She nodded yes.
"Anything you need?"
She shook her head no.
"Right." I didn't want to believe this.
Uneaten oats lay in the trough in front of her. I patted her neck and went in search of the kid I'd brought in.
Everyone in the bailey seemed to be hurrying about, getting last things done before the feast. Many were still in the plain gray wool that was everyday wear for most people, but some were already in their Sunday best, dyed in bright colors, with a great deal of embroidery.
Everyone seemed to know who I was. Passersby greeted me with smiles and nods. I had always thought of peasants as being brutally downtrodden, forced to grovel before their masters. I'm sure that that must have happened somewhere, but I saw none of it at Okoitz.
I was passing the mill when a man stopped me. He had a basket of food in one hand and a pail of beer in the other. "Sir Conrad? Could it be that you are looking for the child you saved?"
"In fact, I am."
"Then I shall take you there. I am Mikhail Malinski, and the child is with my wife."
"Then I am in your debt, Mikhail."
"No, Sir Conrad. It is I who am in your debt. Understand that two nights ago our third child died at birth. My wife grieved horribly for a day and a half. I thought it would be the death of her. But she's happy now. You understand?"
"I understand. We are in each other's debt. Let's see them."
"In a moment, sir. I have but a quick errand." He went inside the millhouse, and I followed. I was shocked by what I found. Four men were chained to a heavy "hourglass" mill, grinding grain to flour. It was the first brutal thing I'd seen in Okoitz.
"What's all this?"
"Why, the mill, Sir Conrad. Oh! You mean the men. These two were caught last week drunk, disorderly, and annoying some married women. They'll be here until the end of Christmas."
"This one's my brother. I always warned him about his poaching. He got six months for it."
"I wasn't poaching! I shot that deer on my land and tracked him to where they found us!"
"Save your lies for someone who'll believe them, brother! They found you four miles from your land, and that deer had an arrow through its heart. It couldn't have gone four yards!"
"What about this last one?"
"Oh, he's a bad one, he is. They caught him stealing from a merchant. He's worked off maybe half of the five years he got." Mikhail put down the food. "Your Christmas feast, brother. Share it if you want."
As we left, I said, "Five years for theft seemed severe."
"Had he robbed another peasant, it would have been only six months. But merchants have to be protected, you know. If they aren't, they might stop coming, and who would we sell our grain and hides to?"
"I see. What if someone stole from a knight?"
"Why, I can't remember such a thing ever happening, Sir Conrad. I suppose, if the knight let him live, that it would be far more than five years."
I ceased to worry about the location of my gold.
"What do you do when there aren't any criminals?"
"Well, the grain has to be ground to flour, doesn't it? There's usually a spot or two open on the mill, and the rest of us men have to take turns at it. But we keep an eye out for lawbreakers."
"I can see where you would. You keep saying 'men.' What do you do about female criminals?"
"Well, that's rare, Sir Conrad. Women are more lawabiding. But there was a time, two years ago, when a girl-only twelve, she was-stole a silver-handled dagger from the count himself."
"What did the count do?"
"Got his dagger back and told the girl's father. He beat his daughter to within a thumb's width of her life! Then the count gave the father a month at the stone for not bringing up his daughter right! As I said, it doesn't happen too often."
"What if she'd been married?"
"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-meterwide 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 offive people. And there were two very young women that I had ... had. Damn 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.