The command to "Get out" hung in the oppressive heat of the forge, a final, unnegotiable dismissal. Bastiano, pale with terror, tugged desperately at Alessandro's sleeve, ready to flee. But Alessandro stood his ground. He held up a hand to silence his steward, his eyes locked on the shadowy form of the giant smith.
"I was told you were the best," Alessandro's voice cut through the air, clear and steady. "I did not travel a day through bandit country to buy a horseshoe."
Lorenzo let out a short, contemptuous laugh that was like the grating of stone. "I am no one's smith. Especially not for some threadbare princeling followed by a trembling ghost. I don't care if you traveled from Rome itself. The answer is no." He turned, intending to reheat his metal, the audience concluded.
"I am not here to commission a sword to hang on a wall," Alessandro pressed on, his voice rising with intensity. "I am here to offer you the chance to forge a tool that will remake the land. To build something no smith has ever built before. A legacy in iron, not just another weapon for a pompous knight to misplace."
The word 'legacy' made Lorenzo pause. His massive shoulders tensed. It was a word that spoke directly to a master craftsman's pride, a pride that had been festering in this squalid workshop for years. He remained with his back to them, but he did not return to the forge.
Seizing the moment, Alessandro knelt on the grimy, soot-covered floor. He picked up a small, flat piece of scrap metal and, using its edge, began to sketch in the thick dust. Bastiano watched, horrified that his lord was dirtying himself on the floor like a beggar.
First, Alessandro drew a sharp, vertical blade. "A coulter, to slice the turf." Then, a flat, angled share. "To cut the soil beneath." Finally, with deliberate care, he drew the elegant, revolutionary curve. "And a mouldboard. To lift the earth and turn it completely over."
He had drawn the heavy plow.
Lorenzo turned slowly, his bad leg dragging. His eyes fell to the drawing on the floor. The sneer on his face slowly dissolved, replaced by a look of intense, professional scrutiny. He limped closer, looming over the design like a storm cloud.
"It's absurd," he grunted, but without the earlier venom. "The curve on the mouldboard is too deep. It will create too much drag. An ox team would stall."
"Only in light, dry soil," Alessandro countered instantly, his mind clicking into a familiar analytical mode. "In the heavy, wet, clay-like earth of a drained riverbed, that curve is necessary to guide and flip the soil without it sticking. A flatter curve would act like a brake."
Lorenzo's eyes flickered with surprise. He pointed with a grimy finger. "And here. The joint where the beam meets the coulter assembly. It's a weak point. The first large rock you hit, it will snap."
"It will be reinforced," Alessandro replied, drawing a more detailed inset. "With a mortise and tenon joint, secured with an iron collar. The stress will be distributed across the entire beam, not just at the joint."
The smith fell silent. He stared from the drawing to the boy who stood before him. This was not the babbling of an ignorant noble. This was the precise language of an engineer, of a fellow craftsman. He was being spoken to by an equal, an impossibility that hung in the air more palpably than the heat.
"Who are you?" Lorenzo asked, his voice now a low rumble of genuine curiosity, not aggression.
"I am a lord with rich land that I cannot till," Alessandro said, rising to his feet. "And you are a master smith with no canvas worthy of your skill. I am offering you that canvas."
The Lame Bear looked at the drawing, at the poverty of the two men before him, and at the rotting walls of his own prison. For the first time in years, the bitter, defensive anger in his eyes was replaced by the focused gleam of a master facing a challenge worthy of his mind.
"A beautiful drawing," Lorenzo said at last, his voice flat. "But drawings don't till fields. This… this requires good iron. Hardwood for pure charcoal. It requires a master's time and skill." He fixed Alessandro with a penetrating stare. "You have no money. I can smell the poverty on you like the stink from the tanneries. So, you will not pay my price in coin."
He straightened up, his massive frame seeming to fill the entire workshop.
"This is my price," the smith declared. "You want my genius? You must first prove your worth. Bring me ten bars of quality iron—not rusty scrap. And a full wagonload of oak or beech, cut and dried for charcoal. Bring me that, and I will forge one of your revolutionary plows."
He picked up his hammer, the motion fluid and final.
"If the tool works as you say it does, I will come to your pile of rocks and we will speak of a partnership. If you fail to bring me my materials, or if you ever show your face here again with empty hands, I will throw you in the river myself."
He turned his back on them, the audience well and truly over.
"Now," his voice boomed, echoing off the stone walls, "I told you to get out."
Alessandro met Bastiano's wide, terrified eyes. He had his master smith. Now, all he had to do was complete another impossible task.