Craftsmen

Agnes entered the first-floor hall. There was no carpet on the floor, no frescoes on the dome, and no curtains on the walls. The place looked terribly shabby; even the windowpanes had been pried out and replaced with wooden boards.

"Why didn't you choose a better residence?"

Vitus said, "Centurione abandoned the city and fled, and his soldiers took the opportunity to loot the town. The old ducal palace was burned down, so I could only choose a residence that was relatively intact. The interior is spartan, but the main structure is sound. We'll make do."

Following Vitus's lead, Agnes toured the entire residence. She thought it was worse than an ordinary merchant's home in Florence.

"It's far too bare. I'll write to my father and ask him to send all kinds of furniture. I'll also hire a painter to cover the hall's dome with frescoes."

Vitus hurriedly added, "Don't hire a top painter like Donatello. Just find someone decent."

The next morning, Vitus summoned the Florentine blacksmiths and the local blacksmiths. After inspecting their work, he selected the four most skilled and hired them as full-time smiths at a high salary.

"Your task for now is to forge the parts shown in these drawings, then assemble them with the iron barrels to make a new kind of firearm."

Vitus explained the trigger's purpose and its precise construction. When he had finished, a blacksmith named Lambert replied, "This isn't complicated. I once helped my master repair the clock tower in the city square. At its heart was a complex mechanical escapement, especially the metal gears of different sizes. Those were far more difficult to make than the trigger you've described."

As he reminisced about his glorious past, Lambert grew more and more animated. He claimed that a minor task like making triggers was beneath him; he ought to take on a more challenging project—building a mechanical clock tower, so his name would live on through that landmark for generations.

"How could I afford to fund a nonmilitary project like that?" Vitus made up an excuse to fob him off. "For now, make the triggers. If the opportunity comes, I'll recommend you for a mechanical clock tower project in Constantinople. It's the city the whole world yearns for. If you took part in such a project, the fame you'd earn would be beyond imagining!"

He assigned tasks to the four men. Lambert and another blacksmith would make the components, while the other two would make the barrels. To speed things up, they could recruit boys as apprentices. The ducal household would cover all their expenses, and the blacksmiths would receive an additional "training subsidy."

Vitus asked, "Any other questions?"

The four blacksmiths glanced at one another, then fell silent. Vitus told them to get started as soon as possible, then returned to the ducal palace for lunch.

"You're back?"

Agnes was sitting at the table, lost in thought. As soon as she saw her husband return, she hurriedly told the maids to serve the food. "Thank goodness I brought two cooks this time. Otherwise, we wouldn't even have had a decent meal. Were you talking to those blacksmiths the whole time? Was that really necessary?"

Agnes came from a merchant family and had an almost instinctive sense for business. She believed Achaea lacked iron ore and had to import iron from elsewhere, which meant the metalworking industry's profits were bound to remain low. She thought it better to invest in something else.

She pondered the matter over the table for a long time, then decided to put up part of her dowry and start a silk workshop of her own.

The silk industry was highly profitable. Vitus had considered it too, but there were risks he couldn't ignore.

"Silk production takes a great deal of time and money. Once you plant mulberry trees, you have to wait three years for them to grow before you can harvest their leaves. You'll also need to get someone to buy silkworm eggs, build silkworm sheds with proper ventilation and temperature control, and hire experienced weavers.

"Besides, raising silkworms is far more troublesome than you think. The slightest mistake can make them fall ill, sharply reducing both the quantity and quality of the raw silk."

He argued until he was hoarse, but Agnes only grew more determined. With no other choice, Vitus agreed to give her a large plot of land, just to keep her occupied and stop her from clinging to him all day.

Two days later, Vitus and Agnes left Andravida with their escort, intending to find a suitable plot of land while also surveying the agricultural output of their territory.

It was now late February. The chill was gradually fading as they traveled south along the coast, with the deep blue Ionian Sea on their right. Near the shore, the water was a clear turquoise, and smooth, rounded pebbles could be seen beneath the surface. Farther out, the sea deepened to pure indigo, and beyond that it turned azure, almost blending into the sky.

The land on the left gradually rose into rolling hills. Some slopes had poor soil, with broad patches of gray rock exposed. Scattered flocks of sheep wandered across them. The sheep were small and scruffy, yet astonishingly agile and sure-footed as they leisurely grazed on wild grasses.

Other slopes had fewer rocks and were planted with rows of olive trees. The Peloponnese had hot, dry summers and mild, rainy winters, an ideal climate for growing olives. The olive trees stood far apart, with other crops, apparently legumes and vegetables, planted beneath their shade.

On one hillside, several farmers were picking olives. They used special wooden rakes to comb the fruit into wooden frames. Vitus went over to take a look and saw that the olives were dark purple, some even black.

He asked a male farmer, "Why wait until now? Shouldn't you have picked them earlier?"

The farmer answered with a bitter look, "There was a war last year, so we fled to relatives in the inland mountains to take shelter. We only came home last week, just in time to catch the tail end of the harvest."

The olive harvest lasted from October until early February of the following year. The green olives picked in October were suitable for pickling and eating, while those harvested later grew darker and were better for pressing into olive oil.

Now that it was late February, Vitus guessed these olives were poor quality and wouldn't fetch a good price once pressed into oil. "Goodbye, and good luck."

The caravan continued on and stopped at a village, where local farmers were busy pressing olive oil. They crushed the olives with stone mills, squeezing out a large quantity of oil and water. After letting the mixture settle, they skimmed the oil from the surface with spoons and stored it in clay jars.

For many years, olive oil had been the Peloponnese's most important export. Venetian merchants sold it elsewhere, where it was used for lighting oil lamps, making soap, and as a seasoning and cosmetic. Olive trees also grew on hillsides, so they didn't take up land that could be used to grow wheat. They were the perfect cash crop.

As they traveled, Vitus also observed the fields on the plains. They almost all used the three-field system common throughout Europe:

The land was divided into three fields. One was sown in autumn with winter wheat, another was sown in spring with crops such as barley, oats, or legumes, and the remaining field was left fallow. The three fields rotated, completing one cycle every three years and thereby preserving the soil's fertility.

From Vitus's perspective, this system was more efficient than the earlier two-field system and already quite advanced. For the time being, he couldn't see anything that needed improving.