“It’s not just the regents,” Bodendorf said. “There was something about auditors.”
Bernhard laughed. “Tyrol has hired some auditors from the State of Thuringia-Franconia. Up-timers, or trained by up-timers. Mme. Calagna says that they don’t use the auditor title as quite what it meant up-time. They do check whether or not the books are balanced, but generally they function more like what would have been the ‘Office of the Inspector General’ and they are fierce. She has started a general examination for the purpose of rooting out corruption and graft, not just in the County of Tyrol itself, but in the Swabian and Alsatian holdings.
“My lady informed me, after her meeting at them at the SoTF headquarters during her last stop in Bamberg, that the three ladies who head it may be most fruitfully compared to the three furies of classical Greek myth. She was brimming over with glee and anticipates the rolling of quite a few heads as a result of this enterprise. Because of it, though, I don’t think there’s any prospect of credit from Tyrol right now.”
Ehrlach contemplated the probable results on any principality of a visitation by furious auditors. “You’re probably right. Hell, you are right.”
“Could we raise any significant funds from the French Huguenots?”
Rohan was right there in the room. “No. My brother Soubise is in Paris, but it is all he can do to keep the family’s private assets and estates safe from Gaston’s predatory hands. It’s impossible, right now, to arrange any general campaign for raising funds from the Huguenot community as a whole.”
Basel
July 1636
Diane Jackson, from Basel nagged Bernhard constantly about plague. There were hotspots of plague scattered through Switzerland, which worried her.
Claudia went to meet with Diane, taking the plague doctors along. She was delighted (the doctors were scandalized) to find out from Tony Adducci that there had been no such custom as the mandatory seclusion of new mothers for six weeks after childbirth up-time. That, in fact, Tony, who was studying his way zealously through a kind of, as he put it, off-campus seminary program, had never even heard of such a thing as the churching of women.
The grand duchess also had her first encounter with Frank Jackson, who arrived for what he said was a “long visit, if you can figure a couple of weeks as being long.” It was the first time they had seen each other since the ambassadress came to Basel two years earlier. “Honestly,” he said, “I never expected it to drag on so long. You’re busy and before you know it, it’s been a week and then a month and then a year.” While there had been plenty of radio messages back and forth, the up-time militia general (which was how Claudia interpreted being a general in the National Guard of the State of Thuringia-Franconia) admitted that he “wasn’t much for writing letters.”
The general brought copies of the new German translation of the complete works of and an up-time author named A. Conan Doyle as gifts for Diane’s friends at work.
Claudia snagged one for Bernhard, who loved the stories. After she got back home, they began a custom that when both were present, she would read a chapter to him each evening.
Besançon
July 1636
Grand Duke Bernhard grumbled to his wife that he had a ghastly shortage of Lutheran connections just now. Obviously, Gustavus and the USE were a lost cause when it came to subsidies. He had put out tentative feelers as to whether his brother Wettin and the Crown Loyalists, now that they had lost the election and Ed Piazza was USE prime minister as of July 1636, might be interested. He had even suggested that perhaps their publicists could work with a slogan along the lines of, “We are holding the line and raising the flag in the west by supporting Grand Duke Bernhard while the emperor is preoccupied in the east” if such funding became public knowledge.
“A lot of the Crown Loyalists still have money. The question in my mind, when I wrote, was whether or not they would they be willing to risk it on Burgundy. Or, more pertinently, risk having Gustavus find out, somewhere down the line, that they had risked it on Burgundy?”
“What I got for my troubles...” He kicked a wastepaper basket across the room. “What I got for my troubles was letters from all three of my brothers to the effect that, you have dug yourself into this pit, baby brother and you are going to have to find your own way out of it. Ernst put it more nicely, but that’s still what he meant. Albrecht pointed out that the family funds are both limited and already committed. Wilhelm added a veiled allusion to the fact that when Joseph landed in a dry well, his eventual rescuers carried him off to become a slave in Egypt.”
An inkwell followed the wastepaper basket.
“I’m not giving up on the USE. I do have Lutheran connections with bureaucrats of lesser rank. With theologians, through my old tutors. I’ve written Hortleder. He was here for the conclave in May–as, he puts it, an obscure functionary standing anonymously in the second row of those following Johann Gerhard around. I’m sorry I missed him; I always did rather like the old man. I’ve written to Nihus. Not Radtke, because he’s working directly for the SoTF government now. I’ve asked about the up-time Lutherans, even though there weren’t very many of them. I don’t recall that any of them are known to have made a lot of money, but they might know someone who knows someone who knows someone. What was the name of the man who didn’t come for the smallpox vaccination campaign? Lambert? Leahy? ”
“His name is Gary Lambert, my lord,” Claudia said mildly. “Their famous hospital, which he heads, is called Leahy. But may I suggest Gerry Stone.”
Bernhard slammed his fist on his desk. “They sent that squirt Gerry Stone for my smallpox campaign instead of Dr. Nichols. Instead of Lambert. A kid.”
“Who is at the University of Jena, studying to become a Lutheran pastor.” Claudia modulated her voice even farther. “Ron Stone, the duc de Rohan’s friend. Tom Stone. Dyes and pharmaceuticals. Money. Quite a lot of money.”
Bernhard spun around. “Not enough money to subsidize as many regiments as I need, but still–no source of money is to be sneezed at. Maybe I should have been more polite when I greeted the kid.”
The next day, Rohan was not shy in pointing out that the grand duke should have been more polite when he greeted the “the Stone kid.”
“Where is he, anyhow?” Bernhard griped. “Isn’t he supposed to be doing something about smallpox vaccinations?”
“There was a glitch,” Kamala Dunn reminded him.
“Oh, the glitch. That glitch.” Bernhard reminded his secretary Michael John to send another stern memo to the glitchers and light a fire under somebody.
“Gerry Stone is in France just now, I believe,” Rohan said. “He went with Ruvigny and Bismarck after you loaned them to me to go get my daughter Marguerite. Without, as far as I am aware, either the knowledge or approval of his family.”
“Why?” Michael John rarely interrupted his superiors, but the question burst out of him. He had a little boy of his own and a baby girl, now. “In the name of all that is holy, why did you let him go wandering off to France in the middle of...of...of all that’s going on?”
Kamala Dunn shrugged her shoulders. “He’s a kid. He’s a teenager. He’s a good-natured kid, not a mean bone in his body, but that’s the answer. Kids do strange things if you leave them to themselves. That’s why they need parents.” She thought a minute. “Preferably parents who aren’t off in Padua or Prague, being very busy. Tom did a good job bringing up those three boys, but if you ask me, he’s quit too soon for it to be good for Gerry. Ron’s older and Frank went off to stir up a revolution, but Gerry’s sort of gotten the short end of the stick. You have to stay right on top of it, every single minute.”
“Too harsh,” Carey Calagna said.
“I’m sticking by my guns.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Bernhard tried to think of anything else in the Germanies that might be sneaked under the table where Gustavus couldn’t track it? Maybe by way of Johann Moritz in the Province of the Upper Rhine and his improbable wi
fe, Henriette of Lorraine, in Phalsbourg? Except that Johann Moritz was so conscientious and diligent about his position as deputy governor... But Henriette–wasn’t, exactly. Smart, clever, but her scruples left something to be desired, and now that those two were married... However oddly married... That would take some more consideration.
Somehow, as he thought about wasn’t, exactly in the context of Henriette, inspiration came. If there was nothing to be had directly from Fernando, might some funds, some way, come from the prosperous northern Netherlands via Frederik Hendrik, sort of sneaked under the table? By now, the “second gentleman” of the Low Countries might not be averse to pulling a bit of wool over the eyes of his southern overlord.
And if that were the case... Hey, might there be some chance of a subsidy from Christian IV in Denmark. His position in the revived Union of Kalmar must be grating on him a bit. He also, by now, might not be averse to pulling a bit of wool over the eyes of his overlord by passing some money under the table. Der Kloster was passing a small book, a collection of up-time aphorisms, around among its members. One read, Laws are made in order that people in authority might not remember them. Cynical, but the compiler had been applying it to a set of regimes there whose written constitutions were prescriptions for impeccable adherence to human rights, whereas the rulers had violated them frequently and with impunity.
Maybe he could send a couple of secret envoys? Who would be best? Not anyone from Der Kloster. All of them were too well known as Bernhard’s men. Their very faces appearing in the Hague and Copenhagen would proclaim that something, very probably something nefarious, was afoot.
Chapter 34
Besançon
September 1636
Early in September, Henri de Rohan reported that his daughter Marguerite, whom–he cleared his throat–Bernhard had chosen not to marry, had arrived safely, if without her mother, after a surprisingly uneventful journey across Gaston’s France.
“What about Gerry?” Kamala Dunn asked.
“He is safe and sound, too, having gotten some adventuring out of his system, and is none the worse for wear. He’ll be heading back to Jena for the winter semester, I understand.” Rohan thought he might as well gloss over Gerry’s planned detour by way of Geneva in the lively company of Marc Cavriani and Tancrède LeBon. It wasn’t really pertinent and would only worry Mme. Dunn, given Diane Jackson’s semi-constant harping about plague spots in Switzerland.
“May I have my officers back now?” Bernhard inquired, his eyebrows raised.
“Oh, sure. I left the rest of them eating breakfast, but I’ll send a man over to tell them to report right away. Where?”
“Quartier Battant headquarters. I want to hear what they observed and heard directly, where I can ask questions; not just review a written report.”
“Particularly,” Kamala Dunn said firmly, “as far as it pertains to plague distribution in France. Has anything been made worse by the advance and retreat of the Spanish tercios? We get regular reports from our people on the ground in Lorraine and Swabia, but France is not being exactly forthcoming about describing the status of situation there.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Christine of Lorraine, grandmother of the grand duke of Tuscany and mother of Grand Duchess Claudia, died in Florence after a period of failing health. The Grand Duchess Vittoria, very young wife of Ferdinando of Tuscany and oldest daughter of Claudia by her first husband, the assassinated Duke Federigo of Urbino, wrote very confidentially, with deep encryption, that her Grandmama’s decline had, unfortunately, been mental as well as physical. It was, perhaps, a divine blessing that the number of her days on earth had come to an end and she now lived with the saints.
Quite a number of people suggested that, in view of the political complications just about everywhere, it would be a Really Bad Idea for Claudia to attend the funeral, even though there would have been plenty of time. It wasn’t scheduled until six weeks after Christine’s death. The regents in Tyrol certainly agreed with the suggestion. They had refused to let eight-year-old Ferdinand Karl go to Florence to convey the family’s formal respects. The unsettled conditions in the peninsula caused visions of kidnappings and hostage-takings to fly through their heads. They sent a Strongly Worded Remonstrance to the effect that Claudia should not go.
Ed Piazza let the opinion of the USE administration be transmitted via radio. It was couched more as an instruction from the emperor to one of his empire’s provincial governors than advice sent to the wife of a foreign ruler. Do.Not.Go.
Somehow, the piece of paper, as delivered from the radio operator’s office, managed to convey the impression that the message as it came through the air implied a Damn.It at the end.
As Bernhard was among the most vociferous of those who objected to the idea of her going, he did not really take umbrage at Piazza’s directness. He did complain, quite a lot, about Gustavus’ daring to exercise such abrupt authority over his wife, but everyone realized that this was more for the appearance of the thing.
They compromised upon a period of official public mourning until after the funeral, during which Claudia would neither engage in any public duties nor appear at social events. She chose to spend this time with her two youngest children in Dôle.
✽ ✽ ✽
Bernhard understood her sorrow. He had been devastated when his own mother died. That did not prevent him from taking advantage of her absence from the capital to get a few of his own little private projects under way. He promptly sent Bismarck and Ruvigny off to negotiate with Frederik Hendrik and Christian IV, carrying a tentative subsidy agreement drafted by his lawyers (with a lot of blanks to be filled in) to his specifications (i.e., missing many of the clauses that had so irritated him about the French subsidy) and a power of attorney allowing them to sign on his behalf if certain circumstances might be met in the more final drafts.
He really wasn’t expecting to get what he wanted, or indeed anything much, from this ploy, but as he said to Rehlinger, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
Chapter 35
The Hague
mid-October 1636
When Ruvigny and Bismark got to their quarters in the Hague, they found a note from Marc Cavriani’s Aunt Alis.
You will need to keep a low profile. Please meet with me tomorrow morning at the office of the local bank which provided Marc with the advance draft on Cavriani Frères last spring. Dress for an appointment at court.
As they followed Signora Cavriani through the back corridors, Ruvigny expected to see some functionary who would, hopefully, begin the tedious and tortuous process of obtaining an appointment with Frederik Hendrik, if one were to be had. Rather, when they reached their goal, the Stadhouder himself was there, with only two counsellors.
The negotiations were surprisingly short and, Ruvigny said with some surprise to Bismarck that evening, surprisingly effective. He hadn’t even had to use all of the arguments they had prepared to get the second gentleman of the Low Countries to even consider the barest possibility of providing a subsidy to Bernhard.
They left for Denmark with Frederik Hendrik in possession of copies of all the draft agreements and a tentative, verbal, promise of an undetermined amount. “Come back and see me again after you’ve come to an agreement with Christian IV,” he said. His secretary provided them with letters of introduction to the Danish court, signed by the Stadhouder himself.
Copenhagen
November 1636
Frederik Hendrik’s first-layer letter of introduction got them an unusually prompt royal audience, to the considerable indignation of various bureaucrats, secretaries, and aides whose customary rights to screen access to the monarch, and thus to receive discreet bribes for admitting those who wished to see him, were bypassed. There was quite a bit of grumbling about how busy, extremely busy, the king was.
“That might actually be true,” Bismark said. Miscellaneous clerks and secretaries, anonymous to him, scurried back and forth, up and down the hallways of the multi-laye
red medieval mishmash that was Copenhagen Palace, where the government’s administrative headquarters were located.
The appropriate official presented them to the king. Ruvigny handed over their second-layer letter of introduction and practiced breathing calmly. Neither he nor Bismarck had any idea what Frederik Hendrik had written. The official verified the Stadhouder’s personal seal and handed the letter on to the king. Christian broke the seal, spread the paper out on his writing cabinet, and read silently.
“Ah,” the royal voice boomed and the royal face beamed as soon as the demands of protocol had been satisfied. “Ah,” Christian IV said again, loudly enough that not only the various functionaries in the room but anyone who might be at a window, listening through a hole in the ceiling, pressing an ear to a keyhole, or standing behind a drapery could certainly hear him. “Captains, my greetings. How courteous of my brother in the Netherlands to respond so personally and immediately to my request that he take my son Waldemar into his service for training as an officer.”
Several surrounding faces fell, if only a little. The king’s son by Kirsten Munk was now 14. The Netherlands had provided Europe’s best training ground for military men for the past three-quarters of a century. This was–only natural. It was a little unusual that Frederik Hendrik had sent two of his own men as special emissaries, but, then, sometimes Count Waldemar could be difficult.
“Welcome to the hospitality of my court.” The king continued to boom and beam. “You are my guests for as long as it takes to make all the necessary arrangements.”
It turned out that they were in fact his guests. That afternoon, early afternoon, since the winter daylight in the Danish capital disappeared by the fourth hour, some palace porters transferred their luggage from the inn where they had taken rooms to one of the wings in the Rosenborg summer palace where visitors of minor rank were housed. It was a smaller wing and their rooms were on the uppermost floor, but it was not by any means crumbling or decrepit. Christian had begun the construction early in his reign and the building hadn’t been finished for more than fifteen years. It was convenient enough, also. The walk to the Copenhagen Palace would take them five minutes in normal weather.
Ring of Fire - 1635_ The Legions of Pestilence Page 27