Cast in Time Book 6: Duke
Ed Nelson
Cast in Time
Book 6
Duke
By Ed Nelson
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my wife, Carol, for her support and help as my first reader and editor.
With special thanks to Ole Rotorhead for his technical insights on how things really work.
Then there are my beta readers: Ole Rotorhead, Lonelydad, Antti Huotari, Brent, Craig, and Don.
And never forget the professional editor, Janet
E. Rupert
Quotation
"According to 'M' theory, ours is not the only universe. Instead, 'M' theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing."
Stephen Hawking
Other books by Ed Nelson
Book 1: The Beginning
Book 2: Schooldays
Book 3: Hollywood
Book 4: In the Movies
Book 5: Star to Deckhand
Book 6: Surfing Dude
Book 7: Third Time is a Charm
Book 8: Oxford University
Book 9: Cold War
Book 10: Taking Care of Business
Book 11: Interesting Times
Book 12: Escape from Siberia
Book 13: Regicide
Book 14: What's Under, Down Under?
Book 15: The Lunar Kingdom
Book 16: First Steps
In the Richard Jackson World
Mary, Mary
Stand Alone Story
Ever and Always
The Cast in Time series
Book 1: Baron
Book 2: Baron of the Middle Counties
Book 3: Count
Book 4: Earl
Book 5: Earl of the Marches
Copyright © 2025
E. E. Nelson All rights reserved
Eastern Shore Publishing
1150 8th Ave SW Unit 2901
Largo, Fl 33770
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-953395-92-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 20239124
Contents
Cast in Time
Dedication
Quotation
Other books by Ed Nelson
Copyright © 2025
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Backmatter
Chapter 1
Now that Spain was under my control, I had to appoint leaders. I selected five of my military officers to be counts. They were men I trusted and who had performed well in the field.
These five could have been cut out with a cookie cutter. All were a little over six feet tall, blond-haired, and blue-eyed. Hitler would have loved them. Instead, they were mine.
I divided Spain into five counties. The new counts were to select barons from their forces who they felt could do the job. Each baron was to have a janissary group assigned to them to maintain law and order in their new baronies.
The newly formed janissary groups were divided up so that there were no relatives in the same group and with as few men from the same geographic area as possible. This was to make revolts less likely in each barony.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was creating dissent in Cornwall. There were barons and counts there who thought that their younger sons or brothers would be receiving honors. Some had gone so far as to take out loans in anticipation of reaping the riches of Spain.
Spain wasn’t that rich at the moment. They had been fighting internal battles and then had to stand against the Moorish invasion. The country was in disarray, to say the least. Now that the major powers had been defeated, the local warlords began to come to their senses and asked to become part of my Spain. Those who didn’t would become my subjects anyway, just a lot more painfully.
The major cities were connected by Roman roads and had aqueduct systems. Those were the only good things about their infrastructure. Every one of their cities needed a sewage system, and their farming methods hadn’t changed in thousands of years.
Then there was the Basque problem. They had broken our treaty and attacked a brigade of my forces. I couldn’t let their actions stand, so they paid a heavy price.
The battle that ended with suffocating their small army resulted in several of their villages being left without any male support. In this day and age, it would have been normal for me to sack the villages and burn their crops, then sell the citizens into slavery.
That wasn’t my style. I didn’t make war on women and children. My solution was to bring in several thousand of my janissaries to replace the Basque men killed in the battle. No orders were given to intermarry with the local population, but soldiers being soldiers, it happened anyway.
Other Basque villages that hadn’t been involved in the attack were quick to swear their allegiance to me. I allowed them to do so but didn’t trust them at all. I set up a routine overflight by a dirigible to remind them of what forces I wielded if they didn’t behave. They got the message, and things were peaceful in the Pyrenees.
I claimed ownership of the port of Santander. It became our main transit point for troops and supplies pouring into Spain. To prevent famine, I was delivering wheat and rice by the ton.
Our survey crews were out in force mapping the land. We started construction on sewage systems in the larger towns. One product the Spanish had that no one else could provide was cork. While not in large demand, it was enough to keep their economy moving.
Baroness Agnes’ Grey Ladies were out in force, bringing modern health care and vaccinations to every town and village. These efforts were the direct result of Lady Agnes’ personal drive, so much so that I discussed it with Eleanor and my civil advisory council. All agreed with my suggestion that her work should be recognized by promoting her to Countess Agnes.
Her comment on being made a countess was, “That’s nice; now I have things to do.”
That’s my girl.
We also gave her the authority to create baronesses as she saw fit. There would be a title and cash award but no land. They were more honorary titles as a reward for good work.
When Countess Agnes’ elevation was announced to the public, my approval ratings soared. I’m almost ashamed to admit it, but I instituted the ratings to keep a pulse of the public’s feelings for my administration.
The surveys revealed that there was a festering sore in Cornwall. As I had noted, there was discontent about my not appointing the offices in Spain to the relatives of Cornish counts and barons. This discontent was centered in Tintagel.
I tried to do things differently after my defeat of King Geraint. My thinking was that by showing mercy to the secondary followers of Geraint, they would become accepting of my rule. What I should have done was kill or enslave them and their families as was common practice at the time. In not doing so I had left a problem to grow over time.
Since I wouldn’t commit war against women and children, I had to find a different way of handling things. This type of problem would only grow exponentially as I conquered new areas.
In the meantime, I now had a group that wanted my downfall in my heartland. I had to take action but didn’t know what to do.
While I dithered, the decisions were taken out of my hands. The Tintagel Group, as I called them, sent a force of one thousand riflemen to Owen-nap to seize power. I received this news over the radio as I was in Spain at the time.
Our personal guards at Owen-nap forced Eleanor and the children to escape ahead of the invasion. My family objected and thought they should fight alongside our troops and staff. My standing orders were to bring them out.
What extra Eleanor and the kids could add to the defense was far offset by the chance that they could be taken hostage or killed by the Tintagel Group.
Eleanor and the children were put on horseback, and they rode to the dirigible factory where an airship was on standby for them. They were flown to Santander while I waited for them.
Back in Owen-nap my troops were following a plan put together several years ago and updated regularly ever since.
The keep’s staff and the local villagers were taken by train to Saltash. The areas directly in the path of the advancing Tintagel Group were cleared and the crops destroyed. Livestock was herded into the hills. I would reimburse all losses.
The troops moved into the keep. It had been improved over the years with a surrounding thick wall. The outer wall was three feet of poured concrete with rebar reinforcement. There was a twenty-foot gap between the inner and outer walls. The inner wall was the same as the outer.
The gap was filled with earth. There weren’t any weapons in this world yet that could penetrate these walls. Normally, the one weakness of a fort like this was the gate. For daily use these were wooden and could be breached. My troops closed the wooden gate and then lowered a slab of concrete immediately behind the wood.
The slab had been mounted above the rampart and was lowered into position with a rachet device. If the enemy showed up with cannon, there was a second slab that could be lowered on the other side of the gate entrance. If this were done, the gap would be filled with dirt that was kept under cover near the gate entrance. We didn’t want to use this unless absolutely needed. It would be difficult to dig it all out once the battle was over.
The single slab could be ratcheted back up with little effort. Well, little effort as compared to digging out all the earth between the two slabs.
When the gate was closed and the slab lowered, the keep was effectively isolated from the world. Nothing in, nothing out.
There was a well in the central courtyard. Unbeknownst to most people, I had subbasements dug. A second well was on the lower level. A steam engine could pump water from the second well to a tower built at the top of the keep.
There was a year’s supply of coal on hand. We could bring more in daily by balloon.
The water tower had a concrete wall surrounding it. An observation platform was on top of the tower. Unless you knew about it, our secondary water supply was well hidden. I thought “well hidden” was a good pun when I first used it, but I was told it was just a bad joke. Some people don’t get it.
The basement held tons of food. There were smoked meats, canned fruits and vegetables, and bins of grain. The only thing we didn’t have down there was livestock. We did have chickens and milk cows in the courtyard area. There were a lot of them so we would have milk, butter, and eggs for a long time.
As far as weapons went, we had cannons mounted on the walls. These were sheltered behind embrasures. There was also a roof of earth-covered logs to protect the cannons from plunging fire. That was moot at this time as no one besides me had that capability.
In our secure cannon-development facility, we had made our first howitzers. These were monsters that could fire a one-hundred-pound powder-filled ball over a mile. We made and tested these in secret.
When we conducted tests, cavalry troops cleared the firing range and the surrounding area. Once we had a howitzer that could perform as we wished, they were calibrated. After many test firings we had a table for each gun that would allow us to put a shell at any spot on the table.
Each gun was different enough that each needed its own firing table.
They were hauled into the keep on a dark stormy night when no one in their right mind would be out. We had patrols out to ensure that people in the wrong mind wouldn’t see our actions.
Once the howitzers were in place, two to each side of the keep, they were enclosed in locked sheds. These sheds would be torn down if the guns were needed.
Since we had firing tables for each gun, the next step was to place range markers out on the battleground. The enemy wouldn’t know it was the battleground until they got there.
The village next to the keep had expanded out a quarter mile from the walls. We didn’t intend to destroy the village unless the enemy got that close. To prevent the enemy from closing in, a trench had been dug all the way around the keep. This was not a hastily dug trench. It had been advertised as a future drainage trench.
It was ten feet deep, twenty feet wide, and concrete lined. During normal times the trench was covered with wooden planks stout enough that heavily laden wagons could cross it.
In preparation for the enemy’s arrival the planks were pulled back to our side of the ditch. This was easily done as each plank had an eyebolt embedded. A steam tractor with a special fitting could pull ten of them across at a time. In a matter of hours there was a trench that would stop the enemy in place. They would now be in our killing field.
To top it all off, now that we knew the Tintagel Group was on the move, I started a troop movement of my own. Using the train system, five thousand troops garrisoned as far as London and even near Scotland were being brought forward.
They would be a blocking force when the broken Tintagel Group tried to retreat.
For once one of my plans worked. The enemy advance stalled at the trench and the howitzers opened up their devastating fire. The one-thousand-man force, which thought it was invincible since they were armed with rifles, melted away.
Those few who survived tried to flee, but all were captured by the blocking force.
When I questioned one of the surviving leaders, he told me, “We would have won, but you don’t fight fair.”
After I stopped laughing, I didn’t even try to answer him. What do you say to someone that stupid?
They did confirm that it was triggered by resentment for my not giving their relations control of Spain.
Chapter 2
That caused me to have some thoughtful moments. I had considered giving them positions of power in Spain. Thank goodness I had decided to keep Spain separate. Sending this group of revolutionaries would eventually have given them enough power to be a true challenge to my rule.
Now I had the problem of what to do with the survivors and all the families involved. It was easy deciding what to do with the surviving soldiers who had attacked me. They were branded as slaves and sent to Nigeria to work the fields. Few of them would live for more than a year.
There were many young widows with children. These I sent to Spain with enough funding to live for a year. I had them spread out to the towns where my janissaries were garrisoned. Mix available young women with available young men and problem solved.
Some of the women would never forgive and forget and raise their children to hate me. So be it. They were scattered enough that they couldn’t group together.
That left the elders in Tintagel. They were the parents of the soldiers. These were the people who had sent their sons off to die. They would never forgive or forget. Neither would I. These were seized and sent to the northern states of Jutland and Sweden to work for the local counts. There were only several hundred of them, so they dispersed easily after I revoked their titles and took all their assets.
This left the ordinary citizens of Tintagel. I paid them a hefty relocation fee and moved them to near London. Those who had a trade could practice it in London. Others could work on the farms or start their own as there was still plenty of empty land nearby.
Tintagel was now an empty city. I had it leveled, and the very foundations hauled to the harbor and dumped into the sea. No ships could land there now. The ground of the town was plowed and by spring you could never know that anyone had ever lived there.
The only thing left standing was half of the local keep. This was to serve as a reminder of what would happen if I was displeased.
While all of this was going on life returned to normal in Owen-nap. One noticeable event was that Mike and Cathy drifted apart. He had taken over his father’s business and was trying to get it up to our standards and still be profitable. This required him to work many hours. I admired him for this and told my regulators to work with him as much as possible.
He still had to meet safety and quality standards, but they would give him some slack in other areas such as his environmental responsibilities.
Mike had the first safety recall of production in the history of Cornwall. He handled it well, being forthright about what was wrong as soon as the problem, a fire hazard, was found. He paid for ads on radio and in the newspapers. I made certain the editors of these outlets praised him for his actions.
This also triggered the first attempt at a class action lawsuit by a local law firm. I had always taken a dim view of these. Each individual in the class would receive a minor reward, such as a coupon giving them a percentage off on their next purchase of that product. The lawyers would receive a portion of each person’s reward in the form of cash.
The lawyers would get rich, and the citizens would get very little. I immediately posted a law that class actions were illegal. Usually, I allowed the system to develop the laws; in this case I made it directly.
The law firm that had tried to form a class action was struck from all government work. That included anything that had to be filed such as deeds and wills. They went out of business within the week.
The individual lawyers found work with other firms. This was fine with me as they would spread the word of what wasn’t acceptable.
Looking in the mirror while shaving one morning, I noticed that I had a few wrinkles forming around my eyes and that several gray hairs were showing. This pleased me to no end. One of the questions that I worried about was would I age or even live forever.
This seemed to answer that question. I was now thirty-eight years old and had been here for eighteen years. I felt like a thirty-eight-year-old rather than one hundred and something. Most days, that is. Some mornings after a night with the guys it was more like a two-hundred-year-old.
Eleanor couldn’t understand why I was so proud of those grey hairs. She had found a few of her own and had promptly plucked them. When I explained my fear, she understood what I was going through but still thought grey hairs were to be avoided. I argued that they made me look more distinguished. She didn’t buy that as I only had a few, and you had to look closely to see them.
I even bribed Doug to mention my grey hair and to ask me if I was going to die. It might have worked if he was able to keep a straight face. Eleanor got even as she bribed my barber to snip out the grey ones during my next haircut.
Such were the life and times of the Owen-nap family.
One of the drawbacks of our small industrial revolution was fly ash around most factories. This is the fine particulate that goes up the flue from a coal fire. It is what gives smoke its dark color. It covered the ground and piled up to make a dark landscape. The only living things that it helped were strawberries. I don’t know why, but they thrived in it.
It was also a health hazard as the particulate got into lungs and damaged especially the young or elderly.
I set a team to work to develop electro-static dust collectors (ESPs). These would be attached to flues in the large coal-fired plants. We didn’t have a solution yet for the home.
An electrostatic dust collector is a highly efficient device designed to remove fine particles, such as dust from flowing gas such as smoke from a coal fire. It leverages the power of induced electrostatic charge to effectively collect these dispersed particles.
There is a collection of electrodes or plates. They usually have a rectangular shape with dust collecting hoppers installed at their base. The main components are collecting electrodes/plates, discharge electrodes, inlet and outlet perforated screens, insulators for the discharge electrodes, rappers, and one or more electrical transformers.
As the coal smoke flows through the ESP, electrodes apply an electric charge to the particles. The charged particles are then attracted to the grounded collection plates due to the electrostatic force. This process effectively removes the fine particles from the gas stream. This is the same action as running a comb through your hair to create static electricity and then using it to pick up a small piece of paper.
This simple but elegant method would clean up our environment. I remember what the steel mills in Baltimore looked like with the red iron dust before the technology was introduced.
The dust collected was hauled to farms where it was used as fertilizer. If nothing else, we had the largest and nicest strawberries around. They became an export. They were put on through trains to London and then boated across the channel. They received a premium price. It reminded me of the silk trains in Canada. Not even the King of England’s train overrode them. They had the total right of way.
Now or sometime in the future they would be obsolete, but in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Canada’s Silk Road was a remarkable railway route that facilitated the transport of precious raw silk from the Orient to North America.
The Silk Trains were special cargo trains operated by Canadian railways, primarily the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Canadian National. Their mission was to transport valuable shipments of Oriental raw silk from the port of Vancouver to destinations in eastern Canada and the United States.
The silk-laden trains embarked on an epic journey. They traversed the Rockies, crossed the prairies, and ventured through the rugged Canadian Shield to reach Montreal and Buffalo, New York. The raw silk was destined for the National Silk Exchange in New York and the mills of the eastern seaboard.
These silk trains were given the utmost priority over all other rail traffic. Even express trains and royal trains took a back seat. The perishable silk was incredibly valuable. A single bale of raw silk could fetch more than $800 in the 1920s. Adjusting for inflation each trainload was worth upwards of $90 million. To add to the urgency, insurance costs were exorbitant, ticking away by the hour from the moment the cargo left the boat until it reached its eastern destination.
Freight agents would board ships in Victoria, feverishly completing paperwork so that unloading could commence the moment the vessels docked in Vancouver. Silk bales streamed off conveyor belts before passengers even stepped onto the gangplank. Stevedores heaved the hefty 90-kilogram bales onto the dock, where waiting customs agents promptly cleared them. These precious bales were wheeled onto specially built shorter rail cars to handle curves at higher speeds. These cars were lightweight and fast, designed exclusively for silk transport.
The clock was always ticking. Every minute counted. The silk business was so lucrative that nothing was left to chance. The race against time ensured that the silk trains hurtled across the country, ensuring the timely delivery of this luxurious material.
I knew we would never see the like of that in our time as air freight would be much faster. Still, the images it created in my mind were romantic. They also gave me some practical thoughts about rapid troop movements. Lighter shorter cars would allow us to move our troops faster. I tasked the military staff to look into the practicality of designing such cars and having them stationed at each major garrison.
Of course, the answer was that it could be done. It would only take a lot of money. Remembering the Tintagel Group, I approved the expenditure. My engineers built prototype cars and tested them by running them at full speed from Owen-nap to London.
The first lesson was to make certain that the tracks were clear. Five cows were killed on the test run. It’s a wonder the train wasn’t derailed. The second lesson was that we needed crossing guards at every road crossing the tracks. People were used to trains moving at forty miles an hour and were able to avoid them easily.
Now we were moving at seventy miles an hour and were a danger to anyone near the track. The consensus was that the new train cars would do the job. I gave the go ahead to build enough cars to move a force of five thousand men throughout Europe. This included using the passes through the Pyrenees. The Basques were doing everything they could to get back in my favor. I suspected they would remember this for several generations, then become a problem once more. That was someone else’s problem.
As usual I was spending money like there was no tomorrow, but at the same time Timbuktu was providing new wealth. Now that the colony was established, they were sending regular shipments of salt, copper, and gold. In turn their infrastructure was being upgraded and their standard of living getting better all the time. All they needed was air conditioning to become a paradise.
From being considered a hardship station they were now a sought after posting.
There was a team working on air conditioning, but they had made little progress. We needed it, not so much for housing but for refrigerated ships, so we could ship perishable goods.
Chapter 3
This was a turbulent time for me. I would no sooner get one issue put to bed than another would pop up. At least they were occurring linearly rather than simultaneously. This time it was a group of my newly formed janissaries who tried to break away.
Five thousand of them tried to take Toledo. They were armed with the new rifles so were a force to be reckoned with. This time I was harsh in taking them down. These were single young men, so I didn’t have to worry about innocent families being involved.
I had them bombed from the air and when there were only a few left I had them executed by firing squad. This certainly sent a message to the remaining fifteen thousand janissaries.
Another surprise that wasn’t a problem was that Eleanor noticed that Cathy and Hagar were keeping company again. We decided to keep our mouths shut and let nature take its course. Hagar is a good young man and a noble to boot. Everything we would want in a son-in-law. Eleanor and I also realized that we had no vote in the matter.
Life kept coming at me from many different directions. Some of the issues were of my making. One of them was an expedition to the Iroquois. I had been putting it off for several years. Now that I had Takala, or Fox, to act as an intermediary, there were now no further excuses.
At one time I would have led the expedition. Nowadays, I had too much on my plate keeping my dukedom together. Also, I wasn’t as young as I used to be. Not that I was old but the idea of roughing it was no longer an adventure I wanted.
Fox had educated me on how the Iroquois lived. The men were hunters, and the women were gatherers and farmers. Their farming was rudimentary to say the least. They would plant the same crops on the same soil until all the nutrients were leached out. They would then move on.
This slash and burn farming is what the early American colonist used. They would grow tobacco and cotton in the same manner. This was why they had to keep expanding their lands, taking it from the Indians.
If we could teach modern farming to the Iroquois, then they wouldn’t have to keep moving. Once they were able to settle in an area, a European type of society would emerge.
The only obstacles were that the men considered themselves hunters, not livestock keepers or shudder, doing women’s work such as farming.
The only way to overcome these cultural differences was to demonstrate our way was better. The men would be stubborn about change. Their women were our hope. A major problem with their lifestyle was they would farm an area until it couldn’t produce anymore. Those years would result in starvation for the tribe. The survivors would move on.
To demonstrate our methods were better it would take a multi-year expedition. There would be farmers with all their tools, along with livestock and herders, and Grey Ladies with their MASH units to provide health care.
There would also be one hundred guards with rifles and cannons.
The expedition had the equipment to keep us in radio contact.
Fox, while not a chief of his tribe, was of great assistance to us. He had seen our way of life and thought his people should adopt it. He had independently concluded that if the tribe didn’t adapt when our settlers arrived, they would squeeze out his people.
He was instrumental in selecting where we would make contact and set up our demonstration farm.
The land he chose was controlled exclusively by his tribe of the Iroquois. We didn’t want to have to negotiate with several tribes for the same piece of land.
For first contact we sent one ship. Fox, along with traders, Grey Ladies, surveyors, construction workers, and guards were on this vessel. Their objective was to rent five hundred acres of land for our headquarters and demonstration farm.
Fox and a handful of guards landed and met with the chief of his tribe. Fox had left the tribe to explore and had left with a good reputation. He was remembered and welcomed back.
He had trade items with him in the form of metal tools, such as axes, knives, pots, and pans. These were gifted to the tribe to open a conversation.
Fox explained that we wanted to rent land to set up housing and a farm. This took many hours to explain as the concept of rent was foreign to the Iroquois. When they finally got it, they thought we were crazy and that they would be glad to take advantage of us.
With their permission our surveyors laid out a five-hundred-acre plot. The eastern boundary was the ocean. It included a natural harbor. The northwest and southwest boundary points had stone plinths erected to delineate the borders. Several smaller piles of stone were set along the border but were too far enough apart to serve as a fence.
Once the border was outlined, Fox asked the chiefs what they wanted as rent for this land. The rent would be paid annually.
This led to a lot of good-natured negotiations as the gifts we had provided proved popular with the men and women of the tribe. Especially the women.
It was a good trade. They thought they had taken us to the cleaner, and we were amazed at how little we had to pay. I had been following these events by radio. While my people were living rough in the woods, I could go to a tavern with my friends each evening. This was the way to live. Eleanor would even join us along with my friends’ wives so there was no dissention at home. Unless I drank too much.
When the trade was concluded, I ordered my traders to pay double what was agreed upon. I had them explain that we knew the land was worth much more than they had settled on. Also, we would renegotiate the rent every year as the land would become more valuable.
Now the Iroquois knew we were crazy, but they took the extra with no complaints.
The first ship, a metal-hulled oil-fired screw-propelled one, was now unloaded. First off were workers with chain saws to clear the area of large trees for the small village the surveyors had laid out. Once the trees were delimbed a powered sawmill was set up to cut boards for our houses.
Two small bulldozers were used to clear out the underbrush and small saplings in the village area. Roads had been laid out and trenching was started to accept a gravel base.
Water and sewage lines were put into place along the roads. While all this was occurring, Indian men and women wandered the area to watch the strange goings on. The Grey Ladies had set up a MASH tent and were treating the inevitable cuts and bruises that occur in a working environment. When they saw an Indian with a problem, they examined him or her and did what they could to help. This help was a lot compared to the Iroquois nature-based cures.
Their medicine men and women weren’t witch doctors as portrayed in fiction. They were well founded in human anatomy and natural cures. One medicine man in particular became a student and soon spread the word about bacteria and antibiotics.
We bribed every Iroquois we could to be vaccinated. We had been careful to make certain we didn’t bring smallpox with us.
When we told our friendly medicine man about smallpox, he let us know that word had spread that Indians far to the west were dying from a disease that sounded like smallpox.
Every brave who was vaccinated received a choice of a metal hand axe or knife. Women were given a large pot or a frying pan. This program was successful enough that the tribe would survive if they were infected.
The wife of one of the Iroquois chiefs asked us why we were spending so much effort as we would have to move when the land failed. She had a hard time believing that it wouldn’t fail if taken care of.
With Fox acting as a translator, one of our farmers explained that plants needed food just like us. When the food was gone the fields would fail. She was nodding her head in understanding. It was a new concept to her but one that made sense.
“So how do you feed the fields this plant food you call nitrogen?”
“Some plants produce nitrogen, so we sow the fields with them every four years.”
This led to an explanation of crop rotation. Again, this woman was no dummy. She quickly put it together that with crop rotation, they wouldn’t have to move and could build better shelters.
We were surprised when her next question was how we stored our crops and the meat the hunters brought home. It was reported to me that she almost had a heart attack when she learned about our animal husbandry practices.
Her next step was to bring three other women to our next meeting so they could see and hear what we were doing. It turned out the other women were the wives of the sub-chieftains of the tribe.
By this time, we had leveled and prepared two hundred acres for cultivation. Our little village of thirty houses and two barracks along with barns were under construction. One home was almost complete. Indoor plumbing was like a miracle to them.
The electrical wiring was in, and we had a turbine-driven generator providing electricity. I learned from my reports that one woman spent almost an hour turning the light on and off.
Once the women had seen everything we were putting in place, they brought their husbands to see what we had. Fox was getting a workout translating. The head chief’s wife who was the first to see our settlement was spending every waking hour with him trying to learn English. She also had three young ladies following her who were charged with learning our language. It was obvious who the bosses were in this tribe.
The men acted aloof but were interested in our weapons. Several of our men went hunting with them and brought back four deer. This was a record harvest and caused a huge celebration that night.
The hokwe wanted rifles of their own, but I wasn’t ready to take that step yet. I questioned the leader of the expedition where he had picked up the term “hokwe”. He indicated that the men called themselves that.
Previous reports had used the term “braves”. I’m afraid I introduced that into the Cornish language. I immediately ordered that only hokwe would be used in the future. None of this brave, squaw, papoose nonsense. At the Point they had been very open about the army’s history with the Native Americans. It was nothing to brag about.
I had an offer made to the Iroquois leadership to take a delegation to Cornwall to see our civilization. It depended on having more than one translator.
It turned out that we already had more than one. Our young soldiers, being young soldiers, had met some of the local ladies. Pillow talk is a wonderful way to learn a language. We had five soldiers who were able to communicate with the Iroquois. When this came to light, they were immediately promoted a rank. Soon we had other troops learning the language on their pillows.
It didn’t take long before one of the original soldiers approached his commander and asked permission to marry his girlfriend. It seemed their pillow talk had been productive in more than one way.
That was an easy decision to make. The soldier and his new wife were given one of the houses we had built. We hadn’t planned for this but were going to take advantage of the situation. Another twenty houses were started.
The new bride was showing her house off to her friends, and you could see where that would go. It was a good thing that the other ranks only included single men.
Chapter 4
When the Iroquois contingent finally did go to Cornwall, it was an interesting experience for them. Better to put it as a life-altering experience.
From the trip on an engine-powered ship to the busy port of Saltash they were pointing out new wonders to each other. The train trip to Owen-nap was an adventure in its own right. I had met them at the docks so got to see their first reaction to our civilization.
I thought they would think the train was a demon, but they took it in stride. The men wanted to know how it worked; the women to explore the wonders of my private car.
In Owen-nap they were given rooms in the keep. The keep was transitioning from a fortress to a chateau. It was still called the keep, but with the verandas with large glass doors opening to a large ballroom it was less defensible than it used to be.
I wasn’t concerned because the outer defenses were strong enough to hold against any known army in this world.
We arranged tours of our factories. To no ones’ surprise the ladies of the tribe wanted to see the marketplace that they had noticed on the trip to the keep.
Our marketplace was still the same as it had always been. A large open field where merchants could set up stalls. Some of the stalls were permanent arrangements. Most were set up at need. Some people even threw a blanket on the ground and were in business.
Surrounding the marketplace there used to be homes. All these homes had now been converted into stores with the owners living on the second floor.
I noticed that one side street was being converted from homes to stores. We had a city in the making.
The Iroquois ladies didn’t have any of our gold or silver coins for trade, but they did have wampumpeag belts. These were shell beads sewn onto colorful belts to tell a story. They were also used in trade.
I knew the history of the belts and how modern technology was able to duplicate them in short order and devalued their worth. We went to several different stalls and established an exchange rate for the belts. I then bought all the belts at a ten percent premium. The Iroquois women now were armed for shopping.
Since it was only women who carried the wampumpeag, they had all the money. I didn’t understand the language, but it didn’t take much to understand the following conversation.
“Ah honey, this knife is a good deal; please pay for it.”
“You have a knife that is perfectly usable.”
“But look at the handle on this one and how sharp the blade is. I will be the envy of the tribe.”
“How much are they asking for it?”
“It is only ten silvers.”
“That is robbery. I will talk to the man.”
Through the translator she would then negotiate the price down to six silver, a fair trade.
The merchants quickly learned that these weren’t hicks from the sticks.
The conversation now continued.
“Honey, you saved me four silver on the purchase price; I would like to buy something else.”
“No, I saved the money, so it is mine to spend as I want.”
The ladies would buy useful things that they could take home.
That was until they came upon a clothing store. The men were told to go find something useful to do while they did some serious shopping.
The ladies were all dressed in their best buckskins which were covered in fancy beadwork. It didn’t take long for them to establish a trade rate of one of their dresses to two of ours. Not fancy ballgowns but good daily wear.
Eleanor and Cathy had accompanied us and were helping the Indians in their selection. It is fair to say that the Cornish merchants got scalped that day.
One of the biggest obstacles we faced in changing the Iroquois from hunter/gather and slash and burn farming was the men’s resistance to change. They wouldn’t want to give up the manly pursuit of hunting meat for the table.
First, we took the men on a wild boar hunt. It didn’t take them long to figure out this was dangerous business even using our weapons. I cheated a little in that my hunters used OK-47s instead of fifty caliber rifles which would take a hog down with one shot.
There was a man at the back of the crowd armed with the heavier weapon for safety, but he didn’t have to shoot.
Once the Iroquois saw that we were manly in our hunting, they were more open to what we had to tell them.
Next, we took them on a tour of our cattle and sheep ranches. The smarter among them began to see the light. They could still have the thrill of the hunt and with the herds have a constant source of meat.
The pig pens were a source of amazement when it was explained that the wild boar we had just hunted were escapees from the pens.
They drew the wrong conclusion, at least in my mind. They would raise the pigs but would release some so they would always have something to hunt.
One of the men commented that the women would have a lot of work doing the farming and taking care of the herds. He was told that the men would be taking care of the herds and helping with the farming. That didn’t go down well.
“You men have turned into women!”
We had prepared for that line of thinking.
“Who is your best fighter here?”
“I’m the best.”
“If this farmer can beat you in a fight, will you admit they haven’t turned into women?”
“Yes, but I will not hurt him too badly.”
What the poor Iroquois man didn’t know was that the deck was stacked. Our farmer that he had to fight was one of our best hand-to-hand and bladed weapon fighters.
“So no one will get hurt, we will use training weapons.”
These were wooden knives and hand axes which had wet paint on them so a strike could be recorded. Luckily no one asked why training weapons were immediately to hand, though one senior chief winked at me.
The fight was to be two out of three falls. A fall was when a man was down and had to tap out. A lethal hit as registered by the paint was counted as a fall.
As I hoped and expected our commando took out the Indian easily. He threw him around like a child.
I asked, “Now do you think our men are like women?”
“No, could he teach me some of his moves?”
“I think that can be arranged. Now do you think it would be beneath you to herd these animals to feed your tribe?”
“It looks like it would take a real man to do this work, so I will learn.”
One step forward.
The following stop was a farm where the fields were being plowed with our behemoth steam tractors. The men had seen them in action in the land we rented from them back in North America but hadn’t gotten up close.
The closer we got the bigger they looked and the noisier they were. The Indian men walked slower and slower. They were truly intimidated by them. I signaled for the tractor to stop.
The driver climbed down. This was also preplanned as the driver was a fourteen-year-old boy. He helped several of the men and their interpreter aboard and taught them how to operate the machine.
He went a little further in his explanations than I had planned for. He got talking about the steam tractor races. The Iroquois wanted to know more about them, so we had to show them the racetrack and tractors used.
These tractors weren’t the large ones used for plowing; these were smaller custom-built for speed.
I had to institute rules almost as strict as NASCAR as the young idiots racing were tying down the safety valves. We didn’t discover that until one blew up on the track. It killed the driver and injured twenty fans.
You’d think this would have done the sport in, but they kept at it and people still showed up for the races. I now had each tractor inspected before every race. The Grey Ladies now kept a permanent first aid station on site. The stands had wire fencing to catch any debris.
Drivers had to prove they were sober before they could mount their tractor for the race. I made betting on the races illegal. Not that people wouldn’t make private bets. I didn’t want to see any races fixed.
These races were usually twenty miles long or eighty laps around the quarter mile track. Once lights were installed night racing became popular. Food vendors moved in along with each driver selling their paraphernalia. The races became a popular date destination for the younger set.
The track owner knew a good thing when he saw it and was franchising tracks in all my territories.
It took the janissaries in Spain to come up with demolition derbies. I shut that down as fast as I could. Imagine two boilers blowing at once.
The Indians loved to watch the races. I think I know what the hokwe will be doing to show their prowess in the future.
The day after the evening race we continued our demonstration on property ownership. I explained that as the baron, all land had belonged to me. In their case the land belonged to the tribe.
One of the older men told me that no one owned the land, that it belonged to nature.
I countered with, there was Iroquois land and other tribes’ land. He who controlled the land owned it. If a more powerful group attacked and won, they now owned it.
He had to agree with that, as that was common practice.
I then asked him to think of the land owned by the Iroquois for this conversation. If they had our weapons, no one could take the land from them. They perked up at that and paid attention.
We went out to a local farm and wrote down the numbers on the corner boundaries. After that we went to the land registry office and presented the numbers to a clerk. She brought out the property book for that tract of land and was able to show I had sold the land to the farmer they had met.
He had made a twenty percent down payment with the rest being a loan from the bank.
We then went to the bank where Farmer Wheatland told the bank that we could look at his loan records. He had been making payments for ten years and now owned the land free and clear.
He was taking out another loan to buy more property, so the bank had his land appraised. I had sold unimproved land. His land value had gone up tremendously, so they were willing to loan him the rest of the money he needed to buy from me the unimproved land next to his farm.
One of the older Indians asked, “Why do you sell the land when you could improve it and make more money?”
“I’m not a farmer and besides I do continue to make money off this land.”
“How is that?”
“Property tax. I need money to improve our roads, schools, hospitals, and many other things. It is a low percentage, but when you put all the property together, I have a large income.”
I continued, “The land is unimproved right now, so the property tax is low. As the farmer improves the land his taxes will go up.”
They turned to Farmer Wheatland, “Are these taxes too high?”
“All taxes are too high, but these are fair enough. The Duke Owen-nap, who is our baron, is a good man and uses the money to build us a better county, so it works.”
Unsaid was if I didn’t use the money well, I might have a problem.
Chapter 5
The leader of the Iroquois mission turned to me and asked, “And you will help us set up this system so we can become wealthy like you?”
“Yes, we will.”
“What will it cost us?”
“You adopt our laws, which you will have to if you want to implement this system, and pledge your faith to me. You will still pick your own leaders, but your supreme leader will owe me fealty.”
This led into a discussion on what fealty meant to each of us. We ended up agreeing it meant they would be part of our nation and that we would defend them.
You could see the greed in his eyes as he put things together.
“If someone attacks us, you will help defend us?”
“Yes.”
“What if we attack someone else, do we get to keep their lands?”
“No, only I can give the orders to attack someone else. Also, I can reach separate treaties with other tribes. They then would have the same status as the Iroquois in my nation.”
Their leader didn’t particularly care for this so I turned the conversation back to how wealthy the Iroquois would become. I also pointed out that if other tribes approached the Iroquois to join them, that would be allowed.
I knew this could lead to problems such as tribes being blackmailed into joining the Iroquois, but if we could gain additional land and people without war, I was okay with it.
One of the future problems that had to be solved was the use of currency. I had the Iroquois leaders taken to the weavers. The looms had been set up to weave wampum. All that had to be added to be a finished belt was the bead work. That was handled by another automatic machine.
It didn’t take the Indians long to figure out that their currency would soon be debased. I informed them that I would make it illegal for anyone but natives to manufacture wampum, but they saw the handwriting on the wall.
That was when they were given a complete introduction to our coinage. The value of the coins was based on the rarity of the metal used. Even if someone tried to counterfeit it, they would be hard pressed to make a profit.
The coin stamping operation along with edge milling convinced them that it was the best way to go. They gladly accepted my offer to exchange their wampum for our coins.
The Iroquois proved to be furious bargainers when we went to set the exchange rate. I let them beat me down, so they ended up smiling about their victory over the white man.
What they didn’t understand was that all their wampum in the entire Iroquois nation was only a fraction of our budget. Normally, it wouldn’t even be worth a line item in the annual report.
Another factor was that I was personally buying the wampum and that I could sell it as I pleased. Since it would no longer be a currency, only collectors of curiosities would be interested in it. There were many such collectors, and I managed to almost double my money.
As stated, it wasn’t much money, but I wanted to uphold the honor of the white man. Silly games we play.
An Iroquois lady by the name of She Who Dances reached an agreement with a Saltash dye merchant. They both dealt in dyes, and each had access to some the other didn’t. They formed a partnership which was a first.
I was thrilled because this not only opened trade but did it in our coinage. I was so thrilled that when the deal was presented to me for ratification, I added a clause that they would have no tariffs for five years.
This proved once more how good of negotiators the Iroquois were as she promptly went for ten years. After a spirited conversation we settled on seven years.
While the Indians were still in Owen-nap a trade ship arrived from China. It had a cargo of silk and spices, what one would expect. Of course, the Iroquois were all over it. While they didn’t have enough money to buy most of the cargo, they did have enough to purchase samples to take home.
We had made our radio facilities available to the Iroquois, so they were in constant contact with home. We found out that the Iroquois leaders had asked for a surveying team to mark the borders of their current territory. With those markers in place, they asked for a mutual defense treaty. If we were attacked, they would come to our aid and we to theirs.
On the surface this looked one sided, but it bound them to us in the long term.
Roads were being built. In the main Indian village, a school was established along with a hospital. Where possible we used the Iroquois to staff the facilities.
I funded the Bank of the Indian Nations. The name alone should have told the Iroquois of my plans.
Trade was heavy between our two nations. A new crop, at least to us, was introduced, corn. It was a small, stunted variety. Back in Cornwall we had an agricultural college whose top priority became creating a larger variety.
Fortunately for us, I had been forced to do several papers on plant genetics. I had thought this a useless exercise at the time but was now thrilled to have copies of the textbooks in my mind.
Woodland buffalo were still extant in that time in the Americas, so we captured several to start a herd in Cornwall. They would be a new source of meat and a trade item with the mainland.
Our tribe of the Iroquois weren’t happy when the leaders of the neighboring Mohawk tribe approached us and asked to check out the wonderous benefits they had heard about.
I was interested in this event, but my attention was torn in a different direction. I received a radio communication from my banking partners in Constantinople. The city was in chaos as various groups struggled for power. The walls weren’t being manned, and they were afraid the city would fall to the Arabs.
I had ships just outside Constantinople’s harbor with five hundred troops aboard. My staff had planned several scenarios. So, the order went out to execute plan Beta 2. This was a simple evolution. The ships sailed into the harbor and took control of the docks.
There was little to no resistance to our landings as the city troops were trying to man the walls, while the troops of the factions vying for power were fighting each other.
The fighting wasn’t constant; it was more like a faction would try to expand into a new area. The faction holding the area would resist and fight them back. In doing so the defending troops were weakened enough that surrounding factions would descend upon them and take the area. Captured soldiers had the choice of joining the winning faction or death.
That was an easy choice to make so a few factions would grow in power. At the current rate we estimated that one faction or the other would control the city in a month. That is if the walls could hold back the Arabs.
Consulting with our banking partners, we decided we were to fight back the Arabs first. Besides five hundred fighting men, we had brought along fifty cannon.
Under a flag of truce, we contacted the walls’ defenders. When they realized we were there to drive the Arabs away we were welcomed with open arms. The troops manning the walls were exhausted from day after day of fighting the Arab’s sallies.
I had always pictured the walls of Constantinople being one huge wall surrounding the city. In fact, it was a series of walls built over time. My generals chose the Theodosian wall system to fight from. It was the largest of the walls. It stretched three and a half miles north to south.
It joined the seawall by the connecting Blachernae wall. The entire wall system had been built and rebuilt as the city expanded and earthquakes destroyed parts of it. I found it interesting that after one earthquake the walls were rebuilt by two rival racing teams. They contributed a total of sixteen thousand men. Salary caps or roster limits weren’t in place at that time.
Our cannons drove the invading Arabs two miles back from walls. In the meantime, six dirigibles were on route to eliminate the threat.
When asked what faction the bankers preferred to end up in power, they did the radio equivalent of shrugging their shoulders. One was just as bad as the others.
That solidified a thought that had been running through my mind. The troops on the wall let the factions continue to fight it out. When our dirigibles arrived and rained hell from the skies on the Arabs, we had control of the walls and outside of the city.
I rode along in the lead dirigible, the Graf Zeppelin. The down timers were curious about the name. As they didn’t know my whole story, I made up one about my grandmother telling stories of a huge flying machine she called a zeppelin. That proved to be a mistake as they now wanted to know about my grandmother. I pulled rank and changed the subject.
That didn’t help much as that started a lot of speculation about her and with probably a tragic end. I called Dad’s mom Grandmother and Mom’s mom Grandma.
Grandmother Flecther didn’t die a tragic death unless you call collapsing in the middle of a barn dance at age ninety-seven tragic. She had bet she could dance for two hours straight. She won the bet but kept on going. She made three hours and fifteen minutes, a local record.
In the next year there were three more deaths at the barn dance as the old ladies tried to break her record. It became a tradition that the first song played was “Dance Macabre”. Weird as the song was it became weirder played on fiddles, banjoes, and washboards.
Ah, the good ole days.
I sat during the flight to Constantinople with a smile on my face. The crew attributed it to the upcoming carnage. If they only knew.
The flight was uneventful. The skies were a brilliant blue with a few puffy white clouds. A sharp contrast with the grim mission we were on.
We were in constant radio contact with our forces in the city. They gave us the locations of the largest Arab forces.
We stationed an airship over each large Arab encampment. The Arabs had felt the wrath of our dirigibles and napalm before so as soon as a balloon stopped over their camps, they evacuated as quickly as possible.
We gave them enough time so that their camp followers had time to leave. They still left mountains of supplies behind. When the camps were clear we opened the nearest gates and brought the supplies into the city.
The different factions fighting for the city thought they would take the food and stores from us. Rifles soon changed their minds. They went back to fighting among themselves.
After landing I met with my banking partners. We updated each other on what we knew of the situation. Not counting us, there were now four power groups left in the city. The Reds, the Greens, the wall guards, and the remains of the rest of the factions that had lost their fighting forces.
The wall guards had proven loyal to Constantinople and were willing to work with us. We used them as the core of a new force to run the city.
The odds and ends of factions were discussed individually. Some of their leaders were despicable and had to go. That didn’t mean we would absorb each of their men after investigating them to see if they were salvageable.
That left the Reds and the Greens. They were still strong enough to be a problem. We solved the problem by knocking on the door of their fortresses with cannon. It is amazing how far a door can fly if enough force is applied. A battery of cannon can apply a lot of force.
Chapter 6
Since the Byzantines had only been fighting each other for power, I felt no need to teach them any lessons like I had in Tintagel. That and to tear down and plow under the city of Constantinople would be a decades long undertaking.
I just wanted the citizens and all their factions to realize there was a new sheriff in town. My first step was to disband the factions’ armies. I let each house or faction keep ten men under arms as guards.
All others were enrolled in the city guard which I now controlled. Once in my guard they underwent physical evaluations and those who passed started our form of basic training. Forty percent of those examined were in no shape to be in the city guard. The reason ranged from being drunks to having missing limbs.
There were enough cases of syphilis and gonorrhea to justify a major campaign to wipe it out. As usual, Countess Agnes’ people were forefront. Our pharmaceutical factory had to go into overtime to produce the needed vaccines and antibiotics.
Installing a modern sewage system was going to be a major undertaking. The city was not a planned city with straight roads. Instead, it was a hodge podge of buildings. In the wealthier areas the homes were far enough apart that we could dig the needed trenches for the pipelines.
The poor parts of Constantinople were a hopeless mess. We would have to tear down buildings by the block. After several contentious meetings it was decided that we would start with a vacant area that used to be a racecourse.
The area would be leveled and new apartments built. The apartments would have all the modern conveniences, and the roads would be in a square with parks included. The parks would include shopping malls and community centers. Each block would house about two thousand people.
It would take about fifty of these blocks to rehouse the people who were displaced when we tore down their districts and houses to install sewers and water mains.
While the city was supplied with fresh water by aqueducts, these were always cut by besieging armies. In addition, the city sat on top of enormous underground cisterns, at least one of which was called the Basilica Cistern because its roof was supported by dozens of huge columns looted from old Roman temples.
There were even some colossal stone heads in the water acting as plinths for some of the columns. Since even our weapons couldn’t guarantee there would never be another siege, we kept the cistern system but had to design ways to refresh their contents with fresh water from the aqueducts and then deliver the stored water to water mains for gravity-powered delivery.
What we came up with was to use the fall of the water from the aqueducts to the cisterns to power water wheels which carried most of the load of pumping the water back up, though the inevitable inefficiency of the system meant we had to install supplemental wind and steam driven pumps, though use of windmill pumps really did minimize the fuel demands of the steam pumps.
Water tanks would go on top of the new blocks of apartments we were building in order to supply constant pressure at the point of use.
When the first new block was completed, we would hold a drawing for the first pick of the new buildings. The only ones eligible were the people in the block about to be destroyed.
The new block was open for tours as we were selling the idea that people would have to give up their old homes. There would be no charge for the new homes. No apparent charge, that is; the building costs were included in the tax rate.
Even with the building costs, the new tax schedule was lower than the old rates, which were making the city council’s leaders rich.
Nothing was ever easy as some people had to be hauled out of their old homes kicking screaming. Once in their new homes, it took about a week for them to praise the new area and their housing.
None of the apartments were over three stories, and they had balconies plus an open community area in front and behind each unit. This allowed people to gather and a sense of community to be rebuilt.
It would take at least three years to rebuild the city with modern construction. It would have taken even longer if the enormous cisterns weren’t under the city.
These cisterns were where we placed underground piping for water, sewage, and electrical lines. Without them it would have taken ten to fifteen years.
I put a moratorium on racing for two years. All the manpower would be required in rebuilding the city. I had hopes that the long downtime would make people lose interest in racing and cause the factions to fall apart naturally.
With peace prevailing throughout the city, commerce resumed. Constantinople was a major trade hub for the Mediterranean and Black seas by controlling the Bosphorus Straits.
With the fighting that had been going on, piracy had taken its toll and shut down a good portion of the trade routes. With my controlling Constantinople I was able to send my navy on antipiracy patrols.