Ring of Fire IV

by Eric Flint

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “It’s just the way it is.”

  “You made a pact with the underworld,” Missy accused.

  “You’re being ridiculous. Pass me the turnips, please. And the butter. Some more pork and bread would be nice, too.”

  * * *

  After they finished eating, Eva even found herself drawn into Missy’s discussion with Litsa concerning the developments with the library. That was to be the subject of the next installment of her friend’s articles for Simplicissimus, now that she was done with the pharmaceutical enterprise.

  “Honestly?” said Missy. “The biggest problem—and don’t you say a word to anybody or I’ll have every academician within a hundred miles running to complain to the landgravine—is that we don’t have any trained librarians here, except me. Not one, so far as I can tell, in the whole benighted province.”

  “But surely…” Eva frowned. This was another problem she’d never considered before, and probably not one that was simply due to American fetishism. On most subjects, Missy Stone was as level-headed as anyone Eva had ever met.

  “Surely those same academicians know how to find a book they’re seeking,” interjected Litsa.

  “Sure—as long as it’s theirs.” The look on Missy’s face was one of great exasperation. “Each and every one of those oh-so-august-and-if-you-don’t-believe-me-just-ask-them perfessers has concocted his own idiosyncratic way of organizing his books. That’s ‘idio’ as in ‘idiot.’ It never seems to occur to them that the whole purpose of a library is to make it possible for anyone to find a volume they’re looking for, which might have been acquired years earlier by someone they’ve never met and never will. That’s the whole point of classification.”

  She poured herself another glass of wine. This was her third of the evening—which was quite unusual, for Missy. “No sooner did I beat them into submission over the issue of having a classification system at all—thankfully, I’ve got two big clubs: Amalie Elizabeth’s temper if she loses it and my husband’s money if I take it away—than the wretched lot of so-called scholars started arguing with me about the basis of the system itself.”

  She drank half the glass in one long swallow and almost slammed it down on the side table. “Oh, but no!” Missy began mimicking a pedant’s speech and doing quite a good job of it. “The system devised by this Dewey fellow, whoever he was, fails to take into proper account Aristotle’s division of all knowledge into three types: episteme, techne and phronesis.”

  Now she raised her chin and gazed at her two companions down as long a nose as Missy could manage. She wasn’t quite what Americans meant by “snub-nosed” but pretty close. “Since you up-timers are grievously deficient in your classical education, the terms refer to—”

  “Scientific knowledge, craft or skill knowledge, and practical wisdom,” Eva translated.

  Missy glowered at her. “Et tu, Eva?”

  Litsa laughed. “She’s just showing off. Most people don’t bother to learn Greek. Most of them don’t even know that much Latin. She’s always been too smart for her own good.”

  Eva shook her head. “I’m afraid there are few people in the world who can be as pig-headed and arrogant as university scholars. Dukes and margraves are abashed in their presence—in the minds of the scholars, at any rate. Have you brought them to heel yet?”

  “No, but I will. See reference above to landgravine wrath and Missy takes her ball home and won’t play any more. But what a ridiculous waste of my time.”

  She finished the rest of the wine and then contemplated the empty glass for a moment. “Damn. That’s three glasses, isn’t it?”

  Planting her hands on the arms of the chair, she levered herself upright. “I’m off to bed, before I turn into an outright lush. I can’t wait to get to Lorraine where all we’ve got to deal with are plague-carrying rats.”

  * * *

  When she entered her room, Eva discovered Barbeline sitting on the bed. The French girl looked simultaneously apprehensive and stubborn.

  “I don’t want to sleep alone,” she announced. “It was all right before, when the captain was still here and I knew he was close by.” She looked down at her feet, which were several inches shy of the floor. “Please?”

  “Of course, girl. Which side of the bed do you want?”

  “The side nearest the wall.”

  “It’s yours. And you can sleep here every night if you want, until we leave.”

  “I’m going with you, right?” Barbeline sounded very nervous, which was not like her at all.

  “We already agreed you’d come with me—all three of us.”

  The girl had actually wanted to accompany Harry, when he left with Ohde. But the captain had firmly refused, explaining that he’d be traveling very fast and for long hours, not just to get to Nancy but to investigate the countryside as well. It would be too strenuous for Barbeline. She could come later, with Eva and Missy, at an easier pace.

  “I just wanted to make sure.”

  * * *

  After Eva had blown out the lamp and lain down, Barbeline nestled against her. A few minutes later, very softly, she asked, “Can I call you Maman?”

  Eva’s answer didn’t need any thought at all. “Yes, you can.”

  PART III

  The Duchy of Lorraine

  Chapter 11

  April 2, 1636

  “What a mess,” said Harry Lefferts. He leaned back and straightened up from the table where he, Vincente Jose-Maria de Castro y Papas and General Johann von Aldringen had been examining a map of Lorraine. “Oh, my aching back,” he complained, kneading his spine with a fist.

  Aldringen gave him a glance that fell considerably short of sympathy, as you might expect from a soldier in his late forties hearing a much younger man complaining about back pain. Especially one who, like Lefferts, was obviously in superb physical condition.

  “God help France—not to mention its neighbors—if that bastard Gaston ever becomes king.”

  Aldringen grimaced. “The Almighty will need to help us in particular.”

  Historians of the future world Harry Lefferts had come from would call this period of European history “the Thirty Years’ War.” But from the standpoint of the people alive at the time it was not so much one war as a tangled cluster of wars. Each of which, by the time it ended, had produced offspring.

  In terms of sheer chaos, destruction and bloodletting, the Thirty Years’ War was reckoned by many of those historians to have been the single worst period in European history since the collapse of the western Roman Empire. No one would ever know for sure, but estimates placed the number of people killed in central Europe as upwards of a quarter of the entire population—a much greater death toll than either of the world wars of the twentieth century.

  That much, at least, central Europe had been spared in the universe created by the Ring of Fire. The worst of the destruction would have come in the second half of the Thirty Years’ War, and the arrival of Grantville in the middle of the war followed by the alliance the Americans made with Gustavus Adolphus had brought peace and even prosperity back to the Germanies. A unified nation had been produced for the first time in German history, and the victory of the new United States of Europe in the Baltic War had rocked all of the hostile powers surrounding it.

  Especially France, which had suffered a catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Ahrensbök less than two years earlier, in May of 1634. Ever since, Cardinal Richelieu’s hold on power had been shaky—and the ambitions of Monsieur Gaston, the scheming and unscrupulous younger brother of Louis XIII, had become turbocharged, as the Americans would say.

  From March through July of 1635, those ambitions had led Gaston to ravage Lorraine, partly with his own army, partly from the forces he set loose, and partly from the forces sent to stop him. Why had he done so? A coherent answer was hard to come by. Even by the standards of the Thirty Years’ War, most of whose battles had been semi-accidental collisions of armies seeking p
lunder, Gaston’s “strategy” was impossible to distinguish from whim and caprice. Hither and thither he’d marched, looting and pillaging along the way, for no clear reason anyone could deduce except that Gaston seemed to feel he needed to be doing something that advanced his ambitions. In the end, he’d gone back to France with nothing to show for his efforts. But between the chaos he’d unleashed and the plague that came with it, much of Lorraine had become a disaster area.

  The few cities in the duchy and most of the big towns had been spared, for the most part. Nancy had been too strongly defended for Gaston to attack with his relatively small army, Toul had been occupied by Bernhard’s Burgundians, and Metz had surrendered to King Fernando rather than undergo a siege. Thereafter it had been directly incorporated into the newly expanded Netherlands.

  But the countryside had suffered badly, especially in the lowlands. The terrain of the Vosges region was difficult enough that Gaston had stayed out of it, so southern Lorraine had come through relatively unscathed. But most of the duchy’s population lived north of the mountains and it was those areas between the Moselle and Rhine rivers which had suffered the worst consequences, as well as the lands bordering the Meuse.

  It would be inaccurate to characterize the situation in those areas as “sheer chaos.” Enough of the local authorities and village leaders had survived to maintain at least a semblance of order. But many of the peasants had been reduced to desperate conditions, and that degree and extent of destitution acted like acid poured over the social terrain. The fact that the lawlessness that resulted was on such a small if ubiquitous scale made it all the harder to control.

  Especially since the most of the duchy’s military forces—which were none too great to begin with—had to be kept stationed at the French border, lest Monsieur Gaston be struck by another whimsy and take it into his head to march back into Lorraine.

  “What have we got now, Vincente?” Lefferts asked.

  The former officer in the Spanish army wagged his head back and forth briefly. “Let us call it a company.”

  Lefferts’ lips twisted into a crooked smile. “Lot of help that is, the way you down-timers define a ‘company.’ That could be anywhere from a hundred to a thousand men, depending on the dance between recruitment and whatever’s stipulated in your contract.”

  Vincente and Aldringen both smiled as well. The charge was true enough, being honest. The so-called “Early Modern Era” along with the Renaissance that had preceded it were the great periods of mercenary armies in European history. Although he was a Spaniard himself, Vincente had been not so much an officer of Spain as he’d been an officer in command of his own company employed by the Spanish crown.

  Johann von Aldringen’s history was even more complicated. A Lorrainer by birth, he’d briefly attended the University of Paris before joining the military forces of Spain. Twelve years later, in 1618—just as the Thirty Years’ War was getting underway—he’d left Spanish service to become a soldier for their Habsburg cousins in Austria. As an officer in the imperial army he’d played an important role in defeating the Protestant forces under Mansfeld at Dessau in 1626, and was ennobled by way of reward. He’d served in the Mantuan War from 1628 to 1631, whose plunder had made him a wealthy man.

  In the old time line, he would have been dead already—killed fighting the Swedish army on the Danube in July of 1634. But in this new universe he’d instead gotten another promotion of sorts. He’d been jointly selected by King Fernando of the Netherlands and Grand Duke Bernhard of the newly formed County of Burgundy to become the husband of Duchess Nicole, thereby helping to restabilize Lorraine.

  Nicole had been willing enough. True, Aldringen was almost twice her age and she’d barely known the man before they were married, but that was a common situation for Europe’s royalty and high nobility. Politics was always paramount, and between having a respected and accomplished general as her spouse and the joint support of the Netherlands and Burgundy, her duchy’s chances for survival had been greatly improved.

  The biggest threat to her now was disease, not invading armies. The plague had died down, for the moment, but it could well return—as could typhus, dysentery, typhoid fever and smallpox. In order to keep disease under control she had to restore order to Lorraine—with most of her own army forced to stand watch at the border with France.

  So, she’d employed the renowned Captain Lefferts to handle the job. And while Lefferts was far better known for producing disorder than constraining it, he’d had the good sense to offer a partnership to his new friend and companion Vincente Jose-Maria de Castro y Papas, whose experience and skills were quite different from his own in many respects. For all intents and purposes, the new mercenary force being assembled in Nancy would actually be commanded by Vincente, not Lefferts.

  In part, that was to help assuage whatever anxieties Nicole and her new husband might have—as rulers always did when it came to mercenaries in their employ. Lorraine was solidly Catholic, as were the duchess herself and General Aldringen. Captain Lefferts was also Catholic, formally speaking, but he made no secret of the fact that his Catholicism rested very lightly on his shoulders. Vincente, on the other hand, was a true son of the Roman church. The Spaniard attended mass regularly. The American…was said to make an appearance from time to time. Semi-annually, at best, and always on a holiday and full of alcoholic good cheer.

  “We have about one hundred and sixty men, for the moment,” said Vincente. “Recruitment has been slow, but I think that is mostly because people are still unsure how long we will be here. There aren’t many stray mercenaries in Nancy—and most of those, we’ve already hired. That means we’ll be depending on local boys from here on, and few of them will risk leaving an existing job for one that might be gone in two or three months.”

  “We’ll be around longer than that,” Harry said, “but you’re right—that’s something we still have to prove.” He glanced at his wristwatch. The device was still quite functional because Harry Lefferts was a stern traditionalist, in some ways. When he’d bought his first good wristwatch upon graduating from high school, he’d insisted on getting the old-fashioned kind that you wound up yourself. No newfangled, unproven, and chancy batteries for him, thank you very much.

  “I’ve got to leave. I told the gunsmiths I’d visit them today and finalize some purchases.”

  Aldringen nodded. “I think we’ve gotten as far as we can today, anyway. There’s no point planning any more patrols until we have enough men to send out on them.”

  * * *

  Sometime after midnight, Harry woke up abruptly. He was sweating and from the tension in his forearm muscles he knew he’d had his fists clenched.

  “Damn,” he muttered, staring up at a ceiling he couldn’t see. “I’d hoped I was done with them, at least while I was asleep.”

  It was the same nightmare he’d often had—as well as having it in the form of a flashback while he was awake.

  A street in Rome. Juliet Sutherland, her face twisted with terror, desperately trying to outrun a troop of cavalrymen—something a person much slimmer than she couldn’t have done. The cavalrymen passed over, her shattered and crushed body lying behind. A man in a dark cloak emerged from the ranks of Spanish infantry coming after the cavalry. He stepped forward, aimed a pistol, and shot Juliet in the back of the head.

  Harry had seen the face of the first cavalryman who trampled Juliet quite clearly in his rifle scope. He’d committed that face to memory. But he’d never been able to get a good look at the man in the cloak who’d executed her.

  You could say—Harry would say it himself—that the cloaked man had simply been doing his duty and had even been merciful, since there was no way Juliet would have survived her terrible injuries. Instead of dying slowly and in agony, she’d died instantly and felt no pain at all.

  Harry sat up, swiveled in place, and lowered his feet to the floor. The feet were bare and the floor was cold, but he didn’t notice at all.

  Yes, you cou
ld say all that, and Captain Lefferts would fully agree. And if the time ever came when he encountered that cavalryman, he would kill him. And if the time ever came when he figured out who the man in the cloak was, and found him, he’d kill him too.

  He knew from experience that he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep for a while. Although…

  He hadn’t had that dream—not once—during a recent week-long stretch of his life. So, closing his eyes, he brought those memories up instead.

  And fell asleep within minutes.

  * * *

  He arose the next morning feeling more clear-headed than he had in years—maybe ever. Immediately he rose and started getting dressed.

  “For once in your life, Harry,” he said to himself, “don’t be a fucking idiot.”

  * * *

  He found Vincente having breakfast at the inn’s common table.

  “Join me?” asked the Spaniard.

  Harry shook his head. “No, I want to get an early start on my patrol.”

  “The squad won’t be ready for at least an hour.”

  “I won’t need them. I’ve decided it makes more sense for me to see what’s happening near the Rhine. Tell Sergeant Fischart to lead the patrol heading out to the Meuse.”

  Solemnly, Vincente nodded. It was only after Harry had left the room that he allowed the smile to show.

  “Now who do I know who might be heading this way across the Rhine?” he asked no one in particular.

  Chapter 12

  April 5, 1636

  “Where are we, anyway?” asked Missy, looking around the small meadow they’d stopped in. There wasn’t much to see: a meadow like many others they’d crossed since leaving Hesse-Kassel, a forest surrounding the meadow that didn’t look any different from most of the terrain they’d encountered, and a small road passing through the meadow that just barely made the grade from being classified as a dirt path.