Up-Time Pride and Down-Time Prejudice

by Mark H. Huston

  As the summer went on, her schedule became a challenging grind. On top of everything else she had to do, every couple of days after hours she would encode a letter to her mother that was the formal ‘spy’ communication. She found she really didn’t have much to tell anyone about the Fugger. She was too busy to notice any real spy stuff. She told her mother about the dinner in one of the letters, un-encoded. She smiled at that thought. Since she was using the Fugger mail service, she figured that everything was read anyway before it was sent.

  Regina had accompanied her to town today, along with their usual following of two footmen from the Schloss and one of the maids. They were walking to town, crossing the stone bridge over the Inn River. Schwaz stood on the bank in front of them, and the valley stretched up all around them, the rich emerald green giving way to the grey stone of towering mountains that enclosed them on all sides. Over their shoulders, the castle sat on the side of the valley wall, at this distance looking both imposing and beautiful, a patch of white against the brilliant greens of the valley walls. The whole vista made Mary grin widely every time she saw it.

  “You are looking rather happy, Mary,” said Regina.

  “I was just thinking how nice it is to get away for a bit. I get so busy, the days blend together. I don’t have time to think sometimes. Every meeting I have with a factor, or a mine manager, or someone from the family, I end up having to write a report, or a query back to Grantville, or write a letter to figure out who to write a letter to to get an answer. That’s the frustrating part. There is so much I don’t know, and I don’t even know who to ask. So a day off is nice!”

  Regina nodded to her. “I know the Count is pleased with your performance so far.”

  Mary felt herself beaming widely, this time with pride rather than the spectacular views. “That’s nice to hear. I feel like I'm not earning my money sometimes. You guys are paying me a lot, and I feel like I’m the one getting the education here, not the Fugger. I have learned so much about mines, steam engines, guns, chemical processing, making steel, dyeing of fabrics, and I don’t know what else. Heck I've even learned quite a lot about artillery. It’s like going to seventeenth-century college, only getting paid for it.”

  Regina nodded to her. “You have adjusted well, Mary. We have learned much with your help. The Count tells me we will have a steam engine and pumps in place for one of the old flooded silver mines soon. We tried a Spanish pump there years ago, and it was a failure.” Regina touched Mary’s arm as they walked, drawing her to the railing of the bridge. They paused to look down the river.

  Mary drew in the clean mountain air and the wet smells of the riverbank. Here on the bridge there was light scent of dead fish and manure, dropped by the animals crossing. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell, when mixed with the pure mountain air. “It’s so beautiful here. It’s incredible. The mountains are, just wow. I try to tell my Mom and Dad back home just how beautiful it is here, but I don’t think I can describe it fully. I mean, you can only say something is beautiful so many ways.” She turned to Regina, her face relaxing after squinting into the sunshine reflected off the river below them. “You know Regina, I don’t think I've told you how much your kindness meant to me, when I first came here. The blankets you brought me, the candles in the cell in the basement. Your kind words.” She shrugged. “Until the Count told me I was welcome, I really didn’t know if I was in deep trouble. Almost shooting Johann Franz, and all that.”

  Regina patted her hand and smiled. “It is quite all right, Mary. It was the right thing under the circumstances. Family has its little disagreements now and again, you know. And fortunately you missed Johann Franz. He rather likes you, you know Mary.”

  Mary shot her a puzzled look. “Okay….that’s nice. I guess.” Mary had no idea how to take that. She rather liked Johann, he was intelligent, and if she allowed herself to think about it - and to be honest, she did think about it now and again - he was somewhat good looking; but his default mode always seemed to be count pissy-pants. But more importantly, anyone here was way out of her league. Like, so far out her league that she couldn’t even begin to think about it. She could come up with nothing particularly witty, so she simply said, “I guess I like him too. He’s easy to work with.”

  Regina looked back at her. Mary saw a hint of a smile on Regina’s face. “Did you have a large family, before the-the miracle?”

  “Not that big. I mean before the Ring of Fire, we had cousins and stuff, but we actually come from kind of a small family, compared to most. Why do you ask?” Mary tilted her head in question.

  Regina motioned for them to continue walking into Schwaz. Mary nodded and they started off the bridge, the footmen and the maid trailing at a respectable distance behind. “Did everyone in your family always get along?”

  Mary had to repress a snort. “Get along? You’re kidding, right? An Italian family? Of West Virginia hillbillies? We had more disagreements than you could shake a stick at - or rather we had a lot of them.” Mary looked at Regina, who nodded. Apparently she understood the idiom. If not the reference, then the gist of it. She had been speaking German so much lately, she had started to think in it. Mary continued. “There were family gatherings where I was briefed on what I could say to which cousin, told never to mention Great Uncle Ernesto to Grandma, and never ever bring up politics with Aunt Margie. Good lord, we had disagreements.”

  “Nice to hear some things don’t change after three hundred years,” said Regina with a hint of sarcasm mixed with humor. “The Fugger have disagreements too.”

  Mary kept walking straight ahead. This was the first time that Regina had said anything about the family dynamics. As long as Mary had been at Schloss Tratzberg, she had been focused on tasks and getting things done, not the family. Of course, the family was somewhat closed off to her. They were not by nature an ebullient bunch of Counts and Countesses, schooled in court intrigues as they were from their father’s knee. The older students in her classes were generally not forthcoming with conversation other than the topics before them, and the younger kids just didn’t know anything. She had gotten snippets, of course. And some information on the family from her briefings. Some of the Fugger hated up-timers, reflecting the feelings of the Munich court of Maximilian. This was natural, due to the strong ties between the Catholic League, the Bavarian court, and the Emperor in Vienna. She had always suspected this might be the reason Sybilla tried to make her life miserable. But in spite of the position of Grantville supporting the Protestant enemy, and the dark shadow of implied witchcraft, she also knew there had been Fugger in Grantville from almost the beginning, and if not family members specifically, then they were using the large number of researchers and factors who had inundated the town in 1632. The Fugger family was late to the up-time bandwagon, unlike the Nasi clan. The Nasis had adopted early and thoroughly, all-in. As a result the Nasis had a near monopoly on banking in the USE. One of the reports from her briefings talked about how the Fugger were divided on this issue, and losing money and market share. The Nasi presenter in her briefing had used the actual words ‘market share’. In a Power Point. In the seventeenth century. She remembered rolling her eyes at that one. And now, for the first time, a Fugger was mentioning this internal division to her. She was paying close attention. Mary decided that honesty, at least as much as possible, was the best cautious response. “I've heard something about that. The Fugger have been restrained in their dealings with Grantville. Low profile, as we up-timers say.”

  It was Regina’s turn to snort, but quietly. “That is an understatement. There are a great number of this family that believe, truly believe, that Grantville is a result of the actions of Satan. Not that I can blame them. It is truly a cruel thing to tear people away from their family like you were. But the fact remains that we are falling very much behind. What was once for us solid as granite and as hard as steel has become like quicksand. Our foundations are shifting, and radically. And many of our other family members, who are in Augsburg, o
r in Munich, or Vienna, only see the world as way things were. Wishing the earth to be stable under you is of no help. Wishes will not stop an earthquake, or an avalanche. And there is a large faction of the Fugger who wish. If they don’t change, they will be left behind, and the family will wither and die.”

  Mary walked in silence for a few moments, glancing at Regina. She ran several options through her head, and finally settled on a simple reply. “The Count did mention some of that to me when we first met. That there were some who didn’t want me here.”

  Regina nodded solemnly. “My brother is a very wise man. Very wise. Kind by nature. Too kind sometimes, for the hard things he has to do. But.” She looked up at Mary and pointed with her finger at the sky, to emphasize the ‘but’. “He always does what he must do.”

  Mary nodded. She wasn’t sure what to say. She wondered if that was some sort of a warning, but the way Regina said it didn’t sound that way. The thought crossed her mind that if she was a real spy, she would have some clever way to draw out more information, ask for some example, but the discussion felt honest to her, and the only thing she could come up with to say was, “I see.”

  They were approaching the outskirts of town. Regina nodded, and brightened considerably. “And that is why we are having the ball, here at Schloss Tratzberg. To bring people together. To meet you. And to formally introduce you to more of the family, and to some of the other families here in the Inn Valley. And it’s why we are getting a new dress fitted today. We can’t have you showing up to the ball in a hand-me-down dress from the Countess, can we?”

  Mary laughed. “I will not turn down a new dress, Regina, that’s for sure. Down-time clothing is growing on me a bit, since I've been here. I kind of like the feel of the fabrics.” Mary ran her fingers through the pleats of her skirt. “And I haven’t tripped over my skirts once in the last month!”

  Regina reached out and touched the bodice Mary was wearing. “This was one of the Countess’s older dresses, I remember when she got it. It looks nice on you, and the seamstresses did an excellent job.”

  “I like the embroidery, it must have taken someone hours to do. But don’t get me wrong, I mean, I still like my old blue jeans, but one has to admit that some of the dresses in the here-and-now are pretty nice. And I got a feeling that when winter comes they will be comfortable in the castle. I like the way they swish sometimes.” She grasped her skirts and swished them back and forth as they walked.

  “So you didn’t wear dresses much as a girl?”

  Mary shook her head, and folded her hands in front of her, letting the skirt fall naturally. “Nope. Jeans and t-shirt kind of girl, sweaters or sweatshirts in the winter. About what everyone else wore too. There were things like prom and homecoming – which were sort of formal dances put on through the school - where the girls wore dresses, but, trust me Regina. They looked nothing like dresses down-time. If you think up-time jeans and a tight t-shirt are scandalous in the here-and-now, you really would not have liked a high school homecoming dance. What some of those girls wore was barely there.”

  Regina touched her on the arm, drawing her into her confidence. “Oh, my. You must tell me all about it sometime. It sounds exciting!” For a moment the expression on Regina’s face became that of a young girl, excited about a dance and a new dress. They both laughed pleasantly, and continued their stroll towards town. Regina again drew close. “With those kinds of clothing, how did the girls manage to stay virgins?”

  Mary snorted a laugh at her. “Most didn’t. I mean it was a small town. Not much else to do.”

  Regina continued to lean close to her. “What about you, Mary? Are you a virgin?”

  Mary straightened up, and lost a step to Regina. “What? Ex-excuse me, did you just ask if I was a virgin?”

  Regina looked at her innocently. “Yes. I thought up-timers were rather open about such things…”

  Mary gulped a little, not wanting to offend someone who was friendly to her, but still a little put off by the question. “I-I would prefer not to answer that question, Regina.” Mary felt herself blushing a little, and shaded her eyes to the bright sunshine.

  Regina must have sensed the uncomfortable vibe Mary was giving off. She reached out and touched her arm. “Oh, no. I have offended you I see. I am sorry. I thought that since birth control was so widespread in the up-time, that people were a little more open about such things. At least that is what I heard.”

  “My town had its share of teen pregnancies, stupid teenagers doing stupid things.” Mary shrugged, trying to put this in a way that didn’t make all of her friends back home sound like wanton jezebels. “Up-timers and sex are a little bit of a mixed bag. Some of it was very open; some if it was more rigid than it is now. I mean, back up-time, it was supposedly scandalous when a girl went to the altar pregnant. But it happened. Here, as long as a marriage contract is in place, nobody seems to mind. Saw that back in Wurzburg. I attended a wedding there and was blown away by a girl coming down the aisle looking like she was nine months along, and nobody batted an eyelash except the up-timers. It was kind of funny, the shocked up-timers and the unperturbed down-timers looking at each other. Up-timers wondering why the down-timers weren’t shocked, and the down-timers wondering why the up-timers were.” Mary shook her head at the memory.

  Regina raised her eyebrows in agreement. “Well, if the contract is in place, it’s nearly the same as marriage. The contract is a commitment that is legal and binding, at least in the eyes of the community.”

  Mary nodded. “Yup. Up-time marriage and down-time marriage are two very different things. The way you guys look at it is a lot more like a business arrangement than it was up-time. It was very rare that we had prenuptial contracts. Most people fell in love and got married when they felt like it, making the decisions and plans on their own terms.”

  “Sounds chaotic.”

  “Well, half of all marriages ended in divorce, if I recall correctly. So it was kind of chaotic I guess. From one perspective.”

  “I was a bit of a rebel, back in my day. I married for love.” Regina sighed. Mary looked at her, astonished. Regina nodded in return. “I met Felix at a fair, quite by accident. My father was much more understanding than I thought he would be about the whole incident. But my Felix was from a good family, a count in his own right- the match wasn’t too far off. My mother didn’t speak to me for a year after the wedding. But we eventually reconciled, and came together as a family, like we always do. But we had many good years together.”

  “What happened?”

  “He died. Was kicked by a horse in the chest.” Her voice quieted, and Mary moved closer to her, straining to hear. “Stupid. Something was broken inside him. He lived for several days after.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Regina expression brightened. “Don’t be, child. We had time to say goodbye, which is more than many can have.” She grasped Mary’s hand and patted it as they continued to stroll. “So, there is love in many marriages here in this time. It isn’t all business. But it isn’t all chaos either. I don’t know anyone who has ever been divorced. The Church doesn’t generally allow it, unless there are extraordinary circumstances.”

  “I know a lot of divorced families. I think the Church was a lot more flexible up-time. And speaking of the church, can we stop by before we go to the dressmaker? I want to drop off something to Father Huntsha and Raphael.”

  “Of course. They will wait for us at the seamstress. What do you have for the Father?”

  “I got a small book from Father Larry, or rather Cardinal Mazzare – I still have trouble with that one – on Vatican II. One of the footmen, Friedrich, has it, it won’t take but a moment. He assured me it wasn’t heresy to have possession of it. Father Larry, not the footman.”

  Regina looked surprised. “You correspond with The Cardinal-Protector? Regularly?”

  Mary laughed. “For me he will always be Father Larry, my parish priest. I grew up with him. So after I found out that Father Hu
ntsha here in Schwaz was interested in the Catholicism I grew up with, I asked Father Larry if he had any books. He sent me something for him.”

  When they arrived at the church, Father Huntsha was delighted to have the book. “I shall devour it cover to cover.” the young bearded priest positively beamed. “It looks to be a reprint of an up-time book.” He read from the back cover. “It contains all sixteen documents of the Second Vatican Council plus the forty-nine later documents from popes and Vatican congregations that implement the details of the Council’s decisions.” The man almost squealed in joy. “This is truly exciting, I can’t wait to read it. Thank you so much. Oh my!” The priest was a foot shorter than Mary, but she could see the excitement on his face, to the point of almost being in tears. “Oh, my. So exciting!” He clutched the book to his chest, and Mary could not help but smile at him. His enthusiasm was contagious. “Oh, bless you child!”

  “I’m glad it makes you happy, Father. Is Raphael here today?”

  “Yes, he should be here momentarily. Do you have another book?” His eyes lit up in anticipation.

  “No, just some magazine article reprints on restoring old organs. I thought he might find it interesting. I had the library back in Grantville pull what they had. It didn’t cost much, it had already been researched by other people, so it was on hand when I asked for it.”

  “I will find anything you bring me interesting, Mary Russo of Grantville!” Raphael burst into the narthex from the church, tugging his doublet on over his arms, and brushing masonry dust from his shoulders. Leopold was at his heels, eyes keen for Mary. “But I do want to see what you have brought me.” He turned to Regina. “Countess, it has been several months since I last saw your beauty, and I have missed it every day since then.” He bowed with an Italian flourish, deeply and showing a leg.