Ring of Fire - 1635_ The Legions of Pestilence

by Virginia DeMarce

  He stood up. “Oh, well. I suppose we can just introduce her as ‘Mme. de Ruvigny’ as far as the general court personnel in Turin are concerned. They’ll have seen the coverage of the wedding at the Hague in the newspapers, of course, but we can present it as a private visit.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “And do you enjoy being married to our Henri?” Marguerite was saying. “Sharing the passionate embraces so nicely described in the Song of Songs, which we are not encouraged to read, even though it is in the Bible?” From her expression, it was clear that she did not think there were likely to be passionate embraces in the Ruvigny marriage bed.

  “I will tell you something about matrimony, Mlle. de Rohan, that not even the Song of Songs covers.” Sophia pursed her thin lips together.

  “Oh?”

  “They do not tell us when we are unmarried girls that when a human male goes to sleep, he is very, very, warm. He is better than the best stove a person can imagine. If I had the slightest idea of it, I would have forced myself into his cabin on that horrid North Sea voyage. He goes to sleep and he lies there, all stretched out, snoring, and makes heat. If his wife is very careful, and moves slowly, she can put her cold feet right up against the back of his calves and he won’t even notice. If you move too fast, he will flinch and curl up, so you have to start over again. If you are very careful, though, you can put your feet right on all that heat and lie there in bed, getting warm, all the way through.” She smiled at Marguerite. “It is utterly magnificent, all that warmth. Moreover, it is mine.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Joan Smith arrived with a cat carrier in each hand. Ed Piazza had arranged, or, to be precise, Annabelle Piazza had arranged, for Hank and Joanie to bring one of the proto-Siamese kittens that Marc Cavriani had liberated from Paris, one of those deemed not to be The Cat Himself, to be presented to the grand duchess. Who preferred dogs. Yappy little fluffy pom-pom dogs. She had written a gracious thank-you note.

  The grand duke saw no point in domestic pets. A war horse had a function. A well-trained, massive guard dog had a function. A cat in a kitchen, barn, or grain bin, controlling vermin, had a function. A peculiar-looking feline with an inclination to knock over piles of paperwork did not have a function.

  “We will send it to Our daughter,” the grand duchess determined. “Perhaps she likes cats.”

  She didn’t really know. She hadn’t seen Vittoria since she was four years old, and the girl had never mentioned cats in her rather stiff letters to her barely-remembered mama.

  Joanie had brought the other cat on her own recognizance, for Sophia. She and Hank only stayed for a week, but Sophia was happier than she had ever been in her life.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Lisa Lund asked everyone over to dinner while they were there. “It won’t exactly be formal,” she said with a grin. “The only place we have that’s big enough to hold this entire bunch is the back room of Tom’s butcher shop. Think of it as a kind of country barbecue held indoors.”

  Instead of a large dining table with silver centerpieces and elaborate candelabra, there were several small tables that she borrowed from here and there. The chairs and benches were best described as a “random assortment.”

  Thomas Wedekind butchered the pig. Lisa concocted the sauce and directed the slow roast.

  The level of conversation didn’t quite reach “ear-splitting,” but was well beyond “can’t even hear yourself think.”

  Nobody at all minded if Sophia got sauce all over her fingers. She adored the whole evening.

  Her maid Hille, properly in attendance upon her mistress, heard Hank talking to a couple of the other technical up-timers who had come from their little mini-base outside the town. Some of the up-time men had names she thought might be Greek, but these were Ole and Harold. She wondered if they might be Danish, or maybe Norwegian. But Hank was saying, “One of these days, they’ve just got to realize that Dad isn’t as young as he used to be. He’s healthy, thank God, but he’s 75 and he’s been working flat out ever since the Ring of Fire. He’s trying to build planes, but he’s also trying to train a cadre of people who will be able to not just build them, but also design them, after he’s gone. There’s just not enough people coming out of the technical college and the university in Magdeburg to fill all the ‘new hire’ spots he has open. Maybe he was making a joke one day when he said that if he dies before he’s 95, half of the ‘aviation industry’ such is it is could just implode, but I don’t think so.”

  Hille repeated this to Sophia, who wasn’t absolutely sure, but was pretty sure, that, back in Denmark, the king was spending a lot of money on airships. Maybe she ought to send someone a note. If she could find someone she trusted to write it for her.

  Finally, she asked Miss Joanie, who obviously already knew anything that her husband might have said. Also, to read her a letter she had received from Magdalene Sybille.

  She was sorry to hear that the lieutenant, the one who had fished Waldemar out of the water, had died even before the yacht got back to Copenhagen. “I liked him,” she said. “He spent a lot of time watching us, the children. He was old for his rank and I think he was married. I know he was married. Otte Knudsen, his name was. I will ask Magdalene Sybille to give something to his widow for me. I can send her a letter of credit with this letter to pay her back. The mail is going through overland and that’s nothing confidential.”

  Once the letter was stamped and mailed, Sophia sighed. “Next, I suppose, I have to figure out this pile of recommendations. Persons suitable to be my lady-in-waiting. Are you too busy...?”

  Joanie looked at her. “Lady Sophia, may I ask a question. It’s perhaps rather personal, but I remember how you struggled four years ago.”

  Sophia nodded.

  “Why don’t you just hire a reader? A secretary to handle your correspondence and read to you when you want to use a book. Up-time, we had what were called audiobooks, when books were recorded and people could listen. Those aren’t here, yet, down-time. I remember, when I was in Denmark, one of the elderly pastors said that his father, in turn, had served as a chaplain at the court of your grandfather, King Frederik II, who had this same problem. As an adult man, he still struggled to read the Psalms, even though he had almost the entire book by memory. But he had secretaries and he governed a kingdom quite successfully. I should think that a reader in whom you can place your confidence would be a much wiser expenditure of your funds than a lady-in-waiting, unless you may possibly find a woman who can do both.”

  “Oh.” Then an, “oh” repeated. “My grandfather? Nobody ever said that. Of course, no one would want to say such a thing about Papa’s father, not at court. I shall have to ask Henri. If he thinks it is a good idea, once we get back from the embassy, perhaps I shall. She would have to be a careful choice; there’s no time before we leave for Savoy.” She pushed the stack of recommendations to the side.

  “Also...your lieutenant, Knudsen?” Joanie said, a question in her tone. “He was an officer and not noble?”

  “There’s no way Papa could possibly run the army and government with just nobles,” Sophia answered. “Not even the Danish part of it, if there didn’t have to also be the German Chancery for the duchies. He hasn’t given that up even though Holstein has been mediatized into the USE. There probably aren’t even 200 noble families in all of Denmark. Maybe 2,000 people, certainly no more than 3,000, including women and children and old men. They don’t have titles like the Germans or English or French; a person is either noble or not. Noble families that die out aren’t replaced. Papa can’t create new nobles in Denmark; just in the duchies. Most of them aren’t wealthy; just noble. Some don’t have any land at all; they work as overseers on larger estates, just like prosperous peasants sometimes do. There are only a few noble families who are important enough and rich enough to always have members on the Council and make difficulty for Papa when they disagree with him: about a dozen really rich ones. Those own close to half the land in the kingdom. Maybe
not that much, quite, but it has to come close. That’s why they can be so very troublesome. He has to...to....” For a moment, she stumbled for a word. “He has to propitiate them.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Then Hank and Joanie had to go home and the embassy to set out for Turin.

  Sophia left her new more-or-less Siamese kitten with Marguerite de Rohan. She and Miss Joanie had talked a lot during that wonderful week. The smile on her face when she turned over a mostly-Siamese queen just about to enter her first season wasn’t, quite, utterly malicious.

  Chapter 46

  On the Road Again

  January 1637

  The cat who went to Savoy had a loud voice. He was the chatty kind of Siamese.

  Marcie Abruzzo developed an annoying habit of singing along with him. As the carriage rolled along, she caroled, “Meow, meow, meow, ow, meow, ow, meow, ow, Me-ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, meow, ow, ow.”

  Bismarck winced. “What the hell is that song?”

  “A good motto for these diplomatic jaunts.” Marcie put words to it.

  The more we get together, together, together,

  The more we get together, the happier we’ll be,

  For your friends are my friends,

  And my friends are your friends.

  The more we get together, the happier we’ll be.

  Ruvigny looked at her. “Everyone keeps telling me how dreadfully optimistic you up-timers are, basically. I didn’t really take it seriously until now.”

  “It’s not ours, really. Not new. Not lyrics that an author deliberately wrote like Hey, Jude or Ode to Billie Joe. Just a kids’ song. There are a whole bunch of songs for little kids that use the same tune. Did You Ever See a Lassie? Ach, Du Lieber Augustin.”

  Chapter 47

  Turin, Savoy

  February-March 1637

  In due time, at the conclusion of a winter trip that was no worse than any normal winter trip, they ceremoniously presented the Grand Duchess Vittoria with:

  A genuine descendant of Richelieu’s famous cat, who has been in all the newspapers.

  Vittoria responded with a few well-chosen, gracious, words in public. In private, she responded with Oohhhhh, ooooow, how cute! I’ve never had a kitten. It took about three days before he was cuddling in her arms, sitting in her lap, snuggling against her skirts, and sleeping on her bed.

  “He is very well-mannered,” she told Duchess Christine Marie of Savoy. “I believe that I will name him Castiglione. That’s close enough to leone. He can be my own little lion; he will be my brave knight and defend me like a small fortress.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Oh, how nauseating,” Sophia said to Marcie. “But I suppose I should make allowances; after all, she’s a year and a half younger than I am.”

  “They told us that she was pretty much a frump,” Sophia continued, shifting uncomfortably on the very hard upholstery of the sort-of-a-love-seat that was in the suite of rooms that the palace officials had assigned to Matt and Marcie. “She’s no worse looking than I am, and it’s clear she’s willing to spend a lot of money on her clothes. Some of those fabrics are to die for–not just taffeta, but moiré taffeta, and some of the lace on her underskirts is four inches wide. Her jewelry is magnificent, even if it tends to be oversized in the Italian style.

  “The cut of her clothes isn’t very becoming to her, but she’s not dressing like a nun or anything. I think Mama would say that we should do her a favor; take on a project of ‘fix up the frump to the point that she’s reasonably attractive’ so she can pleasantly surprise her ‘sort of a husband’ the next time they see one another. After all, the public wedding will, finally, precede their getting around to the consummation of the fourteen-year saga of the various legal contracts and layers of consent leading up to it.”

  Marcie, considering the level of plain and, a person had to say, close to fat rather than pleasantly plump that marked Vittoria’s face and figure, shook her head. “I sort of doubt that a make-over will do her much good, with that double chin, but I suppose we can try.”

  “A few months can make a real difference in a girl’s shape at her age,” Sophia answered. “You should have seen Anne Cathrine and Leonora when they started to blossom.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Vittoria was a little more dubious about the burgeoning–she wasn’t quite sure what to call it, maybe a proto-friendship. She fully realized that she might be acting foolishly in becoming close to the Burgundian envoy’s young Danish wife. For that matter, she would be probably be acting foolishly by becoming close to anyone at all in the whole, wide world. At a court, every connection brought its perils. Still, it was so different. And it wouldn’t be for long. Also, her cousin Claude was here and wouldn’t let her go wrong, she thought. Almost everyone acknowledged that Claude was shrewd in spite of that ridiculous elopement.

  Marcie brought up the proposed idea of a “make-over.”

  Vittoria replied sourly that it wouldn’t do any good at all. “It might, under other circumstances, but Ferdinando prefers boys and everybody knows it. At least, everybody at the Medici court knows it. Probably everybody who counts at every court in Italy knows it.”

  Sophia grimaced. “Oh, yes, there’s just no privacy at a court. Everyone knows absolutely everything that everyone else does. And has an opinion about it.”

  The conversation meandered on. Vittoria spoke Italian, Spanish, and French well, plus Latin, but had not yet started to learn German; Claude, who was still recovering from her second miscarriage and thus resting on a kind of chaise lounge, was fully fluent in Italian, French, and German; Sophia could manage German easily and quite a bit of (down-time) English, but her French was limited to a few memorized polite sentences and phrases and she had no Italian at all. Nobody else except Marcie spoke English. None of the others spoke any Danish, nor planned ever to do so. Everything got repeated and re-phrased a lot. Several times, one or the other lamented that tutors did not have enough sense to realize that girls really ought to learn a common language such as Latin just as much as boys did.

  “The French are working on it,” Claude commented. “They would love to see French take over as a common language at all the courts.”

  “Italian would make much more sense.” Vittoria sipped her coffee. “I do like this new beverage. It lets a person’s mind stay concentrated on the topic under discussion much more than wine does. Concentration itself is important, but the real trick is to avoid being caught up in intrigues, at least as much as possible. While my grandmother was alive, I did pretty well by only repeating in public what she told me to say. She educated me and was an excellent tutor. Sometimes, if it was about Tyrol or Burgundy or the USE, I used statements that Mama had written in her letters, but not until Grandmama had looked at them and told me that they were acceptable opinions for me to express.”

  Sophia murmured a sound of general, respectful, agreement, sternly subduing her envy of those who could read the letters they received from their mothers. And of people whose mothers were allowed to write to them. She hadn’t had a chance to say good-bye to Mama. Henri had helped her write from Amsterdam; they had sent it overland with one of the new stamps, through the postal system. There was no way to know whether or not Papa would allow the letter to be delivered.

  Vittoria put her cup down and picked a pastry off the plate in front of her. “Hot chocolate is good, also. I think I prefer it made with water rather than milk, though, and less sugar. There’s more zing to it.” She sighed. “It was always a kind of theater for us. We rehearsed; then I walked onstage and recited my lines. One thing to my advantage was that I’m a very quick study. I can learn my lines for an entire court masque in just a few hours. Grandmama had a special dispensation from the archbishop, so that even though we lived in the La Crocetta convent, we were perfectly free to come and go for court entertainments.

  “Learning several comments to get me through a receiving line only took a few minutes, since there’s no opportunity to say m
ore than two sentences to any one person.” She took a bite of the pastry and chewed with concentration. “I don’t believe that I care for tea, though perhaps I have not tried the proper variety. I understand that there are many.”

  The cat jumped on her lap and took a swipe at the pastry. She put it down quickly. “No, no, messy. Your feet have been in the dirt. To think that I told the duchess what good manners you have.” He made a pounce at the cup, which she quickly snatched up again.

  “Then Grandmama died last September. For the last six months, I’ve had to rely entirely on myself. Except, of course, that I pray to the Holy Mother a lot. And say as little as possible, keeping my personal opinions to myself, as I did last fall when I met with Rebecca Abrabanel, the secretary of state of the United States of Europe. Oh, my, but I was discreet. When I am in a position to hear them talking, the courtiers say that I am very wise for my years. But I suspect that a lot of them are hoping that I’ll flounder around and they can somehow get their claws into me. I have to be extraordinarily careful. I am careful. Much of the time, it’s easier to meet with foreign emissaries than with Tuscany’s own nobility.”

  Marcie nodded, molding her hands around her own cup. She had never particularly liked coffee, but a cup of something hot made a good hand-warmer in the chilly room. She had taken a pastry to be polite, but she wasn’t really hungry in the middle of the afternoon.

  “Many people say it’s unfortunate that I look like my father instead of my mother, but for the maintenance of my reputation, it’s probably better. And prim. The combination of beauty and gaiety has been fatal for more than one ruler’s wife. As far as the marriage goes, my only assignment will be to produce legitimate sons. Ferdinando won’t care a bit that I’m dumpy and double-chinned, as long as I do that and dress in a way that displays the wealth of his court whenever I make a public appearance. Just as he wouldn’t care if I were as beautiful as one of the women in a Titian painting.”