Chapter 8

The Alemmani did not fit in well with the other farm workers and it was as if the Alemmani looked down their nose at those either held in captivity or working for silver. They justified their own presence by saying that they were getting knives for war as payment.

I was not just training the Roman soldiers in unarmed combat. The Alemmani got some of this training. After the first day of harvest I fought my wild brethren in front of the tired workers. The Alemmani displayed what they had learned on each other. It felt right for these large men to stand in a well defined area and then bow respectfully to each other before every bout. At this time they were more Japanese than the people presently in Japan.

The Romans were ridiculed by the Alemmani until they came up and showed what they had learned. To the farmers this was a great display of agility.

My reasoning for this was to promote less violent ways of dealings with stress. Adopting a Japanese model of restraint and conviction was almost diametrically apposed to the way they were but strangely quite close too.

We used the scythes instead of the sickles during the day and did more than what would be possible in five days with the smaller tools. They used a flail to remove the seeds and this reminded me of the nunchaku. This was good against a sword but a staff was even better. Better to let them learn a few moves well than to load them down.

I was family, in a way, so I got to sleep in the house. Around midnight I heard a stealthy approach. I had been asleep but my subconscious warned me. The footsteps were light and a small person slipped into the room. I figured who it was and my nose confirmed it.

Felicia stood beside my bed but could not see me well. It took her a moment before she slipped off her gown and pulled up the cover to get near me. When she pulled the covering down she remained still. I guess she just didn't know what to do next.

She gasped though when my hand found her breast. After she let out her breath she said, "I didn't know you were awake."

"I am a warrior. If I did not wake up, I would be dead. Now get on your side and kiss me."

She was very eager to do this and she eventually moved above so I could not get away. Her breasts were not full grown but they were enough for me. She felt an obstruction and climbed over it and held it captive between her tightly closed legs.

My own hands were gently pinching her nipples as her body undulated on me. One hand left a nipple and caressed her butt to hold her tighter to me. The skin felt very good in my hand. My finger tips caressing the furrow but did not go far.

Felicia stopped her kisses and moved down a few centimetres and moved her pelvis up and down. My member was now as tight against her opening and clit as she could make it. I now used both hands on her ass to keep her in sync as I pushed up at the same time. She was very excited and there was enough of her fluid released to lubricate us. It was starting to get exciting for me when she started to leave the sync I had established and she ground herself into me to stimulate her clit.

Her hands had been on the bed but I could tell from her muscles that she was squeezing the sheet with all her might. Her pelvis now went into overdrive and it hammered me about ten times and she simply froze. She had pushed her chest up and now she collapsed onto my chest.

It took a moment then Felicia moved to get more comfortable then she said, "Do you love me, Jón?"

"Felicia, I said that my father will be the one to choose my bride. That means that I cannot marry you. Love is an emotion that takes a long time to nurture and to let it grow. You know me very little. What you have is..." I tried to think of the word for infatuation and had to say, "something that feels like love to you but really isn't. You will know the difference when you get just a bit older."

"But I love you. I know it."

"You cannot love yet. I already said that. It is possible that what you feel may grow into love. At the moment you are just feeling all the feelings that your body supplies to get you pregnant."

"I would gladly have your baby."

"I am not even twelve yet. I adopted many children. I do not want any children of my own until I find a safe home for them. I also want to be home for them and not away fighting or doing business to keep the empire together. I want to enjoy my children as they grow."

"I could wait."

"That is foolish. You should have fun as you grow up. When you meet the man that will love you as much as you love him then you could start your own family."

"I can wait a few years."

"That is a good idea. Give yourself time to taste a bit of life first."

"I hear that boys like girls to taste them."

"They do and some boys like to taste girls. Do you want to try? I have seed now."

"I want to try."

Felicia turned around and I had to get her into position. Just before I would be muffled I whispered, "No teeth."

"Ok."

Felicia learned quickly. When she did something good I rewarded her by doing something nice to her. She had something happen very nice to her twice more before she got a chance to taste me. When she finished she turned around and said, "I like the taste of you."

"You are pretty good yourself. Now you better go to your own room. Two ideas you should remember. The first is that we both smell of having sex. Your mother will smell this. The second is that you will stare at me oddly and your mother will suspect."

"I already stare at you."

"I know, Honey but you will do it even more."

By the time she left, I was ready again. I was not going to call her back though and had a difficult time to get back to sleep.

I was alert the next morning but either Licinia didn't suspect or she was a good actress. After breakfast, most of the people continued with the harvest while I went to the family forge. A large mound of copper, lead, tin, brass and bronze was nearby. This was what was owed me for my products.

There was a still to make and I now had the materials. Pure copper melted at a thousand and eighty three degrees Celsius. I could reach this temperature with dry hardwood alone. It took two hours until I had some hot copper that was poured out in a long rod on the floor. I beat this flat and worked from one end to the other. Copper got work hardened so I had to heat it up again. The copper was formed around a long steel rod after being trimmed with a chisel. I now had a three metre length of tube.

A copper tub was much harder to make. If I had a lathe I could spin it but none of my lathes were strong enough for this.

The top was just as difficult but I made it in the form of a cone. The point would get an elbow and this would be what was connected to the tube I had made. The lead and tin were used to make solder and this was used without flux but it did work. The bottom tub had a flange around it and the top had a matching one that fit and overlapped a bit.

Tertius was pressed into my service. He now seemed to enjoy working with me though the harvest because the new machinery was still fascinating.

The tube was soldered to the top with the use of a large lump of copper with a steel handle in it and a wood handle to support this. It was put in the fire and when hot enough it was used to transfer heat to the copper I wanted to solder. The lead/tin alloy flowed into the gap.

After supper, I got the Alemmani and the Romans to practice a bit more but this time with weighted wooden weapons. Their technique was definitely Japanese. I used this to distance them from their own method of acting like a berserker.

Some of the men helped me with the still. Licinia came with us as we poured some of her poor wine into the lower tub that was supported by an iron grate. I put the top on and had to put some wooden forks up to support the long pipe span. One of my iron pots was at the end to collect the condensate.

I explained again what I was doing. "Wine is water and a chemical called ethyl alcohol. Water boils at one hundred degrees but the alcohol boils at only seventy eight and a half degrees. The liquid will boil at the lower temperature until all the alcohol is gone then the temperature will rise to one hundred."

Licinia asked, "What if we put more fire under it?"

"It will only boil quicker but the temperatures will stay the same. The vapour coming off the wine will expand almost eight hundred times. It will leak out all over the place but it is easier to just go up and out the large hole in the top and then through the tube. Some of the vapour will cool and fall back but some will go into the tube. The tube is cool and the vapour will turn back into a liquid. This liquid is mostly the alcohol I want and a little bit of water."

The fire was started and we waited. The seam between the upper and lower sections leaked a lot. I used a nail that went through two small blocks of wood. The gap was opened and the metal seam was put between. A small hammer and a dolly block pulled the blocks together and closed the seam much better. We put sixteen more on then got the fire started once again.

I put damp rags on the copper tube to cool it better and eventually a liquid started to drip from the tube. I guessed that their wine was one tenth alcohol so I should get three litres in the pot.

Tertius got a mug and this was used to collect twenty millilitres or so. I had a sip of the warm alcohol. It was not quite moonshine quality but it was still rough. Everybody got a taste but none of us liked it.

"This will go into an oak barrel. In a year or two it will gain a softer taste. It will sell very well when we have enough. It might even be good to buy poor wine to get the alcohol from it. You can also use this to add to your own wine to make it stronger. Nobody in the world but us knows how to do this.

"Many drugs can be made with alcohol. One is called an anaesthetic. This means that it will put people to sleep while they are being operated on. It will only be after the operation that they will feel the pain. By then it will be a lot less. The physician does not have to contend with a patient screaming or thrashing around."

Tertius asked, "Have you operated?"

"The gods have said I did and showed me pictures. This was before I lost my memory."

"Could I be a physician?"

"You should talk to Iulius. He would be the one training you. I will tell you this; I want you to learn as much as you can. Even if you become a soldier and learn how to kill you also have to learn how to heal."

When the flow stopped, I knew the temperature was rising. I used a new steel hoe to pull the burning wood out from underneath and we put some water on this to put it out.

I had three small barrels that we had made at the camp, complete with steel hoops. They were just forty litres in my estimation but enough for a start.

When I went to bed that night I expected Felicia and she did not disappoint me. We were hot at it in minutes and I allowed my own release in her mouth. The second one was slow and much nicer. We cuddled for a while then tried a third time. She was a growing girl and could use the protein and I only had a damp spot around my neck.

The next morning Felicia avoided me. I think it was because she was becoming even more infatuate and did not want it known. I got some help from some of the older workers and we cleaned out the tub and recharged it with wine. They were shown how the liquid burned and were suitably impressed to perform the task safely.

Iulius had been conspicuous by his absence. This was good for me but I wondered how convenient it was. He had called one of the military boats one day and just left. He had left word for me that he was just going to see Horatius Postuma. I didn't believe this.

I had another project in mind, and it was a very good time to begin. I took out some bat shit I collected with Alemmani help. I began the process for making a small batch of saltpetre. I tried to keep this secret from those around me but at the same time not seem to be hiding anything. There was enough flimflam I could use if necessary without destroying the process.

It took almost a whole day to make just a half kilogram or half of my new gram.

Felicia came by and said worriedly, "My mother asked me what was wrong. I think she suspects."

"You are acting odd. You were usually at breakfast and now you hide. You went too far the other way."

"Do you think that is it?"

"Yes. Try to act like the way you were a few weeks ago."

"You hadn't done anything to me then and I was just a girl."

"That girl is still inside you. Let her come out."

It took a moment for her to understand and she smiled. "Do you want to go into the barn. I'm hungry."

My dick did the thinking but we were out in half an hour.

The next day I went back to the family forge and formed a large box of lead foil. This is what I had used before to make sulphuric acid. Licinia had a good supply of sulphur after I told her how it could sterilise barrels.

Licinia had two larger glass bottles and one small one. All of them were empty and very valuable to her. I used the larger ones to hold the acid I made. The apparatus was dismantled and I began to make a much smaller still. I would like to have used glass but I had not got around to collecting the ingredients.

I redistilled some of the alcohol I had collected then poured this into a steel pot with the sulphuric acid. This was done outside for fear of an explosion. The product was then distilled enough times until I had some relatively pure diethyl ether. This went into the now clean and empty bottles.

Looking at the liquid I remembered how the US had used this liquid for fuel air bombs that had been somewhat effective against the Cong. Not much literature came out of Nam about this. They had used lots of other liquids too but the stumbling block was the dispersal of the fuel into a mist before it was ignited.

That night over the meal, Licinia said, "We seem to be scaring the birds away. There will be more grapes than usual."

I said, "Will you have enough old barrels to cover this?"

"I am not sure."

"Then maybe we should make a few spares. They don't go bad."

The grain harvest was in and their ineffectual drying processes was all we used. There was old grain though. It looked like a tonne. Some could be shipped to the Roman forts but I wanted some for me. It would be a while before the grapes came in so I had lots of time to work on projects.

The men shifted into making barrels. We had more than enough tools to do it and they had some experience. The Alemmani watched this avidly because they were going to do it next. Progress was faster than normal because we had been cutting lumber by hand for a long time. It was far from dry but it was at least already cut. We shaped the boards then heated them to drive out the moisture. This also made them hard as a rock and hard to machine later.

There was no problem with the forging of the hoops because the men were old hands at this sort of work by now.

I took one of the old barrels and sterilised it with the sulphur to show everybody how to do it. Barley had been purchased and then allowed to germinate. When it had just started, I dried the grain and then ground it fine.

Iulius had come back and he looked sheepish so I knew he was keeping secrets too. He asked, "What are you doing now?"

"Barley and other seeds germinate and turn the flour in the seed into sugar so it can grow. I stopped the process before all of this enzyme disappeared." I then had to talk about enzymes and their functions in life's processes.

"I am going to take wheat and grind it into flour then add the barley enzyme and water. The flour is a substance called starch. It is really made up of two different sugars. The enzyme will split the sugars. Yeast will ferment this, just like the wine. Instead of drinking this it has to be distilled and then stored in new oak barrels. When it is done, each barrel will be worth a fortune."

"I tasted that stuff of yours and I would not pay anything for it."

"You have to develop a taste for it even though it is very strong."

The grinding of the wheat I left to others but I did not have to have it that fine. Stone fragments didn't matter because they would settle out. Licinia liked my experiment and donated more wheat which meant more barley and barrels. Next time I would try rye instead to see how good I can make it.

I made a large barrel two metres high and three long that sat on its side. It was supported by a strong cradle so none of the barrel was sitting on the floor. Wooden valves were put in and I made a water trap for the top so that the carbon dioxide could escape but not admit anything. Licinia was not sure about the size. If it went wrong then there would be a lot of waste.

My next project was a crusher. The two metal cylinders had been made at the camp as well as the bronze bushings. We made a large hopper out of wood. At the bottom was our crusher. A man turned a large crank attached to one of the cylinders and it would turn. Both cylinders were nobby and it was hoped that the grapes would be drawn between the two metal drums and be crushed just enough to release the juice without crushing the stems. Most of the stems had already been removed.

The crank at least was at a convenient height and baskets of grapes would be passed up to people on the platform. I had seen similar events on tours of wineries in Ontario. I had made my own wine for a few years but I was strictly an amateur.

Felicia missed a night and it took a bit of convincing before she admitted that it was her menses. Later that day I gave another talk on sex to all that would listen. This information conflicted with what they had been taught or thought but I think they accepted my version. My track record was pretty good.

Accidents happened all the time around a busy farm and I got a good look at Iulius' tools. I had my own from the camp but his were better. We talked of what a physician had to do and we devised tools to do the tasks.

We had some small files so I made saws from some steel that I had hammered flat. Little chisels, pliers and cutters were already in use. I made a haemostat but it was clumsy and too large. Iulius liked the locking feature though. He and I worked to perfect the design within the constraints of our tooling and materials.

Sutures were now needles and a spool of thread that had to be threaded when needed. I had a lot of premade versions ready for use. We used catgut from sheep and even some silk from a small remnant of cloth. Iulius liked the convenience and the strength of the silk.

Bronze lancets were good but I made steel ones just on principle. I saw sterilisation as a problem and could just use a pot to hold boiling water.

Lee Valley was a tool distributor in my time. It dealt in good hand tools and some oddities for the more eccentric of their customers. One product was a kettle made in eastern Europe. A fire of twigs was made in the box at the bottom and the chimney went up through the middle of the kettle. Water around the chimney absorbed a lot of the heat that would otherwise be wasted.

Tertius was given the drawings and challenged to make some units. I knew that a large one like this was the same as a gas hot water heater I had used in my time. It only had a metal helix in it to slow down the discharge of hot gases.

The grapes started to come in and I helped in the picking. All the rest were doing it and I wanted to learn what I could. I had made some pruning shears with a leather strap to hold them in place. Rather than make a lot there was only ten of two different versions. I did not know what the wineries of my time used so I had to do some research of my own.

The crusher worked fairly well. It might have been better to tie the two drums together with a pair of gears but there was too many other concerns at the camp than make matching gears. The crushing of the grapes by walking in them was now not necessary but it was also a social event. I tried to substitute others but people liked purple skin for some reason. I knew that my smaller brothers would have been all purple if they had got the chance.

I wanted to make a grape press but that was too difficult for the quantities that would have to go through it. I figured that two drums that were placed very close to each other would extract the bitter taste from the stems. What Licinia had was a large vertical wooden screw that was over twenty centimetres in diameter. A large wheel on it pushed wood beams down on the grapes after they had been in the vat for seven to ten days depending on conditions.

I made plans for a long horizontal press that required a heavy steel threaded shaft to go through it. We had no bolts though a smith could make some on demand but they were not uniform. We had no feed for a lathe or a milling machine.

The men that were with me at the camp worked at designing now. This was usually just mental work and it was difficult here to make anything large. After a lot of thought I remembered a simple coil spring and how it looked like a threaded rod. This immediately led to me thinking of a long uniform shaft with a metallic wire wrapped tightly around it. I would then have a thread or at least one to work with.

We then shifted into the actual construction of the lathe. This would take many months to complete. My pseudo threaded shaft would be steel with brass wire that would be wrapped around it then soldered to the shaft. This was not strong but it would hold together long enough to make another shaft out of steel. When the new shaft was hardened it would last for years.