After my speech I grabbed Lawrence and made some preparations to make sure I made good on it. I sent him to see if he could find me someone that could get me fireworks from China. I know they were made long before now.

It took awhile for me to get across what to ask for. I told him to check with the merchants who travel by sea, especially traders that dealt with the far east. I doubted he could find someone in a month as China is a long way away.

As in on the other side of the Ager known world. It was even longer here with no Suez Canal. You have to swing around Africa or go by land. Agers did know of it of course but before Marco polo it was almost mythological. I doubt he would have much success but he had proven me wrong before.

“Well that was a good Speech.” Someone said breaking me out of my thought. I turned around to see Matilda smiling .

“Thank you, milady. I thought the men deserved it and I meant every word.”

“I am sure of that.”

“What brings you out here?”

“I wanted to see what I had given up.” She said, smirking.

“It is a fine site for a Stadium.” Knowing she probably meant something else but ignoring it “I should be able to finish it in time as it will require little prep work.”

“I’m glad. Now about the “making it up to me” you were talking about yesterday.” I was starting to feel like man-whore.

“I can’t milady. I must check in on my other venture in town. If you recall the Rump Roast Inn started today.”

“Oh trust me I know, the whole city knows. It has been the talk all day.”

“Good things I hope. It hasn’t been burned to the ground has it?”

“Not yet but there is no telling what the future might yet bring.” She said, chuckling.

And with that ominous statement I almost ran to the Inn. It was packed. I waded through the crowd to reach the bar and realized they had even thought to hire music. It had slipped my mind, somebody was getting a raise. When I reached it I asked Claire.

“Agatha thought music would be nice.”

“She was right. Has it been this way all day?”

“Yes and we have run out of everything except Beer thank the maker.”

“Don’t worry about it. If you have to turn someone away that will just build up the prestige of this place. Bars and Clubs used to do it where I’m from all the time.”

“They chased them off with Bars and Clubs? I like it.”

“No. No.” I sighed sometimes I forgot when I was “Just tell them unfortunately due to overwhelming demand for our fabulous food we no longer can serve you fine gentleman/ladies. I do hope you come back and see us tomorrow.” Then I had an idea.

“Have Agatha do it, that can be her job. It's called a Hostess. She sits customers and turns away any undesirables, uh any who have a history of not paying or touching the girls.”

I explained that there would be absolutely no touching of the Girls. After they were warned once and do it again they were to remove them and tell them to cool off a day or two.

“If they come back and do it again, place a photo, I mean a drawing of them at the entrance saying they are banned under it and for why and never let them in again.”

“How will I remove them Sir Arthur? It is just me and my daughter here with you gone.”

“I will send you one of my recent finds to be a Bouncer, uh think a bodyguard for the Inn, after practice tomorrow his name is Goodwin and he is almost as large as I am. I’m afraid we may have to start our own slaughterhouse after he starts eating alongside this lot.”

That’s when another good business idea hit me, slaughterhouses and meat production. I knew a little about farming as gramps owned one but I wasn’t raised on it. He had raised cattle mainly with a few chickens and a pig or two. But it was what gramps also raised that I thought would be most useful for winter that would be here before long. Rabbits.

Rabbits are amazing creatures. They will live off almost anything vegetative. From grass to hay they even eat kitchen scraps. Love them actually. They also breed well like rabbits. Where do you think the saying comes from?

The best part is they eat little compared to other meat animals and are what is called “on the hoof” meat. You slaughter them and eat them usually within 24 hours. No storing needed which in a world with no refrigeration and expensive salt was a godsend.

Note to self build rabbitry.

I found that Claire had saved me some fried chicken. I told her she was a life saver and scarfed it down. I talked to Agatha and I made it known that what she did was one of the most important jobs at the restaurant. I also set it up where she would get 10% of all the tips that the other girls made. In the 21st that happened informally but I wanted it set up in writing in my restaurant.

Hamen and the busboys (although I decided to use trainee waitresses to do the job to see how they worked around customers) were paid by the Inn but the girls worked for tips. I however set it up where 10% of the bill was automatically a tip from me. This way they had an incentive to sell my food. They even got 20% for drinks as I had a larger markup on them.

I had always not liked the obligation to have to give a server a tip in the 21st. I always thought a tip should only go to someone who went above what an average server did or who was especially nice to the point it made the visit better than just a meal. So that’s how I set my restaurant up and made sure both the customers but especially the girls knew this. I would probably end up having to enforce the no touching rule more on the girls then the customers after a few weeks.

My still was still a work in progress. The puns are strong with this one.

I had a problem with copper tubing. As in it didn’t exist. I had to go back to the basics on what a still was. Basically a still is an evaporator and a condenser. Alcohol evaporates at lower temperature than water thus it boils off quicker and once you catch it and condense it (cool it, this is what the copper pipe does) you can collect the purified alcohol. I just used the principle and built a simple one.

Think of a cauldron boiling with a cone lid. The lid has a hole in it above it is a kind of copper double umbrella that drops down the side. The vaporized alcohol collects on the outer umbrella and falls down the side into a container on the bottom. Its not perfect but it does work. And It wasn’t bad shine. I’ve had worse trust me. It just wasn’t in nearly sufficient quantities and I think I lost most of it as vapor.

I had it working enough to sell a few shots to some brave men though almost none had a second. I had a plan on how to sell it by the buckets once I could make it by the buckets. My limited understanding from two classes of psychology was making it easy to manipulate people who had no experience with any, especially the nobles and their pride.

I had to make the shot glasses out of copper. You never think about it in the 21st but glass making is pretty energy intensive and it is expensive as hell in the 12th. Unfortunately that was something I knew nothing about other then it was sand heated up real hot and worked somehow. Glass seems unimportant until its not there.

I realized when I saw the amount of coin being thrown around here that I was going to have to start some double entry accounting. That meant having to either train someone new or take Gilbert off engineering. Either way had its plus and minuses.

I didn’t even know if he would work there and I knew he could probably excel in accounting. I first decided to see if any of the girls that already worked at the Rump Roast could grasp basic math. I had every employee take a quick oral test (as they for the most case were illiterate) to judge how quick they could grasp math.

I was surprised by one girl by the name of Cristina who was actually a busgirl. She grasped the basics faster than even Gilbert had. I decided to cross train her in math and start some basic accounting courses and see how she handled it.

I left making sure to thank everyone for all there hard work as I did. I was feeling like my investment in the Inn was a good call. It not only brought in money but lips are never looser then were booze flows. It would probably pay off more in information gathering then anything else.

As I was walking I started trying to remember all those days in accounting class. After some thought, I decided it was time to start that school finally. Probably start with a basic math and accounting course, then expand into reading/writing. It is easier to teach a lot of people at once then separately as they can help each other and lord knows I need all the help I can get.

Math was absolutely necessary for an industrialized country. You can get by without knowing how to read or write but you really are at a disadvantage if you can’t do adding, subtracting, and multiplying. It's my theory that's why everyone hates dealing in large quantities. Anything more than a dozen is like blowing their minds.

If I made accounting into an accreditation program that could be revoked I could cut down on corruption drastically. I could also maybe get the King to codify laws to discourage it. Maybe an “off with his hand” clause for really naughty individuals caught cooking the books.

When I got to the Tower I tracked down the King and found him in the Throne room.

“Good evening your majesty.”

“Hello Sir Arthur how was your first day of this football practice?”

“Good your majesty. You have some very good men under your command.”

“Some not so much it would appear. What is this of you dismissing some of my Knights?”

“They struck peasants, your grace. While I care not what happens to these peasants outside of my field, on it they will be respected as football players. If they are not, I'm afraid you will lose in football the same as in war. If you do not respect your men on the battlefield they will not follow your commands isn’t that correct, your majesty?” I of course did care, that's why I was doing this to begin with.

“Yes, yes I suppose you're right but they are only peasants. I hope you got rid of the peasant that instigated the problem”

“I did your Grace” I didn’t of course that was usually one of the Monkey twins and they never instigated anything.

“Good now, is that why you came to see me?”

“No, your majesty, I wanted to tell you more about America. Especially our economy and what is called accounting. I think it could help us both keep a lot more of our silver.”