Ring of Fire - 1635_ The Legions of Pestilence

by Virginia DeMarce

  The docks were on the Rur, or Roer, depending on what language one was speaking (it was not, of course, to be confused with the Ruhr in any language). Hermann, Manoah assisting with the local dialect, interviewed one of the bargemen. Where had they been, where did they start out, where do they suspect they picked up the infection? The man could at least tell them that the barge had come off the Meuse, but not much more because he hadn’t joined the crew until it came upstream. They had dropped one of the polemen off, sick, and he had been picking up day labor jobs.

  Hermann thought. The Meuse, downstream, flowed through the Low Countries and into the North Sea through the mess of the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt delta area, a bewildering and only partly tamed set of water ways.

  He sent a different man with a message to Katharina Charlotte and Melchior, saying that he would need to spend a little more time tracing the barge’s movements for at least some distance, though tracking it through the delta would be hopeless. Manoah would make the arrangements.

  Grantville

  mid-June 1637

  Over Sofia Juliana’s protests that she didn’t want charity, Amalie Elizabeth had exclaimed impatiently, “Don’t be difficult, Juliane,” and had her flown to the Leahy Medical center in Grantville. Physicians, nurses, technicians, aides, and observers from what appeared to be half the continent of Europe flocked to her room.

  “For all these reasons,” the up-time woman said to what had to be a class, for which Juliane was serving as the insect pinned to a board, “particularly based on the patient’s obstetrical history of two prior premature births of children who were, upon medical examination, otherwise healthy, merely born too early to survive, I have come to the conclusion that ....”

  Dr. Susannah Shipley. That was the woman’s name. She wore a name tag.

  She had a clipboard.

  Everybody had a clipboard.

  Sofia Juliana fought a temptation to giggle when the thought that perhaps clipboard manufacture could become the economic salvation of Hesse crossed her mind. She would have to remember to mention it to Amalie Elizabeth.

  Much medical jargon, most of which terms she did not understand, flew over and around Sofia Juliana’s bed.

  “Incompetent cervix,” the up-time physican-professor was saying. “It can be difficult to diagnose and wasn’t easy to treat, even up-time, but there are things we can do. In this case...absent the possibility of ultrasound...I am going to undertake a cervical cerclage...”

  A down-time doctor had explained that to Sofia Juliana, before all the students arrived. “It’s a known problem. It’s a treatable one.”

  As Sofia Juliana understood it, Dr. Shipley was going to sew around her cervix, using strong sutures, to keep it tight, so the baby could not come out before its proper time. Stitches, stitches with thread, almost like drawing together gathers on a shift and reinforcing them with smocking.

  Not for a wound on her arm or leg. Stitches for those, she knew well. If necessary, she could do them herself. Stitches inside her body.

  “Also bed rest,” Dr. Shipley had proclaimed. “Between those two, I think we can probably bring the pregnancy to term. Don’t panic. But the stitches have to come out before you can deliver the baby, obviously, so I want you to stay right here in Grantville where I can keep a close eye on you and catch the first sign if you start to go into labor early. If you don’t, then once I think the baby is mature enough to survive outside the womb, out come the sutures.”

  Sofia Juliana nodded, wondering where she would find the money to stay in Grantville for four months. Everyone knew that costs in the up-time city were frighteningly expensive. And who would manage the farm while she was gone?

  Once all the medical people left her room, she wrote out a message and asked a young girl, who introduced herself as Ashley Walsh and for some reason called herself a candy striper although she was not distributing sweets and her uniform had no stripes, to arrange to send it to Amalie Elizabeth, who would know how to send it to Charlotte for transmission if Hermann was still there, and how to send another copy to Nancy, to catch him when he arrived there if the first one missed him.

  Juliane only had one radio address, for Amalie Elizabeth. To herself, she thought again, how am I going to pay for this?

  Hermann had not taken bribes.

  Jülich

  late June 1637

  Hermann and Manoah traced the barge’s movements down the Rur, getting as far as Roermond in the Netherlands.

  There, Hermann was standing on a pier, shaky boards underfoot, watching where he stepped. “This one?” He contemplated a superannuated barge that greatly resembled a hundred other old barges and turned to Manoah. “These men, you think, know where it was before it started upriver to Jülich?”

  Manoah nodded an affirmative. He had arranged for them to meet the polemen at a nearby tavern; had set some local watchmen to keep them from leaving.

  A band of unruly apprentices came running down the pier, pushing and shoving at one another, causing the poorly fastened boards to wobble. One of them bumped into Hermann, shaking him and unbalancing the rather unsteady equilibrium he was maintaining on his artificial foot.

  He fell, not far, but off the pier and down into the rackety barge that he and Manoah had been inspecting. He landed in a pile of burlap, old packing sacks, piled on top of some kegs; picked himself up, laughed it off, pointed out that he was fine, not hurt in the least. He picked up the sacks, shook them out, tossed them back onto the kegs, and climbed back up onto the pier with only minimal difficulty.

  “Where are we likely to find them, then?”

  They tracked down the barge crew, confirming at least that the plague-ridden barge that moored in Jülich had come up-river from Venlo rather than down-river from Maastricht.

  So much, so far, this was good news. This plague barge was probably part of the new wave being brought in from England; there was not a plague pocket, unrecognized, deep in the Netherlands.

  Hermann and Manoah headed back to Jülich before they, or any one else, realized that that barge crew in Roermond, also, had fallen ill with plague.

  The Roermond authorities quarantined the men and disinfected the barge, burning the contents, burlap sacks and all. The city put a plague watch on the river.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  It was four days before Hermann got back to Jülich. Charlotte had taken the children to one of her country estates. Melchior was still in the city.

  The message from Sofia Juliana had been waiting for nearly a week after she sent it. He said a prayer of thanks that his wife was being cared for and radioed back, to both Amalie Elizabeth in Magdeburg and to the physicians in Grantville, expressing his thanks.

  He radioed a short version of his report on the plague-carrying barge off to Diane Jackson; in Basel, in Besançon, in Nancy; in any location where he thought it might catch up with her. He sent it to Magdeburg and asked them to pass word along to Fernando and Frederik Hendrik. Then he sat down to write up a fuller version.

  The next morning, he woke up with fever and chills. By the end of the day, abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting had set in.

  The appearance of buboes confirmed what Melchior’s physician had feared.

  Chapter 57

  Nancy, Lorraine

  late June 1637

  At the last minute before the formal opening of the conference, Johann Moritz of Nassau-Siegen, deputy administrator of the Province of the Upper Rhine rushed in to represent the USE, saying that he had last-minute information from Magdeburg, where the administration had been notified by Melchior von Hatzfeld that Hermann von Hesse-Rotenburg, who had been on his way, had fallen ill in Jülich.

  “If he’s in Jülich now,” Nicole said with a little annoyance, “he wouldn’t have been able to get here in time for the opening in any case. How inconsiderate of him. Now I have to put up with having my cousin Henriette trailing along after Johann Moritz, probably to make mischief.”

  Henriette did create, if not mis
chief, at least irritation with her constant teasing.

  “Isn’t Nicole looking a little dumpier than usual, even for her? Pudgy, even for her? Don’t doctors call that discoloration on her face the ‘mask of pregnancy’? They’ve been married, what?, just about 18 months now,” she said to Claudia.

  “Henriette,” Johann Moritz said a impatiently. “Please do stop it. When you get anywhere near your family, you start acting like a child. This trip is maddeningly inconvenient for me. Wilhelm Ludwig of Nassau-Saarbrücken is in Augsburg again, assisting his father-in-law; I’m the deputy and I’ve had to leave my deputy in charge while I’m here. I had to bring my secretary; his secretary doesn’t know where all the important documents are.”

  “The old man is past it,” was Henriette’s assessment. “Georg Friedrich should turn in his resignation and let Gustav appoint someone competent for the Province of Swabia rather than hanging on to the prestige of an imperial office by his fingernails. But I suppose his sons don’t want him to. Still, if Friedrich thinks he has to stay in Basel to keep an eye on Baden, Christoph could go help him.”

  Johann Moritz put the heel of his left hand to his forehead. “Please be quiet. Just give me a bit of time to organize my thoughts. Go talk to some bankers about investments, or something. I need to talk to the grand duchess in peace.”

  Constantin Ableidinger arrived two days later than Johann Moritz. At the first chance, he asked Grand Duke Bernhard about Colonel Raudegen, found that he was on loan to Rohan – who was dealing not only with administrative matters in Burgundy but also, at a distance, with Huguenot woes in France–and expressed disappointment. “Well, I’m sorry he isn’t here,” Ableidinger’s voice boomed across the dinner table, “because although we have gone our separate ways in the past dozen years, we knew one quite another well as young Protestant refugees from Ferdinand II’s Lower Austria. Those were the Bayreuth days for us.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The majority of the messages pertaining to What Do We Do Next? arrived from Don Fernando in the Netherlands. The king in the Low Countries wished he was there. In lieu of being there, he radioed thought after thought after thought, each one of which had to be placed on the agenda by Scaglia and duly considered by the rest of the conferees.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Grand Duke Bernhard got bored. After enduring more reiterations of the basic discussion than he thought reasonable, he delegated all the conference business to Claudia and went off with Fabert to inspect garrison readiness and discuss stockpiling.

  “He’s restless,” Claudia said to Scaglia and Huygens. “In truth, he wanted a principality of his own but was not really prepared for the tedium that goes with ruling one. He is a general and it has been too long since he was in action. He’s tired of garrison duty. Yet, he has tied himself closely enough to the USE government that Gustav even felt free to move Horn out of Swabia. Bernhard won’t move in that direction again. Not ever, unless the whole structure collapses and the chessboard has to be reconfigured again. Nor can he do anything in Lorraine without Fernando’s approbation.”

  “He wants war?” Huygens asked.

  “Not war for its own sake. But he is anxious for something to do.”

  “I have come across an up-time saying that perhaps is pertinent.” Scaglia narrowed his eyes. “The book attributed it to the methods developed during their First World War. That, ‘War is long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.’ Would it truly be less tedious for him if his regiments were in action again?”

  Claudia meditated. “I have no doubt that he has experienced his moments of terror. On the field at Breitenfeld, for example. I think, though, that for Bernhard, the moments of terror are necessary to keep him functioning. It has been too long for his...what do they call it?...mental health...since he took the field. Der Kloster has turned into an efficient management team. Erlach has the treasury in hand. Perhaps you should tell Fernando, as it may affect how Bernhard handles the co-protectorate here in Lorraine in the next few months. He’s becoming impatient. Now that he is receiving funds again, he is so fully prepared that there is very little more for him to accomplish in the way of preparedness.”

  Scaglia sent his report on the conversation to the infanta, Maria Anna, and Fernando, because he agreed that they ought to know.

  Huygens sent his to Frederik Hendrik and Christian IV because he concluded that they would have to do something.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Claudia thoroughly enjoyed the evening philosophical discussions.

  She was profoundly grateful that her husband was off counting ammunition or some other activity that sensible rulers hired professional military entrepreneurs to perform. She was still not fully persuaded of the merits of militias, no matter how one inflated them and offered the title of “national army of such-and-such a place.” She found Bernhard’s regiments quite comforting. Even so, although he had many admirable qualities, he was not a patient man when theory was involved.

  Since they had Scaglia right there in front of them, nearly every conversation involved some aspect of Political Methods and the Laws of Nations. Almost everyone present was interested in the “soft landing idea” – even Constantin Ableidinger, although possibly not from the same perspective as the rest of them.

  Huygens noted Bismarck’s name and asked if he had looked up the famous Bismarck of the future.

  “I’ve looked at the encyclopedia articles, of course. They don’t have a lot of detail about the man himself; there’s more about how the unification of Germany occurred in the 19th century. ‘Blood and iron.’ Hard to argue with that, but I find it difficult to believe that the USE would have come into being if Gustav had not had an army.” Bismarck laughed; then added, “There are said to be a couple of biographies of him in the Grantville libraries. I’ve never been there and certainly can’t afford to have them copied, so they will have to wait unless,” Bismarck grinned, “someone wealthier than I may cause a down-time reprint to become available.”

  “He left memoirs,” Scaglia said. “It doesn’t appear that their libraries contained a copy. One of the supposed biographies that the researchers found turned out to be fiction, a novel: the title is Royal Flash.”

  “Someone has contributed a biography to the state library now, by an English scholar named Taylor,” Huygens added, “but from reports I have received from Frederik Hendrik’s researchers there, it could not be considered unbiased; rather tendentious and even hostile. More a commentary than a biography.”

  “There are some other possibilities,” Scaglia said. “Of Ms. Mailey’s books, this man is also discussed to a considerable extent in one that Dr. Nichols made available while she was away. It is more a general historical narrative, though. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire: 1875–1914. Also tendentious. It was part of a series, but no one has found a copy of the previous volume yet.”

  “Just to tease my friend August,...” Ruvigny patted his friend August’s shoulder. “I have purchased a recently published pamphlet containing a selection of quotations attributed to the man, though there appears to be some dispute as to whether he really said all of them or not. I think the one on revolution, Scaglia, was closer to your ideas.”

  “It was?”

  “That if there was to be a revolution, it was better to make it than to suffer it.”

  “Better not to have one at all,” Duchess Nicole said. “Non inultus premor.”

  The others acknowledged her contribution of the motto of Lorraine, I will not be touched with impunity, politely.

  Sophia realized why the trip to Savoy had been important. The duchess was not by any means as perceptive as her sister Claude. Things would have been simpler if Claude had come to explain things to her, in private. Nicolas-François did his best, as she thought back to the way the discussions went, but that couldn’t be the same for the duchess as curling up on one end of a sofa with her sister on the other and giggling while they talked things over.

  But it seeme
d likely that Duchess Nicole did not giggle. None of Sophia’s sisters had ever curled up and giggled with her. Anne Cathrine with Leonora, perhaps, but none of them with her.

  Perhaps the general explained things in private. Pillow talk. Her imagination boggled at the image of Aldringen and Nicole cuddling.

  “There is one that Grand Duke Bernhard would appreciate, I think,” Ruvigny continued. “It appears to be a verified statement, as well, since he made it in a public speech to the Reichstag of his day.”

  A conquering army on the border will not be stopped by eloquence.

  Claudia collapsed in helpless laughter. “M. de Ruvigny, you must get me a copy of this collection.”

  “The encyclopedias all appear to agree that he was a very conservative man,” Aldringen commented.

  Scaglia shook his head. “Conservative yes; but I think possibly Herr Ableidinger’s reactionary is even the more apt term. Otto von Bismarck did not like the changes of the industrial revolution–similar, very, to the one that is now coming to us. He did not like the urban middle classes, factory owners even less than merchants. As I read the descriptions, his dream was an impossible one, in which a rural world from humblest peasant to highest noble sturdily and unquestioningly supported a powerful monarch.”

  Sophia suddenly sat up straight. “That wouldn’t work any more, even without the up-timers.”

  They all turned.

  “As a king, Papa has not been a brilliantly successful businessman, but he has certainly known, long before the Ring of Fire, that he could not ‘live of his own.’ The total manorial rents that he receives from the royal holdings in Denmark in a year are...not much more than the dowry he gave M. de Ruvigny to take me off his hands, and Norway only contributes about 60,000 rigsdaler more annually. Denmark’s wealth comes from the tolls for passage through the Sound and those come from trade, commerce. He has founded towns; encouraged merchants and mercantile activity. Brought merchants and artisans from the Netherlands, even at the cost of losing some support from the Lutheran bishops because for such men, he tolerates the practice of Calvinism.”