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FOURTEEN

I asked Roxanna how far it was to the place where the wreck of The Brick Royal was kept, and it turned out to be pretty much on our way home. I insisted on visiting it.

There were three guards on duty at the only door into the warehouse. One each from the duke, the archbishop, and the warlock. It gave me the feeling that the local triad of powers-that-be weren't all that loving and trusting of one another. The guards wore various sorts of waxed leather armor, and carried carefully polished quarterstaves, but had nothing of metal on them except for small belt knives, with blades barely two inches long.

With Roxanna's help, I managed to convince them that it was all right for me to see my own stuff, but they weren't really happy about it. I had the feeling that they each wanted to immediately report our visit to their respective superior, but at the same time, they were each afraid to let the place be guarded only by the competition. But that was their problem, not mine.

The boat itself took up the center of the huge cave. It was pretty much lying on its side, since the massive, winged keel was still fastened on. I walked around it, inspecting.

There was an eighteen-inch hole in the bottom, near the keel, where the mast had punched through. This was much smaller than my memories of the wreck had made it seem. If Adam had a bag of concrete on board, and it hadn't gotten wet, doing a patch job wouldn't be that hard. The mast itself was surprisingly intact, as best I could tell, as was much of the rigging. Even the sails looked to be in reasonably good shape, and we had a spare set of sails around somewhere, the first ones I had purchased, made of Dacron. Crawling up on top, I saw that the cockpit had been gutted, but in a careful sort of way. The instruments had been removed, presumably for safer storage, but nothing was actually destroyed. The upper deck was cracked where the mast had come down across it, but the solar still and the solar cells seemed to be okay. The hole in the deck where the mast had gone through was a mess, of course, but I thought it was repairable. With a month or two of work, The Brick Royal could be made ready for sea again.

While I was looking over the ship, Roxanna and the servants were scrounging through the piles of stuff that had originally been on board. There was an awful lot of it, so much so that it was hard to see how we could have gotten it all packed into just the one boat. Roxanna had found the kitchenware, and was much taken by it.

"My lord! I had heard tales of your wealth, but the seeing of it confounds me! You ate with utensils of solid silver?"

"We used those for eating, but they're not silver. Silver tarnishes. That stuff is all stainless steel. It's harder and tougher than silver, and less expensive, too."

"But there is so much of it, and all for just you two men?"

"Well, first place off, while you people get along just fine with one only single spoon each, a formal place setting in my country wants two forks, two spoons and a dinner knife, plus a steak knife if we're digesting big slabs of meat, which is many times. Then too, please, we started out with more that fifty people in boat, but most them got tired of sailing beside an ocean after a few months. I think Adam said that we had a table service for eighty with us," I said.

"How could that many people fit onto one boat?"

"It was pretty nicely crowded. Then, too, in my country, people don't have so much living space as you do here. Wealthy people live in houses that are ten times smaller than your apartment."

"Could . . . could we take some of this back with us, my lord?"

"Certainly. Take whatever it pleases you want. Just remember that half of it belongs to equal partner Adam," I said.

"Well, we wouldn't need half of it, but perhaps a service for ten?"

"Fine. Don't forget some plates, bowls, cups, and some sort of thing. All around here it's someplace. And let's make up a likely similar set to send for the Adam and Pelitier sisters."

It took me two hours to find what I was looking for. Adam's coin collection. It was half mine now, and I needed the money. There were two iron safes that each had a key lock with the keys still in them. Apparently, Adam had been less worried about someone robbing him than he was about losing the keys. The silver was all loose in one hefty strongbox that I couldn't begin to lift. The box was fireproof, and squeezed in on one side was a Manila envelope filled with passports, wallets, identification, and insurance papers. It was a good spot for all that currently useless stuff, and I left it in there. The gold was packed with each piece in a separate little plastic pouch to protect the finish of the beautiful coins, and then ten to fifty pouches, depending on the denomination, to the sturdy canvas bag. I took two bags of the gold, one for Adam and one for myself, and used four of the bags to hold a few fistfuls each of old silver quarters. Heavy stuff, it was all that I wanted to carry. I locked the chests and put the keys in my pouch, my present outfit not having any pockets.

Roxanna and the servants had the tableware sorted out by then, and had put some kitchen utensils in with them, which was fine by me. They were all ogling and talking about everything, even the plastic garbage bags that everything had been wrapped in. A minor case of culture shock, I suppose.

I did some scrounging myself, and in the course of things came upon the mirror-fronted medicine cabinet that had been on the wall of the boat's head. The face that looked back at me was ghastly. I'd never tried to grow a beard before, and now I knew why. It was scraggly and thin, and had twice as many hairs on the right side as on the left. The mustache was almost as bad, and I promptly resolved to get rid of the thing, local fashions or no local fashions. A few more minutes were required to find my shaving kit, and with the medicine chest under my arm, I rejoined the group.

As I put my reavings along with theirs, Felicia looked at the medicine chest and screamed. Soon, they were all crowding around the mirror, mumbling about what an incredible piece of magic it was. I was the longest time getting them calmed down, trying in my poor Westronese to explain that it was only a simple device, with nothing unholy about it. They eventually relaxed, but they never believed that it wasn't magic. In their eyes, I had become a mighty sorcerer.

"Well, you never look down on bowl of water? You never see face looked back?" I asked Roxanna.

"Yes, of course, but then water is magic, too."

I shook my head and went back to scrounging. The local beds were narrow, hard, and lumpy, so when I came across one of the big, queen-sized air mattresses that married couples had used early in the trip, and a sleeping bag to fit it, I put the bag and mattress into the "take it home" pile. I thought a bit, and put a second set of bedding in Adam's pile, since big people have even more trouble getting comfortable that us ordinary critters. Then I went back a third time and brought over enough air mattresses for our hosts and both sets of servants. They were people, too, no matter what the local mores said.

I found a sewing kit, and threw it in with Roxanna's booty, along with a few pounds of tea for myself.

"You'll especially want to throw away the thread, from what Adam tells me about your clothmaking abilities here, but you might find the scissors, needles, and thimbles useful," I said.

"Yes. Thank you, my lord, but why would you want scissors with a sewing kit?" She said, "But no matter, they will be very useful. But more to the point is that smaller boat."

The inflatable life raft was there, and still fully inflated, but I think perhaps that Roxanna didn't recognize it as being a boat. She was gesturing towards the yacht's twenty-foot-long tender.

"The Concrete Canoe. Yes, what about it?"

"I was going to suggest that it could be put to good use as a fishing boat, my lord. I saw no nets among your equipage, but there were many hooks, lines, and such," she said.

"I don't know as how I would like to be a full-time fisherman."

"No, of course not you, my lord. But a crew could be easily hired. It could be very profitable, as well as providing both your household and your friend's with the freshest of fish."

"Okay, if you wish. Would you see about hiring some suitable men?"

"Certainly, I would contact them, and select the best, my lord, but as to my actually paying their wages . . ."

"You can't, because you are just about out of money," I said, handing her one of the sacks of old silver quarters. "You should have said something about that sooner, but here. Take this and figure out how much more I owe you."

She spilled some of them into the palm of her hand and turned pale. "It . . . it is too much," she stammered. "This is a hundred times, more than that, more than I have earned for my hosting of you!"

"That much, eh? Well, keep it anyway." What I'd given her couldn't have been more than fifty dollars in quarters. I wasn't sure what the old silver ones were worth, but certainly I hadn't given her much more than the price of a good meal for two at a nice restaurant. Adam had definitely been right about metals being worth a lot here! I left Roxanna staring speechless at the money and went to scrounge up some food.

Everyone had gone to Communion except me, so we had skipped breakfast. The munchies were hitting pretty hard, so I broke out some food, the sort that didn't need cooking. Corned beef, Spam, Pringles and bean dip, some warm Cokes and some Snickers bars for dessert. Everybody loved everything, even the Spam.

On board, our usual "glassware" was plastic, but I'd found an unopened case of champagne glasses that had probably been saved for some celebration. These surprised them more than anything else. They'd heard of glass, but they'd never seen it before. I used the glasses to serve the Coke in.

We ate our fill, and I had Felicia take the leavings and an extra can of Spam to the guards. I was wondering where we should throw the trash when Roxanna carefully collected up all the tin cans and such and gave them to the cook for washing and preservation. Metal was that scarce here. I imagine that some craftsman will someday end up making something useful out of them.

It was well past noon before we were finally ready to leave. I gave two pouches of silver and one of gold to Felicia's husband Jacques, and told the three male servants to take them to Adam along with his share of the housewares, air mattresses, some instant coffee, sugar and a jar of Cremora. These people didn't drink anything with caffeine in it, and Adam used to need a few gallons of coffee a day to keep himself going. The men were to tell him that I would be dropping by tomorrow morning. The servants and Roxanna were astounded at my trust in the men, but I wasn't really worried. I mean, it was only a few hundred bucks worth, so what the heck.

Roxanna felt otherwise. She took the money back from Jacques, opened each of Adam's pouches and carefully counted out the contents, recording the amount, before returning the money to him.

"It is not polite to lead a good man into temptation, my lord," she said.

I tipped the guards a quarter each, thanking them for guarding my property so well, and telling them that I wanted them to keep up the good work. The truth was that mostly I just wanted to see the expressions on their faces. It was worth it, even with the one who couldn't believe that a coin so large could actually be made of solid silver!

Roxanna scolded me about it on the way home. I'd given each of them a half a year's pay!

I laughed at her, and gave each of our servant women four of the quarters, telling each them to give half of the money to her husband. It was fun. I hadn't exactly been poor in America, but here I was rich! 

 

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Framed