"These Americans," Don Alfredo de Aguilera said with a sigh. "They have no idea of the effects they have." He cast a sardonic look out the window, then sighed and turned back to his letter. The best he could do was the best he could do, but that didn't mean that his uncle Ramon was going to be any happier with him. But perhaps the letter to his cousin might help.
Mi querido Carlos,
As you know, your father has required that I stay here in Grantville, researching and looking for ways for the family to increase its wealth and influence. So I stay. In many ways, I do enjoy it. In some others, I simply do not.
There is bad news which I have shared with your father in brief but I share with you in greater detail. The woman will not sell all her sheep. The up-time Merino sheep will be bred in Germany. And she is selling some, but not all, of her Angora rabbits. Which, as rabbits do, are reproducing in great numbers. Rapidly. Very rapidly. So much so, that the insane woman is now furnishing breeding pairs of them to others. At no cost. With contracts to purchase the product of said rabbits.
While the quantities will be small for years to come, especially of the Merino wool, the quality of the fabric is better than anything we have. This is partly because of the Angora rabbits, but I must tell you, Cousin, that the wool of the up-timer sheep is better than any in Spain. So Spain no longer has the best wool in the world. As well, these sheep produce more wool. They were bred to do so, after all.
Carlos, yesterday at the Exchange I saw a young woman, the daughter of a farmer, wearing an Angora-wool blend top. That girl was wearing finer woolens than Her Imperial Majesty, the queen of Spain possesses. A farmer's daughter! Can you imagine it, Cousin? "Here, Your Majesty, we have the best wool in Spain. Granted it's not quite so good as a farmer's daughter wears in barbaric Germany, but it's almost as good." What price will Spain's fine Merino wool bring when this becomes common knowledge throughout Europe? And it will. The farmer's daughter was quite proud of her "Angora sweater," marveling at its soft comfort, having her friends feel the softness while she spoke of its warmth. There is no keeping this secret, even if almost no one can get cloth made of the angora-wool blend. Simply the fact of its existence must bring down the price of our Spanish wool.
Yet there is good news, or at least a potential way to compensate for the lost profit that the family will face. Up-time they had machines to spin wool and other fabrics at tremendous speed and low cost. None of those machines made the transition. But, sooner or later, they will reinvent the machine. At that point, wool cloth made in Germany will cost not that much more than washed wool from Spain and the window of opportunity will close.
The opportunity I speak of is to become more than a supplier of washed wool. I believe that we should become a supplier of finished thread and cloth. I know my uncle will likely be opposed to this, but I believe it is essential. The cloth makers of England, France, Germany, and Italy will not pass on the savings from such a machine to the providers of the wool.
The National Library has very little available on the subject of the spinning jenny, spinning mule and other machines used in the "mass production" of cloth. I enclose what they have from the various encyclopedias and I will be continuing my research. Carlos, we have a window of opportunity here, but that window will not stay open forever. If the family's wealth is to be maintained, we must have those machines. We must be able to break into the cloth markets of Europe before they have the machines to compete with us or we will likely never gain the foothold we need. I know what Uncle Ramon thinks of the mercantile trades, and that his opinion of those who work with their hands is possibly worse. But for the sake of our family, Cousin, you must persuade him to invest in an experimental facility geared to the development of the machines used in the mass production of cloth.
Don Carlos de Aguilera sipped his wine as he read the letter from his cousin. After delivering the bad news, the letter shifted to asking after various family members, before switching back to matters of business. Business and trade weren't something his cousin seemed able to avoid. Don Alfredo suggested diversification into other crops. Which was a possibility. Cotton, peanuts, and corn.
In the next few weeks, as I acquire them, I will send you a pair of Angora rabbits and some seed corn. I have included what drawings I have managed to accumulate, as well as reprinted articles on many things of interest. I'm particularly interested in the peanut butter. Up-timers crave peanut butter, Carlos. Small children beg for it. We must discover what they're talking about and attempt to produce it. There's a market right here. As well, I'm told that it is "nutritious." It has "protein." And that everyone benefits from ingestion of such. Best of all, the plant itself nourishes the soil. Which should allow for the growing of cotton if you can acquire the seeds.
I strongly recommend that we attempt to breed sheep with better wool and size. Select the largest rams, the largest ewes and keep them isolated from the others. The shepherds have always attempted to breed the best to the best, of course, but they were as much concerned with the ability to traverse the meseta as they were with size and wool quality.
Do write me. I sometimes feel that I'm lost in time.
Alfredo
Don Carlos rang for a servant. He didn't look down on his older cousin to the extent that many in the family did. Granted, Don Alfredo wasn't very good with a sword and seemed unable to avoid involvement in trade. But that too had its uses. "I will be dining with father this evening. Have my horse readied," Don Carlos spoke past the servant.
In spite of Don Carlos's best efforts, his cousin's report was laughed off. Until the matched pair of gleaming white Angora rabbits arrived. With them came a sample of the Merino-Angora blend, in the form of a scarf. Even Papa couldn't laugh that off. As punishment for being right when Papa was wrong, Don Carlos got placed in charge of putting together a research and development facility to develop the spinning machines. He naturally delegated the actual organization to his steward, Ricardo. Then he went back to his hunting.
Ricardo Suarez shook his head and considered whether or not he should just run screaming into the night and fall off a cliff. Then he sighed, and went back to writing letters, muttering all the while.
"Build a research and development facility, he says. And what do we do if we succeed, I wonder. That's the problem with the entire family. They don't think ahead. Not at all." Ricardo was actually quite fond of the de Aguilera family.
The patriarch of the de Aguilera family, Don Ramon, was a hearty man, nearly seventy years old. Upright, upstanding, bound by traditions . . . a bit hidebound, in Ricardo's opinion. Most of the de Aguilera scions were following in that tradition, except for young Don Alfredo in Grantville. Ricardo had hopes for Don Alfredo, although he knew that Don Ramon didn't have much use for him. The young man simply didn't meet his expectations. Don Alfredo liked making money and was, well, obvious about it. Don Carlos, his cousin, was much more the type to suit Don Ramon's expectations. Proud, courageous to a fault, honorable . . . but useless for practical things. Basically, a proud wastrel, at least in Ricardo's opinion.
Very well, Ricardo thought. I shall write young Alfredo and get more information. Carlos . . . well, Carlos won't pay much attention to what I do, so long as his pleasures aren't interrupted.
By the time Ricardo gave it up for the night, he'd made arrangements to hire an assortment of craft masters, journeymen and apprentices. As well, he'd arranged for them to travel to the most isolated village the family owned. It had been nearly depopulated by a virulent sickness two years ago, so there would be room for experiments and the surrounding hills and valleys could be used for the sheep-breeding program Don Alfredo advocated. Not to mention, the rabbits had to go somewhere else. The stable master was very insistent about that.
Agustin Cortez alighted from the wagon, happy to be out of it. It had no springs and was not, he thought, well put together. What he saw however, was almost enough to make him want to get right back on it. Agustin was a journeyman cabinet maker, who was rather better with wood than he was with people. Which might have something to do with the reason that he was still a journeyman and not a master. He had a marked tendency to open mouth and insert foot. And always at the worst possible moment.
So when he was offered a job working on a special project, well, he needed the job. But he hadn't realized until he got here that the job was in the middle of nowhere. As he looked around, mostly what he saw were sheep. There was also what appeared to be a broken down grain mill and the remnants of a village. All these things were located in a valley in the Cantabrian hills. What sort of a project could they possibly have in mind for this place?
Agustin's musing was interrupted when a young woman walked by, carrying a load of wool in a basket. She sniffed as she passed. Apparently, whatever it was that they were doing here, the young woman did not approve.
Well, he was here. Best to get on with it. "Senorita? Oh, Senorita?"
She turned and cocked an eyebrow at him.
"Who is in charge here?" Agustin asked.
"Montoya." She shifted the basket, then pointed to the best of the buildings. "There." Then she sniffed again, and turned away.
Not a friendly woman, Agustin decided. And plain as well.
He found Luis Montoya bent over a number of drawings of a strange-looking contraption. A contraption Agustin simply couldn't make head or tail of, although he could clearly see where his skills with wood were needed. The drawing showed wooden parts that were hopelessly unadorned. And Luis, it turned out, was not "in charge," but merely another journeyman.
"Gears I can produce," Luis said. "This I have the knowledge for. But I know nothing about producing thread. Women spin. Not me."
"Ah," Agustin said. "So that's the big secret project we're to work on."
"And secret it indeed is," Luis warned. "The de Aguilera, Don Carlos, was very clear on that. Not one word of what we do here is to be spoken of. Not to anyone."
Agustin looked at the drawings again. Then he looked for more, something to show how this was supposed to work. There weren't any. "How long have you been here?"
"Five days. Don Carlos, well, his steward, made me an offer I couldn't refuse."
Well, Agustin certainly understood that. Eating is better than starving, any day. "Are more coming? Surely you and I are not the only men to work on this."
"A master carpenter—he'll be in charge. Two or three other masters and journeymen, for wood and metal. Some apprentices, mostly, from the de Aguilera estates. The people here, only a few, are mostly herders and that ilk. Unlettered, of course. No knowledge of anything but sheep."
Agustin sighed, then they got down to trying to figure out how this machine was supposed to work.
As Agustin read through the sheets of paper, he kept running into words in brackets, with numbers. And at the bottom of each page were annotations. "In 1828 Mr. Thorpe, also an American, invented the ring spinning frame, whose principal feature consisted in the substitution for the {flyer 25} of a flanged annular ring, and a light C-shaped {traveler 26}." Unfortunately the annotations were not always helpful. {Flyer 25} was recorded as: 1) An advertisement (usually printed on a page or in a leaflet) intended for wide distribution. 2) Someone who travels by air. 3) Someone who operates an aircraft, followed by a note in another hand: This can't be right. We are talking about a part of a spinning machine.
It was very clear that several people had worked on this and not all of them had known what they were working on. Some parts of the notes were printed and others handwritten. The right definition was in the packet, but Agustin would not find it for over a week. By the time he and Luis knocked off for the evening he was exhausted from trying to make sense of the half-translated documents.
The rather surly young woman delivered their evening meal. A thin soup, cheese, and bread. Luis did, at least, have a cask of reasonable wine. The de Aguilera's weren't exactly generous with supplies, but they weren't entirely misers, Luis explained.
"So," Luis said, "the problems of getting the machine to work are . . ." He began a litany of complaints, possibilities, conjectures and outright fantasy. Even Agustin knew more about wool and how it was processed, having seen the lavadero Alfaro, near Segovia in operation.
"Have you no sisters?" Agustin asked. "Have you not observed a shearing, even?"
Luis looked dumbfounded that he would even ask. "And what does that have to do with building the machine, I ask? We take the wool, we make the machine make the thread."
The woman, who had returned to pick up the remains of the meal, laughed out loud. Agustin, who had four younger sisters, joined her.
Luis looked hurt for a moment, then explained. "My family . . . my mother died, years ago, when I was small. So, no, I have no sisters. Only an aunt, who sent me to apprentice to a smith in El Ferrol, on the coast, after my father died. Which is how I became interested in clocks, because of navigation."
Luis' story was a long one, which involved quite a bit of travel, a number of misadventures, and untold heroism. At least, according to Luis. Through it all, the woman listened, leaning against the doorpost, spinning with a hand spindle. Agustin watched as the thread grew longer, then, when the spindle had nearly reached the floor, the girl drew it up and wound on the thread. Again and again, the thread lengthened.
Finally, Agustin could stand it no longer. "Why this way? My sisters use a wheel." He gestured at the spindle. "And what is your name, please?"
She cocked her eyebrow at him again. "Lucia. And you can't use a wheel when you're walking the hills, following sheep. So—" She gave the thread another twist. "—I carry this, always."
Agustin nodded. The production of fabric was time consuming in all ways. First the sheep grew the wool, then were sheared. The wool was washed, sorted, sold, then carded, spun and woven. Flax was worse, as the hard stalks had to be rotted in water before the fiber could even begin to be prepared for use. Silk wasn't something he'd ever seen produced, although that was done in Lyons, he knew. His sisters, who made his clothing, were always moaning about wanting dresses made from Lyons silk. Not likely, even though Papa wasn't dreadfully poor.
The master of the project, one Pedro Munos, appeared three days later. And Agustin knew he was probably in trouble within moments. Munos was just the type of master he could barely tolerate. Worse, he was the type of master who could barely tolerate Agustin—and Agustin needed this job. It was clear that the man was more interested in sucking up to Don Carlos than he was in working the wood. More journeymen came over the next week, until there were eighteen men, along with the wives and children of the more senior of them.
Agustin thought that "wife" might have been an overstatement in some cases, but that was between them and God. Just when he began to think that he might as well leave now, before he got in trouble with Munos, Miguel Cortes showed up. And Miguel, thankfully, was senior to Agustin, so Agustin could probably avoid Munos' notice, with a bit of luck and care.
One of the exciting days that broke up the drudgery of making machine parts that no one understood was the day the rabbits arrived. They were, Agustin decided, very odd-looking rabbits. They were also, alas, not particularly friendly in spite of their incredibly long and soft white hair.
This was discovered when the man who was attempting to transfer the doe from the traveling cage to a larger cage screamed vituperations at her. Then dropped her on the ground, clutching his bitten, bleeding hand. Before anyone could reach her, she took off between the buildings.
"Catch that rabbit," Munos cried.
What followed was something of a circus, with men, women and children chasing a very frightened—and quite speedy—long-haired rabbit that didn't want to be caught. And wasn't.
Munos, huffing from his run, cursed everyone indiscriminately. The rabbit handler, with his wound bandaged, finally removed the half-grown kits to individual cages, along with the buck, these actions also accompanied by Munos' cursing.
"This will set Don Carlos' breeding project back by months," Munos whined.
"They're rabbits," Lucia pointed out. "It won't be that long before the young ones are ready to breed. Because they're rabbits, like any rabbit."
"Would you like to say that to Don Carlos?" Munos asked.
Lucia flinched.
"I thought not."
The rabbit handler carried a written explanation back to Don Carlos' steward. No one knew just how the temperamental de Aguilera scion would react, but they expected it to go badly for the handler.
Badly, it went indeed. A week later, Munos received a summons from Don Carlos.
"We are making good progress, Don Carlos, but it is a very complex device." Master Pedro Munos handed several sheets of paper to Don Carlos. They were the collected questions about the workings of the spinning machine so far. This was the first major status report since their discussions when Don Carlos had approved his hiring.
Don Carlos looked through the sheets of carefully numbered questions. "There are over a hundred questions here, Master Munos. Can't your craftsmen figure out anything for themselves?" He snorted. "See Ricardo with this list of questions. What have you accomplished so far?
"I have gotten most of the parts that were clearly shown in the diagrams made. There are a few diagrams that are less clear but they shouldn't prove much of a problem. Now all that is really needed is to assemble the machine, if the images are correct." Then, noting Don Carlos's look, Master Munos hastily added. "As I'm sure they are. There should be no great problems. I should have a working machine for you in a few months. As I said, it is a complex piece of machinery and these things take time."
Ricardo felt a good bit of sympathy for Munos, when the sweating man entered his office. Don Carlos wasn't the easiest man to get along with, and was even less easy to explain things to.
Munos plopped into a chair and wiped his face. "That . . . that . . ." He stopped and shook his head. "It is most difficult to explain the mechanics, Senor. Most difficult."
"So explain it to me, please," Ricardo said. "Tell me what happened."
While Munos explained about the difficulties with the machines, and about the lost rabbit, Ricardo took notes and read over the list of questions. When Munos ran down, Ricardo settled back into his own chair and called for refreshments.
"I see. Well, I will arrange for a replacement rabbit, and, if possible, for more of them. And I will send your questions to Don Alfredo. I must say some of them don't make sense to me, so I well understand why they didn't make sense to Don Carlos. What could the color of the wool have to do with the machine and how it will work?" He tapped the list. "Wool is simply wool. It is all much the same, whether black or white. Do try to provide questions that at least make some kind of sense."
After three months, Agustin was nearly at the end of his rope. He, Miguel, and the other journeymen carpenters had built the parts they could see clearly on the drawings They'd also built parts they thought would work by extrapolating what they thought the machine should do. The smiths and Luis had done the same thing with the metal parts they thought the machine needed. But putting it together was not going well. Something was missing. Several somethings, probably.
In the midst of this, some of the shepherds came back, Lucia's father and older brother among them. They had been on the meseta for a year, herding sheep throughout the country. This year, though, would be different. Don Carlos had directed them to bring the best rams and ewes to the mountains after shearing, and keep them there. Now, according to Lucia, was when the real work started for her family. The men would shear their own small flocks, as well as care for the de Aguilera flock and supervise the breeding program.
It did mean that Lucia was in the village more, because she no longer looked after the flock with her younger brother and sister. It did not mean, however, that there was less work for her to do. In addition to the ever-present spinning, there was more food to cook, the garden to care for, sewing and darning of damaged clothing for her father and brother, as well as the wool to clean and card.
The villagers made something of a holiday of the shearing. And Agustin was surprised at how fast that went. Shearing, however, he learned, was not the biggest job. Even docking and culling the lambs was not as big a job as cleaning the wool turned out to be. There was, though, plenty of meat for several weeks after the shepherds decided which lambs to cull.
Washing the wool, at least in this village, took almost every hand that was available. And because he and Luis were somewhat extraneous to the machine project at the moment, they decided to help. Luis, it turned out, had his eye on Lucia's cousin, Beatriz, because of her cheerful, loving nature. Agustin had to admit that Beatriz was better looking than Lucia, but she was also a bit flighty for his taste.
So they both wound up putting the wool in cold water, which was then warmed until the grease and dirt loosened, then lifting out the heavy, wet, smelly stuff to drain and rinse. Throughout it all, the women chattered and made sure that no one poked and prodded the wool too much, as it would then stick together and become unusable. After rinsing, the wool was laid to dry in clean, grassy areas, where the breezes would dry it as quickly as possible.
Lucia explained that the wool would be turned several times a day, and that it would take about four days to dry completely. Surprisingly, they did not sell the finer grades of wool, not this year. This year, Don Alfonso had pre-purchased all of it, so that the machine team would have wool to experiment with. Rather a lot of wool to experiment with, Agustin thought. And too soon to be doing much experimentation, at that.
"If you want to make spinning faster," Lucia grumbled, "find a better way to loosen the wool and get all the hairs lined up in the same direction."
It seemed that if women weren't actively spinning wool, they were preparing it for spinning. Even after washing and removing most of the grease from a fleece, wool was just naturally clumpy. It grew in tangled locks, which had to be separated and made smooth before the wool could be spun into thread.
Carding and spinning were laborious, repetitive tasks, although not particularly difficult. Or so Agustin thought, until Lucia tried to teach him to use the carding combs she was wielding. In spite of Luis' laughter about it, Agustin felt that the machine would never work unless the men building it understood the process of making thread. Which, of course, none of them did.
So, Lucia not-so-patiently showed him how she loosened and carded the fibers with a set of carding combs, then removed the straightened fibers and rolled them into what looked like a sausage. After that, the wool was ready to be spun, either on her hand spindle or a wheel.
"Why do you roll it that way? Why not just leave it flat?"
Lucia shrugged. "It is the way I was taught. I've never tried it any other way. Besides it would take up too much room in my basket and might tangle again."
At Agustin's urging, Lucia sat at one of the treadle wheels he and the others had built from a drawing and began to spin the flat mass of fiber. After a false start or two, it only took a few minutes to spin. Of course, it only took her minutes to spin one of the sausage shapes, as she pointed out.
"But was this faster? At all?" he asked.
"Perhaps. But it would only make a real difference if the mass of wool was larger, I think. No. Not larger. Longer. And, maybe, thinner." Lucia used her hands to try and describe what she meant. "With these, I must stop the wheel, pick up another, attach it, then start the wheel again. With a longer, thinner, ah . . . I don't have the words. But if the wool was like a rope, long and thin, instead of a flat square . . ." She looked at him. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"I think so. And I think I read something about that, in all the papers. Let me think for a while."
It was often easier to understand Lucia's gestures than the stuff they received from Don Carlos. Rumor had it that the papers and notes they got from Don Carlos were sent to the de Aguilera family from Germany. Judging from the shape the papers were sometimes in, Agustin thought they might have been sent from even farther away. By now they were sending questions back along the route, wherever it lead. Agustin wasn't involved in that part. The questions went from him to Miguel to Master Munos. Agustin was increasingly concerned that the important questions weren't making it all the way to wherever the source of the information was.
The words were often unfamiliar, which frustrated everyone, as they would then have to ask for explanations. Still, every packet from Don Carlos gave them more information. The big breakthrough, though, finally came. The man in Germany—if that was where he was—had started tracking down the various names of the inventors, and come across more detailed information and drawings. Still not enough, but it helped.
The spinning machine was stalled. It should work. It was supposed to work. As they looked at each part of the operation, it even seemed to work. But the thread it produced was clumpy and came apart with even gentle tugs. Miguel, nearly howling with anger, had stomped away this morning, cursing all the way. Munos, who was being pressured by Don Carlos, wasn't in any better a mood, and had left for Zamora to explain the delays. With those two gone, Agustin and Luis had time to experiment with a better way to card the wool.
They started, much to Lucia's dismay, by tearing apart a set of carding combs to see how they were made. "Any idiot can see how they're made!" she said. But, better to check, anyway.
Agustin and Luis were a bit embarrassed to have to admit that she was right. The carding combs were just bent pins, stuck through leather, which was then nailed to a flat piece of wood. After a handle was added to the flat piece, the carding comb was complete. But it, combined with some of the drawings they'd recently received, did give them an idea.
It took some time to find enough leather to cover a large and a smaller wooden drum. It took longer than that to make the tiny pins to insert through the leather, bend them at the correct angle, and secure them to the drum. And more time to construct a frame to hold them.
It wasn't an exact duplicate of the "drum carder" in the drawing. For one thing, in order to take advantage of one type of motive power they had available, Agustin and Luis positioned the drums differently. The drums were laid on their sides, supported in the air by a pole that ran through the center of each drum. The drums were held up with a spacer, so that they could harness one of the bellwethers to a shaft that would turn the drum. The shaft was about five feet long and the large drum about three feet across with a radius of half that. A small boy was initially used to walk the bellwether around in a circle, but that same small boy eventually attached a turnip to a stick and hung it in front of the sheep. The sheep kept chasing the turnip, although he never caught it. As bellwethers were used to walking all day, leading the vast flocks throughout Spain, the sheep took no harm.
The smaller drum turned at a faster pace, of course, and quite a large amount of wool could be gradually placed on it. The teeth from the larger drum picked up and straightened the wool as it came off the smaller drum. Taking the wool off of the larger drum proved to be somewhat problematical in the beginning, but they eventually contrived a tool for that.
"Can you spin this, Lucia?" Agustin asked. He presented her with a blanket of wool that was about two inches thick, nearly ten feet long, and about two feet wide.
She looked at it carefully. "I think so. But it's too wide. We need a way to draw it out."
"Into sliver, yes?"
"Pardon?"
"Sliver. Or top. That's what the papers call it. Long, thin ropes of wool are called 'sliver' or 'top.' They call this a 'batt.'"
"Why? If it looks like a rope, why not call it a rope? If it looks like a blanket, why call it a batt?"
At her curious look, Agustin laughed. "I have no idea. But you can read them for yourself." He stopped abruptly. Probably Lucia didn't know how to read. Why would she, living out here in the middle of nowhere?
She didn't get angry as he feared. She just shrugged. "Or you can read them to me, if you think it will do any good. Which I doubt. Meanwhile, let's try this." She took the batt of wool and began to tear it into strips. With care, she could tear a two-inch wide strip of it from the batt without the strip of wool falling apart. These she coiled in a basket, pinching a new strip to each end as she tore it. That took a while. The "rope" they ended up with was over ninety feet long. Finally she sat at the wheel. And began to spin. And spin. And spin. The only time she had to stop the wheel was to move the thread from one hook on the flyer to another, so that it filled the bobbin evenly. Then to change the bobbin, after each of them got full.
"Aunt Lucia! Aunt Lucia!"
Lucia went toward the garden, where her niece was supposed to be gathering vegetables for soup. "What, Elena? What is the problem?"
"Look," Elena said. She pointed to a row of beans. "I was pulling beans and a rabbit ran out. It was that rabbit, the one that got away."
Lucia looked at the row of beans, then kneeled down and fished around in the tangled plants. "Ah." She drew her hand out of the tangle. It was full of long, silky, white hairs. "Well, now we know where that dratted rabbit got off to. Perhaps we can trap it, now that we know where it is."
Elena tapped her on the shoulder and whispered, "Look."
Lucia did, then laughed out loud. The smaller rabbit, not quite as long-haired and not quite as white, ran away. "Well," Lucia gasped when she stopped laughing, "I see that Mrs. Bunny has been busy, hasn't she? We'll need several traps, I think."
In spite of the several traps that caught some of the half-wild, half-Angora bunnies, Mrs. Bunny managed to evade capture. That didn't, however, seem to lessen her fertility, as they continued catching an occasional half-breed rabbit well into the fall.
Which led to the question of who owned the half-breed rabbits. By long tradition, the wild rabbits of that portion of Spain belonged to the people that lived there. Mrs. Bunny would have been returned to the patron as a matter of course, but these weren't purebred Angora rabbits. These were the kits of Mrs. Bunny and the wild bucks of the valley, as could easily be shown by the fact that Mr. Bunny was still in his cage. And probably none too happy about Mrs. Bunny's errant ways. Those wild bucks had always been the people's rabbits.
If some of the villagers found occasion to slip a wild doe into Mr. Bunny's cage to give him a little consolation, what could be the harm in that? And later, how could anyone be sure that the newly-common long-haired rabbits weren't the offspring of Mrs. Bunny's wild shenanigans? Granted, Mrs. Bunny would put all other rabbits to shame in the productivity department if all the little kits that had been captured were hers. But in the case of any given rabbit, who was to say?
By the time anyone involved in the administration of the Angora project noticed anything odd, there was quite a little breeding program going on. Enough of the half-breed rabbits with longer hair had appeared that some Spanish Angora garments were appearing in the valley.
"Master Munos, what is the hold up?" Ricardo asked with a bite in his voice. "You promised us a spinning machine over a year ago. Where is it?"
Master Munos had been dreading that question. He considered claiming that the drawings and notes were incomplete but he suspected that it wouldn't work. It hadn't worked when the journeymen and other masters had tried it on him. "It's the journeymen. They talk back. They refuse to do as they are told." He honestly didn't remember that most of their talking back and refusing to do as they were told amounted to him telling them to make the thing work and them asking him how. They were, in Master Munos' memory, intentionally disobedient and disrespectful.
By this time, most of them were lacking in anything resembling respect for Master Munos. However, most of them were pretty good at faking it. Agustin Cortez was not so good at hiding his opinion. "That Cortez is the worst. He spends all his time with that village spinster. He claims that he is trying to come to know the process spinning. Ha! That is not the sort of knowing that he is after with Lucia. And he encourages dissension among the other journeymen."
"Do you think he should be fired?" Ricardo asked.
Master Munos froze for just an instant. He knew that firing Agustin Cortez would be a disaster for the project and for him. Though he would never admit it, even to himself, Cortez had been the spark that had led to several of the minor breakthroughs that had gotten them as far as they were. Master Munoz desperately needed a reason for keeping Cortez that wouldn't sound like praise. "I wish we could," he said, "but he knows too much about the project. He could take what he knows to someone else and let them catch up to us in a few months."
Ricardo nodded.
"I wonder," Master Munos mused, "could that be what he's hoping for? To delay the project until he's fired. Then go to someone else."
Ricardo looked doubtful.
Master Munos shrugged it off as a passing fancy. "In spite of the difficulties with the journeymen, I have managed to get built a simple but ingenious device to speed up the carding part of the process." He snorted a laugh. "Part of what makes it ingenious is that it is simple enough that even the journeymen couldn't mess it up.
"It has turned the warehouses full of washed wool into warehouses full of carded wool."
"I will see about sending you some spinners until you get the spinning machine operational," Ricardo said calmly. "Do you have more questions for our source in Germany?"
"Only a few." Master Munos wondered if perhaps he hadn't been overzealous in weeding out the questions from the journeymen and the other masters. But he certainly didn't want a repeat of that first meeting with Don Carlos.
In the little village in the Cantabrian hills, they did in fact have a spinning machine that worked. Unfortunately it was a spinning machine for cotton. They, of course, were in a wool-producing area. If they had had some cotton to try on it, it would have spun decent, but not spectacular, thread. But they didn't have cotton or even realize that they needed it. They didn't realize that to spin wool they would need to adjust the machine. Agustin had considered the possibility and even asked about it indirectly, in one of many questions that he had included in the latest information request to go up the line. But he didn't really think it was important because, after all, who would send designs for a cotton-spinning machine to wool country?
"That works quite well," Lucia admitted a bit grudgingly. Then she sniffed. Again.
Agustin hid his grin. "I'm pleased you think so."
It was shearing time again. And if they couldn't get the machine to work, Augustin, Luis and some other journeymen had decided that perhaps they could do other things to help speed up the process. They developed a wooden cage to hold the unwashed wool. Then they were able to lower it into the cold water bath, with ropes and pulleys to make the lowering and lifting easier and keep the wool from being manhandled. Some of the metal smiths managed to tinker together flat pots that would need less water, and therefore less wood, for heating.
Cleaning the wool did take time, but perhaps a bit less than it usually did. As well, they had rigged up drying platforms, raised about eighteen inches off the ground, to allow for greater air flow around the wet wool. Drying was certainly sped up.
"More women will be arriving," Master Munos said when he got back from Zaragoza. "Beds will need to be arranged for them. De Aguilera is sending them to spin the wool that's in the warehouse, as well as the new crop."
Miguel nodded. "They'll need more wheels, as well. We haven't any extra."
Munos waved off the statement. "Just do what you have to. And get the machine working!"
Miguel left, steaming with anger. Just do what you have to. And get the thing working. There was a long list of questions that they had sent and most of them remained unanswered. How were he and his men to accomplish anything if they couldn't find the answers? If whoever it was wanted this machine really wanted it, why didn't he try to find the answers they needed?
Miguel was afraid to experiment. It was an incredibly complicated device, the spinning machine. Able, the papers said, to spin fifty threads at once and have them all of consistent quality. No one had ever done anything like this before; it wasn't how innovations happened.
Honestly, Miguel wasn't sure how innovations did happen. It wasn't that he was either unskilled or that he lacked creativity. But his training had focused on quality and art, not whatever this was. Miguel could build a table that was a work of art. Show him a picture of something made out of wood and he could make it. He could inlay a family crest into the side of a chair using five different woods and make look like God had grown it that way. He could also look a piece of wood and know how strong it would be once it was cut and carved into shape. He could attach it to another piece of wood, never needing a nail. But never in his life had he been asked to do systematic experimentation. Just do what you have to. And get the thing working. Willingly. Except he had no idea what he had to do to get the thing working.
Agustin was frankly relieved that the women who arrived had done so unequipped with spinning wheels. It gave him something to do other than sit around staring at the uncooperative spinning machine. He and the other carpenters divided their time between the spinning wheels and housing for the new arrivals.
"Oh, yes. I heard him say that."
Lucia looked over at the scrawny young woman who spoke. How this one might have heard Don Carlos speak anything but an order was beyond her, unless she'd been eavesdropping. Unless, perhaps, Don Carlos was very indiscriminate about what he said in front of strangers. Well, he might just be. Nobles did tend to ignore servants. But had this girl even worked for the de Aguilera family? Lucia decided to find out. The rumors the new employees brought with them were somewhat distressing.
"We'll be provided with good beds and everyone will have their own room, when the factory is built," was one of them.
So was, "Ha! We'll never see another sunrise after we finish spinning all this wool."
One of the most reliable of the new women had indeed been a servant in Don Ramon's household. Lucia listened to her particularly well, as she might have greater insight into their employer.
What she heard was most distressing.
"I should say not!" Ricardo had decided to make a visit to the village and see if he could figure out what the holdup was. It was all well and good that the wool was being carded and spun, even if the spinning was still by hand. But this was outside of enough. "The mother of those rabbits belongs to the de Aguilera family. Therefore so do the offspring."
He was looking at rows of cages, each of which contained a half- or three-quarter bred Angora rabbit. The hair varied in length, and the colors tended to be much less spectacular than the colors of the purebreds. But for villagers to attempt this! Never would he allow it. Never! "These rabbits belong to the de Aguilera family," he repeated. "And they will be taken to the de Aguilera estate. Tomorrow!"
It was a bit cavalier of the steward, but not beyond the law. Agustin kept his mouth shut, although it was a struggle. It was obvious that the de Aguilera family intended to keep the Angora as their monopoly, at least in Spain.
"Foolish," Lucia muttered. "Pure foolishness." It was obvious to Lucia that the effort at monopoly would fail. Among the rumors the spinners brought was confirmation that the rabbits came from the up-timers in Germany, where they were sometimes even given away to poor women. If there were enough that up-timers would give them away, they must be very common and others would buy them.
Worse, many of the better of the half- and quarter-breed rabbits had belonged to her little brother, Juan. And Juan was very upset, since he loved those dratted bunnies.
The action with the rabbits did give credence to some of the other, less rational, rumors. Like the one that said every one in the valley would be held there for the rest of their lives to keep the secret safe. And the one that suggested those lives might not be all that long for most of them.
"Damn that woman!"
Agustin and Luis jumped. Lucia rarely cursed, and Beatriz never got angry. It was just the way these women were. Now Beatriz was cursing?
"What's wrong?" Luis asked. "Let me fix it."
Beatriz was apparently not in any kind of good mood. "You'll just mess it up, Luis. Stay where you are."
"But at least tell me the problem, mi corazon," Luis begged. Quite literally, Agustin noticed, trying to hide his grin. Lucia elbowed him in the ribs, but she was trying not to smile, he could tell.
"It's that dratted Isabel," Beatriz groused. "She never gets this right. Always, always, the strips she tears from the batts of wool are too fat. Always. She's in too much of a hurry."
"It's an easy fix, Beatriz," Lucia said. "Heaven knows, we've done it often enough."
Beatriz began stretching out the too-fat strip of wool. "I know that. The point is that I shouldn't have to. It was her job today, not mine."
Agustin found that his mouth was hanging open. He'd never seen Lucia do exactly what Beatriz was doing with the wool. The rope, when Beatriz was finished pulling, which she did very gently, was at least five feet longer than it had been, possibly more.
"I am an idiot!" Agustin shouted.
"Well, that's common knowledge." Luis grinned at his friend. "Lucia could have told you if you didn't know," he added winking at her.
"Ha! You're an idiot too!" Agustin answered back.
Agustin's shout had distracted Beatriz who had seen Luis wink and giggled at his surprised look. "That too is common knowledge. But what is the idiocy of the moment?"
"All this time we have been trying to figure out a machine to tear ropes from the batt. We could have been making a machine to stretch batts into ropes."
"That sounds like a lot more work," Lucia said. "Tearing them is easier. That's why we do it that way."
"Yes! Easier for a clever girl with clever fingers. A girl with the wit and skill to keep watch on how the wool batt is coming apart into ropes. But not easier for a machine that has no eyes, no fingers and no wit at all."
Luis was nodding. "Machines are stupid, even the most complex ones. They can't change what they are doing, can't adjust themselves."
Don Ramon de Aguilera was severely displeased. They had been pouring money into the spinning machine for two years now, and at the suggestion of his nephew. And now the boy had gone off to the Low Countries to save the guilder. What should a proper Spanish gentleman care about the Dutch guilder?
The idea had been that while there were restrictions on who could make cloth for sale, there were no such restrictions on who made thread. So if they could use the machines to make fine high-quality thread quickly and cheaply, they could have the savings of the improved production and slip through a loophole in the laws by exporting not washed wool, but thread. Carded wool was wool under the law. They could export no more of it than washed wool. They got a slightly better price for it, true.
He wasn't sure whether he was more displeased by Don Alfredo or the disloyalty displayed his shepherds. Don Ramon felt he was a generous, if not extravagant, lord. He didn't approve of extravagance, especially in regards to dealing with the lower classes. It only lead to trouble.
In Don Ramon's world, there was a place for everyone and everyone belonged in their place. He was born a hidalgo and a Spanish noble, a defender of the church and of Spain. His shepherds had been born shepherds. He, like his father before him, generously allowed the shepherds to trap rabbits. But that was a matter of generosity, not of law.
Now, taking that generosity as license, his shepherds were stealing from him . . . stealing the expensive angora rabbits imported not just from Germany, but from the future. Apparently egged on by the over-educated craftsmen he'd had to import to build the spinning machine. Proving that education, especially of the lower classes, was a threat to the faith and to the social order. Where was the loyalty?
Machines, it turned out, were even stupider than Agustin or Luis had thought. To stretch a batt into a rope, what the papers called a sliver, they were using a series of rollers, like those they had built for the spinning machine. Each roller turning a bit faster than the one before. "I don't understand it, Lucia." Agustin complained.
"Never mind about that!" Lucia said. "Don't you pay any attention to what is going on in the world?"
"What?"
"One of the other families in the Mesta has started selling limited quantities of Angora wool. From what I hear, the de Aguilera family is convinced that they got the rabbits from us." She looked down at the table. "It might even be true. A lot of people in the village were upset when they took our rabbits. And they didn't get all of them.
"They've placed guards at the mouth of the valley and no one is allowed to leave."
"It'll be all right," Agustin insisted. "Once we get the spinning machine working, everything will calm down." He tried to carry conviction in his voice, but it was hard going. The truth was that the improvements already made should have satisfied the de Aguilera family, at least for now. Cleaning and carding took at least as much of the time in going from wool to wool thread as spinning did. The project was already a success.
Not all the notes from the German source were directly on spinning. There had been some on more general mechanics and their impact and how that lead to the industrial revolution. Based on those books, they had done a couple of studies. The time saved by the cleaning cages, the drying racks, and the carding machines meant that more man hours, woman hours, could be spent on spinning. From the books, they had also made some improvements in the spinning wheels. They were producing a lot more thread for a lot less labor than before the project had started. Why didn't the de Aguilera family see that?
Things like this had happened before. The contractors would complain about a project, generally in preparation for extorting the costs back from the craftsmen or running the craftsmen out of town without the final payment. But that wouldn't work here because of the major concern with secrecy. It was starting to feel like a story from ancient times, about the workers buried with the Pharaoh to keep the secret traps secret.
To avoid thinking about the unreasonableness of the de Aguilera family, Agustin turned his mind back to the unreasonableness of the rope stretcher. It was at least something he had a hope of solving.
The rope stretcher consisted of five sets of rollers each turning a bit faster than the last, and each a little closer to the next than to the last. Agustin had figured that the wider the rope, the more distance you needed to give it to stretch. Luis figured that it didn't matter, so he didn't argue the point, though—as a matter of aesthetics—he would have preferred that all the rollers be the same distance apart.
The first set of rollers was a foot from the second, the second was a half a foot from the third, which was a quarter foot from the fourth, which was only an inch and a half from the last set. But in spite of that, it took them a while to realize what was happening. Because you couldn't always tell that the batt of wool had lost cohesion between the first and second set of rollers, sometimes it looked like they were coming apart between the second and third sets. Or it looked like the third, fourth or fifth set was causing the problem by pulling too hard.
It was Luis that saw it. He was watching the stretcher shred rather than stretch another batt of carded wool and picked up a single strand of wool. He stretched it out as long as it would go and then pulled on it some more. Naturally, it broke. It really didn't have anything like the stretchiness of a piece of thread.
He looked back at the stretcher and began to visualize what was happening to the hairs as they went through the rollers. It wasn't that they were stretching; they were sliding against each other. At least he thought they were. He picked a fragment of the wool batt and pulled it apart. Slowly, carefully, watching the individual strands. Yes. It was the strands slipping past each other that allowed the wool to stretch. They were tangled together, but after being carded they weren't that tangled. Sort of half tangled.
He looked back at the rollers. Then he remembered something from the spinning machines. He was pretty sure that the rollers were all the same distance apart on the spinning machine. He picked up another bit of wool and slowly fed it into the stretcher. He wasn't really trying for a rope now, he was just carefully watching to see what would happen. He used very little wool because he wanted to be able to see what was happening to the threads. And see he did. Suddenly, he saw it all. A bit vaguely to be sure, but he saw it.
He started adjusting the distance between the sets of rollers. No easy job, because they weren't designed to be adjustable. That was what Agustin found him doing. He tried to explain what he was doing to the carpenter but the words came out jumbled. He wasn't used to being the one who wanted to try something different.
Even after the second run through Agustin didn't get it, but he just shrugged and said, "Tell me what you want me to do."
BLAM! The sound of a shot woke Lucia. Then there was shouting. "Somebody catch that rabbit!"
Still only half awake, Lucia looked around and noticed that her little brother Juan was missing. Suddenly she had a bad feeling. She quickly put on a shawl over her shift and ran out of the cottage. And almost ran over a rabbit glowing white in the moonlight. The rabbit dashed around the corner and was gone.
Lucia could see lights waving in the distance, and went to investigate. The de Aguilera guards were milling around with torches, scattering in all directions. Except for one, who was bending over a slight form that lay in the dust. "Juan!" Lucia shouted, and ran toward the guard.
The guard sprang to his feet and pointed his gun at Lucia. "Get back!"
"He's bleeding. Let me bind his wounds."
"He's dead," the guard said harshly. "He tried to slip out of the valley carrying the white rabbit. Got shot for his trouble and now the damned rabbit has run off again." Then he shook his head and relented a bit. "Go ahead, girl. Talk to him while you can."
"It hurts, Lucia!" Juan cried. It looked like half his belly had been ripped away.
"Oh, Juan. What happened?"
"They stole my bunnies." Juan repeated a complaint that he had made ever since the rabbit crossbreeds had been collected. Then he added, "I caught Mrs. Bunny in one of my traps. I guess I shouldn't have tried to sneak her out but it seemed only fair. They took mine, I'd take theirs." He tried to grin.
"Oh, Juan," Lucia whispered. Then Juan died.
"It's all that Agustin's fault," Papa said. Papa had been drinking ever since the burial. Juan was the youngest, and had always been Papa's favorite, as much for his independence of thought as for his resemblance to their mother.
"Agustin didn't tell Juan to steal the rabbit, Papa."
The look he gave her was ugly. Very ugly and scary. "Shut your mouth, girl. My son is dead, dead for a damned rabbit. I don't want to hear what you think."
It didn't quite work the way Luis and Agustin thought it would. Granted the wool did spin into better thread than it had been, but the thread was still weaker than it should be. It was all Agustin could do to keep from beating the machine into splinters, but he drew a deep breath and kept trying.
He went back to the papers. Finally, he had it. "Weights, Luiz. Weight on the first roller, to slow it down, so the wool will draw. A lighter weight on the second."
"Are you sure?" Luiz asked.
"When have we been sure of anything?" Agustin responded.
Lucia walked into the old mill upstream of the village with a breaking heart. She had just realized that she was truly and deeply in love with Agustin. Two things had told her so. She looked at her future without him and it was a bleak gray place that didn't seem worth the trouble. And she was coming up here to send him away because she cared more about him than she did about that horrible life. She had to tell Agustin that he had to leave but the words wouldn't come. She cleared her throat to prepare the way for the words she didn't want to say.
The two men looked up from the spinning machine. "We figured it out!" Luis said.
Agustin grinned at her. "I was waiting until we got this to work to ask your father, Lucia. But we're close enough now we know we can get it to work." Then he knelt right there on the dirty stone floor of the mill. "Lucia, will you marry me?"
"Yes!" came out of Lucia's mouth without her will. For a moment she forgot the news that had brought her here. Then they were kissing and the news was pushed back even further.
When they came partway back to earth, Luis was sitting on the frame of the spinning machine grinning like a loon. "So when is the wedding? From what I saw you'd better hurry." He laughed. "Besides, you still have to convince her father."
Suddenly, it all came back. "Father is on his way to the guards, to tell them that you're responsible, that you know where Juan hid his rabbit cages. You have to run, and you have to run now."
"Not without you, I'm not!" Agustin insisted. Then he shook his head in confusion "What makes your father think I had anything to do with it?"
"Papa doesn't like you," was all Lucia could think of. "The way you talk about master Munos. And not getting the answers to your questions. Papa is very conservative. He can't blame Don Ramon, Juan or himself. It must be someone else and he decided on you. He's been warning me about immoral townsmen for months."
"You both need to run." Luis was nodding. Lucia knew that he was more politically astute than Agustin. "Look, when this comes out Don Ramon is going to be very angry. He is going to want someone to blame and the people here know that. Munos is going to be looking for a scapegoat.
"I think they are misreading Don Ramon. He isn't stupid; he is just set in his ways. And Ricardo is a smart cookie. But they aren't here. What we have here are some guardsmen that figure they are going to be in trouble for letting Mrs. Bunny get away again, some scared masters and some upset villagers.
Besides that, there is no way Munos is going to want anyone hearing your version of events. I'm fairly safe because I don't answer to Munos. Master Guiterez will protect me from overzealous guards. But no one is going to protect Agustin and if he runs they will know you warned him." He gave Lucia a serious look. "All the guard will see in you is a village girl whose brother was caught stealing from the don. No one who can is going to even try to protect you."
"Are you sure that Master Guiterez will be able to protect you?"
Luis pointed at the cots that had been set up in the mill house. "I was asleep on one of those. I never saw a thing." He grinned.
More time was wasted while Agustin hugged Luis and Lucia kissed him on the cheek.
Agustin started putting stuff in a sack. "We'll have to head into the hills. Then on to the coast and somehow get out of Spain."
"Hills I know very well," Lucia said.
"Ah."
They looked toward Luis. "Ah. I know someone at the coast. He owes me a favor." He quickly wrote down a name and village. "Go to him. He'll get you out, if you can only get there."
It was the middle of the night when they left the village. They could see torches beginning to move toward the village from the mouth of the valley, but they had a head start, unlike poor Juan.
They ran toward the hills and didn't stop.
Lucia glanced back only once. Mrs. Bunny hopped out from under a bush, her white coat gleaming in the moonlight.
"Go," Lucia hissed. "Go, bunny. Go, go."