Ring of Fire - 1635_ The Legions of Pestilence

by Virginia DeMarce

  The king snorted. “I can assure you that Sophia, unlike Anne Cathrine, will expect to have from the beginning what she considers to be an appropriate level of support for a ‘king’s daughter’ and she defines that level quite liberally.” He dropped the draperies back into place and barked out a laugh. “Compared to Bernhard, though, M. de Ruvigny, you come cheap.”

  He threw himself back into the chair. “Generous. As a father, I am foolishly indulgent and generous.” He cleared his throat. “Particularly when the generosity also serves my purposes. Twice that amount, M. de Ruvigny, if you do two things. First, get her to the Netherlands, marry her in the presence of Frederik Hendrik and his wife, and remove her to Burgundy, thus thwarting Ulfeldt’s ambitions and not incidentally signaling to the current fiancés of Kirsten’s three youngest girls that their matrimonial prizes are not secure if they continue to thwart my will.

  “Perhaps, should you have the opportunity to make such a journey, you might when possible, not immediately or as a matter of emergency, but when feasible in the not-too-distant future, take her to the miraculous Grantville and marry her again there. I understand from my lawyers that their legal system does not recognize the enforceability of betrothal contracts at all.”

  Christian nodded at the decanter on the sideboard. Ruvigny poured him a generous glass of claret, taking a small one for himself.

  “Second,” the king held up two fingers, “you and Captain von Bismarck actually do take her brother Waldemar with you when you go, albeit that was a subterfuge I invented on the spot while I was reading Frederik Hendrik’s letter of introduction for you. Persuade the surviving brother of Maurice of Nassau to take the boy on as a junior officer, if you can. He’s 14 now and showing every sign of going to the bad–as headstrong as my older Gyldenløve son; as lazy and useless as the younger one. Whatever my differences with his mother have been, I don’t want that outcome for Kirsten’s child. Not that being a ‘king’s son’ is an easy role for any youngster to fill. A third of the people he meets insult him, a third fawn over him, and the last third try to tempt him into doing something that will cause political embarrassment to Us and to his legitimate brothers.”

  He looked into his goblet and then drank half of the wine at once.

  “If Frederik Hendrik has enough sense to refuse, which he may, take the boy on to Bernhard, who will be in no position to refuse. Not if he wants a subsidy from Us.”

  Ruvigny gave a half-bow.

  “Don’t mention any of this to Sophia, yet, until I am ready to have her told. Just be, shall I say, tempting. Nor, other than the matter of Waldemar, shall you say anything to your compatriot yet. You do understand me?” Christian stood up, pulled a piece of paper from the box underneath his standing desk, and scrawled a note. “Here, take this to the treasury tomorrow. You and Bismarck can start talking to people who understand the mechanics of how moving money around the continent works and how much is actually available to be moved. When you have numbers, come back to me.” He scribbled another note. “This will get you back to me when you’re ready.”

  “There is a saying,” Ruvigny said to Bismarck that evening. “I cannot think of the source right now, but it is to the effect that God gave us mouths in order to enable us to conceal what is in our thoughts. It is barely possible that His Majesty of Denmark actually does, sometimes, speak carelessly and drunkenly. However, it strikes me as prudent for us to evaluate his apparent careless and besotten comments in the light of that saying. I suspect that he has not only heard it, but fully understands it.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  There were a lot of financial negotiations with the treasury. If money were to be moved out of Denmark, first it had to be found in Denmark. Once it was found in Denmark, that is. If it could be found in Denmark. Deep among the cubbyholes of Copenhagen Palace, an accountant and a bursar scratched their heads.

  “He’s bought an army in Burgundy!” the accountant murmured softly. “Why? Tell me why.”

  “If he thinks he needs one in reserve and wants to keep it under wraps, given his current relationship with the high king, Burgundy’s as good a place to stash it as any,” the bursar murmured in reply. “Particularly since it’s already there, has been there for quite a while, and apparently won’t be going anyplace very soon.” He looked at the ledger in front of him again. “I regret to say, though, that our sovereign lord the king does not always have a firm grasp on the crucial distinction between gross and net.”

  “But why does he even want it?”

  “I’m not in a position to read the royal mind. But as a lowly bureaucrat, I will say that if I were our monarch right now, I would be thinking that we have recently been made forcefully aware of the truth that though Denmark is now well-positioned in the Union of Kalmar through Prince Ulrik’s betrothal to Princess Kristina, Gustavus is not immortal. Should the high king die in an untimely fashion, there might well be opposition to the now-proposed succession in the USE. Should Ulrik die in an untimely fashion, which could well happen since he is running around on the eastern front gaining his mandatory military command experience, Gustavus’ next choice as her future husband would not necessarily be Danish. In either case, a few regiments might be very convenient. His Majesty is also sponsoring activities in the New World and may meet with resistance there. Who knows what other plans may be in his mind?”

  “Ah,” the accountant answered. “Since the appearance of the up-timers, I have found it a rather interesting hobby to compare the poetry of England in our own day to that which appeared in subsequent centuries in theirs. “One of them wrote, “‘Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for.?’”

  The bursar frowned. “Let us rather focus on this earth, this kingdom’s revenues, and how we are to find the money for this project.”

  He only implied the adjective “hare-brained” as it might apply to “project.”

  Once found, the money had to be moved from its current repository to some other fund, all without occurring more suspicion than necessary on the part of the department to which it had originally been allocated. The process took some time.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  During the evenings at the court, Ruvigny and Sophia continued to talk. Not alone, of course. One was never alone in court. Poland–what would come of Gustavus’ Polish campaign?

  “Gerry Stone,” Bismarck said, “the up-time youngest son of the famous Tom Stone, quoted to me what he said was an African proverb. ‘When elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled.’ There are many possible applications of this to the current war.”

  “It’s just as true when families quarrel,” Sophia said. She didn’t elaborate on her train of thought, but rather directed a lady-in-waiting to tell the musicians to switch to a dance tune.

  Interlude

  early winter 1633, Fredericksborg

  Sophia stood by the door, looking into the schoolroom. Miss Joanie was dancing around the room, holding a strip of cloth as a partner, doing unfamiliar steps and humming a tune. Each time she made an over-elaborate, exaggerated, bow or curtsey, she sang a refrain of, “Yes, Your Majesty,” or, “No, Your Majesty.”

  She had stopped, turned around, and said, “You may enter, Lady Sophia.”

  “What is that dance?”

  “It is called a waltz.”

  November 1636

  Sophia accepted the news of her father’s plans with aplomb. The tone and topic of their conversations changed.

  “Are you doing this of your own free will?” she asked her prospective groom and, well–eventual husband. Was there a name for the next stage? In any language? Potential eloper? Elopee?

  “Given the right girl with the right dowry, I’ve been perfectly prepared for many years to go into matrimony with good intentions and live in amicable fidelity for the next forty-plus years, should God grant a full lifespan of four score years to both my wife and myself.”

  “How do you define the right girl?” Sophia looked down
at her hands, twisting her fingers.

  Ruvigny raised an eyebrow. “How about the one whose father is willing to produce the right dowry?”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “What are your views on premarital chastity,” Ruvigny asked. The king might be willing to wink at an elopement, but he rather doubted...still, there were a lot of somewhat scandalous stories about Anne Cathrine and Cantrell, with allegations that the king had colluded.

  Sophia wrinkled her nose. “It’s not as if I have experience with anything else. I’m scarcely a Delilah or a Salome, to tempt some impetuous swain–no Juliet to a Romeo as the playwright from my Aunt Anne’s court in England would have had it. As a pawn on my father’s chessboard, I can’t say that maintaining chastity has posed much of a challenge for me so far.”

  “And your views on marital fidelity?”

  This time, she frowned. “I don’t really have much experience with that, either. Except, maybe, for my chaplains and tutors, and I don’t know their families. I’m not sure that many of the adults I have known observed their marriage vows. It...it would make life a lot simpler than marital infidelity, I think. Ever since Mama was accused of adultery...maybe she did and maybe she didn’t. I don’t know...I wasn’t old enough to understand and a lot of the time when Papa claims that she had a relationship with Count Ludwig von Salm, who certainly was at the court during those years, we children were in Friesland...things have been a lot more difficult, with them estranged and her in exile in the country.

  “Of course, Papa charged her with witchcraft and consorting with a magician, also. Rulers who are unhappy with their wives are hardly ever content to rely on just one charge.

  “There are all the Gyldenløves, too, by quite a variety of women. Not to mention Vibeke, dear, dear Vibeke, right here in the palace with her recently spawned little brood.” Sophia’s face became pensive. “Overall, I’m inclined to think that complete, absolute, marital fidelity would be simpler. Life at court has enough complications without introducing unnecessary ones.”

  Chapter 39

  November 1636

  The treasury finished its part of the process. Ruvigny flourished the pass that the king had given him, and he and Bismarck returned for another private audience on the topic of subsidies.

  The royal lawyers having torn Bernhard’s proposed wording of the contract to pieces and put it back together in a different order, Christian slapped the new version down in front of them and said it would be this way or no way. They requested an evening to review it, which the king granted.

  Since they were furnished with the power of attorney and, upon deliberation, they decided that this way was much preferable to no way, they signed the next day. “Bernhard will throw a tantrum,” Bismarck said phlegmatically, “but since I don’t think he really thought we would come back with anything at all, we can just stand there until he gets over it.”

  For public consumption, there was a court notice that a satisfactory agreement had been reached and Count Waldemar Christian von Schleswig-Holstein was indeed going to the Low Countries. The notice was followed by a considerable degree of bustling around. The “Dutch captains” had come to Copenhagen in modest accommodations on a small merchant vessel. Their departure for Amsterdam with Waldemar, though, would need to accommodate his valet, his chaplain/tutor (clearly he would need a Lutheran chaplain/tutor in a Calvinist court), his four sturdy bodyguards, and his baggage on a ship for Amsterdam. A clerk obtained tickets for the next sailing of one of the larger fluyts. The palace staff started to pack up Waldemar’s luggage.“Alles in Ordnung,” Bismarck exclaimed cheerfully. The presence of the bodyguards might seem a bit excessive, but could be explained by Waldemar’s loudly, vociferously, angrily, proclaimed reluctance to go. Almost everyone at court readily assumed that they were to prevent him from eluding his temporary mentors.

  Of course, if they were going, it was prudent for them to go as soon as possible, before the Sound froze. There were already occasional mornings when it wasn’t just a matter of the piers being slick under foot because the fog had condensed and frozen. The ice was beginning to creep out from the edges of the harbor toward the center, not always thawing during the day. It was still thin, but no ship’s captain thought there was any time to be wasted.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Three more days. In their room that evening, Bismarck made a joke about his friend’s association with the king’s daughter, calling it verbal seduction.

  There was no more time for duplicity. Ruvigny broke the news that it wasn’t a joke. Well, neither was it seduction, precisely. Nothing physical had happened. But, yes, he had been, in a way, seducing her. Enticing her. With a view to elopement.

  Looming disapproval oozed from Bismarck’s every pore.

  “Elopement with royal paternal sanction, I assure you. I’m not endangering the subsidy negotiations.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Sophia appeared to be quite calm about it all, as far as Ruvigny could tell on the basis observing her outward expressions. What she had hoped to find in the proposal sent by Frederik Hendrik may have manifested in an unexpected way, but it still offered her an avenue of escape. She produced no drama as she stood to one side in her father’s bedroom, where these extra-confidential finishing touches were in process, watching as the transaction demonstrated that in this marriage her role was indeed that of “the right girl being the one whose father was willing to produce the right dowry.”

  She was “the girl” with a very generous dowry, it seemed, Sophia thought, as she observed sardonically. Enough, probably, to satisfy M. de Ruvigny’s dearest hopes for investable capital to fund a shining diplomatic career. That should please him. It was more than she had expected to receive, but, of course, the “elopement” meant that the treasury would not have to fund the splendor of a wedding suitable to the status of the royal father of the bride and the noble status of a groom from the Danish high nobility, carefully calculated to display both precisely. She had nothing to complain about. It was nothing worse than she had ever expected of any marriage that Denmark’s political needs might make for her and M. de Ruvigny appeared, if on the basis of short acquaintance, to be more patient and tolerant than the majority of men. As a bargain, it was probably going to be better for her than most of the other options would have been. Which did not, admittedly, set a very high bar.

  The king placed a bank draft for the dowry, written in his own script, furnished with the royal seal, to be drawn in the Netherlands after the wedding, in Ruvigny’s hands while she watched. No installment plan. No delays.

  Arrangements for the elopement itself turned out to be more complicated than those of the marriage agreement. Even when the king approved, it was not easy for a royal daughter simply to disappear from the palace.

  By ship? By ship, certainly. Nothing else was feasible.

  By night? Or, at least after dark, given how short the daylight hours were. Otherwise somebody was sure to see. The last thing that the king wanted was for Ulfeldt to pursue her through the streets with a group of his...what was that word that Eddie Cantrell had used once...such a useful word...enforcers.

  In disguise? That might work.

  Hidden in a large laundry basket? “What kind of frivolous books have the ladies-in-waiting been reading out loud in their parlor, young lady? Those pernicious Harlequin Romances?”

  “That was professor Grotius, Papa,” Sophia answered more than a bit snidely. “He’s a professor at the University of Jena now. It happened back when his wife helped him escape from imprisonment in the Netherlands.”

  Laundry basket or no laundry basket, getting her onto the ship without alerting Corfitz Ulfeldt was going to be a problem.

  “Why,” Sophia asked, “do we all have to leave at the same time? It’s already announced in public that all the huddles have been because the two of you have been here on behalf of Frederik Hendrik to talk to Papa about that pesty brother of mine. All of you just go down to the docks the way everything has been
arranged and get on the boat that will take you out to the ship, where everyone can see you go on board. She hoists anchor. Off you go. Bye-bye. I’ll be standing on the dock waving. No one for Corfitz to chase.”

  “But what about you?”

  “I know that sailors go from one ship to another at sea, sometimes. What is it called?”

  “Trans-ship,” said Bismarck.

  “What a surprise! So, you sail away. Papa can order the captain of the fluyt to heave to out of sight of land. Then, that night, I can go down to one of the little boats.”

  Sophia’s first suggestion that she could depart in a fishing boat was reasonably dismissed by her new fiancé as not a good idea, given the associated odor, unless she truly wanted to spend the remainder of the voyage in a closed ship cabin smelling like a mixture of cod, herring, and flounder.

  “So not a fishing boat. Just one of the little boats by the pier. They can row me out to the royal yacht, we can catch up with the fluyt the next morning, I get to climb up a rope ladder, and it’s ‘all aboard.’ No problems.”

  “What,” her father asked, “about the immense amount of luggage you will inevitably take with you? I have seen you travel from here to Dalum. I have seen you travel from here to Frederiksborg, which is a scant 20 miles. It’s hard to keep something the size of your luggage secret. The hatboxes alone...the shoeboxes.... It would take all day to get that from one ship to another by way of a cargo net down, the transfer boat, and a cargo net up again.”

  “Just crate it up, put it on some other Dutch merchant fluyt that’s in port, and ship it to some address in Amsterdam. Nobody except my maids has to know what’s in the crates. Ship it ahead. Or on the same ship as Waldemar. Or after I’m gone.” She turned to Ruvigny. “We’ll be in Amsterdam long enough for it to catch up with me, won’t we? Or I can go shopping there, if it doesn’t.”