“Well, duh. What about the dark blue dress?”
Maria put the jeans back into the trunk. “That’s one of the countess’ old dresses that has been remade. Perhaps the green with the gold trim would be better?”
Mary nodded. “Good idea. I like that one too.”
“Mistress. What is this?” Maria pulled out a plastic molded case, slightly smaller than a briefcase, secured by a small padlock. “It’s quite a fancy case, although that little lock won’t stop anyone.” She tested the weight of the case. “Heavy too.”
Mary took it from her. “It’s from my Father. It’s, umm, a tool set, I think. I will have to find the key. You can put it in my locking trunk with my books.” She handed it back to Maria.
Mary felt a little bad about lying to Maria that way; she had been very helpful recently. Mary had grown to depend on her, for things other than meals and getting laundry done. But Mary also vividly remembered the door of the cell closing with a solid thump on her first night at the castle, and that door had been closed by Maria. The miasma of Hofer always lingered over everything. So the fact there was an old .38 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver in the plastic case, to replace her missing .32, was the last thing she wanted Maria to know about. This spy stuff is hard, she thought to herself. And lonely…
The count and his wife held a formal dinner every week in the great hall of the castle, and it always included the older woman Regina, a selection of some of the young people who were “in school” for the summer, and whoever happened to be in town to meet with the count and the staff. Mary was initially surprised, but pleased, to receive an invitation. The rotating group included visiting factors, managers from various subsidiaries, and a changing list of members of the family. This week it was the gunsmith she had met earlier in the week, some mining factors, and several of the recent residents of the castle, including Johann Franz, his buddy Leonhard, Franz, and Sybilla.
As she approached the dining room, wearing the green dress as suggested by Marie, she was joined by Hofer in the hallway. “Fraulein.” He said it with his usual haughtiness.
She resolved to be polite. “Herr Hofer. Are you attending the dinner tonight?”
His head snapped around and he stepped in front of her, blocking his way. “Do you mock me?”
Mary stopped, and took a breath in surprise. “No, Herr Hofer. I don’t. I-I was attempting to be polite.” She was caught off guard by his ferocity.
“Servants are not invited to dine, unless it’s some special occasion or award. It has happened once only since I have been here. And now again, with you.”
Her response was carefully neutral. “I don’t think I'm supposed to be a servant here, Herr Hofer.” She was rewarded with his haughty down-the-nose stare. She really didn’t mean to piss him off, it just always happened with this guy. Mary sighed quietly to herself.
He sniffed and backed away. Bowing, ever so slightly, he said “Fraulein Russo, enjoy your dinner,” and turned down the hallway. Mary watched him go. What an asshole, she thought.
The dinner was held in the great hall of the Schloss, the room with the drawings of the Hapsburg family tree nearly life size on the walls. The ceiling was elegantly carved, and the soft glow of candles lit the room with a golden tint. There was still a little sun coming in the one set of windows. She had gotten used to the deer antlers everywhere, and took in the room with the long table, sideboards, and the six servants that surrounded the table, all dressed in their best uniforms. With the candle glow, and the fading light of a summer evening, it was one of the most elegant things she had ever seen. She was not the last to arrive, as Johann Franz came in shortly after her, and the seating began. She was directly across from Johann Franz, with Regina placed to her right, and one of the mine managers by the name of Felton to her left.
Mary was nervous, her stomach growling. Her mother had always hammered her about manners at the table, but the problem here was she didn’t know which manners. Her up-time manners for good behavior at a table were different from the manners down-timers used, she was sure of that. It didn’t help that she had never been to a restaurant any fancier than a Cracker Barrel back up-time, and certainly nothing like dining with the Fugger clan in the great hall of an honest-to-God castle. She was grateful to be seated right next to Regina, who quietly helped her figure out which spoon to use.
Tonight’s table was much more opulent than the simpler fare she ate regularly. Mary had heard stories of down-time dinners where they ate all kinds of strange things. The stranger the better. Nightingales and kittens and pheasants that were aged by hanging them in caves. She was relieved to discover there were no pies with four-and-twenty blackbirds. The meal was long, heavy and very tasty, with a selection of excellent wines served in elegant crystal from Venice. The room smelled of pepper, onions, and roasted meats. And were there meats. Good heavens. There was chicken, some small wild birds that Mary didn’t recognize, small thin slices of veal and others of liver roasted and tasty, and then what her hosts called “castrated ram.” It looked a lot like regular mutton, but it was tender. There was a type of pancake, cabbage that was cooked lightly, artichokes, and a bowl of peas. The table was overflowing.
There was also a venison meat pie that was quite good. It was a richer version of a recipe she had as one of her regular dinners. Conversation flowed constantly during the meal, the Count often directing questions to the factors. Mary watched him carefully. Other than their initial meeting, and the occasional chance crossing of paths in the courtyard or galleries, there was little interaction with the count. They moved in very different circles. Mary decided the best approach was to not speak unless spoken to.
When the Count asked a question of one of the visiting factors, or the gunsmith, they were often detailed and incisive, and very much to the point. While they were answering, the count would look at Johann Franz, or Leonhard, to make sure they were getting the point. Once, when Leonhard was fiddling with his plate and subtly teasing one of the servers, and not paying attention to some detail of mercury salt extraction, he received one of the count’s arched eyebrows in admonition. Mary smiled to herself as Leonhard acknowledged the count. Leonhard also saw that she had noticed his admonition and looked doubly chagrined. Mary smiled briefly behind her napkin.
One of the factors at the table was a blustery man from Augsburg. Mary had not met with him previously, as he was a person who apparently did something exclusively with financial matters, where most of the problems that Mary worked on were technical issues of one sort or another. His name was Herr Lightfine, and he was not shy about asking questions of her.
“So. Mary. Is it true that back up-time, everyone lived like a king?” He sat back in his chair and peered at Mary with an expression she thought looked like a house cat sizing up a mouse. He had a shock of curly dark hair that he kept pushing off his forehead, and a military bearing.
∞ ∞ ∞
Mary put down the sweet wine she was sipping. “Like a king, Herr Lightfine? Well, I don’t know about that, but certainly the common person lived better than most folks in this day and age, including kings, if that’s what you mean. Most people had indoor plumbing, unless you lived in a cabin back the woods somewhere. Running water. Hot and cold. Heating in the winter, most often a car or two.”
The Count smiled as he interrupted, looking proud. “We are working on plumbing here, there is a water tank going in the attic in the next two weeks.” There were nods all around the table. “The amount of disruption has been minimal, except for the drilling of holes in the floors, and of course the walls getting torn open for pipes. We just rebuilt this castle a few years ago. But it’s needed if we are to be modern.” He smiled at the countess, who nodded back with an expression that looked surprisingly to Mary like relief.
But Herr Lightfine wasn’t done yet. “Peasants living like kings, choosing their own governments, you make it sound like some kind of commoners’ paradise. Most find it hard to believe. A tall tale. A legend. Almos
t if it were the sort of a story designed to stir unrest with the masses.” The man was clearly one of those dinner guests who liked to ‘stir the pot of conversation’ as her father had put it, one Thanksgiving back up-time. Her father had said it about one of her Mother’s cousins, Cousin Bill…something - she couldn’t remember his last name now, who liked to be needlessly controversial. Mary decided to proceed cautiously.
She smiled at him. “Herr Lightfine. I don’t know about stirring up citizens. From what I have learned, people have been stirring themselves up with rebellions against unjust rulers for years. Not only in Austria, and Bavaria, but everywhere since history began. I'm certainly not here to stir up any rebellions. I'm here to teach up-time technology.” Take that cousin Bill-whatever your name is, she thought to herself.
“But you cannot deny that ever since your town landed in Thuringia, usurping the land from the rightful owners, you have grown outward, taking more under your control, again from the rightful owners and rulers, stealing and reshaping to your will.” He was growing slightly more red-faced as he spoke, and his voice began to rise. “You erode the landscape like a sinkhole, growing out from the center swallowing everything. Leaving chaos of the natural order in your wake.”
Mary had been called a few names over the last couple of years as an up-timer, but never a sinkhole. She looked around the table at the others, and they were all simply looking at her, awaiting her response. She glanced at Regina, who simply met her gaze with a very slight raise of her eyebrow and a slight dip of her head, that said “Well…?”
Mary took another sip of wine while she collected her thoughts. She had been expecting a conversation like this; she had one or two over the last couple of years, starting with an inn back in Wurzburg where one of the local members of the lower nobility had tried to argue with her in a bar. This had the same feel to it, except a little more high class. She smiled again as she put down her wine. “Herr Lightfine. The citizens of Grantville don’t see it that way. Allow me to address your distress over what I think you called ‘usurpation’. Remember, we were ripped from our time, quite unexpectedly and quite without anyone asking our permission. We were torn from our families, our comparatively comfortable lives, and dropped into what was the middle of one of the worst wars fought on this continent to date. Many had died. Many more would die. From disease, starvation, armies spreading plagues, it was a mess. And we were dropped in the middle of it. Do you know what a vacuum is, Herr Lightfine?”
The man looked confused, and heads swiveled back to him. “I am not certain. It’s a word I have heard…”
“That’s okay, Herr Lightfine.” She looked him in the eye. “You don’t mind if I say, ‘okay’, do you? It is such an up-time word; it is a hard habit for me to break. Okay?”
He nodded begrudgingly. “I have heard it even in Munich, and much since I have been here this week. It is not welcome in many circles.” He glanced at the count.
The Count smiled. “I find it easy on the tongue, and rather like it. It is okay with me.” The table laughed politely, and Mary was glad for some of the tension to have bled out of the conversation.
“Okay.” She smiled, and noticed Johann smiling widely too. “Vacuum. For me it’s a common concept, but for a lot of down-timers, particularly those who have their Plato, it’s difficult. But essentially a vacuum is an unfilled area, in which there is nothing. No air, no water, no substances of any kind. It’s a very useful thing with quite a bit of up-time technology.” She looked over at one of the mine managers, Herr Felton. “We can do an experiment with mercury and a closed glass tube sometime to demonstrate a vacuum, I think we have access, don’t we Herr Felton? We have discussed mercury often enough in the extraction of ores.” He nodded assent, but seemed a little nervous to be drawn into the discussion. She turned back to the group. “This is a rather long explanation to get to a point about a downtime saying. An idiom, one that any down-timer will understand.” She took a breath and looked straight at him, making sure he understood each word. “Nature abhors a vacuum, Herr Lightfine. An idiom which applies to the physical world and the political world. We arrived in a political vacuum. People of Thuringia were starving, dying, it was chaos. Magdeburg was in ruins. And the people of my town, my little Grantville West Virginia, filled that vacuum. Naturally. We filled it with what we know, and what we brought with us. We filled a vacuum created by warring princes, with little regard for the people who inhabited the lands. We filled it with guns, food, technology, and we filled that vacuum with our ideas. We did not create this vacuum, Herr Lightfine. Ask anyone who has been to Grantville, and talked with real up-timers. Nobody has any idea why we ended up here. Nobody. We don’t know. I don’t know. But we were dropped into a vacuum, and filled it to survive.”
He held up one finger. “Ah, but there is where you're wrong, Fraulein. It was not a vacuum. That land, and those people, belonged to someone, it was not free for the taking.”
Mary could feel herself getting impatient, and she bit back her first thought, which was something close to well, you can try and come and take it, buster. But she changed her mind. “We have another idiom, Herr Lightfine. You're an accountant, you should get it easily.” She took another pause to emphasize the words. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law. That’s one I don’t think I have to explain. And another thing. Those people did not belong to anyone. You don’t own people. Not where we are from.”
Johann spoke up. “If I could point out, Herr Lightfine, the Wettins, or more accurately John George I, Elector of Saxony and his family have forgone any claims to that land. Their allegiance with the Swede, and his dependence on up-time weapons influenced the decision greatly, I am sure.” He shrugged. “But the land does legally belong to the up-timers now.”
Lightfine waved his arms, dismissing the point. “It isn’t about the land, is it really? It’s the ideas. If you ask any of the people around here who they are, they will say they are the count’s men. The count’s men. Or that Tyrol belongs to Claudia deMedici, and they are men that belong to her.” He tapped the table for emphasis. “They will talk about who they belong to, who is their master, who is their proper liege.” Tap, tap, tap. “They will know under whose coat of arms they live, who they owe their allegiance to. As a man should.” He took a moment to brush the shock of hair off his forehead. “But you go to this Grantville - and let’s not even talk about witchcraft- if you go there, and ask someone ‘who are you?’, what do they tell you? And I know this, because I have been there.” He glanced around the table and there were a few affirmative nods. “What do they tell you? Fraulein, what do they say?” He turned to her accusingly. “What do you say, Fraulein, if I ask you who you are?”
Mary was taken aback by his tirade. She hesitated a moment, feeling the eyes of the room on her once again. She nodded, and spoke clearly. “My name is Mary Margaret Russo, from Grantville, West Virginia.”
“Ha. You see! This is what I mean about their ideas. They don’t belong to anyone.” Lightfine leaned back in his chair, gesturing to the air, proud of his logical prowess.
Mary watched the reactions around the room. The count was thoughtful, Johann just looked curious, and Regina again looked at her with the raised eyebrow and nod of her head. Mary took a deep breath. The evening was turning out to be a lot more interesting than she thought it would be. And stressful. She forced another smile. “You're correct, Herr Lightfine. I don’t belong to anyone. I have noticed this way of thinking too. When I was in Wurzburg, I had time on my hands. Army life can be pretty boring sometimes.” Johann, Franz, and Leonhard all nodded with a smile. “If you spend time in Grantville, and now in Magdeburg, you might think that you never left home sometimes. We mostly all think one way, and it’s natural, at least for us. But in Wurzburg, it was clear that people thought differently about themselves. I was curious.”
The count leaned forward in his chair, as did his wife. “This is very interesting Mary, tell us more.” The looks on their faces were of conce
ntration and extreme interest, disconcertingly so, Mary thought.
Mary shook her head. “Count, I'm not an expert in history or philosophy. Not by a long way. I did some reading and I talked to some people who know more stuff than I.” Mary suddenly remembered. “There are books that talk about this stuff that we can request copies of, a lot of the Committees of Correspondence have them.” She could feel everyone stiffen a little in the room at the mention of the Committees, and small glances were exchanged. Good, she thought to herself. “There was a CoC in Wurzburg that I used to frequent, so I picked up some of this information, just by hanging out there. It was at the tail end of the Ram Rebellion, so I heard a lot.” She paused and looked around the table. “I will tell you what I know, but it may not be the full picture.”
The count made a motion with his hand, and looked at Johann, and Leonhard, as well as Sybilla to make sure they were paying attention. “Please go on, do the best you can.” Sybilla was the only one who acted a little bit dis-interested; Johann and Leonhard were focused, forward in their chairs. Franz took his cues from Sybilla. The room grew quiet.
Mary nodded. “Starting well before the American Revolution, there was a lot of new thought about government. Some of it starting right about now, some later. There are writers living now who planted seeds that became the ideas of what was called the enlightenment. Don’t ask me to name them, I don’t know them. I’ve spent more time thinking about the mathematicians who are around now, and boy are there a lot of them. Really good ones. But new ways of thinking about government took root, and gradually something called the Rights of Man were defined. You can talk to any rabid CoC member to get the details, but by the time of the revolution-”
Lightfine interrupted her “The one around 1865, correct?”
She shook her head. “No, Herr Lightfine. That was what we called the Civil War. The revolution was in 1776.”
“Ah. Yes. That war. There were many. You're correct. Please go on.”
Up-Time Pride and Down-Time Prejudice Page 13