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girls almost two years ago. Now one was married to Sir Vladimir and the other three were engaged, or
nearly so, to the Banki brothers. She had always been the leader of that group, and now she was the one left
behind. Only Natasha remained unattached besides her, and Natasha was a relative newcomer.
I was looking at Krystyana when I was thinking this out, and I noticed a slight bulge in her tummy. I wasn't
sure, but I thought I might have hit on Krystyana's big problem.
As soon as I could, I called Natasha aside and asked her about it.
"Of course, my lord. You didn't know? Krystyana is heavy with your child."
"My child? You're sure of that?"
"She has touched no other man but you since first leaving Okoitz, my lord. Whose else can it be?"
Now that's as big a fist in the stomach as a man can get! I dismissed Natasha and sat back to ponder it all. I
was going to be a father! Cute, bouncing little Krystyana was going to be a mother! It was only when I
asked myself if the kid's father and mother were going to be married that I suddenly got cold chills.
In the first place, I'm just not the marrying kind. Maybe it was because my parents' marriage hadn't been all
that happy, or maybe it was something in my genes, but that's just the way I am.
In the second place, Krystyana and I didn't have anything in common but a certain sexual attraction, the
sort of thing any normal man feels for a healthy fourteen year old, and even that was already fading, at least
my half of it,
And in the third place, the whole idea of marriage scares me shitless!
I procrastinated for a few days, hoping that some solution would come to me. The only obvious one, a
marriage between Piotr and Krystyana, was shot down because of her obvious hatred for the boy. He was
willing to take her in any shape or condition.
I finally decided that my procrastination was sheer cowardice, and called Krystyana into my office. I
simply laid it on the line to her. I said that I liked her like a sister, but I wasn't going to marry her. If she
wanted to stay single, that was okay by me. I would always see to it that she and her child were well taken
care of and I hoped that whatever happened, she would want to stay on as the kitchen manager, since she
was doing such a good job there. But I strongly recommended that she marry, if not Piotr, who loved her,
then someone else. I would be happy to provide a suitable dowry.
She didn't answer. She just left, crying.
Some days you just can't win.
Chapter Fifteen
The duke was impressed by the stories he heard about Count Lambert's Great Hunt, and decided that we
should do it on all of the lands subject to him, about half the land that would one day make up modem
Poland. I was appointed his Master of the Hunt, and delegated all the work to Sir Miesko. He was delighted
to do it, since the hunt on Lambert's lands alone had made him a wealthy man. He spent almost six months
on the road getting the thing organized, and I didn't much get involved. That suited me just fine, since I
wanted to work on the limelights.
Getting the limelights going was another job of bucket chemistry. I had some iron grids cast that would fit
in the bottom of one of our beehive coke ovens, to raise the coal off the bottom so we could run water
underneath. While that was being done, work was started on the gas tower, a circular water tank in which
floated a vast close-fitting, copper-lined, straight-sided barrel. Not that a straight-sided barrel was unusual.
They were the only kind in use until I introduced the potbellied variety and proved that they leaked less.
Pipes went under the tank and up to just above the waterline. When gas was produced, the barrel rose, to
settle again as the gas was consumed.
How big a gas tower did we need? How much gas was needed to keep a limelight going? Was one coke
oven enough? Too much? I hadn't the slightest idea. I just made things big and hoped for the best.
Then, too, I'd never even seen a limelight, I'd only heard about them. As I understood it, it was a hydrogen
flame under a lump of lime. I didn't know what sort of a burner was used, so I used a bunsen burner.
Six weeks and eighteen thousand man-hours later, seventy-five tons of coal was loaded into the converted
beehive coke oven and lit on fire. It was necessary to have the grid completely covered with coal so that the
steam would be forced through the coals rather than around them.
The system worked to the extent of generating a flammable gas, and filling the gas tower, but the faint blue
flame produced was hot enough to heat the lime only to a dull red. Not a very efficient light, which was the
purpose of the exercise.
I could think of only two ways to get a hotter flame. One was to use pure oxygen instead of air, since the
nitrogen in the air cools a fire considerably. The trouble with that was that I didn't have a good source of
oxygen, and we weren't quite up to building an air liquefaction plant.
Oh, I could have heated mercury, a remarkably cheap substance in the Middle Ages. It was an industrial
waste product from the manufacture of sulfur. At moderate temperatures, mercury absorbs oxygen and at
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