Ring of Fire IV

by Eric Flint

  “Men! Why is it so hard for you not to think with your dicks?”

  Ah. The mystery was solved. Ron and Harry were “buddies” by the mere fact of belonging to the same half of the human race.

  The wrong half, to be precise.

  It didn’t take Ron more than an instant to deduce the specific source of Missy’s indignation. Unfortunately, he didn’t take an instant longer to deduce a more salubrious way of expressing his conclusion.

  “Look, hon, it’s been obvious since the day they met that the two of them had the hots for each other.”

  Missy’s glare was transferred from the innocent world outside the window to the guilty-as-hell miscreant within the room. “Had the hots for each other?” she demanded. “Oh, sure! Let’s just pretend that one of them isn’t the worst rake in Europe and the other isn’t a sheltered girl barely half his age. She’s probably—no, excuse me!—she was probably a virgin.”

  Barely half his age. In point of awkward fact, Harry was thirty and Eva was twenty-two—hardly an outlandish age spread even in the century they’d come from, much less this one. The count of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt was a man in his mid-fifties with a wife who’d been a teenager when they got married—and was still no older than Eva. But Ron didn’t know any American, including Missy herself, who didn’t have a good opinion of the man. Grantville could have had a lot worse neighbor.

  He decided a flanking approach was probably called for. “I really think you—we—shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions. Has Eva herself said anything to you about it? Made any complaints or anything?”

  Missy flung her hand to the side, as if batting away a noxious insect. “Eva! She only left her room once today, and that was to use the toilet. Such as it is.”

  She made a face. When you lived in Grantville you didn’t think much about the ubiquitous availability of up-time toilets. That was the single biggest drawback to relocating anywhere else except Magdeburg—and even then, only parts of Magdeburg. Anywhere else, you’d only find American-style plumbing in the palaces and town mansions of people rich enough to afford to get it installed.

  Amalie Elizabeth, the landgravine of the province, had installed exactly two up-time toilets in her palace here in Kassel. One for her and one for everybody else who came to visit. But the inn where Ron and Missy were staying, despite being the best one in the city, had nothing but what amounted to an indoor outhouse.

  Missy’s plumbing distraction was brief. Within seconds she was back to the subject that had aroused her fury, worrying at it like a terrier attacking a rat.

  “He’s a rat, is what he is. He’s had the girl in bed all day. He’s taking advantage of her innocence—”

  Ron raised his hand abruptly. “Missy, cut it out! You know perfectly well that if there’s one thing no down-time girl is—including and probably even especially a princess—it’s ‘innocent.’ They do sex education in this century in a way that’d have given every fundamentalist back up-time a heart attack or a stroke.”

  She subsided, slightly, but she was still obviously fuming.

  “Have you talked with Litsa?” Ron asked. “I know she’s here because I heard her singing in her room when I passed it. And judging from the tune she was singing, she was in a fine mood. That wasn’t any lament or dirge, I can tell you that.”

  Missy shook her head.

  Ron studied her for a moment. “Just been working up a head of steam in here by yourself, huh?” He extended his hand. “C’mon, Missy. Let’s do see what Litsa thinks. She’s probably the best friend Eva has.”

  * * *

  By the time Missy finished expressing her concerns, Litsa was obviously fighting to keep a grin off her face.

  “Why is this funny?” demanded Missy.

  Litsa shook her head. “I’m sorry, it’s just…I don’t mean to be rude, but you Americans sometimes have the most peculiar attitudes. Didn’t any unmarried women in your time—girls, too—get pregnant without being married?”

  “Sure,” said Missy. She gave Ron a glance that had its full share of Missy’s current disenchantment with all things male. “Could have happened to me, if I hadn’t been able to keep ol’ octopus-hands here at bay.”

  Ron tightened his jaws a bit. As a depiction of their courtship, that was completely unfair. Missy had been no slouch herself in the groping department. But he didn’t make any protest.

  “And how was it handled?” asked Litsa.

  “Depended on who it was. And what the family’s attitudes were. Sometimes you had what they called a ‘shotgun wedding.’ That means—”

  Litsa laughed. “I am familiar with shotguns, and the meaning is quite clear. Much the same happens in this time, on occasion. But surely not always, not even with your people.”

  Missy shrugged. “No. Sometimes people got abortions, sometimes they had the child and gave it up for adoption, and sometimes they just went and raised the kid themselves.” She gave Ron another of those damn-your-gender glances. “Herselves, I should say.”

  “And was it a great scandal?”

  “Sometimes.” Missy pursed her lips. “To be honest, in our town—not much. But we were just lowlife hillbillies, not nobility. People used to make nasty jokes, anyway, about how inbred we supposedly were.”

  Litsa laughed again. “Compared to down-time nobility—much less royalty? You have to be a genius to keep track of how many cousins are married to each other in the German aristocracy.” She shook her head. “The custom here is that such a child is quietly birthed and then unofficially adopted by the whole family. They are called ‘a child of the clouds’ and no one asks any impertinent questions as to exactly who and by what process the infant came into the world. Every noble line has such a child—usually more than one—somewhere in their extended family. It is really not—what do you call it?—a big deal.”

  Missy frowned. “But… What happens to the woman? Does she get disowned?”

  “Not here. I believe it does happen in England, but they are barely better than barbarians. We Germans are a civilized folk.” She nodded at the door, beyond which and across the corridor a certain couple was presumably still engaged in the activity whose frequent consequences were under discussion. “When her father died, Eva was left with a trust fund, as were all his children. That fund legally belongs to her; it is not under the control of her brother John Casimir, who is now the head of the family. So no matter what happens, regardless of how furious her brother or anyone in the family might be with Eva for her conduct or situation, she will be able to support herself in comfort for the rest of her life. Fairly modest comfort, to be sure. But she’d be able to afford a suitable residence and employ one or two servants—and a nursemaid, should she have a child.”

  Litsa made a dismissive gesture. “But that’s not probable. Her brother John Casimir is quite fond of his youngest sister and he’s a jolly sort of fellow who spends most of his time hunting. It’s very unlikely that he would be outraged even if Eva did get pregnant. I imagine he’d be more amused than anything else and make coarse jokes about how his stubborn and determined little sister—she’s well known for it in the family—managed to get herself a bastard despite her pox scars. And did so not with a sweaty young stablehand but with one of the most glamorous men in Europe, to boot!”

  She bestowed a gleaming smile on Missy. “I am really quite happy for Eva. She has always been very—what’s the term?—stoic, I think, about her scars. She handles the disfigurement better than most people would. But somewhere deep I am sure there has always been a great deal of sorrow. There will be much, much less after she is done with Captain Lefferts.”

  Again, she laughed. Litsa really was in an extraordinarily good mood. “I read that marvelous up-time story just a few months ago—the one by the Dickens fellow, called A Tale of Two Cities. Captain Lefferts can now take for his own the hero’s slogan at the end: It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done. And he doesn’t even have to get his head cut off!”


  Missy stared at her. “That is so wrong,” she said.

  Ron started laughing. Missy glared him and started to say something, but then just threw up her hands and stalked out of the room.

  * * *

  Ron returned to their room a while later, bearing a plate of pastries he’d finagled out of the inn’s cook.

  “Look, hon, I brought a peace offering.”

  Missy was back to glaring out the window. She turned her head, looked at Ron, looked at the plate, and went back to glaring out the window. “Fat chance, buddy.”

  But she relented soon enough. Missy had a ferocious sweet tooth and for some reason being angry always made her hungry.

  “You planned—mumph mumph—this,” she said accusingly, starting on her second pastry.

  “Well, yeah,” said Ron, who’d taken her place at the window. “I know you pretty well by now.”

  “Scheming—mumph mumph—bastard.”

  He looked thoughtfully at the winter landscape below and then up at the sky, which was overcast. “I was a child of the clouds myself, you know. Nobody’s really sure who my father actually was. Biologically speaking, I mean. But it never mattered—not to my dad, who was, is, and always will be Tom Stone. Not to my brothers Frank and Gerry. And it sure as hell never mattered to me.”

  He turned away from the window. “Eva’ll be fine, Missy. I’d be a lot more worried about Harry. I think Grantville’s goodest ole boy may have finally met his match.”

  Chapter 10

  February 25, 1636

  Harry held Eva in a close embrace, which she welcomed more for the personal comfort than the shelter it provided from the bitter February wind in the courtyard.

  “I’ll come as soon as I can,” she said. “Damn Litsa—and Missy too!”

  Harry chuckled and kissed her hair. “We’re not talking more than a couple of months.”

  That brought precious little solace. Eva had now had the experience of spending a week or so enjoying the pleasures of connubial existence for the first time in her life. Using the term “connubial” expansively, and who cared what fussy rhetoricians might argue? The prospect of now spending two months without her lover in her bed every night—that is to say, the way she’d spent the first two hundred and fifty or so months of her life—was horrendous.

  “Damn Litsa,” she repeated. She left Missy out of this second curse because even in her current state of distress Eva was fair-minded enough to admit that Missy was more sinned-against than sinning. The American woman had not planned on traveling to Lorraine at all, and had only been added to the expedition when it became clear that the business negotiations her husband Ron was involved in were going to continue for quite some time. It turned out that printers were even more disputatious than apothecaries. Working out suitable arrangements for launching an up-time-style publishing industry in Hesse-Kassel was going to take at least as much time and effort as it had taken to get the pharmaceutical side of the project underway.

  So, a switch had to be made. Ron would stay in Kassel while Missy would go to Lorraine. Her protests that she had nothing she could do of any use in Lorraine—as opposed to her valuable work in Kassel expanding the new library and improving the university—fell on deaf ears. Well, not deaf ears so much as the cold stony terrain of necessity.

  “Somebody’s got to show the flag in Lorraine, Missy,” Ron had argued. “It can’t just be Harry on his own. It’s got to be an up-timer with real credentials when it comes to health and medicine.”

  “What I know about pharmaceuticals could fit on a three-by-five card,” she responded through tight lips. “I fumble putting on a band-aid. I hate the sight of blood.”

  “You eat your steak rare, for Pete’s sake.”

  “Doesn’t count. The cow’s dead. It’s not really blood any more.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “See? I told you I don’t know squat about health stuff.”

  But, in the end, she gave in. She understood the logic, no matter how much she protested against it. Even in the late twentieth century, personal connections mattered in any kind of transaction. In the seventeenth century, they were essential. A hired agent showing up in Nancy, the capital city of Lorraine, and trying to present himself as the direct representative of Lothlorien Pharmaceuticals, would be looked at cross-eyed by Duchess Nicole. The wife of Lothlorien’s part-owner and chief executive officer, on the other hand, would be taken for good coin.

  But that had produced a further delay, since the work Missy had been doing in Kassel was important in its own right and she couldn’t just up and leave without ruffling a lot of feathers—in particular, Amalie Elizabeth’s, which had been the feathers whose much-desired unruffled state had been the main purpose of the expedition in the first place.

  * * *

  And, on the other hand, Harry didn’t think he could delay any longer getting back to Lorraine. “Vincente’s been on his own for weeks now,” he’d said, explaining his decision to leave.

  “I understand. I’ll go with you,” was Eva’s immediate response.

  * * *

  “You can’t!” protested Litsa. “I need your help putting all my notes into a good article. You know I don’t write very well—and I promised Simplicissimus I’d have the first installment ready for the May issue. It needs to be posted by the end of the month. No later than March second or third, anyway. That’s just a week away! You can’t go now! You can’t!”

  Eva barely managed to restrain herself from pointing out—oh, so very, very sarcastically—that if Litsa didn’t write well perhaps she should reconsider her ambition to become a journalist. But…

  That would just hurt her friend’s feelings. Worse, really. Litsa’s decision to pursue journalism was the first time in her life that she’d set herself any goals at all, beyond enjoying herself. In truth, Eva approved of her friend’s new-found purpose and didn’t want to see it undermined.

  “All right,” she said, sighing, then held up an admonishing finger. “But it has to be all finished by the end of the month! No later!”

  Litsa looked smug. “My notes are all assembled. If it takes longer than a week to turn them into a proper article that won’t be because of me. And what difference does it make to you? We can’t travel to Lorraine until Missy is ready, and that won’t be until April.”

  * * *

  “I’m leaving Matija behind,” Harry said, nodding toward one of his two companions. “He can escort you when you’re all ready to head for Nancy.”

  Eva glanced at Matija Grabnar, who was helping Donald Ohde finish loading his saddlebags. Normally, two women on a trip from Kassel to Lorraine’s capital wouldn’t need an escort, beyond a servant. But the ravages visited on the Rhineland by Monsieur Gaston’s army and the forces pursuing him, followed by an outbreak of plague, had unsettled the whole region. There was still nothing like organized banditry, but the area was now full of destitute and desperate people, who could sometimes pose a danger.

  Having someone like Matija along would eliminate that problem. Grabnar looked exactly what he was—a very experienced, very capable mercenary soldier. Just one man like him would cow any small band of amateur brigands who might think a couple of young women were an easy enough target for them.

  If such would-be brigands even had that much fortitude. Missy was not a very accomplished horsewoman and had no experience at all as a hunter. Still, she was solidly built—no one would mistake her for a fragile damsel—and she’d be carrying a shotgun in a saddle holster. For her part, Eva was a very good horsewoman and an accomplished hunter. The boar spear that would be hanging on her saddle had been used more than once, and used well.

  And, finally, there were her pox scars. Normally a social handicap, in these circumstances they would perhaps be of some help. Anyone who didn’t know Eva, looking at her, usually added ten years to her age and two or three trolls to her temperament. In truth, it was not likely that anyone would attack them even if they didn’t have Grabnar for
an escort.

  “We’re ready, Captain,” said Ohde. He was already in the saddle.

  “Coming,” replied Harry. He gave Eva a last kiss—not stinting on it, either—and turned away. A moment later, he was astride the horse. If they didn’t know the man and his history, no one watching the practiced ease with which Lefferts got into his saddle would imagine for an instant that he’d come from a time when men rode machines instead of animals—and that Lefferts himself had never once ridden a horse before the Ring of Fire.

  There was a little joke made about him by his regular companions. Other Americans, they said, had been displaced in time. The captain had found his.

  Within half a minute, they were out of sight.

  “Damn Litsa,” Eva said. Realizing she was just talking to herself, she added: “And Missy, too. Even if not so much.”

  Yes, that was unfair. She was not in a fair mood.

  * * *

  By suppertime, however, her mood had improved. Eva found it difficult to maintain a foul temper—even when, as today, she was actively striving to do so. She didn’t exactly have a “sunny” disposition. She was much too reserved and introspective for that. But, perhaps for the same reason, she also found it hard to lose her sense of perspective.

  Going for two months without copulating, in any proportionate scale of suffering, didn’t really compare with breaking a leg or contracting a major disease. It was more akin to bad indigestion.

  Not even that, being honest about it. She even had her appetite back.

  Hearing Missy muttering something, sitting next to her at the dinner table. Eva cocked an eyebrow. “I didn’t catch that.”

  “I was just grumbling about the injustice of life. How the hell do you eat as much as you do and keep that figure?”

  Eva pondered the problem—which she’d never really thought about. That was another peculiar quirk shared by most Americans, especially American women. For reasons that were impossible to ascertain, they had an obsession with their weight. Slenderness was considered a virtue when any rational person knew it might put you at risk of getting sick—and at terrible risk should the harvest fail.