"Frankowski, Leo - Stargard 5 - Lord Conrad's Lady" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frankowski Leo)

УYes, sir.Ф

I hit the START button.




Chapter Two


It was a bitterly cold night, and JohnТs hair and clothes were rimed with frost. He had lost his hat, and his eyes were red and shot through with blood. In front of everyone, he grabbed me and demanded that I return to Okoitz with him immediately. When I managed to free myself from him, he pulled out his belt knife. I was frightened and hit him on the head with a stool. I swear before God that it was never my intention to kill John, or even to seriously harm him, yet it happened.

Sir Conrad was called to the inn, since he was lord of the city. He rarely frequented his own inn and was shocked to find me there. Yet on hearing the tale, he said that I was not guilty of the murder of my husband, for it was an accident and done in self-defense, but that Count Lambert alone had the right of high justice.

On returning from Okoitz, Sir Conrad told me that Count Lambert had said that since a priest had been killed, my case came under canon law rather than civil law, and the matter would have to be taken up with the Bishop of Wroclaw.

Now, it is normally desirable for a criminal to have her trial brought before the Church. The penalties demanded by the clergy are usually far less severe than those handed out by the local lord. But in my case I felt this change of jurisdiction was for the worse, for the Bishop of Wroclaw did not like me, but Count Lambert certainly did. With John dead, I knew I could easily enter the countТs bed, were I willing to share that honor with a dozen peasant girls!

Also, the Church moved very slowly on legal matters, and many years could go by before I might be free to return to France. I spent the uncertain months of winter working at the inn, saving my money.

In the spring, Duke Henryk came to Three Walls to see the wonders that Sir Conrad was building in his factories and furnaces. The duke was a robust old man of seventy, with an outside that was as hard as the crust of good French bread and an inside that was just as soft. The duke made me an offer that I couldnТt refuse-more money than I was currently making, his considerable protection from any Church prosecution, and duties that involved only serving the duke himself. I left Three Walls in the dukeТs company.

Thus I spent the next five years as the personal servant and confidante of the most powerful man in Poland, and in the process learned much about the politics of this new and somewhat barbarous land. I learned who wanted what and for what reason, who hated who for no understandable reason at all, and, sometimes quite literally, where all the bodies were buried. As opposed to the feuding nobles of England, Italy, or even France, Polish nobles were less likely to go to war with one another than to resort to poison, a trap, or a knife in the dark. Perhaps this was because the Polish fighting man was often a member of a large, extended family and was ever ashamed to kill his own cousins, who might be on the opposing side. Family loyalty often took precedence with them over mere oaths of fealty.

My duties to the duke were not well defined. I simply did whatever he wanted me to do. Since he wanted me to continue dressing much as I had as a waitress, my legs and breasts were rarely covered, save in the coldest weather. Indeed, it started a fad, a clothing style that many of the ladies of the court followed, at least to the extent of baring their breasts. Almost none of them adopted the short dress, feeling that naked legs were a bit much.

I always traveled with the duke and was privy to his many secrets. Indeed, an old man will always tell everything to an adoring young woman! One of the strangest things that I learned was that Sir Conrad was not a native to our own times but rather had come here somehow from the far future! Just how this was done was a mystery even to Conrad himself. All that I can think is that the future must be a grand place indeed, for if Conrad was but an ordinary man from that time, as he has so often insisted to me, what must the exceptional men be like?

I usually slept in the dukeТs bed, to comfort him. However, like my late Уhusband,Ф the duke was incapable of actual sex, though seventy-five years on GodТs earth certainly gave him a fair excuse!

Eventually Duke Henryk raised me to the peerage, making me the Countess of Strzegom, with a nice manor house and a few hundred peasants. I am not ashamed of anything I did with that fine old man, and I certainly do not regret my years with him.

The duke did not die of old age, as all expected, but rather by a cowardly assassinТs crossbow while he was sleeping at my side in Wawel Castle.

The duke had long and carefully trained his son to wield the sword of power, and young Duke Henryk easily stepped into his fatherТs position. Yet the younger Henryk was not his fatherТs puppet but did things in his own style. The very day of the assassination, all the ladies of the court were wearing dresses that covered everything but their faces and hands, knowing the new dukeТs displeasure with the old bare styles. Though young Henryk was absolutely honorable in all things, I knew it would not be wise for me to remain at court.

Sir ConradЧor rather I should say Baron Conrad, for Count Lambert had enlarged him-was in Cracow, and gifted the new duke with four of his marvelous horses, that they might protect him against assassins. While testing these horses, I persuaded Baron Conrad to let me go with the party, riding apillion. When we were racing through the fields, an attempt was made by three crossbowmen to kill the new duke, and Baron Conrad drew his wondrous sword and killed all the assassins while the dukeТs bodyguards took their lord to safety.

There was something unbelievably exciting about the chase and the fight with the assassins, bouncing behind Conrad and holding him tightly while he dealt death to the attackers. When we dismounted in a secluded wood to see if we could identify the bodies, well, to state it simply, I seduced him. I suppose I should be ashamed of myself, but in truth I was then twenty-six years old, and that is a perfectly stupid age at which to be a virgin. And how could I ever regret the wonderful pleasure that he gave me and that I had so long been denied!

Baron Conrad was then not maintaining a harem in the manner of his liege lord, Count Lambert, but was contenting himself with a single woman, a dancer from the far cast who wasnТt even a Christian. I had met Cilicia often, and she was a pleasant enough person, but I thought that I would have little difficulty displacing her in Baron ConradТs heart. I traveled with him to Three Walls, part of the way on his new steam-powered riverboat, an almost magical contrivance.

Yet he would not dismiss the foreign girl, but tried instead to make us join together into a single household! A foolish attemptЧof course it did not work. My love, so wise in all things technical, is like a little boy when it comes to solving the far simpler problems of people. He needs my help so much and so often!

But at the time I could accomplish nothing with his other paramour, Cilicia. She seemed to think that she had prior claim on him, and indeed she was again pregnant with another of his children. After a month of trying, I left for my own estate.

Conrad contrived to visit me there at least once a month and often twice. And always I gave him a warm welcome. I wanted more, much more. I wanted a proper marriage and children by him, but I settled for what I could get.

In his own way, he was generous with me. I remember best the time when forty men and as many loaded mules came to my manor gate and announced that they were my birthday present. Since they were from Conrad, I bade them do as they would, and they fell to it with a will. One band of them put glass in every window of my manor, on frames with hinges that could open out and with screens of a coarse metal cloth that fended off insects in the summer but let the breezes through.