The triumph of discovery lasted for a single, glorious evening. The next morning, standing before the colossal rubble of the Roman gatehouse, the sheer impossibility of the task settled upon the men like a physical weight.
Enzo ran a hand over one of the massive stone blocks, a piece of granite the size of a small cart. "My lord," he said, his voice flat with resignation, "we have found the iron. But it is buried. It would take fifty men and a week to move even one of these stones. We are five. We will die of old age here before we free the first pin."
The other men murmured in agreement. The awe of the previous day had evaporated, replaced by the familiar despair of the practical man facing an immovable object.
Alessandro, however, was already looking past the problem. He wasn't seeing a pile of rocks; he was seeing a puzzle of weight and leverage. He walked to a smooth, flat piece of slate, knelt, and with a sharp shard of quartz, began to etch a diagram. It was a simple drawing: three long poles bound at the top, with a rope threaded through a wheel at the apex and another at the bottom.
"What is that, lord?" one of the peasants asked, peering at the strange symbol.
"That is how we move the mountain," Alessandro said. He pointed to the drawing. "This is a hoist. Enzo, you say fifty men cannot move that stone. I say four men can. We will build this machine, and we will make the rope do the work of the men."
He was met with blank, uncomprehending stares. The concept was utterly alien.
"A devil's machine," one of the older peasants muttered, crossing himself.
"It is a machine of wood, rope, and knowledge," Alessandro corrected firmly. "The same knowledge that gave us the drainage trench. Have I been wrong yet?"
They could not argue with that. Grumbling and still deeply skeptical, they followed his orders. The construction of the hoist became their new focus. They felled three tall, straight pine trees from the edge of the woods. Under Alessandro's precise direction, they lashed the tops together with their strongest rope. The most difficult part was the pulleys—the wheels that Alessandro called sheaves. He had them carve two thick, round discs of hardwood, painstakingly grooving the edges and drilling a hole through the center. He then fashioned a wooden housing for each, creating a crude but functional block and tackle system.
When they finally erected the towering tripod over the rubble pile, it looked like a monstrous, skeletal idol. The men eyed it with a mixture of fear and fascination.
The first test was a moment of supreme tension. They wrapped their thickest ropes around the key stone block, the one pinning down two iron clamps. Four men, Enzo among them, took hold of the pulling rope, their knuckles white.
"Pull!" Alessandro commanded. "Slowly. Together."
The men strained. The pine legs of the hoist creaked and groaned. The ropes stretched taut, humming with a dangerous energy. For a moment, nothing happened.
"It is useless!" a man cried out.
"Again!" Alessandro roared. "Pull!"
They gave another great heave. There was a deep, grating crack as the stone broke its ancient seal with the earth. Then, with a collective groan of protesting wood, the massive block lifted. It swung free, a foot off the ground, suspended by nothing but rope and their own straining muscles.
The four men holding the rope stared, their mouths agape. The others looked on in stunned, reverent silence. It was not a devil's machine. It was a miracle. The fear of the haunted ruins vanished completely, burned away by the brilliant light of their lord's genius.
With the method proven, the work began in earnest. Alessandro, acting as a master of works, divided his meager labor force. He put Enzo, now a fervent convert to the church of ingenuity, in charge of the 'quarrying' operation at the ruins. With the hoist, Enzo's team could now lift and maneuver the great stones, exposing the Roman iron beneath.
Alessandro organized the older men and boys to manage the procurement of wood from the oak grove. A new sound of purposeful work filled the once-silent ruins. The task required patience, but their diligence was rewarded with a steadily growing supply of timber.
Over the next two weeks, the landscape of the ruins transformed. A great pile of rust-colored iron pins grew beside a small mountain of felled oak logs, cut and stacked to dry. The men worked from sunrise to sunset, their exhaustion matched only by their soaring morale. They were no longer the starving, hopeless peasants of Rocca Falcone. They were victors, pioneers, a team forging a hoard of wealth from a place of fear, led by a lord who could command the very stones to move.
Finally, the work was done. They had the iron. They had the wood. Using their newfound hoisting skills, they began the arduous task of loading the fruits of their labor. The iron pins were piled carefully onto their single, rickety wagon, its axles groaning in protest. The heavy oak logs were lashed to a newly built stone-boat, a crude sledge designed by Alessandro for dragging heavy loads down the rough slope of the ridge.
As the sun set, casting long shadows from the Roman columns, the loading was complete. Alessandro stood before the laden wagon and sledge, a tangible dragon's hoard of raw materials. He had the smith's price.
He looked from his treasure to the winding, treacherous path that led out of his valley. He had faced down starvation, fear, and hopelessness. Now he had to face the outside world again. But this time, he was not a beggar with nothing to lose. He was the guardian of a slow-moving, immensely valuable prize, and every bandit, baron, and roving mercenary between Rocca Falcone and Ceprano would see it as a treasure ripe for the taking.