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good teeth. Paperwork is minimal. In America, some people have this right and some don't. Most people
don't, so they have a vast number of office workers filling out forms that try to prove that only those
with special rights get these special privileges.
I am convinced that it should be possible to design an economic and political system that has the
advantages of both capitalism and socialism with the problems of neither. If I can figure it out, thirteenth
century Poland is going to be a fine place to live.
By the time Krystyana and the others returned from the hunt, I was feeling much better, having thought
a lot of things out of my system. We dressed for another boring supper.
I simply didn't have much in common with the nobles of Wawel Hill. There wasn't much of anything I
could say to them and I was eager to get on with our errand and return to Three Walls.
Eventually, by repeatedly painting a sad picture of poor Tadaos in a donjon, not knowing if help was on
the way or not, contemplating suicide perhaps, I finally got my party to agree to leave.
Chapter Twelve
Our party was in sumptuous attire as we went to the riverfront at Cracow the next morning. Clothing
equated with rank in the thirteenth century, and rank equated with services. If you wanted to be treated
good, you had to dress good.
At the river landing, we engaged a ferryboat to take us to the northern bank of the Vistula River. This
boat--a raft, really--was made of a dozen huge logs that had been split and burned out hollow, then
shaped and smoothed on the outside. These half-round dugout canoes were laid lengthwise side by side
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to let the river flow past easily. Rough planks decked it over and tied the dugouts together.
A dozen men were required to pole and paddle the massive raft across the river. No fare was waiting on
the north bank, so the boatmaster sat down to wait.
"You know," I said to him, "I can't help thinking that you are wasting the efforts of all your men."
"What do you mean, my lord?"
"Well, you see that big tree growing upstream there on the south bank?"
Yes.
"If you tied one end of a long rope around that tree and the other end of it to the left side of your boat,
near the bow, the force of the water would push your boat back to the other side. And once you were
there, if you tied the rope to the right side of your boat, the river would push you right back to here
again."
He thought a while. "Would that really work?"
"Prove it for yourself. Get a small boat and a small rope and try it."
"Hmm. I just might, my lord. I just might."
Sir Vladimir and the ladies were eager to push on so that they could get back to Wawel Castle again,
since I had promised a second visit on our return journey. Vladimir planned to take us on a short cut that
skirted the Wysoki Beskid Mountains, a part of the Carpathians. That would get us to Sacz in two easy
days of travel.
We traveled across the Vistula flood plain with Annastashia and Krystyana chattering constantly about
all the wonders they had seen in Cracow. When we started climbing the foothills in the afternoon, the
previously perfect weather began to cloud over. In a few hours it began to sprinkle on our expensive
clothes.
"I'd thought that we could make it to my Uncle Felix's manor today' " Sir Vladimir said. "But we haven't
come as far as I'd hoped and I'm loath to get wet in a rainstorm the new finery our ladies made. I know
of caves in these hills. I played in them when I was a boy. What would you think of making for one of
them?"
"Fine by me," I said. "We have my old backpack with us. I can treat you all to some freeze-dried stew."
Sir Vladimir found a cave in short order. There were bat droppings near the mouth. Bats are common
throughout the Carpathian Mountains. They're all harmless insectivores and there are so many of them
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that you can go for weeks without swatting a bug.
It was a four-yard climb to the cavemouth, but over easy rock, almost a stepladder. We couldn't get the
horses inside, but a summer shower wouldn't hurt them. I set up the dome tent and stowed our baggage
in it while Sir Vladimir unloaded and hobbled the horses. Anna wouldn't tolerate hobbling, but she was
so loyal that there was never any worry about her wandering off.
Annastashia and Krystyana collected a night's supply of firewood and soon we were sitting in a
semicircle around the fire, facing outward, waiting for the stew to start bubbling in my aluminum
cooking kit. Krystyana was on my left and Annastashia and Sir Vladimir were to my right.
We were settled just in time, for soon lightning and thunder were crashing and rain was coming down in
sheets. I've always loved thunderstorms when I don't have to be in them, and the view from our
mountain cave was spectacular. But soon the show was over and the rain almost ended.
We started telling stories, a great art form in the Middle Ages but one that has been almost lost in
modem times. Krystyana told a hilarious tale about how her uncle bought a pig, but came home with a
cow. I rambled on for an hour about nine-fingered Frodo. A modem man may lack storytelling skills, but
he sure knows a lot of plotlines.
With dusk the bats rushed out in a clicking, squeaking swirl. The girls, unfamiliar with the harmless
creatures, started screaming.
Sir Vladimir took this as the cue for his story, which was about a vampire. His basic story line, that of a
man who was of -the living dead, who hated sunlight and water, who drank human blood and made his
victims into creatures like himself, was much like a modern movie plot.
Vladimir's flashy storytelling style, with many gesticulations and facial expressions, added a lot to the
natural setting, for Count Dracula had lived in these same Carpathian Mountains, only farther south.
What's more, Sir Vladimir adamantly claimed that every word of his tale was true and his eye didn't
have the wink and twinkle it had when he was fibbing. He actually believed it and had the girls doing so.
While 1, of course, am above such things, I confess he had my heart thumping.
As he was approaching the climax of the story, he suddenly stopped and looked behind me. The
expression on his face was one of pure horror and I remember thinking that in the twentieth century he
would have gone to Hollywood.
There was a' shuffling noise and I wondered briefly how he had arranged the sound effects. Then I saw
that the girls too were horror-stricken and actresses they weren't.
I looked over my right shoulder and made what was perhaps one of the biggest mistakes of my life.
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