I explained the duties of prosecutor and defender, and appointed Sir Bodan to be the defending attorney, since he was articulate and seemed to be the most sympathetic toward the prisoners I removed Sir Lestko fro my own people Natalia acted as court recorder

I took the role of prosecutorwitnesses, until Count Laet on with it In the Middle Ages, trials were often over in minutes, and justice suffered We held it in the church, that being the only building big enough to seat everybody

I arranged the seating like that of the usual modern courtroo ere doing, and that each witness could only say what he had actually seen with his own eyes Hearsay was not admissible, which surprised people They felt that they should say what ”everybody knew”

One by one, the accused were interviewed through an interpreter, and the witnesses were heard I could see Count Laety, but I kept on with it It was almost dark when the last had been heard, and so

The story that caed by the Inquisition to go and to root out witchcraft wherever it was found They had perforh Ger, by their own admission, over a hundred people They had no written authorization from the church, and they did not feel that it was necessary to consult with local te to Toszek they found the baron stricken in athe villagers, they found that seven old women lived in a cluster of huts apart fro wo the their duty, they had cleansed the world of them

Then they had been murderously attacked without provocation by Sir Lestko, ers said that a year ago, there had been an argument between sos out, Baron Mieczyslaw had ordered that some huts for theirl, the granddaughter of two of the women, to collect food and to take it to theement

Sir Lestko's story told what I have said above, and each of ain after supper, and Sir Bodan and Istate their duty as they saw it, and they should be released with all their property returned

I think I showed that the woirl's only faults were obeying her lord and simple Christian charity

I said that the accused had no proof that they orking at the behest of the church, and even if they did once have such proof, they had no right to take any such action without the permission of the local authorities The Bishop of Wroclaas never consulted, nor was Duke Henryk Only Count Lah justice here, and to kill, other than in self-defense, without his pered I then suggested that the jurythe Count La, he said, ”da forth every peasant to tell the story that the one before him had told?”

”Yes, my lord, I did What if one had said that all the others were liars? What if the truth was so different from e had been told? The lives of twenty-three men are at stake, as well as who kno many so-called 'witches,' if they are allowed to leave unmolested”

”It would have been simpler to kill them all out of hand”

”True, my lord But would it have been , Count Lambert's instructions to the jury were, ”Are any of you fool enough to think these bastards had the right to usurp , but Count Lalared at him and he shut up

The fore them”

Not quite proper procedure, but an is At least the accused were allowed to have their say in court

One of the peasants in the town had been a hangiven the job

The prisoners were permitted to say confession to their own priests while ropes were slung over he branches of a huge old oak tree Most of the condemned swore at us, and the priest who spoke Polish swore that he'd seetheht of the Castilians being hung wasn't pretty They weren't dropped, so as to break their necks, but were hauled up so as to strangle Criht Most of the murderers urinated and defecated, and over half had an ejaculation, which I thought curious So really is a merciful way to kill somebody

It was brutal, yet it was necessary People cannot be allowed to take the law into their own hands Anyway, burning eight wo as we rode out about our duties I suppose that soet a lot of flak fro, but there wasn't a word And in later years, when the insanity of witchhunts was all the rage in western Europe, there were none in Poland

The buck stopped here

Chapter Nine

Anna found the mine site without difficulty, and ent to work We had temporary shelters up in a few days, and then the carpenters started felling trees, thefor ore

The et lime for mortar, the saw towns and villages that ere hiring workers teht be sworn in permanently

There was no lack of applicants, since word had spread quickly about hoell my people lived The winter before, I'd made up soists use, and tried to get soht ones, because there was no hiring all the applicants Thousands caross on a permanent basis and a thousand more temporarily I hated to send so ht on the surface, so tunneling wasn't necessary We could dig it out of an open pit, which was hts to take care of security, so that was one headache I didn't have to worry about

In a week, things were progressing well enough for le Nest I left Yashoo, e, and only noht, Sir Stanislaw I took Natasha along, since she was handy to have around, and Anna hardly noticed her weight By evening, Anna had us at Eagle Nest

Vitold, Count La well There were probably more men available than could be efficiently ad, which doesn't take much supervision

Count Lambert had left the day before, and the setup was his idea, so I didn't change anything We left for Okoitz that afternoon and got there in ti the coalwithout problems, and the cloth factory, with its two hundred attractive and available young ladies, was going full blast

Count Laht again, Sir Conrad A cold beer is a wonderful thing on a hot day! I' the icehouse below the grain , I was at Three Walls and found that Sir Vladimir and Annastashi+a were the proud parents of a healthy boy

Trivial matters delayed ain, this ti Anna's rump

The whole su frole Nest to Okoitz and back to Three Walls, the whole circuit taking us a week to run Since many of my workers were separated from their fa post at first, but it got very old after a while

By fall, things were settled down to the point that Copper City only needed to be visited once adown to teeks aat Three Walls as ood harvest in 1233, the third in a row Everyone gorged on sweet corn and watermelon, honeydews and zucchini, pureat success, and the price of honey and beeswax dropped by a factor of twelve on the open ht with me had done well, and I co thelory be to God, we had sugar beet seeds, over a hundred pounds of thear

The new plants were almost untouched by insects, which cut heavily into most crops since insecticides weren't available Most insects are very specialized in their eating habits, and the local ones couldn't cope with the crops that I'd brought in They'd catch up with us eventually, but for the ti a free ride

In fact, the only sour point was the squashes I hadn't realized that they could interbreed, and they had been planted too close to each other The bees, or whatever pollinated theies that were half butternut and half spaghetti squash, and every other coram at six widely separated inal forms, but that would take time I moved six varieties of beans to those same six manors just to be on the safe side