Chapter 23

Forty days later, our ship tied up at the dock in Rouen, although we had switched to a smaller ship in New Aragon for the last leg of the trip up the Seine River. Aside from keeping my wives and new concubines entertained, we had spent a lot of time teaching the new girls English and reviewing lists of projects that had previously been submitted for consideration. Looking over the sprawling city of Rouen as it came into view, I decided which project would be first. I had toyed with the idea several times over the years and had even gone as far as having the engineers draw up plans and give me a cost estimate. With the city pushing five miles to the north and east over former farmland in order to accommodate the well more than half a million citizens and threatening to spill into the fertile agricultural area west of the city, it was time to act.

I had previously forbidden any settlement in the oxbow south of the city that we had built up behind the dikes, saving it strictly for agriculture. I had, however, allowed the construction of a large port facility with warehouses like those that we had in Agadir along the southern bank of the river. When it was finished, the port facilities on the north side were demolished and rebuilt. We added additional dock space with an artificial basin just west of the city, one deep enough to accommodate any ship able to make it this far upriver. Yet another basin and group of docks beyond the two new bridges was for smaller ships with a shallow enough draft to make it all the way to Paris, as well as for fishing boats.

The Seine River from Rouen to the coast looked like a length of rope looped back and forth three times. My new project would be the construction of a canal across the north end of the last two loops. The two six-mile canals would cut one-third off the distance to the sea. In addition, except for existing towns, it would be easier to designate the land in the cut off sections as strictly farmland. A series of irrigation canals like those we had built previously in the section south of Rouen would re-direct some of the river’s water to existing towns and to the crops. We could then expand the port facilities even further by enlarging the artificial basin. When the work was complete, Rouen could finally expand into the farmland to the west, as long as the expansion stayed north of the river.

Baha didn’t need help with any of his projects. The mines he had opened were producing enough to pay for everything he was doing, although the price of slaves had jumped due to Baha buying so many from every available source. Repairs to all the trade roads were complete, and the roads had even been improved. Construction of the relay system was well underway along every major trading route, as well as way stations for travelers and merchants to use. Knowing there would always be food, water, and shelter available every two days made travel for the trade caravans safer.

The cost of the food and shelter was more than offset by the caravans not having to purchase and transport all the food they needed. Not having to carry so much food meant that fewer camels were needed to carry the extra food. There were open areas for setting up tents and a few rooms for the wealthy to rent for a night or two. Water, corrals, and forage were available for the caravan animals. Not only did the way stations help increase trade, but they also provided a source of income for smaller villages as they sold their increased food production to meet the new demand.

The House of Knowledge in Baghdad is complete and magnificent. Baghdad is growing even faster than Rouen but isn’t draining the population from the surrounding area. Baha thinks people are arriving from India, Eastern Europe, and Mongol territory as word of the rebirth of Imperial Baghdad spreads. European merchants and craftsmen arrive, eager to be even closer to the wealth of the Persian lands. Baha had begun rebuilding three cities that had been large trading cities before the Mongols sacked them and chased off or killed the former inhabitants. Baha says overland trade is already four times what it was before we captured the area. Richard reports that traffic at the port in Constantinople has increased even more than that, much to the displeasure of the Genoese and Venetians.

Venice and Genoa traded naval insults a few times, even attacking each other’s ships, but finally realized that the rest of the world was busy staking a claim to the increased trade with Persia and Asia while they were fighting each other. Now their battle seems to be financial, seeing which of them can profit the most. Unfortunately for them, both sides lost a significant portion of their best craftsmen to Constantinople or Baghdad during the tensions and their brief naval chicken fight.

Chaghati Khan followed our lead, repairing their trade routes and building way stations. After we extended the courtesy of allowing one of their messengers to trade horses at our courier stations, they extended the same courtesy to us, once they built courier stations. Captain Xun is a happy camper as both Chaghati Khan, and the Yuan in China have allowed us preferred privileges and lower tax rates at their ports. We would make the same offer to them, but all merchant ships sailing from their ports are foreign vessels.

Baghdad is generating so much wealth that more than half of it goes to King Vytenis and Grand Prince Andrey to help them rebuild, repair, and improve their territory. Kyiv is well on its way to reclaiming its former glory. Vytenis completed repairs to the city. Repairs and improvements to the trade routes are now underway, with many routes paved with stone for the first time. Both leaders want to build two canals between major rivers on the trade routes leading to the Black Sea. The canals would allow continuous travel by ship from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Several stone bridges are complete or in various stages of construction across the major rivers along the trade routes.

King Lev had to go all the way to Pisa to find someone willing to welcome him. His wife and children chose to move to Kyiv and help King Vytenis rather than follow the contentious Lev.

With The Kings’ Council countries surrounding them, almost every state in Europe has finally joined The Kings’ Council.

We had a minor scare when messengers from Margaretville reported that a thief had murdered the Mali Emperor Sakoura on his way home from a pilgrimage to Mecca. We were relieved when the new Emperor, Ko Mamadi, sent word that he most definitely wanted to continue our trading agreement. In addition, having seen the coins our men at Margaretville had, he wanted to convert to gold coins and asked us to mint them for him. He wanted a gold coin equal to a mithqal with his portrait on it.

Flush with gold, I had our mint use the sketch Emperor Mamadi had sent of himself to create the 4.25 gram Mali Mithqal. Once I was satisfied, we minted just over five thousand of them from fifty pounds of gold, and sent them to Margaretville. The Mali emperor loved them and sent a replacement for the gold as well as an additional five hundred pounds to mint more coins, asking us to mint a half-mithqal coin, too. His gift for minting the coins was twenty elephant tusks, twenty beautiful slave girls, permission to travel to Timbuktu to purchase some of their books, and permission to send scribes to copy any of the nearly fifty thousand books they had at the university or in libraries there. He also asked us to send lots of the paper we produced since it was of a much higher quality than what they used. He hoped we would send more honey. He evidently had a sweet tooth; one we would happily accommodate.

Abby’s original few beehives in Lancaster are but a drop in the ocean compared to the more than ten thousand she now oversees throughout Normandy, Lancaster, York, Grenada, and North Africa. She has an army of workers tending them, providing us with lots of honey to trade. In the end, she only makes a small profit, making sure she pays her honey-gathering army well for their efforts. A ship carrying five hundred hives went to Constantinople a couple of winters ago for gradual distribution throughout Byzantine. The next winter, five hundred went to Baghdad, and last winter five hundred went to Kyiv for distribution. Surprisingly, the extra hives don’t affect the production of existing hives, which still provide honey and work for the locals.

Abby’s hives provide work for women looking for ways to augment their family’s budget, usually the wife of a man injured enough that he is unable to support his family. Abby always sends two experienced people to each new area to train new helpers as well as to help find wild hives to capture during the winter to augment her growing collection. For the small reward offered, hunters and peasants gathering firewood are always eager to point out any wild hives they notice. Throughout the spring and late summer, children old enough not to need watching but too young to work, play relatively near her hives and watch for any hives preparing to swarm. When they see swarms of bees congregating just outside of a hive in the evening, they hurry to tell Abby’s apiarist. The apiarist arrives before sunrise hoping to coax the swarm into a new hive. With everything Abby’s learned and taught her helpers, nearly every swarm voluntarily relocates into one of her hives.

With hives all across my territory, Abby received lots of information and suggestions about beekeeping. The best idea came from a slave from the East coast of Africa. Due to her description of the hives they used there, Abby brought the slave to Rouen where she showed Abby the unique hives. After trying several of the new style hives, Abby’s carpenters improved them, and she now uses them exclusively. She rewarded the slave girl with her freedom and a prestigious job as one of Abby’s trainers. Using wood bars across the top of a square wood hive, the design of the hive allows the removal of combs in the summer, which gives the hive time to build up their supply again. It allows the removal of honeycomb without destroying the entire hive during the winter. Her original straw skeps each had a tuft of green thread at the top to distinguish them from everyone else’s. The wood ones are now branded, the outline of a stag’s head burned into the wood on one side of the entrance to the hive and the outline of a bee burned into the wood on the other side.

She has a lot of men working to build new and replacement hives, most having been injured during military service. They have a difficult time standing or walking and sit at workbenches built at a height to accommodate the best position for each man to sit. Young boys do most of the legwork, carrying pieces of wood or finished pieces of hives for assembly, and then clean up at the end of each day. The boys are exclusively orphans between six and eight years old. At eight, every one of them apprentices to a skilled craftsman to begin the journey that will one day see them a craftsman in their own right.

Anne oversees our apprentice program, keeping lists of craftsmen in each territory willing to take on an apprentice, and matching them with a boy desiring to learn that trade. In addition, she oversees a similar program for orphaned girls. Some apprentice at appropriate jobs for young women while others go to live with a family with no daughters. The wife (or wives) sees that she learns the things necessary to successfully run a household of her own someday.

Fortunately, we have relatively few orphans. With men being able to take a second wife, women who might previously send their children to an orphanage to facilitate their chances at a second marriage no longer need to do so. The law states that any man taking a second wife must provide for her children as if they were his own. The churches help in cases where a second wife has several children, and it would impose undue hardship on the family.

In fact, we have so few orphans that we frequently get requests from surrounding countries asking permission to send us widows and orphans, requests we usually grant. That eliminates a drain on their church’s reserves, and we get happy, productive citizens. Lately, several other countries have decided to try our program after carefully questioning people familiar with the program, usually local priests.

Claire oversees the remarriages of widows, arranging to move them and their children if there are no appropriate suitors in their current area within six months. She gets periodic updates from the Archbishops as to which parishes have qualified men available, so she knows where best to improve a woman’s chances of remarriage.

Renee oversees the work at the scriptoriums. Men who are otherwise able, besides those Abby has building her beehives, but who are incapacitated in some way, are taught to read, and write English and then begin work copying books. Those who read and write a second language are used to translate foreign-language books into English. Several artistic men and women assist with the artwork. My goal is to see every volume here and in Baghdad copied into as many languages as possible and copied extensively enough to have several libraries scattered across my territory, each library filled with each of the written works in appropriate languages for that area.

Margaret and the rest of my wives tend their herb gardens, with lots of additional help, especially when they are off gallivanting around the world. Their herbs and the instructions for them are in use by every hospital within two hundred miles of Rouen. Doctors test them to see which really work, and then which work best singly or in combinations for each particular ailment. The women carefully compile the monthly reports from more than a hundred grateful doctors as their arsenal of useful herbs grows, as well as their knowledge of exactly what the herbs can and can’t help. Several herbs have reluctantly been transferred to a garden filled with those failing to do anything noticeable. However, they continue to be tested on different ailments.

I like to wander, to get out of the palace and the walls of stone that surround me. I generally walk through the city at least once a week when I’m in Rouen or in any of my other large cities. Anymore, it can take half a morning to reach the edge of Rouen. I walk alone, dressed in nondescript clothing so I don’t stand out. I go out of my way to avoid being recognized, hoping to catch snippets of conversation, to find out what people are talking about, and what they really think about things.

Unfortunately, someone recognizes me periodically and makes a big deal of it. Many of the citizens who have gotten used to seeing me walking, know of my desire to continue unannounced and only nod slightly in my direction when they see me. Usually, it’s one of the city’s children that starts excitedly squealing, “It’s the Duke, it’s the Duke.”

Then everyone makes an obligatory bow and goes back to their business when I wave them off. The children, though, congregate around me as the boys swear that they will become either soldiers or Demons to protect both our lands and me. Others insist they will become sailors to sell our wares all over the world or to explore the world discovering fabulous wealth to bring back to us.

Several years ago, after hearing her brothers swear that they would become Demons when they were old enough, one young girl, Monique, tried to out-boast her brothers and swore that she would end up as one of my wives. She was crestfallen when her brothers laughed at her, so I knelt and gave her a hug and a kiss telling her I looked forward to the day. She gave her brothers a smug grin of triumph when she left.

Since she lives on one of the main thoroughfares where I routinely walk, I see her a few times a year. When she was younger, she would always run over squealing excitedly, making a dainty curtsey before waiting impatiently each time for her kiss. From there it slowly spread through the city until now, when the children recognize me, the boys all vow stridently to serve me and the girls work their way to the front of the crowd to extract a kiss. The girls are generally between eight and puberty but occasionally one will be older or younger. My wives think it’s hilarious, and Monique is now an exceptionally beautiful young woman.

Each time I walk, I mentally thank the engineers who planned the city. I originally thought they were crazy insisting that the four main avenues be wide enough for twenty horsemen to ride abreast of each other. Between wagons and horses going both ways, wagons and horses stopped in front of businesses, and people walking in every conceivable direction, the avenues are barely wide enough.

As I walk, I hear conversations in more different languages than I can count but know that everyone learns to speak English in addition to their native tongue. I will admit to an occasional pang of jealousy when I hear a street merchant bartering fluently with different people in three, four, or even more languages.

I have to shake my head in wonder each trip when I pass the area where I had originally planned to build the outer wall for Rouen. Far more than half of the city would currently be outside the wall had I built it. Maybe someday we’ll build a wall, but with cannons and powerful trebuchets, I fear walls no longer offer nearly the protection they used to.

The Pope was definitely pleased with my offer to send priests to a group of tribes I described as having discovered while trading with Africa. I explained that the priests would be there for years and couldn’t reveal where they were. They could only reveal their location when the rest of the world discovered the area on their own, or when details finally got out about where the discovery was. I warned him about their current religious practices, and that they had requested us to teach them about our religion, one that didn’t include human sacrifice. It only took two months for the first six priests to arrive in Rouen, each eagerly clutching a missive bearing the Papal seal. Each month after that more would arrive until twenty had volunteered. While they waited for a ship going to Westland, they began learning the different languages of Westland.

The next shipment from the new world didn’t arrive until December. The letter from Parker explained that local natives had warned (after we left), that mid-September to mid-October was the worst time for the huge storms which had originally driven Parker and his ships to the new land. November and December brought several fierce storms, although not nearly what the first big storm had been like. He requested a thousand of the large horses formerly used by armored knights. We now use them only as draft horses, preferring smaller and faster horses for riding and for our cavalry.

Parker reported building a new trading post in Maya territory, and the Maya were excited about using draft horses to carry cargo rather than carrying it themselves. The Maya wouldn’t tell Parker exactly where they mined the jade, but it was somewhere upriver from the newest trading post.

He had sold the Maya twenty of the big horses and four cargo wagons and trained them how to use both. The large pieces of jade that had just arrived with the rest of the goods from Westland reflected a portion of their payment for the horses, wagons, and training. In addition, the Maya had given them more land around a huge lake several miles inland from the sea.

Parker chose to build only a small dock on the south side of the lake to load the jade onto a ship to carry to the main port on the north side. They had named the new post Port Jade. Evidently, the lake was about fifteen miles from a river the Maya used to float the jade downstream. Parker explained that he kept most of the jade there to trade with the nations to the north since they would trade four times the weight in gold for a piece of jade, much more than we could get in Europe; made perfect sense to me.

Each returning group of ships brought news of new adventures. The next group brought back new maps compiled by cartographers using calculations from the new instruments. One expedition followed Totonac guides and rode for five days across Totonac territory to reach the western sea. They reported an exquisite bay there and carefully noted the map coordinates. In addition, they took the readings from the ships in our group during our return to plot two different courses back to Rouen. Our course proved to be several days faster, but part of the reason was probably the fact we were on the new ship.

The biggest surprise was the Maya wanting to buy food from us. Evidently, their civilization had nearly collapsed in the last three hundred years, leading to the abandonment of many of their large cities. Their population had grown rapidly, and their cities grew into the rich farmlands formerly used to feed the large population. When an extended drought hit, the marginal soil they were forced to farm couldn’t produce the same yields and cities had ended up in desperate battles with each other for land and resources to survive, as well as for slaves to work the new fields.

Many cities had simply emptied within a few years as people left to go elsewhere to start over. Not everyone had survived to begin again, and the Maya population has diminished greatly. Hearing that made me glad I stuck to my original plans and didn’t allow Rouen to expand into the more fertile farmland south of the river. Many of the Maya had starved to death, and more simply left the cities and were never heard from again.

Farther west, the Otomie had heard about and seen our iron tools, horses, and new weapons of the Huastec, and asked if they could join the Huastec nation to gain protection from the Guamares. Ocanizl was elated and readily agreed. He sent an Otomie slave, a former Guamares soldier, to tell the Guamares to leave the Otomie alone since they were now Huastec. The messenger’s body was found outside the walls of the closest Otomie city two weeks later. Word was immediately sent to Ocanizl and the Otomie began stockpiling food, water, and firewood inside the city.

The message was relayed to Parker who immediately sent Demons and mounted archers. Rather than be slowed by wagons for the pyrotechnic tubes, each man carried two of the tubes, and pack horses each carried twenty. Full wagons followed at a slower pace with a smaller contingent of troops to protect them. By the time the first troops got to the Otomie city it had been under siege for a week. The new crossbows had kept the Guamares at bay, but re-enforcements had just arrived and the Guamares were preparing to send sixty thousand troops against the city.

The night before the planned assault, the Demons wailed after sneaking into the Guamares camp and killing many of the nobles. Evidently, the Guamares King had been among the newest arrivals, intending to personally lead the assault. He never saw the dawn of the day that he had expected to be his glorious victory. His troops found his body in the morning, and those of many other nobles, draped across a large rock in the Guamares camp. The bodies were all clawed severely, and the hearts looked like they had been ripped out. One of our banners had covered the King’s body.

The Demons continued wailing and raining pyrotechnic charges down on the Guamares army for much of the night. The army finally realized that they were surrounded by a foe they couldn’t even see who could rain arrows, sparks, and lightning down on them at will. Their leaders had told them that the stories of the pale-skinned warriors and their new weapons weren’t true, merely stories meant to scare their enemies. Now they realized, too late, that they were true.

They surrendered; hoping that some of them wouldn’t be sacrificed. Without us asking, Ocanizl compromised and only sacrificed the highest-ranking of the surviving nobles. With more than half of the troops the Guamares could raise now dead or captured, and with their King and many of their top nobles dead, the Guamares nation surrendered one city at a time.

Once again, thousands of civilians went to Tampico. More went to any of our newest mines that needed more help. When the Guamares slaves heard from the Xi’ui about the villages we had built with stone homes for the slaves, they were encouraged. From Tampico, many of the Guamares were forwarded to Tlilxochitl, Tecolutla, and Port Jade. Even more went to Port Jade when the Maya received our first shipment of grain. They paid with more jade and slaves, and even offered the abandoned city of Quirigua, the spot where the jade traders left the Silbapec River for the overland trip to the lake and Port Jade. The maps Parker sent along answered my questions as to why they didn’t build the port at the mouth of the river. There was no natural shelter, and the lake was on a different, although nearby river. Shallow-draft boats could make the one-day trip upriver to Quirigua carrying cargo that was too heavy or bulky to transport overland.

With horses, horse-drawn plows, and eight thousand slaves, Quirigua was quickly revived into a thriving community. Over the next year, many of the buildings that had encroached into the most fertile farmland were dismantled, the stone used to rebuild yet another city two miles away, but on the edge of another area of fertile farmland; they named it Abbyville. We sent cattle, pigs, chickens, and goats there, and Quirigua rapidly became a place where many Mayas came to trade for food, seeds, and livestock. Unfortunately, aside from jade, the Maya had little to trade. Their gold and silver came from trading jade to the northern tribes, and they soon ran out. They had skins and feathers, but, aside from jade, that was about all they had of any real value.

Once they got saws and axes, they began bringing us mahogany wood that we shipped back to New Aragon for shipbuilding. They had a second type of red dye that we traded for. Then we discovered the kapok fiber they got from the seedpods of the Ciba tree. The fiber was like the seed tufts of thistles or milkweed and was exceptionally soft. The natives would strip the silk from the seedpods and pack bags full to trade to us. Kapok fibers now fill our latest oversized mattress, which is far more comfortable than the finest down-filled bed. We discovered that it works exceptionally well quilted inside heavy jackets to keep frigid winter weather at bay and is much more resistant to rain than goose down.

When the Maya learned of our interest in books, their cities began sending us hundreds of documents written on various native media. We finally asked for a hundred Maya able to read and write their language who could copy the documents. Our request was answered overwhelmingly and after two hundred applicants, we had to turn the rest away. We had them make three copies of each document using paper. One went to Rouen, one stayed in Quirigua, and one returned to the original city along with the original document. The Mayan scribes even put together a document to translate their dates into ours, so the documents made more sense to us. As the translators were busy writing, several others were getting a crash course in English.

We sent people over who could read and write English, and eventually had the Mayan scribes read the documents, translating them verbally into English, which our English scribes wrote down. Three copies were made of each translation: one for Quirigua, one for Rouen, and one that would eventually go to the University in Baghdad--after the rest of the world found out about Westland. When every document for a given city had been copied and translated, they were carefully bound into volumes by date before being put into the new Quirigua library or sent to Rouen. A similar process was used in the other cities, preserving the history and knowledge of each city and each group of people.

The population of Quirigua continued growing with people just appearing weekly. Noting the wide variety of crops we grew, the Maya gladly gave us even more land to farm. Even with the large stone buildings in their cities and abandoned cities, they were awed by our grain silos. Naturally, Abby sent beehives to Westland. After the first harvest, the Maya were even more impressed with our ways, offering us a second abandoned city about forty miles upriver from Quirigua. The site was at the confluence of two rivers and provided a huge, fertile plain for farming. Parker could tell by the nervousness of some of the Mayan jade traders that the city was close to the jade mines.

He reminded them we had never attacked someone unless they attacked us or an ally, and that our job was growing food to trade for jade and the other items we traded for. If we took over the mines, we’d still have to grow the food, but we’d also have to mine the jade, too. They named the newest city Gemmastown in honor of one of their Duchesses and quickly set about readying fields to plant. Within a year, the original population of one thousand, which we transferred from Quirigua, had quietly increased to more than five thousand as more and more Maya showed up to trade and just never left.

One group of ships arriving in New Aragon reported sailing north along the coast of Westland, “Until there was nothing to see but ice for days on end.” They finally turned for Reykjavik to resupply and headed directly for New Aragon. They reported finding no large settlements like the Huastec and other nations we had discovered to the south. However, like the southern natives, the villages he saw and traded with along the east coast of the new land were collections of houses built of sticks and mud or of animal skins. There seemed to be no grand homes for the leaders of the peoples they traded with along the coast and only a few villages had populations approaching or exceeding a thousand people.