While building the roads, Keeps, and farms in Devon were easy to write about, they took two years to implement. It was now my sixth year in this day and age.
My wife and children made a wonderful family. Five-year-old Catherine was learning at an accelerated rate. I suspect she had my eidetic memory. Her three-year-old brother was a handful of energy. His favorite toy was a wooden sword. He had learned a new word, 'why.'
Eleanor and I decided not to have any more children for a while, if ever. Neither of us wanted her to be worn out from childbearing, leading to an early death.
Poor Father Timothy died in the madhouse. He fell frothing at the mouth and bleeding from his eyes. It was strange enough that Archbishop Luke permitted Lady Agnes's people to do an autopsy. They found he had a brain tumor the size of a baseball. We could have done nothing for the poor man even if we knew what was wrong. But it did explain the changes in his personality over time.
After much trial and error, we refined a nickel/tungsten alloy, allowing Tom Smith to make better tooling. He was now able to make parts for an ON-47. That is what we named our AK-47 automatic rifle, the ON for Owen-nap.
The cartridges proved to be the easiest component of the weapon system.
Tom hand-forged the parts for a prototype, and had a secret test firing. It scared all but my adventuresome wife. She learned to control her fire quickly rather than the spray and pray others at the demonstration used.
Surprisingly, the Archbishop loved it, even though he couldn’t aim well. "It would smite the enemies of the Lord."
Just what I needed. A Crusade.
With the new farms, we had more than enough to feed our people. We could export it if there were anyone to export it to. We had two years in storage and a good harvest coming this year.
We had started to settle Armorica, a foothold in what I knew of as France. But only built Keeps at the largest towns and ports. The terrain was too rough and long to build walls. We improved the roads and set up a semaphore system as well.
I was in Tintagel when a message arrived from Armorica through Saltash. A caravan was coming in from the main trail to Rome. There had been little traffic on that trial for several years, so this was an event.
Our caravans to Rome always came back empty. This wasn't one of ours and seemed to be heavily laden.
I was curious enough and bored with administrative work, so I went to Armorica to meet them. We maintained a fast schooner in Tintagel, so I used it for the journey. The schooner was built from a design in one of my books. We were creating the beginnings of a shipyard to build more and larger merchant ships.
It took two days to arrive in Vellooasses.
The caravan arrived the day before. It was a true caravan, camels, and all. My people were wary of the merchants, their guards, and drivers. They had never seen the like.
They were Chinese, and arrived via the Silk Road. The journey must have taken at least two years.
One of the merchants spoke Latin.
I asked him why they came the entire length of the Silk Road.
"We started out to go to Constantinople, but were delayed in the desert due to a huge sandstorm that lasted days. By the time we got to Constantinople, they had been visited by the plague. We thought they were the source of the telescopes and microscopes. But they told us they came from Rome.”
"So we traveled on to Rome. It was in as bad a shape as Constantinople. They told us the devices came from Armorica. So we came here.”
“This area, while healthy looking, does not look like it can afford our trade. We hope to find the supplier of those wonderful telescopes and microscopes that have come to us."
"You have found us, but your journey is not finished. We are located across this channel, you see. From here, it is forty-five miles across the water,” I said.
"Would you take several of us to see your land and its factories?"
"You will be my honored guests."
Several people in the caravan spoke Latin, so we could leave the main group in Armorica.
I was intrigued by those who accompanied the Lead Merchant. They didn't appear to be merchants. How they looked at things, took measurements, and made drawings led me to believe they were engineers.
They were here to reverse engineer our inventions or outright steal them. China never seems to change.
Knowing this, I sent word ahead that the ON-47 project, steam engine, and crossbow mass production were to be put on hold. Workers were to be paid, but the factories closed.
The one advance I was willing to share was penicillin production and its benefits. They would see our roads, semaphores, schools, and hospitals. That was okay. They didn’t need any great scientific advances to duplicate.
It was the gunpowder and chemistry operations that had me concerned.
For the fun of it, I decided to let them see a hydrogen balloon ascension. They could even go up if they wanted to.
With these precautions set in motion, we sailed to Saltash. They looked the port town over thoroughly and must have decided it wasn't anything special. Different from those in China but not exceptional. I kept thinking of China, as that is how I grew up. In Latin, it was Cathay, as the Romans called it.
Chen, the Lead Merchant, asked if they could proceed to the manufacturing areas. Once we got on the road to Owen-nap, they became aware things were different. The roads were wide, well-maintained, and smoother than any they had ever ridden on.
I didn't think knowing how to make cement and concrete was that big of a deal. The Romans had been doing it for a long time, and their concrete was better than anything we could make. Ours would last fifty years. I knew theirs would last thousands.
At the first stop, one of the 'merchants' looked closely at the carriage we were riding in. He started pointing and calling others over to look at the leaf springs.
Speaking broken Latin, he demanded that I tell him how they were made.
"That information is for sale or trade."
He didn't like that answer, but the Lead Merchant spoke a few words in Mandarin and shut him up.
In any trade negotiation, if you can get the other party off balance, you have an advantage. I knew very few words in Mandarin, enough to recognize the language but not enough to speak it.
So I said, "Thank you," to the Lead Merchant in Mandarin.
His eyes about popped out of his head. If he thought that was something, I had a bigger surprise in store for him when the trade talks got serious.
When we passed the first semaphore station, the Lead Merchant told me they were similar to those they had in China, and he didn't expect to see any other country so advanced to have them.
I said, "Our entire country, all towns, villages, and fortresses, are connected. It is a redundant system, so if a tower is lost, we can reroute messages."
He frowned at this. I'm not sure why. Maybe they weren't set up that way in China.
I had pre-arranged a company of our troops to meet us when we pulled into Owen-nap. They wore their best uniforms and had spears with a crossbow slung over their backs. I was impressed. I don’t know about the Chinese.
We passed the plaza with the public wells and baths, and they took notes. There was no doubt in my mind this was industrial espionage as much as trade.
One of the 'merchants' used the term Gweilo in my hearing.
I told the Lead Merchant, "Tell your man that here he is the foreign devil."
Again, a startled look and some words spit out to the other speaker.
Nothing like keeping the competition off balance. With that, I think I used all of my Chinese words.
At the entrance to the Keep, the group's eyes got wide. There were taller walls in cities such as Constantinople, but not as smooth construction. These weren't stone. They were reinforced concrete. It dawned on me they probably didn't know how to make vertical walls out of concrete. And I wasn’t about to tell them about using iron or steel rods to reinforce the concrete.
It seems we have a lot to trade.
I introduced them to Eleanor and my advisors.
The group of ten was provided rooms in the Keep. One to treat them as honored guests. Two to keep an eye on them.
That night, we held a banquet. They seemed to have a good time and asked many questions about Cornwall and our inventions.
Early the next day, I took them to the glass plant, where they saw glass being drawn. You could tell this was new to them. They had hundreds of questions. The key question was how did we get the metal drums so shiny and smooth.
I realized being able to measure to one-thousandths of an inch was one of our more important advances. This wasn't to be shared.
I told Thad, who accompanied us, to inform all the advisors and for them to pass it on to their people that this information wasn't to be shared.
They saw the drawn glass being cut for windows. Again, they wrote everything down to take back.
They saw molten glass poured into molds to make eyeglass blanks and lenses for microscopes and telescopes.
We didn't share how hard it was to make optical-grade glass. That wasn't even going to be on the negotiating table. It made me realize that while our end results were impressive it was the fundamentals that were truly important.
After the glasshouse, we went to the penicillin plant. It took a lot of explaining and a microscope for them to understand what we were doing. I invited them to take all the notes they wanted. They were also free to collect samples of the components used in production.
I wanted better health worldwide.
From the Lead Merchant's reaction, I realize I had just made him rich beyond his wildest dreams. I gave him a lecture on how he would make more money if penicillin were priced so everyone could afford it. A small price would result in millions of pills being sold.
I don’t know if he caught on or not.
One of the 'merchants', or spies, had an infection, with a redline already moving up his leg. Lady Agnes, who was present for this tour, gave him tablets. Two days later, when the infection was gone, they were believers. The man and his companions all thought he was going to die.
For the grand finale of the day, a balloon ascension. This time, there were no attempts to hide their surprise. I told them this was a normal test of our defense system. We did it each month. I asked them if they would like to go up with it in the morning. None of them seemed too thrilled by the idea. Their Leader pointed at four of them and told them they would go up in the sky tomorrow.