The town below the castle, once the ground on which the people of Šternberk lived their lives.
Now the place was sunk in a bleak silence, like an enormous grave.
An acrid burnt smell stabbed at the nose. Where the flames had passed, only blackened, charred pillars rose bare like hideous ribs, and on the roadway broken vessels that had lost their owners and melted farm tools lay buried in the ashes.
"Oh no... how are we to live now...."
The lament of a woman who had collapsed where she stood in blank despair scattered on the wind. In the eyes of the people of the domain there was only the deep sense of loss and helplessness of those who had lost the ground of their lives.
But to my eyes, sitting on horseback and looking down at that ruin, an entirely different scene appeared.
'This is actually for the best.'
It may sound cruel, but it was the truth.
Because a medieval village was inefficiency and unsanitariness itself.
Winding alleys that had sprawled out at random like an amoeba with no plan. Muddy streets stinking with the mixed waste of people and livestock. Shoddy timber houses that could only burn down entirely the moment a single spark leapt.
Now all of it had vanished into the flames. The old had been torn down, so it was a golden opportunity to build the new upon it.
Because there is no better place to draw than a blank sheet.
"Is there anyone among you who knows about construction? Stonemason, carpenter, or at the very least anyone with experience digging a well, step forward."
A stir went through the people of the domain.
After a moment, one bent-backed old man came hesitantly forward from among them.
'Oh? He looks familiar.'
It was the old man who had asked me back about bread and a place to sleep right after the battle, when I declared I would take responsibility for the refugees.
"This humble one... is called Štěpán. In my younger days I helped with building the village well and the church. Thanks to that I know something of handling stone."
The hand the old man held out was callused like rough tree bark, as befitted a man who had shaped stone all his life.
I nodded with satisfaction.
"Štěpán, from now on I have need of your experience."
I took Štěpán and the able-bodied men to the open ground that had been the center of the village. The people of the domain, with no idea what was happening, followed behind us with uneasy eyes.
Scratch, scratch.
With a long tree branch I had prepared in advance, I began to scrape at the ash-covered ground.
The black ash pushed aside and red earth showed through. Soon a neat and orderly grid pattern began to take shape on the ground.
The people of the domain only watched in bewilderment as their lord drew a strange picture on the earth.
"This is the Šternberk we are going to build anew."
I jabbed the tip of the branch at the largest square, at the center of the drawing.
"This is the square. It is where the market will stand and the festivals will be held. Centered on this square, we will run straight roads to north, south, east, and west, wide enough for two carts to pass side by side with room to spare."
"You mean to... make roads on purpose?"
Murmurs of incomprehension broke out here and there.
To them a road was merely a trace formed by people treading and passing over it, not something planned and built.
Paying it no mind, I pointed at the narrow lines between the grid squares.
"And behind every house we will dig a ditch. On one side, a water supply carrying clean water drawn from the spring on the hill; on the other, a sewer that gathers the waste from the houses and carries it out of the village."
"A... a sewer, you say?"
Štěpán's eyes went round.
"You mean to build a channel to gather the waste separately and dispose of it? When you could just throw it in the road or let it run into the river..."
To an old man who had spent his whole life scattering filth on fields and roadsides, it was a heaven-and-earth-overturning notion.
I shook my head firmly.
"That is how the village becomes clean and how plague is kept away. Rotten water and filth are the root of every disease. In my domain there must be no more people dying because of dirty water."
At my declaration the people stirred.
That a lord should care about the sanitation of serfs. But the real shock came next.
"Every house will be built straight and square to this grid. The walls will no longer be made of branches and straw. They will be built of brick, hard and resistant to fire."
In that moment the surroundings went quiet as though cold water had been thrown over them.
After a long stillness, Pavel the potter burst forward with a face gone blue.
"My lord! Brick, you say? Are brick houses not for churches and noble lords! How could lowly things like us presume to such precious houses... and besides, where would we get that many bricks?"
Watching the flustered Pavel, I broke into a chuckle.
"Pavel, do you remember the earth you dug out to make the firebricks? That mountain of clay you stripped away in order to get at the kaolin."
Kaolin, the key material for the blast furnace, lay buried deep beneath the clay layer. The ordinary clay stripped away to dig it out had been piled up like a mountain and left there.
Only then did Pavel blink.
"You mean to fire that waste clay? But my lord, there is no telling how much precious firewood it would take to fire all of that! The navel is bigger than the belly!"
"The navel is bigger than the belly, is it...."
Even at Pavel's worried scolding, I kept a deliberately easy smile and turned my head.
Where my gaze went was the dense forest behind the village, thick with dark blue-green foliage.
"Pavel, what does that look like to you?"
My finger pointed at the ridge. Pavel blinked, unable to grasp what I meant.
"Yes? That is... my lord's forest."
His voice shrank instinctively.
The medieval forest was the lord's territory. Anyone who entered without permission to hunt or swing an axe had his wrist cut off or was hanged on the spot; that was the law of the land and common sense.
To them that forest was not a land of plenty but an inviolable sanctuary.
But I merely shrugged.
"Wrong. That is firewood."
"...Yes?"
"Is what covers that mountain not all trees? The finest fuel, grown so thick over hundreds of years with no one laying a hand on it that it rots where it stands."
The moment he understood my meaning, Pavel's face went white. The people of the domain nearby also gaped in astonishment.
Štěpán's deeply wrinkled face quivered as he opened his mouth.
"M-my lord! Your jest goes too far! That place is a hunting preserve the previous lords cherished! If things like us dared set an axe to that sacred forest, divine punishment... no, we would lose our heads by the law of the land!"
At the sight of them trembling I clicked my tongue. What was a tree, that people should be this frightened?
I looked at them straight on with a hardened expression.
"The law of the land? I am the law of this land."
At the chilly declaration the assembly went quiet as though cold water had been thrown over them. Because it was a fact that could not be disputed.
In a lord's land the lord's word is law. Until now that saying had been used for exploitation, but from here on it would be different.
"And Štěpán, there is something you have wrong. My most precious property is not those scraps of timber."
I slowly looked around at the ash-covered village and the people standing upon it.
"Cut a tree down and plant a sapling next year and it grows again. In ten years it makes a forest, and in thirty a great tree. But."
My gaze met the eyes of the hungry, worn-out people of my domain.
"A person, once lost, never comes back. Subjects who freeze to death in the cold and die of plague cannot be brought back by anything."
"Ah..."
A sigh escaped someone's mouth.
"So cut them. All you need."
I gave the order firmly.
"Cut the trees of that forest and light the kilns with them. Fire bricks with that fire and build the houses you will live in. Rather than have my subjects sleep shivering in the cold, I would sooner see the forest of Šternberk stripped bare. That is my will."
No one among the people of the domain opened his mouth. Rather, none could.
On their faces there was boundless respect and awe toward their lord.
But my words did not end there.
"Furthermore, from now on every length in the domain of Šternberk shall be measured against this."
I raised the birch rod I had been holding all this while. It was a rod cut to exactly one meter.
"This one rod we will call one meter. A thousand of these rods together we will call one kilometer, and one small division of this rod divided into a hundred we will call one centimeter."
"Meter, kilometer, centimeter...?"
"That is right. From now on cut and make every brick and every timber by this standard. Then no matter who makes them, materials of identical size will come out, and the speed of building houses will become faster beyond any comparison with now."
The units of length in this era differed by region and by period.
Because of vague and imprecise standards like the length of a king's arm, the span of a man's hand, or the stride of a grown man, all construction had to depend on a craftsman's rough guess and instinct.
It was the height of inefficiency itself.
Štěpán bent at the waist and examined the rod I was holding for a long while.
His eyes went over every detail of it: the rod's length, its thickness, even the grain of the wood.
"My lord. This humble one's head is stiff and I do not follow well, but... do you mean that everything is to be measured with this one rod?"
"That is right. This rod will be Šternberk's new 'hand span' and its new 'inch'."
I looked around at the people of the domain.
"Is Jakub here?"
"Yes, my lord."
Jakub the carpenter popped out from among the people at once.
I pointed at a log lying nearby.
"Measure that log five times against the length of this rod and cut it."
Jakub the carpenter tilted his head, then took the rod from me, set it against the log, and carefully marked the length. Then he took up a saw and cut at the marked point.
"Now bring the other log beside it and cut it the same way."
Jakub cut the second log in the same manner. I instructed him to stand the two pieces of log side by side.
"...!"
At the sight of it a low gasp broke out among the people. The two logs were identical in length, as though they had come from a single tree.
Ordinarily they would have been cut by the carpenter's eye and instinct, so the lengths would differ minutely and they would have to be shaved down again to match as a pair.
"Do you see? Now we no longer need to hold up a piece of wood and shave it down every time. Simply measure with this rod, and whoever cuts it and whenever, we can produce timber of identical length, hundreds or even thousands of pieces."
At my explanation Štěpán's eyes shone faintly. He was a man who had shaped stone all his life.
He knew better than anyone how much a stone had to be cut and fitted to lay it against another, and how hard that labor was.
"Then... it would be the same with bricks. If every brick were fired to the same size..."
"Yes. The speed of raising a wall would become faster beyond any comparison with now. Even without being a skilled stonemason, anyone with the strength to carry bricks would be able to raise a straight wall."
One young man raised his hand and asked.
"My lord! Then could I help with the carpentry work too, if I just had that rod?"
"Of course. Cutting, measuring, and stacking are things anyone can do. You need only trust this rod and follow it."
When my words ended, a faint energy began to rise in every part of the worksite. In the eyes of people who had been sunk in despair, a very small spark was lit.
I handed the rod I had been holding to Jakub.
"Jakub. This is one meter. It will be the standard for everything from now on, so make dozens of rules identical to it and distribute them to the people."
Jakub took the rod with a solemn expression.
"Yes, my lord! This Jakub will make them without the breadth of a single hair's error, on the honor of a carpenter!"
Once again I pointed at the design drawn on the ashes.
"This is not merely rebuilding a village. It is the first step in raising up a new Šternberk. Štěpán, from today you are chief overseer of construction. Manage all materials and assign the labor by the standard of the rod I have given you. I will trust your experience."
"Y-yes, my lord! This old man will take it on ready to bury his bones in it!"
Moved by my trust, Štěpán bowed at the waist with tears welling in his eyes.
Soon the noise of wood being cut to standard and earth being dug began to ring out all through the domain.
That was when it happened.
Through the noise of the worksite came the urgent sound of hooves. János, who had come galloping and raising a cloud of dust, hurriedly reined in before me.
"My liege!"
"What is it?"
Leaping down from his horse, János held out a leather tube, gasping for breath.
"A letter has come from Prague!"
On the outside of the tube, the red wax seal symbolizing the Prague city council was clearly stamped.