Ring of Fire - 1635_ The Legions of Pestilence

by Virginia DeMarce

  “Nothing at all?” Henriette asked.

  “Nothing of significance.”

  When she cornered him alone, she taxed him with his real identity and asked again, “Nothing at all?”

  “I have determined that I predeceased my youngest brother, which is scarcely surprising, since he is fifteen years younger than I am and a full twenty years younger than Johann Friedrich. Even finding that much was not simple. The researchers had to look in the encyclopedias for him, not for me. Even then, Leo was only in a footnote to an article on Sweden which mentioned that all his sons predeceased him and he bequeathed Veldenz to the Vasas to avoid having it shredded into tatters by greedily voracious female-line claimants. Fritz and I obviously left no surviving sons, since he succeeded to the principality, but there is no clue in the records as to the identity of the various females.

  “Beyond that, my life is a tabula rasa. I can make of it what I will.

  “I have hopes of something quite interesting.”

  “Do you find me of interest?” Henriette winked.

  Chapter 61

  Nancy

  July 1637

  There were no panicked, racing, messengers to bring the news that Hermann of Hesse-Rotenburg had died of the plague to Nancy. It was a blasé young technician from the radio center who passed the transcribed message to one of the guards at the door of the conference room. It was a staff assistant who, at Aldringen’s nod, read it out loud to those around the table and standing against the walls.

  It was enough to bring a jolt to the gathering. All of them knew Hermann. Not well, but they knew him, had met him, like this, reminding them that this one specific plague victim was a cousin, an in-law to someone they did know, an acquaintance. A ring of low-voiced chatter circulated around the table

  Constantin Ableidinger stood up and boomed, “Shut up!” in a voice that shut everyone up.

  “I’ve always been pretty much thinking along Aldringen’s lines–that plague is an unalterable fact of life just as much as birth and death and therefore the up-timers are wasting too much in the way of resources on it. That expending resources on it, forgive me, Grand Duke and Grand Duchess, was some kind of a ploy on your part, probably a bit underhanded, to manipulate things over here on the western and southwestern borders.

  “We’re going to have to reset our minds.

  “The up-timers were greatly shocked and saddened to lose so many of their own two years ago, from Colonel Utt to the youngest private. Yet, I think, many of us thought privately, ‘How naive of them. They are not accustomed to facing reality.’

  “Nobody high in social status made headlines by dying in the 1635 epidemic. Colonel Utt was honored by the army and the government, but his loss was a ‘Grantville concern’ mainly. A An SoTF concern at the most. That was where they held the memorial service. That was where the emperor and cabinet sent their condolences. Few of you had even met him.

  “At this moment, you are facing the truth that it isn’t just vagrants, peasants, and artisans, and up-time foreigners, who die of plague, but those you regard as ‘real’ people. ‘People Like Us.’ People in your own group, your own network.

  “You are shocked today because plague has killed a man who was one of your own, born into your class, a friend, a relative.

  “I’m going to say honestly that I never much liked that man, never respected him much. To a considerable extent, I held that opinion simply because he was one of your own, born into your class, a friend and a cousin to Germany’s ancien régime as many of its prominent members took imperial appointments, entered into the parliament, focused on thwarting the ideals I have adopted, on making space for your old world in the new world we are, our party is, trying to create.”

  He looked directly at Scaglia for a minute.

  “Look in your hearts. How many of you have thought, this is a radical movement, not a matter for me, because in places like Amsterdam, the Committees of Correspondence have taken the lead in enforcing the regulations?

  “I will dare to speak here for the Fourth of July Party as a whole.

  “We came to Nancy to discuss the threat of what Gaston may do. These diseases are as much a threat to a decent life for all men as Gaston is, if not more. They kill the highly placed, which horrifies you at this moment, but they kill many more of the lowly. Plague has shown us that it kills down-timer and up-timer, without discrimination.

  “I will even speak for the emperor and the administration.”

  “I am dreaming that if all of us cooperate, plague does not have to be a perpetual threat to building a decent world for peasants and workers, even if our efforts inadvertently include nobles. Plague does not have to carry away the revolutionary young people who will make our New Jerusalem, even if eradicating it, containing it, may also spare the lives of many who are elderly and reactionary.

  “You are all free to reverse that thought in your minds, if that is what it takes.”

  He pointed to Diane, to Claudia’s plague doctors, to the messenger who had just come up from the radio center to announce the news from Jülich. His voice boomed out.

  “Pay.Attention.When.They.Speak.

  “Supply their cadres they way you would supply your regiments. Require discipline where there is a known danger of infection the way you require discipline in the face of enemy troops. Don’t sit around gasping, ‘Poor Hermann,’ and then continue on with life as usual. If you do that,”

  He paused for effect.

  “...if you react that way, then he might as well have stayed home on his farm, doing his little hobbies, making love to his little wife, and waiting for the enemy to find him there rather than going out to confront it.”

  Grantville

  Juliane was playing Scrabble on a lapboard with Myrna Booth, Vernelle’s granddaughter, 23-year-old Madeline Clinter, newly arrived “back home” in possession of a bachelor’s degree and teacher’s certification from the new USE normal school in Amberg, and her sister Flo Richards, splendidly entertained by their rendition of the remarkable phenomenon of Brillo the Ramshackle Ram and the modest industry of stories and souvenirs that he had generated as he morphed into a revolutionary symbol.

  “Next, I have to find a job,” Madeline was saying. “I’m applying in Bamberg and Magdeburg. I think my chances will be better in either place than here. Or maybe over at Fulda. I got a letter from Iona Nelson asking me to consider teaching at Quedlinburg, because they need more up-timers, but that’s way out in the boondocks. It may be okay for her, but she’s close to sixty years old, if she’s a day. I want to live in a city where there’s something happening.”

  Vernelle came in with the news.

  Sofia Juliana turned her head to the side, silent tears dripping from her eyes onto the pillow. “No,” she said, choking back sobs. “No, no no.

  “Nobody ever thought that Hermann was good enough. Everyone always said, ‘Oh, it’s just Hermann’ or ‘Ask Hermann, he’ll step in if we can’t get the person we really want.’ Those people in Magdeburg assumed he was just a placeholder who got his job through nepotism, because Wilhelm and Amalie Elisabeth wanted to put someone in the USE cabinet as a tit-for-tat for their supporting the Stearns administration.”

  She pushed herself up on her elbows, accidentally dumping the Scrabble board on the floor. “And that was true, as far as it went, but he didn’t look at it as a sinecure. He worked hard, all the time. He hardly ever got to come home to see me. He did everything they asked him to. I didn’t look at him and see defective. I was so happy when he offered to marry me. I thought he was wonderful.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “If this baby is a girl, I’ll have to get a job,” Juliane said to Vernelle and Ned Paxton. “I didn’t have a big dowry. My parents had fifteen children.”

  Vernelle blinked.

  “I’m the second-oldest and twelve of the others are still alive, needing to be provided for. Well, three of my sisters are already married, but of course they needed dowries, too, no
matter how skimpy. Philipp’s in the army, but that leaves the rest of them. Five more girls; five more dowries to find, if they want to marry. Johann just started Latin school; Louise is younger, and my father isn’t well.

  “The way things have changed under the USE constitution, Hermann didn’t have enough of his partition share left to assign me enough dower to live on; he didn’t get the tax revenue from the Rotenburg precinct any more. The Province of Hesse-Kassel does. So he was down to what we brought in from the manor farm and rents from a few villages. All the Hessian settlements, about how the Quart would be divided among and inherited by the sons of Landgrave Moritz’ second marriage, were made before the Ring of Fire.

  “If it’s a boy, at least we’ll keep the farm and I can run it for him until he’s old enough to take it over, and we’ll keep getting the rents. If it’s a girl, the farm and the rents, everything but my tiny dowry and that little bit of life income from the dower, will go to his brothers.

  “Oh, I know that Amalie Elizabeth would say something along the lines of, ‘Oh, you poor sweetheart,’ and find me and the baby a place in her household, but I’m not going to live the rest of my life as someone’s poor relation.

  “I’ll have to get a job. Just like your young Madeline, I’ll have to get a job.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Ashley talked to Sabina and Myrna. Sabina talked to Joanie Smith. Joanie introduced both herself and a younger woman to Juliane. “This is Gertrud Hartke,” she said. “She’s Jeffie Garand’s widow; now she’s a nursing student at Leahy; Gertrud lost both husband and father to the plague in the epidemic over by Lorraine. She’s managing full time school while working. If she can do it, so can you.”

  “I have a child also,” Gertrud said. “Just as you will soon have a child. A two-year-old son. I have left him with my stepmother over at Fulda, though. Not even a woman as determined as myself should believe that she can successfully add a two-year-old toddler to the schedule of this study. It dominates every hour of my life.”

  Gertrud regarded the plague much as angels regarded the demons of hell.

  Juliane concurred.

  Nor was Gertrud at all timid.

  Juliane envied her that.

  They had a serious conversation about public health nursing as a career.

  Gertrud mentioned that her mother-in-law, an up-timer, was providing her a place to live here in Grantville, free of charge, while she went to school. “Her name is Marsha Jones. Perhaps, once the baby is born, she would be willing to rent you a room. She loved Jeffie very much. She hates the plague, too.”

  “It will depend,” Juliane said, “on whether the baby is a boy or a girl. Just about every decision I make will depend on that.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “You know,” Ashley said to Mrs. Smith. “That’s just not right, to have the whole rest of her life depend on whether or not her baby is a boy. We ought to talk to somebody. If Princess Kristina can be the emperor’s heir, why can’t other people’s daughters inherit?”

  She stood and picked up her backpack.

  “It’s absurd. Maybe I can make that my paper next year. My long senior essay. Theme: it’s ridiculous that the laws are such a jigsaw puzzle that in one place, a girl can inherit an empire, but in another place, a girl can’t even inherit a farm.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “How’s it going?” Ned Paxton asked as he came home from a hard day’s labor in the field of school paperwork. Personnel evaluations were the bane of his existence, closely followed by hiring decisions.

  “There’s cheese noodles for supper, with a tomato, cucumber, and onion salad. Vinaigrette dressing.” Vernelle came out of the kitchen, stood on her toes, and kissed his cheek. “J. D. and Flo are coming. Anna made the casserole, but I fixed the salad myself. She doesn’t trust tomatoes, even though we have all assured her that there isn’t any danger of poison.”

  “Sounds good. Better than good. Delicious. Let me get out of these clothes and into some jeans.”

  As he disappeared up the stairs, she called after him. “Do you remember back, four years ago maybe, when Joanie and Hank Smith went to Denmark. There was a girl with a learning disability problem; you helped Isaiah Avery develop an I.E.P. for her.”

  “Vaguely.”

  “She’s grown up and married now. Gertrud Hartke’s stepmother is going to work for her.”

  “Well I hope the plan helped her some.” He came back down five steps, far enough that he could see Vernelle. “They say it’s a small world. I’m coming to believe it.”

  Chapter 62

  The Low Countries

  July 1637

  “I

  t is not just Gaston,” Frederik Hendrik wrote to Huygens in response to his report on Bernhard’s restlessness. “It is Rohan and Soubise; it is Bouillon and Turenne, with their connections to Veldenz in the Palatinate and all the possible complications of that, including the different generations of Vasa marriages into other bits and pieces of the Palatinate, Kleeburg and Zweibrücken; it is what Fernando has to decide about Anne and the child.

  “If Gaston makes a ploy that spills over toward the borders of Burgundy, or into Lorraine again, or threatens Sedan....

  “We may need Bernhard’s regiments, which is why we are subsidizing him. Fernando is too heavily committed elsewhere to make a rapid response if Gaston takes such measures.

  “However, Gaston has not yet taken them.

  “It will catastrophic if Bernhard moves prematurely, no matter how restless he is.

  “It is imperative that before the end of the conference, before he leaves Nancy, you make clear to him....”

  From the Hague, Frederik Hendrik had been discussing this latest dilemma via radio with Copenhagen.

  Christian might write to Huygens directly, but Frederik Hendrik rather hoped that he would not.

  The way Christian had expressed it was that Huygens should bloody well point out to Bernhard that since they had been paying the subsidies to keep him afloat for the past half-year or so, Huygens had better point out to the man, before the conference broke up, that he had puppet masters pulling his strings – or more to the point that the two of them were the paymasters who could tell Bernhard, as the piper, exactly what tune to play.

  Frederik Hendrik saw no reason, yet, to be that antagonistic.

  Christian and Frederik Hendrik each had his own reasons for subsidizing the Grand Duke, of course. There were so many contingencies that might give each of them a chance to claw back a little of his own. Neither wanted a total upset of the apple cart. The northern Netherlands right now were not only surviving but doing well under Fernando. The Union of Kalmar offered quite a lot of future benefits to Denmark as long as the betrothal of Kristina to Ulrik held up.

  If....

  If Gustav didn’t remarry and beget a male heir,

  If....

  If the eastern front did not collapse,

  If....

  If the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth did collapse,

  If....

  There were half dozen other potential ramifications. If Fernando lived. If Prince Ulrik lived. For that matter, if Kristina lived. If the Ottoman advance couldn’t be reversed. All they really wanted at the moment, in return for being able to offer up Bernhard’s regiments upon the altar of their “first gentlemen’s” immediate politico-military needs if Fernando or Gustav suddenly found himself over-extended, was just an itsy bitsy teeny weeny scarcely observable shift in the balance of power between Gentleman #1 and Gentleman #2 in each polity.

  Denmark

  In Copenhagen, Christian sat his favorite chair in his study, tapping his finger on the arm. Tap...tap...tap.

  Vibeke’s children were playing on the rug at his feet, with a toy train he had ordered for them from Grantville. It was not an expensive original, rather a “reproduction” of an “antique.” He wanted them to be able to play with it, not just look at it. A small oval track, some brightly painted cast iron cars that hooked to one an
other, an engine to be pushed by a child’s hand.

  He had not seen much of Kirsten’s children when they were this age. He had sent them to the Netherlands for their safety.

  He had seen little or nothing of most of his children when they were this age.

  In 22 more years, in a different world, this six-year-old boy, grown into a surprisingly honorable and competent man contrary to all likelihood and probability, would die in the streets of Copenhagen, leading a company of volunteer students from the university, defending the city against an attack by the Swedes.

  It would be good for the Union of Kalmar if the boy who had become King Karl X of Sweden in that world received a different upbringing in this one.

  Gustav’s nephew Karl was...precisely the same age as Waldemar. This year or next, he should be setting out on his grand tour. If, at some point, Gustav should find himself in need of a couple of regiments in a hurry, there could be a deal.

  Burgundy was a fine place. Far away from Denmark. With a Lutheran ruler. Sophia had not caused him a bit of trouble since he sent her off to Burgundy. From all he heard, Waldemar was doing well there. If it should be possible to drop Karl on Bernhard....all it would take was Gustav’s consent. The boy’s parents were in no position to argue with the high king of the Union of Kalmar.

  Tap...tap...tap.

  Chapter 63

  Nancy, Lorraine

  July 1637

  “We need to go home,” Claudia said abruptly. She had called the whole Burgundy delegation into her suite. “We need to send someone to the grand duke, whatever he is inspecting today, call him back, and go home. Bismarck, could you start...notify my steward, the liverymen. We should start tomorrow morning, as early as possible.”