“The camp followers at Germersheim are settling in, a little. Squatting, I guess you would say. Fixing up the ruins. Digging in the old gardens with wooden spades. Trying to cobble together something that looks like a plow from boards, leather, and swords.”
“Literally beating their swords into plowshares?”
“Well, the blacksmiths and farriers were with the camp followers; the whole support staff for the dragoons. If we can get them through the summer, until such time as the people who used to live there come back and want their land, they’ll survive.” Derek jumped a little. “What’s that?”
Joel looked under the table. “That’s Claws. Andrea’s kitten that she took in when it started hanging around the camp here. Sickly, scrawny, half-grown cat. She quoted some folk song about ‘Take her out of pity’ that the Kingston Trio used to sing. The kitten turned out to be a boy, though. I figured he was so ugly that I’d better feed him, now that she’s gone, because he’ll never make it through life on his looks. Trelli says I’m crazy.”
“Maybe he’ll help keep the vermin down. How much of a problem are mice and rats? Is there enough DDT?”
✽ ✽ ✽
“Joel’s in the lazarette,” Lawson Thompson reported to Derek Utt.
“Damn. He seemed fine a couple of days ago.”
“He isn’t now.”
“Let me go talk to Gus Szymanski.”
“He had a wife, you know,” Gus said.
“Had?”
“He died this morning.”
Derek shook his head. “Alice is expecting a baby, too. This is going to hit his parents hard.”
“That’s what’s so bad about fighting wars with young men,” Gus answered. “They leave young wives behind, and kids who need fathers. The powers that be ought to fight their wars with old farts like me as the cannon fodder. We might be slower, but wouldn’t be missed so much once we were gone.”
“You’re as much on the front lines as the rest of us, when it comes to this plague. More, in a lot of ways.”
✽ ✽ ✽
“I don’t think that ‘qualm-y’ is actually a word,” Matt Trelli wrote to Marcie. “I think it’s ‘over-scrupulous.’ Back when we were taking CCD classes from Mr. Piazza, he used to talk about scruples, remember. That it was one thing to be scrupulous and another to be over-scrupulous. The trick was being able to tell them apart.”
Chapter 21 Everything Head over Heels
“...und in gottes nahmen mitt aller gewalt auf sie gangen, und alle regiment in die flucht und über hals und kopf auch hierüber gebracht,...”
Lorraine
July 1635
Puylaurens talked. He kissed his lady mistress on the ear, which rarely failed to work. Then he talked some more.
Henriette listened with ever diminishing patience.
“My darling Antoine, Monsieur wasted everything last time,” she protested. “The money we raised, the men we recruited. Threw them all away. How can you ask me to give him more?”
“He is my lord,” Puylaurens said stiffly. “And my friend.”
“He is no one’s friend. Oh, what a pestilent man he is. Listen to me, Antoine. I love you. Truly, I do. Can’t you see. You are one of his tools, nothing more than that. Once you are broken, he will discard you the way a spoiled child discards a broken toy.”
“He is my friend. I owe him so much. Without his patronage, if I had not been attached to his household, I would have had no standing at the court. I would have been just one more obscure nobleman from the province of Languedoc.”
“I will not spend one more penny on his cause...” Henriette paused. “No. No more.” She paused again. “Not unless... Well, for the sake of our love. Only if Gaston agrees to stay with us, and make me a part of his council. Only if I can keep my eyes on him.”
She threw her feet to the side of the bed. “Veto his stupider ideas.”
“He will never consent. As a point of honor...”
“Honor?” Henriette shrieked.
The quarrel continued, to the great interest of the footmen stationed outside the bedroom door.
Things, clearly, were being thrown. One raised an eyebrow at the other. They could find out exactly what when the cleaners went inside in the morning.
There were newspaper reporters who would pay generously for this information.
Puylaurens slammed the door open.
On his way out, he paused dramatically in the frame and gestured.
“How can a weak woman understand the honor of a true gentleman? You called Monsieur a spoiled child. You are yourself nothing but a spoiled little girl who spends too much time thinking about prosaic things such as paying soldiers.”
The effect was rather ruined by the fact that he was wearing only his slippers and drawers.
He ran down the corridor yelling that he was leaving with the messenger to join Gaston at Neufchâteau.
Reports of this argument, as retailed by the footmen, had unintended impact. They persuaded the more prudent of the mercenaries, who managed to pick up on the fact that it was la princesse Henriette who was holding the purse strings, that come what may, they would stay right there in Pfalzburg. The less pragmatic captains decided to get in touch with Monsieur Gaston.
Henriette, examining her options, got in touch with the deputy administrator of the USE Province of the Upper Rhine, one Johann Moritz of Nassau-Siegen, for some serious talk about steel, coal, and plague.
She followed up these conversations with seriously enforced quarantines and other rigorous measures.
The less pragmatic mercenary captains, hearing of this, congratulated themselves on having headed west before they were caught up in her net.
✽ ✽ ✽
Grand Duke Bernhard, both directly by letter and in public by way of various pamphlets produced by Moscherosch, made righteous representations to France that Louis XIII and Richelieu needed to do something about the actions of Monsieur Gaston, who was claiming to represent the French royal interests in Lorraine.
Both his formal representations and informal communications emphasized that the king in the Low Countries and he himself, in the April settlement, had been very careful to maintain the “legitimate” title of Charles IV, whether he claimed it for himself or in right of his wife.
Bernhard’s formal letters stated with considerable restraint that Monsieur Gaston’s wife Marguerite, as the late duke’s mere younger sister, had no claim at all to be the legitimate ruler of the duchy, which indeed should now fall to the Duchess Nicole, under her father’s will, or to Charles IV’s younger brother, Nicolas François, if the alleged will of René II were upheld by an impartial court.
Moscherosch further supplemented this in the publicity pamphlets by noting that even if the truly dastardly decisions of 1625, based on the forged will of Duke René II, in the face of all honor and truth, decisions which displayed no trace of knightly gallantry and chivalry toward that unfortunate lady, who had been illegally deprived of her heritage by the machinations of her husband, father-in-law, and the Estates of Lorraine in 1625, and which decisions unjustifiably tried to extend the French Salic law to Lorraine, were allowed to stand, with all the injustices this meant for Duchess Nicole, Charles IV’s heir would not be his youngest sister Marguerite but rather his younger brother, the former Cardinal of Lorraine and ex-bishop of Toul.
Moscherosch had not been able to resist the last two ill-disguised digs. Pamphlets allowed so much more scope than diplomatic correspondence.
The descriptions of Nicole’s prolonged sufferings at the hands of her late husband were really quite touching, Moscherosch thought, admiring his own work.
The legal arguments weren’t bad, either. If a person went on the basis of strictly legitimate hereditary rights, la petite Nicolette really was the proper ruling duchess of Bar as well as the dowager duchess of Lorraine.
Too bad she was such a dumpy, unimpressive, unassertive, sort of individual. The left corner of his mouth quirked. The quirk
spread upward to his left eye, across to the other, and down to the right corner of his mouth. Perhaps he could polish up her image a bit, pro bono. He liked to think of himself as a chivalric gentleman and the series of pamphlets was selling well. He picked up his pen.
✽ ✽ ✽
Riding fast and disguised, Puylaurens crossed Lorraine, bringing word of Henriette’s refusal to Gaston, who did not receive it graciously.
Gaston announced, with a flourish, that he would certainly be able to persuade at least some of the cavalry that her officials had recruited to join him, since she was not currently planning any campaigns that offered them the prospect of significant financial reward. Abandoning Neufchâteau to the depredations of his mercenary infantry, with little more than “stay put until I get back” in the way of orders, he took what cavalry forces he had with him and headed back toward Pfalzburg.
Well north of Lunéville, near Dieuze, they ran into the disaffected cavalry companies’ scouts. That was, Puylaurens thought with considerable relief, preferable to coming directly within the purview of an angry princesse de Phalsbourg. Henriette was mad. Not mad as in insane, but mad as in angry. Excessively infuriated.
A usable, if somewhat diminished, cavalry now in hand, Gaston informed his confederates that he was abandoning his intention to march on Saint-Avold.
Puylaurens found this a great relief, given that Saint-Avold, like Neufchâteau, was part of Henriette’s Phalsbourg.
His relief did not last long.
Since they were already close to the eastern border of Lorraine, and consequently close to the western border of the USE Province of the Upper Rhine which used to be northern Alsace (he was quite proud of this feat of geographical ratiocination), his next move would be an effort to capture or destroy the oil fields at Merkwiller-Pechelbronn. “For,” he said airily, “if I can take them for France, or at least ruin them for further use by the USE, my brother will likely forgive me for all my past sins and force Richelieu to do the same. “Nobody will be expecting us to come at them from this direction.”
Clicquot winced. No rational man would come at Pechelbronn from this direction. The roads from here to there were narrow country lanes, unsuitable for troop movements.
Marchéville told Monsieur that any rational man would go northeast to Sarreguemines and then southeast to the oil fields, which came close to causing his death. If there had been a trained executioner on Gaston’s staff, it would have caused the Lorrainer’s death, but there was none and Gaston had too much sense of what was due to rank and birth to order the hanging of a nobleman.
Puylaurens was tempted to say that it would be more reasonable to find a secure but ineptly defended fortress, presuming that one might be available given the number of military contingents now marching through Lorraine, take it, and stay inside it until they could make some kind of terms with Fernando or Louis XIII. Knowing Gaston better than Marchéville did, he kept his mouth shut.
Nobody was able to persuade Monsieur to reverse his decision. He was, after all, the brother of the king of France. Clicquot concentrated on coming up with something that looked like it might be, generously interpreted, a plan for the raid.
Chapter 22 A Misfortune so Ghastly that it Couldn’t Be Worse
“das grosse unglueck, welches so arg, dass es nicht aerger sein kann.”
Lorraine
July 1635
The plague has gotten into some of my regiments, probably from working together with the contingent that came from Metz. Colonel Bodendorf, a faithful officer who has been with me for years, died yesterday. A couple of the junior officers serving under him have also been called to the mercy of God. I have sent Ludwig Schmid, one of my personal physicians, to deliver what aid he can. Forgive me, my lady, for ending this letter so abruptly, but the brave post rider is ready to leave and as usual, there are all too many things going on, keeping me busy, for me to have the luxury of completely describing the situation here to you in this letter.
Bernhard put down his pen. “I feel absolutely naked without having my Kanzlei with me,” he complained to Michael John. “All these years, my documents have always traveled along. Now most are in Besançon and the current but inactive files are in Schwarzach. The situation is practically causing me to shiver.”
John started to laugh and then looked at him with concern. The grand duke actually was shivering with some kind of chill. He got him into bed and covered him up, the lack of protest at this treatment indicating his employer really was sick.
“Send the letter I just wrote to Claudia. Get a letter out to Fernando,” Bernhard said. “Assure him I’m certain that God will handle my temporary weakness so graciously that I hope that soon I will once again be able to render the services that the Lord will require of me.”
“Sure,” John said.
“Is it the colic again?” Moscherosch asked anxiously the next morning.
“He just says that he doesn’t feel well,” the secretary answered. “There’s been constant diarrhea all night. He says that he’s never felt this bad before in his life. He’s fevered––terribly hot. Then he starts to chill again.”
“Rashes? Spots?”
“No, but he’s very short of breath. His heartbeat is strong, though.”
“Did you call a doctor?”
“I don’t trust either of those quacks on his staff. If you ask me, those blue pills that Blandin has been giving him just make his stomach more tender. Sometimes he vomits blood.”
Freiburg im Breisgau
“God, but this is a disaster,” Kanoffski exploded. “I don’t see how it could be worse.”
Erlach looked at him phlegmatically. “He could be dead. That would be worse.”
“Lutz...”
“It could be widely known that he is ill. The carrion birds could already be circling over our heads.”
“So what do we do?”
“Minimize it. Admit that he’s sick, but make light of it. Just a passing thing. Everyone in Europe who can read a newspaper already knows that he suffers from chronic indigestion.”
Lorraine
“We can’t keep him in the camp,” Michael John said. “A tent is no place to treat a serious illness. We have to risk moving him to Châtel-sur-Moselle. I’ll feel a lot more secure having him inside walls and towers.”
Moscherosch thought about it. There was no doubt that the grand duke’s semi–permanent administrative headquarters in Lorraine had walls and towers. About a mile of walls and twenty-two towers (he had counted them). The castle was up on a rocky cliff over the Moselle. Military types had considered it defensible ever since the days when the Roman legions were passing through the region. Storerooms. Whole networks of galleries. Tunnels for reaching the town below and the banks of the river.
Okay, he would admit it. John had a point. It would be easier to protect the grand duke there than in a tent. Practically, though... “How do we move him?”
“Do you know Private Karpff?”
“Margali’s company? Long-time veteran.”
“Yes. The man would go through hell for the grand duke. Have him pick a few people he trusts and bring a stretcher after dark. We’ll move him on foot, by night. You can let out a news release that he traveled to headquarters by night, but give the impression that he was on a horse, moving under his own power, responding to some kind of emergency.”
“What are you so suspicious of? Or whom?”
“There are an awful lot of people who’ve been less than thrilled by his rise to power.”
✽ ✽ ✽
“Write to the grand duchess,” Bernhard muttered to John. “Send it by the next post. Tell her that I’m not in very good shape right now and expect that it’s going to be a while before I get back to being completely healthy.”
“My lord, that is a considerable understatement.”
“It will do. No need to alarm her.”
He didn’t make a sound when they moved him onto the stretcher, nor all through the miles o
f darkness.
In the morning, safely inside the castle, he allowed himself a brief groan as they transferred him from the stretcher to the bed. Reaching out a hand to Karpff, he quoted Ecclesiastes 9:11,
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.
Then he added, “but remember, old soldier, although we are taught to pray, ‘Thy will and not mine be done, Lord,’ given the option, I would prefer not to die right now and will do all in my power not to do so.”
The stretcher squad left to return to the camp.
Karpff looked at his hand in wonder. “I’ll never wash it again.”
David Sinclair and George Leslie shook their heads.
“You will,” young Hallier said. “Before every single meal. Grand duke’s orders.”
They shook their heads again.
In the room, Bernhard looked at John. “On the other hand, if the time has come for me to die, have Rücker preach my funeral sermon on Timothy 2:7-8. And summon the chancellor from Besançon. Just in case, I’d better make a will.”
Basel
Diane Jackson threw the morning newspaper across the room. “I do not believe for one minute that this illness is nothing to worry about. I remember how Frank always acts when he is sick and this sounds like that. Which meant that once Frank almost died from an abcessed appendix because he would not go to the doctor when his stomach ached.”
“Ah,” Tony Adducci said. “Ah, Diane.”
“We hear rumors all the time that people are trying to assassinate him.”
“Rumors.”
“That is something else that Frank’s mother used to say. ‘Just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean that someone isn’t out to get you.’ Smart woman. Good to me when Frank brought me home from Vietnam, when she could have been mean. At least, the sons lost to me up-time have a grandmother. This is something I believe. There are many people who think they have good reason to get Grand Duke Bernhard.”
Ring of Fire - 1635_ The Legions of Pestilence Page 19