'Tadaos,' I said, 'if you must work us like horses, you should at least provide us with horse collars.'
'What do you mean?'
'You saw my backpack? Make something like that, with a strap across the chest. Tie the rope to the back and a man could at least rest his arms.'
Tadaos pondered this for a while. 'What if you had to let go in a hurry?'
'Tie the rope in a slipknot.'
'Hmm. Not a bad thought, Sir Conrad. I'll make some up, next trip. Do you want to come along to see how they work?'
'No, thank you!'
It was late in the afternoon, and except for a tiny village at the juncture of the Dunajec and the Vistula, we hadn't seen a single habitation or another human being a day.
'I can't get over how empty this country is,' I said.
'There are people,' the boatman said, 'but the river is too open, too dangerous. They live back in the woods in little fortified towns protected by a knight or two.'
'What are they afraid of ?'
'Bandits. Wolves. Mostly other knights.'
'Why doesn't the government do something?'
'The government?' He spat. 'Poland doesn't have a government! Poland has a dozen petty dukes who spend their time arguing with each other instead of defending the country. Poland is a land without a king!'
'The last king of Poland died a hundred years ago, and he divided the country up among his five sons just so they'd each have their own little duchy to play with! And each of them divided it up still further, being nice to their children.'
'Did any of them think about the land? No! They treated the country like it was a dead man's bag of gold to be divided up among the heirs.'
'You paint too bleak a picture, master boatman,' Father Ignacy said. 'There is a strong movement afoot to unify the country. Henryk the Bearded now holds all of Silesia, along with western Pomerania, half of Great Poland, and most of Little Poland. He has the throne at Cracow, and mark my words, his son, young Henryk, will be our next king. I can smell it.'
'You think Henryk's line can be kings? Does the Beard act like a king? When Conrad of Mazovia asked for aid against the Prussian raiders, did Henryk come to his aid? No! Henryk was too busy playing politics to help out another Polish duke, so Duke Conrad went and invited those damned Knights of the Cross in. They've taken as much Polish territory as they have Prussian! It was like inviting in the wolves to get rid of the foxes!'
'But politics is an essential part of unifying the country, Tadaos. At least the Polish dukes have never made war on one another the way they do in England or Italy or France.'
'No, they prefer ambushes, poison, and an occasional knifing. There'll be war with those Knights of the Cross, you mark my words on that!'
There was no arguing with that statement, so the conversation died for a while.
After supper that night, I was sitting with Father Ignacy apart from the others. 'You know, Father, it was the inn. It had to be the inn.'
'What was what inn, my son?'
'The Red Gate Inn, on the trail near Zakopane. I must have come back in time when I slept in the inn. Those double steel doors on the storeroom-I had to have been in some kind of time machine.'
'Do they make time machines in the twentieth century?'
'What? No. Of course not. But don't you see? If they had a time machine, they could be from any century.'
'And you think that your being here is the result of some mechanism rather than an act of God?'
'Father, anything can be an act of God! God can do whatever He wants, but I have to deal with the world in the only way I know how, as an engineer. I think that I should turn back and go back to that inn. Maybe I can find the answer there.'
'My son, in the first place, what you are speaking is very close to blasphemy. In the second, there is absolutely no possibility of your making it back up the Dunajec alive, not at this time of year. You could freeze to death before you were halfway there. I wouldn't try it myself except on orders from the Pope, and then I would go knowing that I was a martyr.'
'Still, I must try.'
'You may believe in machines, my son, but I believe in God. I think that you are here for a reason, and I think that you must find out what it is.'
'But-'
'Then there is the fact that we have an agreement with the boatman to take his grain to Cracow. I'm not sure, but I think it likely that this boat of grain represents all of his worldly goods. If this boat gets frozen in, he is a ruined man.'
We were silent for a while.
'Father, if you are so concerned about the boatman, why don't you worry about the kid? Tadaos is the sort who could survive almost anything. But from what Tadaos has said about Cracow, the poet isn't likely to live out the winter. '
'My son, there is a vast difference- between a reasonably honest workingman and a goliard poet. Don't you know anything about them? They glory in sin and drunkenness and debauchery. They mock the Church and ridicule the social order.'
'Oh, he's just a lost kid. I think that if you'd give him a chance he'd turn out all right.'
'Give him a chance? What do you mean?'
'Give him a job! He's fairly well educated. He's attended the University of Paris. He tells me that he's an artist as well as a poet. If you need copyists, he's a better choice than I am.'
'You really think that I should let that into a monastery?'
'I know you should.'
'Know? Is this something that you've read in your histories?'
'No, Father. Let's say that I can smell it.'
'Well, I'll think on it. But I make no promises. There is, however, a promise I want you to make, my son. A promise of silence. You must tell no one-and I mean absolutely no one!-that you are a visitor from the future. I give you absolution to invent some plausible lie and to tell it to any who questions you.'
'The truth of this matter must be decided by the Holy Church, and until such time as a decision is made, you will be silent.'
'But why, Father?'
'Why? Well, in the first place, because I am your confessor and I am telling you to. In the second, do you have any idea of what sort of controversy would be generated by your claims? Hundreds, maybe thousands of people would plague you, wanting to know their futures. Some lunatic would likely start claiming that you were a new messiah. Others would surely denounce you as a creature of the Devil and demand your execution. Do you really want to be at the center of that sort of thing?'
'Good God! No, Father, of course not!'
'Then you will make this vow?'
'Uh, yes, Father. But what does the Church have to do with this?'
'Why, everything! I must make a full and complete report on this matter to my superiors. I am fully confident that my report, with annotations by my superiors, will eventually reach the Vatican and the Pope himself. It is likely that he will appoint commissioners to look into the matter. They will report back, and a decision will eventually be made.'
'Decision? On what?'
'On what? Can't you realize that you may be a direct instrument of God, sent by Him for some special purpose?'
'I do not feel like a direct instrument of God.'
'Your feelings have nothing to do with it.'
'Hmph. Just how long will this decision-making process take?' I asked.
