"Yes."
"Good. Your salary will be doubled, to eight silver pennies per day. You will be required to provide yourself with horse, arms, and armor, but he will advance you the price of this and deduct it from your pay."
"Armor! What do I need with armor?"
"Sir Conrad, I can travel freely and safely because I am protected by the Church and obviously penniless. You lack this protection and will be escorting a wealthy man. Enough said?"
"Oh, whatever you say, Father."
"Good. He's waiting in the next room. If he likes you, we'll consider the bargain sealed. His name is Boris Novacek, and he's eager to leave as quickly as possible."
Novacek looked me up and down, grunted, and said, "Well, he looks to be the type. Sir Conrad, I understand that you are an officer. How many men have you commanded?"
"At one time, Mr. Novacek? The most was a hundred and seven." I had been in charge of electronics maintenance at an airport, but why complicate matters?
"I see. And the terms are acceptable to you?"
"Eight cents a day, with you to advance my horse and armor. I assume that you will pay traveling expenses, food, and lodging?"
"Of course. But often lodging is not available, and half the time we sleep under a tree."
"Agreed, then." And we shook on it.
One of the glories of the thirteenth century is that there are no forms to fill out in triplicate.
Our first stop was at a used armor shop, since new armor was all custom-made, and that could take months. I quickly learned that "used armor" generally meant somebody had died in it, but I was losing my squeamishness.
The armory had a lot in common with a twentiethcentury junkyard, and at first I despaired of finding things tall enough to fit me.
Except for helmets there was no plate armor at all, which was just as well because fit is not so important with chain mail. The stuff stretches better than double-knit. But you have to wear a heavily padded garment, a gambeson, under the mail, and they didn't have anything close to my size. I decided to trust my thermal underwear; sweater, blue jeans, and windbreaker to protect myself.
I found a mail shirt, a hauberk, that seemed to be of fair quality. It was of a good grade of wrought iron, and each individual link was riveted, not just bent in a circle. It was made for a man as wide as I was but a good deal shorter. The sleeves were intended to be fulllength but went barely past my elbows, and the knee-length skirt barely covered my crotch.
Some long mailed gauntlets took care of my forearms, and I needed gloves anyway. The clerk scrounged up a sort of skirt that went from waist to knees. Some "fulllength" leggings served as shin guards, greaves.
I rejected the full barrel-style helmet-you can't see out of the thingsand found an open-faced casque that gave some neck protection without having more chainmail jingling around. Under the casque, one wore a thick rope skullcap.
It was a mismatched set, but I wasn't entering a beauty contest.
When the shopkeeper, a German, totaled up the bill, I felt my testicles tighten, For thirty pounds of wrought iron, this man was asking for two years' pay!
I said to my new boss, "Mr. Novacek, you are more familiar with shopkeepers than I am. Could I persuade you to see about arriving at a more equitable price?"
"With pleasure, Sir Conrad." He smiled with delight and then launched into the shopkeeper, who was obviously and hopelessly outclassed. I thought Father Ignacy was a good bargainer, but here I was seeing a genius practice his own special art form. He used an incredible mixture of politeness, bombast, pleading, and outright abuse. He criticized the armor I had selected until I was embarrassed for having picked it out. They started at fifty-five hundred pence. He had gotten the shopkeeper down to fifteen hundred pence when he suddenly screamed in anguish and stomped out of the shop. I had brains enough to follow.
"That was undoubtedly the finest display of commercial persuasion that I have ever encountered." His floweriness was wearing off on me.
"I thank you, Sir Conrad, and I compliment you on your good judgment in your choice of negotiators. But it's thirsty work, and a drop of beer is in order."
"An excellent idea, Mr. Novacek."
Drinking at 9 A.M. was not uncommon in the thirteenth century. I guess if you can't have coffee and a proper breakfast, beer is your next best bet. Some of the customers in the tavern were already in their cups.
The waitress was not pretty, but she was prompt, young, and eager.
"No time for that, Sir Conrad. Now that we have your armor selected, there is still the matter of getting you a horse with saddle and bridle, a sword, a lance, and a shield. You will also need a good, warm cloak."
"But Mr. Novacek, we don't have the armor. Surely you recall that you left the armor shop shouting at the shopkeeper, criticizing not only his father and mother but his mother's husband as well."
"I can see that you have much to learn about commercial negotiation. I shall be back in that shop twice more this afternoon, and the final price will be seven hundred and twenty pence."
He was wrong. I got that armor for seven hundred and eighteen pence.
"Incidentally, Sir Conrad, you have a good eye for steel. You really did pick the best he had, and I quite agree with you on those barrel helmets. They're fine for a massed battle, where junk is flying from every direction and there isn't much you can do about it. But in the sorts of fights we're likely to see, hearing and eyesight are important. "
But of course, we weren't likely to encounter any violence.
I'd been on a horse perhaps two dozen times in my life, always at rental stables, riding calm, tame horses that here would be called palfreys. I liked horses, but I was by no means a horseman. My boss, however, insisted on going to the only stable in Cracow that sold Chargers, exclusively. Chargers are very large, very strong, and very mean. They had eight of the things. As I walked down the line of them, one bit me, two more tried to, and I just missed being kicked. Having to ride one of the brutes for the next few years was not a pleasant prospect.
In the back of the stable was a corral with a single horse, a big red mare as big as any of the stallions. I whistled to her, and damned if she didn't come. I stroked her nose. "What's the story on this one?"
"Surely you jest, Sir Conrad! A knight in my employ riding a mare? I'd be a laughingstock!"
"And so would I, Mr. Novacek. I only asked!"
"But an excellent mount, good sirs!" the stablemaster said. "That horse has been fully battle-trained and is most intelligent."
"Battle-trained? Who in his right mind would take a mare into battle? Haw! She'd likely go into heat halfway through the fight! Would you want our good Sir Conrad on her back when a real Charger tries to mount her?"
"But no, my lord. That mare is completely indifferent to stallions. She shuns them, sir."
"Hah! So she's not even good for a brood mare. Still, I have a friend who's a horse breeder, and he knows of the Spanish fly. That might get her tail up! Of course, it kills them more often than not. I might give you fifty pence."
The stablemaster insisted on twelve hundred and off we went for half an hour's shouting. Actually, twelve hundred didn't seem bad, considering that the worst of the stallions went for four thousand.
This time they did settle on a price, a hundred and sixty-five pence, or at least I thought it was settled.
"Done then, stablemaster, provided that Sir Conrad likes how she handles."
"Provided? But you said..."
"I said that I'd be taking her to my stock-breeding friend in Wroclaw, didn't I? And how else are we to get her there? We'll be back soon with saddle and bridle. Come, Sir Conrad."
Novacek seemed to need to follow every bargaining session with a quick beer and a recap of the discussion.
"We really had him there-a hundred and sixty-five pence for a war-horse! I've had to pay more for a mule, and an old one at that! But you see, once a horse has been battle-trained, it can't be used for anything else. Put it to a plow and it'll likely kill you. Not many knights would take a fancy to a mare, and he was faced with feeding her all winter. We'll know about her soon enough, once you ride her. The sword shop is on the way to the saddlery."