Duchess Nicole stared at her.
Sophia lifted her chin and looked back. “Look at what he has done in Glückstadt, though that is in the German duchies, of course, in Holstein. Papa couldn’t have gotten away with it, or something like what the count of Schaumburg has done in Altona, in Denmark proper even if there was a suitable place for such a trade city. The nobles on the Great Council wouldn’t have let him.”
She pushed her spectacles up her nose and faced Nicole again. “August’s purported descendant, possible descendant, does not seem to me to have been a realist. I am a realist, Your Grace. My father bribed M. de Ruvigny to marry me by paying him a large sum of money. I am simply fortunate that the husband he chose is a kind man whose ambition is not simply to arrogate as much power as possible to himself, but rather is mostly driven, I have come to believe, by a desire to reach a position where he can benefit others. But it’s just not possible to pretend about money. Not unless you’re willing to go bankrupt.”
She turned to Ruvigny and Bismarck at the other side of the room. “He has even given the Calvinists the church you attended when you were in Copenhagen. The silk company that he founded did not succeed, but he tried it. There are the experiments in colonizing the New World. Surely....”
She hesitated, looking at Aldringen. “Surely, no rational man believes any more in the picture you just sketched for us. And that Bismarck, not our Bismarck, was, what? Not as far into the future as the up-timers have come from, but much closer to them than to us. Was he serious?”
The conversation moved on, with a general consensus that if the book of quotations was to be believed, much of Otto von Bismarck’s purported political wisdom had constituted a set of platitudes. Politics is not an exact science. Yawn. That was not news to a convocation of diplomats. Politics is the art of the possible. Sleep-inducing. Everyone had come here for the main purpose of figuring out what was possible in regard to the situation in France.
“My greatest confusion, still,” August protested, “is that these up-timers seem universally to believe that the man was Prussian. Prussia is far to the east, east of Danzig, not even close to being in the USE. This Otto was born in Brandenburg, just as I was. On the same small estate, even! Schönhausen. It’s not far from Berlin.”
“We have,” Ruvigny said, “all heard that lament before.”
Scaglia recommended that August should read Hobsbawm and changed the subject slightly. “The remarkable Ms. Mailey also had a book on the earlier stages of the European revolutions of the 19th century, Metternich and Castlereagh, by one of their own statesmen, a Henry Kissinger. That will be available in reprint soon, I understand.”
Chapter 58
The USE ambassadress to the Swiss Confederacy, Madame Jackson, arrived with a companion, apologizing for having detoured through Burgundy to check on the status of the smallpox vaccination program.
“It was good to see young Gerry Stone again, that funny boy. I still miss my own sons, so much. So bereft, I have been,” she told Dr. Guarinonius, “feeling so much without adequate help since Tony Adducci went to Magdeburg, to Cardinal Mazzare’s new seminary, to study for the priesthood. Not that I would have held him back from a sacred vocation. However, for months, I couldn’t find anyone satisfactory to take his place.”
“Then, when the emperor called General Horn away, out of Swabia, the general sent me this young man to be my new aide. He has been such a help. I would like to see all of you treat him well, for my sake.”
The young man in question smiled modestly, reached out, and offered to shake the doctor’s hand in the up-time style. “Charles Louis,” he said. “Delighted to meet you.”
“Not so very young,” Guarinonius thought. “Closer to thirty than twenty, probably. He just has one of those baby faces that keep a man looking boyish well into middle age.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Diane made a speech, a formal presentation which was more a diatribe, on plague and the importance of unremitting efforts to contain it. She called upon the witness of Grand Duchess Claudia’s three plague doctors. She referred to the SoTF’s experience at Kronach; to the losses the up-timers experienced at Merkwiller.
As a finale, she proclaimed: “Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell you of this. Jesus met a man possessed by demons and the demons, when he asked what their name was, responded, ‘My name is Legion, for we are many.’ The sources of plague are many. The rats are many, the fleas are many.”
Aside from Grand Duchess Claudia, the basic reaction among the down-time delegates and their staff was, “Ho-hum.” Most did listen with reasonable courtesy.
Informal conversations continued in the evenings. In some ways, they were as important as the formal proceedings. Charles Louis noted that he had found during the years he was with Horn in Swabia that among the young up-timers assigned to the general, there often seemed to be an expectation that the down-timers would just appreciate all the ideas, technology, etc. that they brought along.
“The reality,” I suspect, “is that most of the down-timers are just looking at that potlatch of treasures–that is a word one of them used to describe railways, airplanes, steam engines, all such–and wondering whether or not there is something within it that will contribute to the further sharpening of an axe that they would be grinding in any case. Or the battle that they would be fighting.”
✽ ✽ ✽
“I am so depressed,” Henriette pouted to her husband. “It has been so long since I have been with a man that all my essential parts are probably growing mildew.”
“You can scarcely expect to persuade anyone that you have adopted chastity as a life style,” he commented.
“Only a couple of passing fancies.” She waved one hand airily. “Neither of them lasted.”
“It will make my life much simpler if, when you pick a new semi-permanent lover, he is a loyal citizen of the USE,” he smiled. “Not French; most sincerely, please, not French, nor even a Lorrainer. Nor Spanish.”
“Oh, Moritz,” she teased. “How unfair. Once, during some tedious diplomatic matter, I saw Olivares’ son. He is just the right age and soooo pretty.”
“Henriette, please! Dutch would be all right. Polish would be questionable right now. Austrian is probably acceptable, given the current situation with the Ottomans.”
She looked at him with some annoyance. “Do you want to pick the man, too?”
“If that is necessary, I would, of course, be happy to be of service.”
“Oh, you exasperating...individual.” She threw a pillow at him. “What would you think about a count palatine from Pfalz-Veldenz?”
“You would plan a long-term affair with the man you married me to avoid marrying?”
“No, no. Threatened with me by Gustav, Johann Friedrich scrambled rapidly and, having no luck with Eberhard’s sister, married Litsa’s older sister Catharina. She’s much his own age, very respectable, and Calvinist. I doubt that he made himself popular with the emperor, but has probably saved himself great grief by escaping the Great Catholic Whore of Babylon.” This time, her gesture at her well-dressed self was flamboyant. She stood up on her toes and twirled around the room.
“I am thinking rather of Karl Ludwig, his younger brother.” She shrugged. “It isn’t what I was expecting, but when opportunities present themselves.... He has been serving as a Swedish officer under Horn. His sister recently married Turenne’s brother, of course. That should contribute to keeping my life interesting.”
“Where do you plan to locate this paragon of a suitable lover? Considering that the emperor has pulled Horn’s troops out of Swabia and sent them eastward?”
Henriette’s eyes gleamed with mischief. “He is now on detached duty, I believe. He also has a reasonably good French education and it appears that he prefers to go by Charles Louis. So I intend to find him on Ambassadress Jackson’s staff, right here in Nancy. Tonight, if my luck holds out. Possibly there is an extended visit to Basel in my immediate future.”
Moritz perked up. “So, we have a man playing incognito, do we? Be careful – that makes him no less the grandson of Gustav’s aunt than his older brother is. His preference for the French form of his name at least helps to keep him distinct from Karl Ludwig who is in Spanish, or at least Fernando’s, custody up in Brussels. But do you think that Gustav doesn’t keep an eye on him?” He paused. “Does the ambassadress know who he really is?”
“Mais, oui. She thinks it is great fun to help pull the wool over the eyes of someone who once wandered around the Netherlands calling himself ‘Captain Gars.’ And, perhaps Gustav won’t notice for a while that I have involved myself. I trust you won’t feel any obligation to mention my plans in a dispatch.”
“I assure you, that is the very last thing on my mind.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Johann Moritz’ conversation with Lady Sophia, Mme. de Ruvigny, if that was what she preferred, was quite different. Discussion of aircraft somehow led to Hal Smith’s age which led to Joanie Smith, which surfaced the subject of a “reader.”
His eyes brightened. “I could recommend someone. Not a typical recommendation, but useful for the new things in this world. At Fulda, there is a woman named Dagmar Nilsdotter. Ambassadress Jackson knows her, I believe. She is Danish, the widow of of a German, one Sgt. Helmuth Hartke, who died of the plague in 1635. Currently, she is the administrative assistant to the SoTF National Guard, Fulda Barracks Regiment. She is well organized, reads well, speaks Danish, German, and up-time English. She has worked among the up-timers long enough that both you and M. de Ruvigny could learn a lot that would benefit you.”
He stopped to think. “She has three small children though; also the young son of a stepdaughter who is studying in Grantville.”
Sophia had no objection to adding children to her household; as noisy and messy as they often were, children were just a fact of life.
Her maid Hille, who was standing a few polite steps away as her mistress conversed, had sharp ears. This Dagmar might be useful to a young woman with new ideas.
Chapter 59
Grantville
late June 1637
Gary Lambert as hospital business manager also wondered just how Sofia Juliana was going to manage financially. “Susannah Shipley says there no medical reason for her to be taking up a hospital bed,” he said to his secretary. “I’m pretty sure that she doesn’t have funds for a hotel. That mounts up fast over four or five months.”
“Maybe Ned and I could take her in,” Vernelle Paxton suggested, sounding tentative. “It’s not as if we don’t have plenty of room and she seems to be pleasant. Unthreatening. Not the diva type. I don’t think Ned would mind. Even though he’s superintendent of schools now, he’s not the kind to worry about what people would say if we take in a boarder.”
Ned actually thought it was a good idea. “While she’s resting, she can simply associate with several of the down-time commoner women in the school system and at the hospital who are, I think, too much in awe of the very idea of nobles, even if they’ve never met one face to face. This young woman isn’t just any old noble. She’s the wife of someone who has held an important position in the government. She can, I suppose one could say, desensitize them, the way doctors expose their patients to allergens in a controlled way.”
While other people planned to rearrange her life, Juliane lay in the hospital and prayed for the life of her child.
Ashley Walsh, as the candy striper named herself, kept coming to her room. “I’m supposed to be entertaining to the patients and keep them in an optimistic mood,” she said cheerfully. “I’m not really a volunteer; I’m a year ahead of myself, in the accelerated program; the high school has a community service component for the juniors and seniors now.”
When Ashley discovered, by chatting relentlessly, that Sofia Juliana had an affinity for cheese production, she said happily that her aunt worked at a goat dairy. The next day, she hauled along Sabina Jenkins and Myrna Booth to help keep her assigned charge from getting bored.
“I did go to Magdeburg to visit Hermann a couple of times,” Juliane told her new friends. “I had to, of course, if we wanted children, and we did. But even in 1634, Amalie Elisabeth insisted that Hermann should take a suite in Hesse House as his lodgings. It was right, of course, in that he was a junior branch of the family and it might seem as if they were snubbing him if he didn’t live there. It could have caused a family fight if he refused, because she can be somewhat overbearing and is always convinced that she knows what is best. Really, though, it made things harder for him with the rest of the administration. It caused them to see him more as if he were part of a Partei, a clique, around Hesse, Hesse’s creature in the government, rather than a true member of the government serving the emperor and the people. I don’t think that the emperor ever put full confidence in him; ever truly trusted him.”
In the face of Sofia Juliana’s panicked protest of, “but I never even lived in Magdeburg and hardly know the important officials,” Ned and Vernelle moved her out of the hospital and into their spare downstairs bedroom, where she could earn her way just by existing and talking to would-be nurses and teachers until the baby was born
“You are,” Vernelle said to her husband, kissing him on his bald spot, “very smart.”
This was her deep and heartfelt belief. Ed hadn’t started out with any more advantages than the rest of the Paxton kids – he was just reasonably bright, very hard working, and extremely tenacious. When they had to get married, she had just assumed he would go into the mines or get a factory job. Vernelle had been more than a little surprised when he kept commuting to school, year, after year, after year.
Personally, she thought with considerable satisfaction, she thought that she’d adapted to it better than Regina Smith had when Hal did basically the same thing. Of course, Ned had been able to live at home in Grantville almost all the time, while Hal had traveled all over the country, sometimes to other countries, leaving Regina to manage four kids.
Chapter 60
Nancy, Lorraine
early July 1637
“I
hope I did not overstep in making the recommendation,” Johann Moritz said to Henri de Ruvigny in regard to his recommendation of Dagmar Nilsdotter the next evening. “Yes, if you don’t mind, I would take some more of that wine.”
Ruvigny passed the decanter across the table.
“Probably, I should have asked you about it first, before I mentioned the possibility. If you hire Dagmar, she will come in without preconceptions, which will be good. However, there might be problems. She cannot be much younger than forty years, old enough to be Lady Sophia’s mother. She has a very strong personality, without which she would not have survived the life that she has led. If you don’t watch out, she could come to dominate Lady Sophia; crush her. It’s been seen more than once in situations with court favorites.”
“I will see to it that no such thing happens,” Ruvigny assured him. “That she does not become the equivalent of an overbearing royal favorite on a minor scale. I have even read the comments on the problem by the late Sir Francis Bacon. My brother-in-law gifted me a copy of the Essays some years ago. My wife has been given into my care by God, however odd and circuitous the process by which the Creator chose her for me, so it is my obligation to protect her. As the good Mr. Dod writes,
“The first duty of the husband is to dwell with his wife, that sith there is a near and dear society between them, and of all other the nearest (for she is to him as the church is to Christ, flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone), therefore he must be willing constantly and kindly to converse with her, to walk with her, to talk with her, and let her have a comfortable familiarity with him, that she may see he delights in her company, and may well know that of all others she is his most loved and welcome companion.[5]
“I’m familiar enough with the phenomenon of favorites,” he continued. “The French court has been plagued with them, constantly. At least we are far enough away from
Copenhagen that we won’t have to deal with hostility from nobles who resent favorites who are elevated from humble backgrounds. Or even, when it comes to the favorites of kings and queens, from status in the minor or provincial nobility.”
“The marriage is acceptable?” Moritz asked. Every court in Europe had heard tales of Lady Sophia’s contrary and difficult temperament.
“She is fully, willingly, compliant with her marital duties, if that is what you mean.” Ruvigny answered. “Fortunately, I am a patient man. Even after a half-year, the only times she approaches near to me of her own free will, without my making an overture, is when she thinks that I am sound asleep. I would never have imagined that any human being short of a corpse could have feet as cold as my lady wife does.”
Hille, whose nose was out of joint because Lady Sophia had said she was not needed this evening, “Ambassadress Jackson is quite sufficient company when all I am doing is walking down two well-guarded corridors to Duchess Nicole’s parlor,” and thus deprived her of some probably good gossip, stood silently in the small dressing room. Very silently. This kind of gossip could be traded for information from others. But should it be? She shifted slightly to get a better angle, for M. de Ruvigny was still talking.
“In some ways, I am grateful that Mrs. Joan Smith was not available for more than a visit, although I found her to be a kind and motherly woman when she did come last winter. I am afraid though, if Sophia had obtained her as a companion, she would quickly have become a child again in many ways, at least for several years. That she would, in an allegorical sense if not a literal one, have simply placed her head on Mrs. Smith’s shoulder, seeking comfort, and relaxed.
“She cannot afford to relax. She must mature.”
✽ ✽ ✽
“I believe,” Charles Louis was saying to the group gathered in the parlor, “that I am happy that I am obscure. I cannot quite comprehend what the emperor must be living through. Or Hand. The situation is not quite the same as the Gospel of Luke’s ‘For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ Nevertheless, it can only be disconcerting to learn that in another world, one was quite dead, while in this one, this morning, one has utilized the latrine and eaten eggs. Poor Lazarus had all the neighbors staring at him constantly for the rest of his life, I am sure.”
Ring of Fire - 1635_ The Legions of Pestilence Page 42