"Oh, that," said a well-endowed blonde, managing to drop her blanket below her belly button. "We were just doing what Mrs. Wrolawski told us to do."
"Cover your breasts. Now, what exactly did the innkeeper's wife tell you to do?"
"She said that if we didn't act as pure as nuns in a convent, the Church would shut down the inn and we'd each be lacking our twelve silver pence per week."
"She also threatened to send us to a nunnery if we weren't convincing," the redhead added.
So Mrs. Wrolawski had eavesdropped on my conversation with the priest and had set things up. Well-a-day. All's well that ends well.
"Okay. But put some clothes on, damn it!"
Most of the waitresses found suitable husbands within six months. The inn paid the wedding expenses, and there was always a "new hiring" the day after. This happened at least once a month and often once a week. For most of our customers, it was their first experience with voting. In my own mind, I could never sort out the morality of it a.
I had no difficulty with the morality of a situation that occurred much later that evening. The inn had closed for the night, but I was up in my room, drinking and doodling with some ideas about a gear-cutting machine. I do much of my best thinking late at night over a bottle. Oh, in the sober light of dawn I throw out three-quarters of it, but the quarter that is left is often very creative.
My room was directly above that used by Tadeusz and his wife. The cooks lived out, the waitresses were fourteen-year-old girls, and it happened that at the time there were no overnight guests. The only men in the inn were Tadeusz, the guard, and myself when the innkeeper's wife screamed. I was shocked sober in an instant.
"Guard!" Tadeusz shouted.
"Shout all you want. Your aging guard has been detained," a sinister, gravelly voice said.
There were more shouts, accusations, and then screams as I flew for the doorway, down the hall, and down the steps. I was wearing the embroidered outfit given me by Count Lambert, and my glove-leather boots made my approach fairly quiet, at least compared with the commotion coming from the innkeeper's room.
A beefy stranger was guarding the doorway. He had a long misericord, and I belatedly realized that I had left my sword belt in my room.
I am not a master of the martial arts, but I had taken the standard military courses in unarmed combat. The important thing is to hit hard and fast. Hesitation can get you killed.
The thug came at me with a clumsy overhand swing. I blocked his dagger with my left forearm and kneed him hard in the groin. He bent over, presenting the back of his head to my clenched fists and his face to my knee.
I took advantage of this opportunity; his nose and teeth gave way with a crunching sound. He fell heavily to the floor, still gripping his knife. I don't like people who pull knives on me in dark hallways, so I stamped hard on his knife hand. Too hard. The bones smashed, and splinters of knuckle bones were driven through the thin soles of my boot, lacerating my foot. Pain shot up my leg.
I picked up the misericord and limped into the room, ducking my head to get through the doorway. "What the hell goes on here?" I inquired.
Two Mafia types were in the room beside the Wrolawskis. The leader of the pair grinned evilly and said, "Just a bit of guild business, stranger. Get out and you'll live longer."
Tadeusz was bleeding from the nose and mouth. His wife's dress was torn, exposing bruised, aging breasts.
"They're from the whoremasters guild!" Tadeusz said, contempt and fear in his voice.
"If your business was honest, you'd come in the daytime," I said. "Now I'm telling you! Get out fast and you'll live."
The leader signaled to his subordinate, and the man came at me with a wide-bladed dagger. He used the same stupid overhand attack as his associate in the hallway.
The misericord is a long, narrow, thrusting weapon designed to pierce chain mail. I blocked the thug's attack as before, but this time at the expense of a slash in the embroidery on my cuff. Gripping him by the shoulder with my left hand, I aimed a gutting thrust at the man's stomach. He pulled his body back, and my knife continued upward, catching him between the chin and neck. The thin blade went entirely through his brain, and a few centimeters of it stuck out from the top of his head.
Over the man's shoulder, I saw the leader hauling back to throw a knife at me. With my hands still on the shoulder and the grip of the knife, I yanked the body upward as a shield. The dead man was much lighter than I had expected, or perhaps the fury of combat increased my strength, but in all events I bashed the thug's head into a low roof beam. The misericord stuck in the wood, and the corpse hung there, the leader's knife in its back.
The leader came at me with his fists, but his sort of hoodlum lives more by fear than by fighting ability. Equally weaponless, I hit him twice, hard, in the stomach.
"Sir Conrad!" Tadeusz shouted.
Suddenly the Mafia type froze, rigid. I was too furious to stop; grabbing him by the shoulder, I chopped viciously with the edge of my right hand, once on each side of the neck, breaking both collar bones.
"Sir Conrad?" the man gasped, his arms hanging unnaturally low.
"Yeah." I was breathing hard.
"The noble knight that killed Sir Rheinburg with a single blow?"
"Among others." I was returning to normal.
"I knew him, sir."
"You look the type."
"We had heard rumors that you were associated with this inn, but the whoremasters guild felt-"
"Well, you felt wrong." The noise had awakened the waitresses, and they were clustered wide-eyed around the doorway. One had a blanket wrapped around her, but the rest were naked.
"Those girls are servants, not whores," I said. "We have nothing to do with the whoremasters guild."
"Yes, sir. That is obviously true, sir."
"So?" I said.
"I may live, sir? I may leave?"
I had to think for a minute. "Yeah. You can live. But you damn well owe us for damages."
"Of course, sir. We always pay our just debts."
"Tadeusz," I said. "What do they owe you for what they've done to your property, for the injury caused to you and your wife?"
"Who can say, Sir Conrad?" the innkeeper said. "But is this wise?"
"Name a number!"
"Perhaps five hundred pence?"
"Good," I said. "Okay, whoremaster. You owe us five hundred pence, not to mention the mess you've made on the floor and the fact that your thugs cut up and bled all over my best outfit. Get out!"
"As you command, Sir Conrad Stargard." He left with as much dignity as he could muster.
"Are you insane, Sir Conrad?" the innkeeper said. "Now they will come back!"
"I doubt it. That kind knows when it's licked."