“Perhaps. Stern clerical tutors and all that. But it may be, again, the increase in Spanish influence. The court there is said to be very rigid. I can rather understand that when Anne of Austria came to France as a girl, she was somewhat dizzied by an ambiance that allowed her to slide down smooth marble halls in her socks.”
“She should not have done so when she was pregnant,”Vittoria said sternly. “Grandmama thought that early, unfortunate, miscarriage was probably the worst thing that happened to her marriage to Louis. If that hadn’t occurred, even Marie de’ Medici would have been limited in the amount of mischief she could cause.”
When they returned, Vittoria first looked at the table and started to scold. “Get down, you naughty thing. Off!” Then she shrieked. “He’s dead.”
Castiglione the Cat was definitely dead, cream filling decorating his whiskers and smeared down his chin, crumbs of pastry trailing down his chest and vomit spewed across the cake plate.
Claude screamed as well, yelling for the footmen. Who yelled for the captain of the guards, who sent minions in all directions, to the duke, to the royal physician, to Duchess Claude’s husband, to Mme. de Ruvigny’s husband (for, of course, the subterfuge that she was not an acknowledged daughter of the king of Denmark had not lasted very long), and to the other gentlemen of Duke Bernhard’s embassy.
It wasn’t that people didn’t expect poison. To some extent, it was a tradition in the Italian courts.
Nobody had really expected poison right this afternoon.
Marcie and Matt stood at either end of the table and fended off all the officious attempts to touch it that miscellaneous palace staff were attempting. Eventually, two of the royal physician’s associates picked up the table, cat and all, carrying it away to secure storage.
The head of the guards ordered the arrest of the footman who had brought the tray and the maid who had poured the coffee.
Sophia pointed out that since it looked, at first appearance, that the poison had been in the pastry filling, it might be prudent not to beat those two until they were senseless, but rather use them as the first stage of a conduit that would allow the identification of who had placed the pastries on the tray, who had inserted the filling into the pastries, who had made the filling, and where the ingredients had been obtained. When the head of the guards raised his eyebrows at the girl issuing these methodical directions, she said, “This isn’t my first attempted poisoning. Not a poisoning by me, but not the first one that I have observed. Or even the second.”
Victor Amadeus seconded her procedural recommendations and allowed access to his otherwise carefully shielded radio relays. Within a day, messages and responses were flying like migrating birds.
Ferdinando demanded that Vittoria come back to Florence at once.
Bernhard wanted to know what in the hell Vittoria was doing in Turin.
Claudia wanted to know if Vittoria was all right.
Bernhard wanted to know why Claudia’s up-timer had been conversing with Claudia’s daughter.
Fernando and Maria Anna wanted to know if Claude was all right.
Nicole wanted to know if Claude was all right.
Ferdinando wanted to know who would be doing the chemical analysis of the poison.
Victor Amadeus named a local alchemist, whom Ferdinando found unsatisfactory. He insisted that he would send two or three of his own, with all possible haste.
Vittoria cried softly over her cat. “I loved him,” she whispered. “He was my first pet; I loved him. He was beautiful and because of me, he is dead.”
“It’s not necessarily your fault. They may not have been trying to poison you, whoever they are,” Sophia said bracingly. “There’s no way they could tell in advance which one of us would pick up that eclair.” She paused. “Unless they all were poisoned. That would have been close to mass murder.”
Claude turned around and wrote a note to the guard captain to make sure to test the filling in all the pastries, not just the one the cat had been eating.
Sophia kept thinking out loud. “They might have been trying to poison Claude, because of Lorraine. Until Nicole has a child, she’s the nearest heir to Bar and having her dead might make things easier for Gaston, if he invades again. Or Marcie, just because she is an up-timer and someone hates up-time influence. Or me, though that’s not very likely. Most of the people who might want to poison me are in Denmark and that’s a good, long, way away. They’d be more likely to wait until I go back to Besançon. It’s not so far for them to travel.”
“Look at it this way, Your Grace,” Marcie suggested. “It’s sort of like this used to be, back up-time. Poisoning at a court here is equivalent to having your car or truck collide with a deer in West Virginia. It was an equation, nearly. If you drove so many miles per year on those roads, then you had such and such a mathematical likelihood of colliding with a deer. It wasn’t your fault and there wasn’t a thing you could do to prevent it. Other people in your car might get hurt or killed, you might get hurt or killed, the deer might get hurt or killed, and if you rolled over, some otherwise uninvolved raccoon just standing by the ditch might get hurt or killed. Or on any specific occasion, everyone might walk away without getting hurt or killed, with just vehicle damage. You might drive for years without one; you might have bad luck and hit a deer two times in a month. The only way you could prevent the collisions, though, was by not driving at all, which wasn’t feasible if you wanted to get anything done.”
Chapter 50
On the final evening of the visit, the conversation was subdued. Vittoria, in tribute to her loyal cat, suggested that they continue the ladies’ discussion of The Courtier. How did the comparison of men of gentle versus those of humble birth in Castiglione compare to up-time attitudes?
“Castiglione ascribes worth to both, but said it was easier to recognize merit in a gently born man,” Nicholas-François said. “However, I suspect that the nod toward the potential worth of the humbly born was more homage to the Roman philosophers than what the courtiers of that day believed in their hearts.”
“It wasn’t so much different up-time,” Matt said. “We didn’t have nobles, but you can’t tell me that the kid of a WVU professor in Morgantown or a coal company executive in Charleston didn’t have a leg up on us redneck hillbillies from Grantville.”
“It didn’t go on as long, though, back home,” Marcie said. “There was more of a churn. ‘Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations,’ and all that. We didn’t have the institutions embedded legally that kept the top layer on top and the bottom layer on the bottom. Hardly any of the coal barons who dominated Grantville back before World War I and built the bigger buildings downtown–like St. Mary’s, if you think, with its stained glass windows of Austrian crystal–still had family there when the Ring of Fire hit. Maybe not any of them.”
✽ ✽ ✽
The trip hasn’t been useless, Ruvigny thought. Nicholas-François is coming to Burgundy with us, will assist the grand duchess all spring, and then accompany her to the big meeting in Lorraine next summer.
Not Claude, though. She’s going to accompany Vittoria back to Florence and stay a while, to provide her with a confidante upon whose discretion she can rely and a usable conduit to the Spanish Netherlands’ government. I suppose that Claudia will be able to live with not getting Claude to Nancy for the conference since it’s to the benefit of her daughter.
“If you ask me,” he said out loud to Bismarck, “Bernhard was probably really, really, really ticked off when he found out that his charming wife didn’t warn him advance about the Tuscany aspect of the embassy. I’m just as glad it will be a few weeks before we get back. Maybe he’ll have simmered down by then.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Hille loathed Savoy. All those people, all those conversations, all the things they talked about, and most of it in languages that she couldn’t understand. She couldn’t even gossip with Grand Duchess Vittoria’s maid Dianara.
SECTION IV For Certain
Values of Normal
Chapter 51
Besançon
April-May 1637
“H
ello boys, I’'m baaaaaaack!”" Gerry Stone bounced cheerfully into the living room of Kamala Dunn’s apartment. “Or girls, seeing who’s here. Semester’s over, at least for me, so I’m wearing my other hat.” He pulled off the cap typical of students at the university in Jena and popped on a brimmed baseball cap with a logo proclaiming that he was on the front lines of the War on Plague.
Shae Horton opened one eye. “Independence Day. 1996. Russell Casse, crop dusting pilot played by Randy Quaid flies his jet equipped with a jammed missile into the belly of the alien ship’'s super weapon. Where did you get that hat? I want one.”
“It was Chip Jenkins’ inspiration–Missy’s brother, if you remember him. About five years older than I am–he graduated from Calvert the same year that Julie Sims did. Lothlorien Pharmaceuticals has ordered in bulk. I’ve brought about 5,000 of the bulk with me for distribution in Burgundy and Lorraine this summer. City council members; local administrators for the grand duke; important church officials of all denominations: get your stylish new hat here and lead the vaccination charge.”
“You expect that to work?” Shae asked.
“The crates are in the duc de Rohan’s front hall, Ms. Dunn,” he added in a hurry, before Shae’s mom could ask what he expected her to do with them. He turned his head to Shae. “We can always hope. Look–down-time adapted. No cheap plastic, no problemo. The stiffening in the bill is cardboard; you can pull it out of the little envelope, trace it, and make another one if the first gets crumpled. Willie Ray Hudson’s wife showed us how her grandmother used to stiffen her sunbonnets that way. No velcro, no problemo. We use a drawstring. You, too, can have an uncomfortable knot at the back of your head. Shae, why aren’t you over there at Rohan’s being a lady-in-waiting?”
“I’m taking a morning off. Mental health day. Sometimes I just need a break from being down-time. I don’t really remember Chip, but Julie’s brother is one of the guys that the military detailed over here to Bernhard for plague fighting. Him and J.D. Blackwood. I know them, some, but mostly they’re either in the barracks up on the citadel or out in the field.”
“I thought you’d be off for Prague by now.”
“June. Six weeks, if everything stays on schedule. That’s when the current set-up will get reorganized. I’ll be staying with the Fodors and going to Morris Roth’s new university.”
“Not quite like Jena. Good luck.” Gerry plopped down on the floor.
✽ ✽ ✽
“I hope you’re all geared up to do the smallpox thing, this year,” he said the next morning. Kamala had hauled him along for a serious conference with Grand Duchess Claudia’s three plague doctors. “I hope it because I haven’t just brought a little stuff, the way I did last year, which was just as well because of the glitch, so it wasn’t wasted. Every one of those six freight wagons that followed me into town has a pre-fab doc-in-a-box. Drive the wagons to the town where you want them and open them up. You’re set with a clinic. Lothlorien will fly in fresh vaccine supplies as they’re needed: that’s low-volume stuff. I’ll go around on horseback, get to as many locations as I can, and do my little up-time song and dance at every single one. I’ve got enough French now, even if it’s pretty basic.
“Your folks cover that town or village, fold the clinic back into the wagon, and move it on to the next one. Basically, you’ve got a medical bookmobile. As long as you have the personnel to do the vaccinations, which is not exactly rocket science when it comes to smallpox, Burgundy should have herd immunity by the end of summer. After that, though, you’ll need to keep it up, or in a few years, with all the new babies, you’ll have a vulnerable generation again.”
“There is no ‘glitch’ this year,” Dr. Guarinonius proclaimed ponderously. “We are prepared and it shall be done. And God will look upon it when it is done and see that it is good. Genesis 1:31.”
“Still,” Dr. Gatterer added, “smallpox is not the same thing as plague.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Gerry slipped into Grand Duke Bernhard’s outer ring of offices, tiptoed carefully behind a chair, and dropped a baseball cap on the head of Johann Michael Moscherosch, who jumped half way to his feet.
“Congratulations. You’ve been elected to get a publicity campaign going for the smallpox vaccinations.”
Moscherosch looked around and groaned. “I’m too busy with stuff for the Lorraine meeting in the summer. Really. I’m leaving for Nancy before the end of the week to work for Duchess Nicole and General Aldringen.”
“Oh! Well, cold spit!” Gerry’s theological studies had already led him to become both euphemistic and creative when it came to expletives. “We’re in bad need of a hook. So far all I can get from the plague doctors is: Do this because it’s good for you; the grand duke says so. It lacks a certain catchiness.”
Moscherosch shook his head. Still a negative.
“Well, is anyone else around?”
“Do you have a budget?”
“Yeah. Well, we sorta’ have a budget.”
“My friend Jesaias Rompler is still in town.”
“But he’s a poet; not a PR man.”
“He can write, can’t he?”
“Why isn’t he long gone?”
“I needed his help during the autumn. Then, after Christmas, he got a new inspiration and thought he might try a romantic serial built around Ruvigny and his Danish lady. With very little inspiration to be found, I might add. If you pay him, he’ll take the gig. His last epic wasn’t exactly a best-seller.” Moscherosch pushed himself out of the genuine up-time oak swivel chair that he had given himself as a Christmas present and started for the door.
Gerry took a good look at the chair. “Did that come out of the attic at the middle school?”
“I don’t care where it came from. It’s the most comfortable chair I’ve ever had. Come on, if you want to find Rompler.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Rompler, once more searching for some possible clue that there might even be the faintest hint of flamboyant romance in the relationship between Ruvigny and Sophia, was found interviewing the “Danish lady’s” little brother Waldemar.
There was no romance in Waldemar’s soul.
No more than in smallpox vaccinations.
But there was money to be had in writing about smallpox vaccinations, it appeared. The poet perked up.
Moscherosch narrowed his eyes and looked at the boy.
“Lord Waldemar, you weren’t here last summer, were you? When they did the short, glitched, version of the campaign here in the city?”
“No, of course not. We didn’t get here until just before Christmas.”
“Then...” Moscherosch grinned a truly wolfish grin. “Have you ever been vaccinated for smallpox, My Lord?”
“Um,” Waldemar said, an increasingly cautious expression on his face. “Well, no.”
Moscherosch grabbed Rompler by the shoulders and twirled him around the room, exclaiming, “I think we’ve got it; I think we’ve got it!”
✽ ✽ ✽
It made a spectacular campaign kick-off.
For greater visibility, there was an eight-foot-high platform raised in the middle of Besançon’s main street.
Lined up behind it were the six wagons containing the portable clinics, the teams already harnessed and ready to go.
On the platform were Grand Duchess Claudia’s plague doctors, Kamala Dunn, the two up-time representatives to Grand Duke Bernhard’s military forces, Sims and Blackwood, Gerry Stone, and miscellaneous municipal officials who were, depending upon their individual temperaments, more or less grateful for being honored in such a signal fashion.
There were banners.
There were trumpeters. With trumpets.
There were some speeches.
Finally, walking ceremonially up from his residence in the Quartier Battant, there was Grand Duke Bernhar
d (who, having little tolerance for speeches, had rearranged the order of appearance to suit himself) with the young Danish prince.
At least, Waldemar was considered a prince by most of the working-class and middle-class locals, who had no particular interest in the intrigues of the Danish monarchy but were firmly convinced that the acknowledged son of a king was highly likely to be a prince. This belief was especially strong among girls between the ages of eleven and sixteen, who were present at this event in significant numbers.
Waldemar was not exactly enthusiastic, but had been persuaded to take one for the team, receiving as a bribe the offer of getting to go along with Gerry and the medics for the county-wide tour of Burgundy rather than having to stay home with his tutor and be bored all summer while the grand duke was off in Lorraine (Bernhard had not offered to take him along on that project). In full view of the crowd, he scrunched his eyes closed and held out his arm.
Rompler was ecstatically happy with the amount of cheap PR that the whole event generated.
✽ ✽ ✽
Diane Jackson caught up with the touring team in the field toward the end of May. She was on her way to Lorraine, but had decided the detour was worth it, because she wanted to catch the very latest that Sims and Blackwood had collected about where plague was appearing this summer, how much of it there was, if the protocols were being observed as strictly as the year before. As she said, with considerable exasperation, unless she could catch up with people and actually ask them, what she got were very short radio messages, written reports that were only as long as the sender felt like writing, and interviews with personnel who had left the immediate scene of action and headed for Basel often quite some time before they arrived there.
Ring of Fire - 1635_ The Legions of Pestilence Page 38