WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Ceaseless

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈

Chapter 63: Bohemian Cement (2)

──────

"You must have had a difficult journey, Your Majesty."

When János Hunyadi and I arrived at the Sternberg domain, Štěpán was the first to greet me.

"It's been a while, Štěpán. You look very well."

"It's all thanks to the grace Your Majesty has bestowed upon me. To think an old man like me would enjoy such comfort before he dies."

The elderly stoneworker had overseen Sternberg's reconstruction and expansion while I was away.

When we first met, he had been nothing more than a pitiful old man, staring blankly at the burned village and worrying about tomorrow.

Now, he was different.

He carried the dignity of a chief construction supervisor, commanding more than ten thousand laborers and craftsmen as he built a massive industrial city from the ground up.

Even the scent on the wind in Sternberg was completely different from Prague.

The acrid sulfur smell that pierced deep into the lungs.

The heavy smoke belched out by burning coal.

It was the opposite of Prague's sweet apple scent, yet it smelled far more fragrant to me.

This was the scent of civilization advancing and developing.

"How is the city doing?"

"There is much to report, but I will first address the matter Your Majesty expressed concern about in your letter."

Štěpán spoke with confidence.

"I have heard that Prague is suffering because of soap suds. But this place is different."

"You seem confident."

"How could I not be? From the moment Your Majesty first drafted the city plan, you ordered the water and sewage works to be carried out thoroughly. We laid pipes beneath the roads in advance and designed the city so domestic wastewater would be collected separately in septic tanks. We have prepared it carefully enough to withstand even a doubling of the current population."

I was pleased. It was far easier to draw on a blank canvas than to paint over one that had already been ruined.

Prague was a relic of the old age that had to be overcome, while Sternberg was the prototype of the twenty-first-century city I had designed.

"Excellent. How is the city's construction progressing?"

At my question, Štěpán pointed toward the construction site.

"The workforce Your Majesty sent is so great that we have more hands than we need. As you can see, the residential district has been laid out in the grid pattern you ordered, and the foundation work is complete. Coal supplies from Silesia are also steady, so we needn't worry about fuel for the kilns."

He paused, removed his hat, and scratched his head. An awkward expression crossed his face.

"There is just one problem."

"A problem?"

"Yes. We have enough workers and fuel, but the pace at which the buildings are going up simply cannot keep up."

Štěpán pointed to the unfinished red-brick buildings.

"Mixing clay, placing it in molds, drying it in the shade, firing it in a kiln, then cooling it again... That process alone takes over a week. We operate the kilns around the clock, but the bricks produced each day are barely enough to build a few houses."

"Hmm..."

The problem Štěpán described was the limitation of traditional brick construction.

Bricks were excellent building materials, but mass-producing them required an unavoidable amount of time.

No matter how much high-heat coal from Silesia they poured in, they could not forcibly shorten the chemical process by which earth became fired ceramic.

"More migrants keep arriving from Prague, and we need houses for them, as well as larger factories... Yet more and more days pass with the workers sitting idle because there are no bricks."

Štěpán let out a deep, frustrated sigh.

"Starting tomorrow, we may have to halt construction and wait for the bricks to be fired. The wages for idle laborers are no small expense... You entrusted this to me, yet I have failed you, Your Majesty."

Blaming himself for his incompetence, he lowered his head.

Silently, I patted his shoulder.

"Raise your head, Štěpán. This is not your fault."

"But..."

"You have done your best. I know well that this is the limit of making stone by firing earth."

I looked over the construction site.

Cranes stood still beside unfinished red-brick houses.

Workers with nothing to do had gathered in small groups, chatting among themselves.

If we could not solve this bottleneck, Sternberg's expansion would stop here. The sewer construction in Prague would be impossible as well, no matter how desperately we tried.

But I already had the answer.

"Let's go to the steelworks."

I led Štěpán across the square toward the Royal Steelworks.

The closer we came, the stronger the acrid coal smoke and sharp metallic smell of iron became.

As we entered the steelworks, a wave of blistering heat struck my face. Amid that heat, a man drenched in sweat and covered in soot greeted us.

It was Tomáš, Sternberg's blacksmith and the Technical Officer (Meister) currently responsible for the steelworks' Blast furnace.

"I have been waiting, Your Majesty."

Tomáš had already received my letter and made every preparation.

Behind him, a strange sight unfolded in one corner of the workshop.

Where molten iron and steel ingots would normally have been piled, mountains of unidentified gray and white powders now stood. Beside them lay fine sand scooped from the river, gravel, and rows of water barrels.

With a puzzled expression, Štěpán pointed to the heaps.

"Your Majesty, what is all this? It doesn't seem to be flour..."

"It's similar. The difference is that this is batter that bakes cities rather than bread."

I smirked and grabbed a handful of gray powder.

Fine particles slipped through my fingers.

"Štěpán. As a stoneworker, you must have heard of Rome's buildings."

"Of course. You mean legendary structures such as the Pantheon and the Colosseum. They are such astonishing relics that stoneworkers say they must have been built by God."

Reverence filled Štěpán's eyes.

Roman ruins that had endured for more than a thousand years were an unreachable ideal and an unknown realm to medieval craftsmen.

"What do you think is the secret behind those buildings enduring for a thousand years?"

"Surely... it is because the ancients' stoneworking skills were far superior to ours? Their ability to fit stone against stone without a gap, for example..."

I shook my head firmly.

"No. The Romans did not carve stone."

"Pardon...? They did not carve stone?"

Štěpán's eyes widened.

For someone who had spent his entire life splitting stone with chisels, it was a concept beyond imagination.

"Opus Caementicium. The Romans made molds and poured batter into them. The batter flowed like water, but with time, it became rock harder than natural stone. That was the secret behind Rome building an empire that lasted a thousand years."

I pointed to the materials Tomáš had prepared.

"The key ingredient that made that miracle possible was red volcanic ash spewed from Mount Vesuvius near Naples. The Romans called it pozzolana."

Volcanic ash.

It was a trace of the earth's fury, yet also an adhesive that supported civilization.

Silica and alumina were abundant in volcanic ash.

When they met lime and water, they caused a fierce chemical reaction, transforming calcium hydroxide into calcium silicate hydrate.

Because this binding material possessed powerful hydraulic properties that let it harden like stone even underwater, the Romans could use it to build harbors in the middle of the sea and raise enormous domes.

But when the empire fell and Mediterranean trade routes were cut off, this great technology disappeared into history.

Medieval craftsmen, unable to obtain the essential pozzolana, were at a loss.

Without volcanic ash, lime mortar was nothing but mud that dissolved whenever it rained.

In the end, they dismissed Roman structures as the magic of the ancients, picked up their chisels and hammers again, and returned to the primitive age of carving stone.

It would take several more centuries, until the nineteenth century, for an Englishman to bring this lost technology back into the world.

János Hunyadi, who had been listening beside me, tilted his head and asked, "I am always impressed by my lord's vast knowledge, but this is Bohemia. We do not have a volcano anywhere nearby, let alone Naples. Where exactly do you intend to get volcanic ash?"

"If there is no volcano, we can just make one."

"M-Make a volcano?"

I gestured toward the Blast furnace roaring behind us.

Kwoooooo!

The enormous Blast furnace greedily spat out red flames.

That thing, which melted iron ore to draw out molten iron, was no different from an artificial volcano fashioned by human hands.

"Tomáš, explain."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

Tomáš stepped forward and opened a sack filled with gray powder.

"This is slag. It is the waste that floats on top when iron is melted in the Blast furnace. In the past, it was treated as rubbish and simply dumped by the river..."

Tomáš grabbed a handful of the powder and held it before Štěpán's eyes.

"But on Your Majesty's orders, we rapidly cooled the boiling slag in cold water. It became sand that shattered like glass. We then ground that sand into this fine powder."

"Slag... Waste?"

Štěpán touched the gray powder with an unbelieving expression.

"Your Majesty, are you saying this waste is the same as Roman volcanic ash?"

"Chemically, they are almost identical. No, it may even be better than natural volcanic ash because its impurities are controlled."

Blast furnace slag contained a dense concentration of silica, alumina, and calcium oxide.

When rapidly cooled, it became a glassy substance that could not crystallize. The moment it met lime and water, its dormant hydraulic properties awakened explosively.

That was the true nature of blast furnace slag cement, the backbone of modern construction.

"Seeing it once is better than hearing about it a hundred times. Tomáš, begin mixing."

At my command, Tomáš and his assistants began moving in perfect coordination.

They poured gray slag powder and white quicklime powder into a large wooden barrel. The proportions were the optimal mixture ratio I had calculated beforehand.

Shhhhhhk!

The pale powders mixed together, raising a thick cloud of dust throughout the workshop.

"Now pour in the water."

At my command, Tomáš tipped a large barrel of water.

Ssssss!

Rough steam surged upward. It came from the intense heat of hydration released as the quicklime met water and transformed into calcium hydroxide.

The mixture in the barrel bubbled like a living creature, spewing white vapor.

János Hunyadi, who had been watching up close, jumped back in surprise.

"You poured water onto stone powder, and it is giving off heat? What kind of bizarre magic is this?"

"It is not magic. Think of it as labor pains before it becomes stone."

I calmly watched the rising heat.

The assistants stirred the mixture with enormous wooden paddles. As the powder and water clung together, it gradually became thick, dark-gray mud.

"Now add the sand and gravel."

River sand and crushed gravel poured in.

Squish, squish.

Large beads of sweat formed on the assistants' foreheads as they stirred the heavy, sinking mixture.

Štěpán still watched with deeply suspicious eyes.

"Your Majesty... Forgive me, but are you truly saying that muck will become stone? To my eyes, it looks like nothing more than muddy water that will wash away in a single rain."

"It does now. But it will be different tomorrow morning."

I pointed to the wooden mold prepared in advance.

"Pour it."

Tomáš and his assistants groaned as they lifted the wooden barrel.

Rumble, splat!

The gray mass poured into the wooden mold.

It was a fluid substance with no form and no predetermined shape.

Yet that flexibility was precisely its true value.

Depending on the mold, it could become a square brick, a grand pillar, or even a road stretching across the entire city.

Once the surface of the mixture filling the mold was smoothed, it formed a fairly convincing flat surface.

I removed my glove and gently placed my palm over the mixture, which had not yet hardened.

It was warm.

A subtle warmth created by chemical reactions traveled into my palm.

"Štěpán."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"When the sun rises tomorrow morning, bring your heaviest hammer and strike this."

Wiping the gray mixture from my hand, I continued.

"It may look like insignificant mud now, but by tomorrow, you will throw away your chisels and hammers. From now on, by simply making molds and pouring this gray water, you will build walls that would take ten years to build in just one month."

Štěpán swallowed hard and stared at the gray pool in the mold.

In his old eyes, fear at the collapse of everything he had known as a stoneworker mingled with faint anticipation for a new age.

János Hunyadi came closer and whispered quietly, "My lord. If that truly hardens... then Prague's sewer construction will be the least of our concerns."

Sharp fellow.

He had already grasped this technology's military value.

"City walls, fortresses, roads... The very nature of war will change completely."

"Yes. We will be able to throw up city walls before our enemies even have time to make ladders."

Now all that remained was time.

Time for the hydration reaction to finish, and for the crystals to entangle and bind together.

Once that time had passed, Bohemia would shed the shell of the Middle Ages and finally cross the threshold into the modern era.

"All right, we'll call it a day. We will gather here again tomorrow morning."

As I turned away, I added to Tomáš, "Oh, Tomáš. Keep collecting the slag. We will need mountains of it from now on."

"It shall be done. But, Your Majesty..."

Tomáš hesitated before asking, "What should we call this new stone? My tongue gets twisted trying to say Opus... whatever it was."

I stopped and considered the question.

In the distant future, an Englishman named Joseph Aspdin would restore Rome's lost technology and patent it.

He would name it Portland cement because the hardened result resembled the limestone of Portland Island in England.

But there was no reason for me to borrow the name of an English island.

This gray powder was born from Sternberg's Blast furnace. It would cover Prague's roads and become the material used to build every city wall in Bohemia.

Its name should therefore find a master worthy of it.

I curled my lips into a smile and answered simply.

"Bohemian Cement. From now on, that is what this stone will be called."

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried