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down to the lowest rank would be sufficient. Certainly she presented no further danger to society.
So we must be killing her as a teaching aid. Well, would it be an effective teaching aid? By this time
everybody knew how and why she had screwed up. Everyone realized now that to abandon a post can
cause a great tragedy. Would one more death added to 21,000 make any difference? No. It would be
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insignificant.
Then what were we gaining by hanging her? Were we providing ourselves with a sacrificial lamb to
cleanse the guilt from our hands? A scapegoat? I never could go along with that strange bit of theology.
Actually, you couldn't blame the captainette for the deaths of all those people, not directly. The Mongols
had killed them, and we had killed the Mongols. Case closed.
The Mongols had been let in by Count Herman's wife, and they had killed her for it. Again, case closed.
The captainette had believed the wrong person as to who should be in charge at East Gate. She had
believed her traditional boss instead of me. She had been given her command by me, and I had done it
because Baroness Krystyana had recommended her.
Night was fading into gray dawn when I finally knew what I had to do. Somehow I was immensely
comforted by the certainty of it.
There was quite a crowd in front of the outer wall when I got out there. The sun was about to peek over
the horizon, a gallows had been built, and a lot of people were standing around it, including all of my
barons who were at Three Walls. The Lubinska woman was near the scaffold, attended by a priest and
two guards. I went to her and said quietly, "You're not going to die this morning." Stunned and
unbelieving, she looked at me and said nothing.
Baron Vladimir led us in our morning services, and a priest, not the one attending the captainette, said a
very quick mass without a sermon. The people were expecting Captainette Lubinska to climb the
scaffold, but she didn't.
I did.
Chapter Fifteen
FROM THE JOURNAL OF COUNTESS FRANCINE
The job of writing the articles for the magazine was done in but two days, and work had already begun
on the casting of the drums of type to print it. But then the time seemed to drag, for there was much work
to be done in the casting of type and the printing of the half gross of pages that the magazine would
contain, and none of it could be done by me.
It would be a plain magazine, for there was no time to carve the woodcuts that usually adorned its
pages, except for a few old commercial messages that were used to fill otherwise blank space. Since
there was no time to contact the merchants and obtain payment from them, you may be assured that all
the "ads" that we used were from my husband's factories.
Indeed, it seemed for a time that the cover, too, would be blank, until a friar named Roman came down
from the cathedral and painted three lithographic blocks for the purpose. He was a merry man, grown
pudgy and red-nosed from drinking too much wine, but he was a fine artist for all of that. The cover he
made had on the front a fine portrait of Count Conrad in his armor and with our battle flags flying behind
him, and on the back a lively scene of our gunners shooting at the Mongol enemies over the heads of our
footmen. Further, all this was done in inks of three colors, the first cover that had been done so. I think
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that some may have purchased the magazine only to have the fine artwork!
I persuaded the abbot to give his men dispensation from the saying of their prayers eight times a day so
that they might spend the time in work, and I made arrangements with the inn that they should be fed as
they worked at the machines that Conrad had built for them. The monks were at first much taken aback
by this, for the waitresses of the inn did their work, as always, nearly naked. Yet there were soon far
more smiles on the monks than scowls, and I bade the waitresses to continue as they had. I was
something of a heroine to these young ladies, for I had once been of their number and now was of the
high nobility. I suppose that my success fed their dreams. Yet when they asked that I dress in their
fashion and help serve, I must needs turn them down. My waist had grown too large with pregnancy, and
anyway, Conrad would certainly not have approved! Still, I was tempted.
The monks worked from before dawn straight through to the dark of night, but still, the job would be a
week in the doing, and always I feared that Duke Henryk would arrive and take the whole thing into
hand himself.
I took myself to Wawel Castle and spent the day there talking to any that I could meet about the seym
that was soon to be held in Sandomierz. All that I met, the old and the infirm, were enthusiastic for
Conrad's enlargement, yet there were very few of the nobility there. All too many were gone or dead.
The city council came to me with the plea that Count Conrad should be their duke and protector, and
we talked long as to how this could be accomplished. They then sent representatives to every
incorporated city in eastern Poland to plead for our cause, and they did this at their own expense, as
well! Not that I was in lack of funds, but when those tightfisted burghers had their own money involved,
you can be sure that they would give it their best effort!
While I was thus employed, Sir Wladyclaw was also busy. The weather was now fair and the radios
were at last working properly, so his men were no longer needed as messengers. Keeping only one at his
side, he sent the others about the countryside in search for Mongols and, when time permitted, to tell the
gentry of the victory won by Count Conrad and of the seym to be held at Sandomierz. They found no
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