Grantville Gazette VI

by Eric Flint

  They had managed to get it all done on time. Except for one crucial thing.

  The new institution still did not have a permanent administrator.

  For the moment, Duke Ernst's personal secretary would add it to his workload. That was obviously not a feasible solution for the long term.

  September, 1634

  "You know," Walpurga Hercher said, "the pastor could get into a lot of trouble doing this. Especially if he went into some of the rougher places, like the 250 Club." She looked at her sister Lisbet consideringly. "I think we ought to get the boyfriend collection to steer him a bit. You and Jonas can ask Errol just to sort of fall in walking with him the morning he sets out, can't you? When Errol is finished playing for the children's music class at the school in the morning. Make sure that he doesn't go to the wrong spots."

  "What do you call this?" Lisbet asked suspiciously.

  "Reasonable prudence," Walpurga answered. "Pastor Kastenmayer isn't such a bad sort. Maybe Errol could take him to the Freedom Arches to talk to Derek Blount and those guys. If he wants to ask young guys. If he wants to talk to up-time women about it, he could go to Cora's. Ryan could take him there, since Magdalena works in the kitchen."

  "I don't see why he couldn't just talk to Errol and the others out at St. Martin's," Lisbet said. "After all, they come to church with us now."

  "The pastor's a man," Walpurga answered. "That would be far too simple a solution to the puzzle."

  * * *

  "You want me to what?" Ron Koch asked in horror.

  "I just told you," Ronella answered.

  "But."

  "Look, Dad," Ronella said. "I want to marry him. We're at a standstill. You don't have anything against him, do you?"

  "Well, no. But it's just . . . err, primitive . . . for me to arrange a marriage for you. Or try to." Ron had, after all, proposed to his beloved Carol on the basis of ten minutes' acquaintance. This project was distinctly alien to every one of his sensibilities.

  "Please, Daddy," Ronella said. "Pretty please, with sugar on it." She clasped her hands, rested her chin on them, and batted her eyelashes.

  That was not fighting fair. She knew it and so did her father.

  "Jonas is a fine young man," Carol Koch said. "I got to know him pretty well during the Rudolstadt Colloquy and I really like him."

  They both looked at her.

  "If you won't ask him for her," Carol said, "I will. It's not as if he's going to find anyone nicer than Ronella."

  Both of the elder Kochs looked at their daughter with considerable parental satisfaction and pride, pleased with their achievement and mutually agreed that no one would ever find a girl nicer than Ronella.

  Ron Koch groaned. Outmaneuvered again. He wasn't good at talking to people. Not persuasive. He knew that. He preferred to let the facts speak for themselves when he made a presentation. He hadn't been trying to persuade Carol of anything when he proposed as soon as he saw her. The fact that they absolutely would never be happy again unless they got married to each other as soon as it could be achieved had been perfectly plain to both of them.

  It was hard to think of any facts that he could lay out in such a manner as to demonstrate that Jonas would be the best of all possible husbands for Ronella. For himself, the facts that she wanted the guy and Carol approved of him were enough.

  Lots of young couples started out on a shoestring. He and Carol would be content with that for Ronella.

  He had a suspicion that down-timers didn't look at it that way. He'd have to ask one of them how a father was supposed to go about this.

  Maybe he could ask Pastor Kastenmayer, he thought.

  Pastor Kastenmayer subsequently confirmed that Jonas was not the product of a world that believed in trying to live on love.

  * * *

  Pastor Kastenmayer transferred the examples that Maria Blandina had collected for him from the box into a small satchel with a handle and set forth on his journey of exploration.

  Errol Mercer joined him before he had even gotten out of the courtyard that lay between the church and the school, mentally shaking his head about the stuff that a guy would do when Lisbet asked him to.

  He set out to do a little steering. Luckily, walking into town from St. Martin's, a person passed the Freedom Arches before getting to the downtown part itself.

  The pastor politely greeted Derek Blount, who was eating his breakfast. Ursel Krause kept peeking from behind the counter, trying to see what was going on.

  "Morning, Pastor Kastenmayer," Derek said. "Meet my brother Donnie."

  He hadn't prepped Donnie. But he was, after all, Donnie's brother. The two of them had lived in the same house all their lives. He knew him pretty well. He had complete confidence in Donnie. At least as far as solving this little problem went.

  Kastenmayer smiled. Derek's brother. An up-timer who was not scheduled to become one of the grooms for the girls of Quittelsdorf. Thus, an impartial witness.

  He explained his mission.

  He reached into his satchel.

  He came out with the pink floral print skort.

  "Would I wear that?" Donnie jerked back in spontaneous horror. "Hell, no. What do you think I am?" he asked. "Some kind of girly man?"

  Although, in the interest of thoroughness, Pastor Kastenmayer pursued his inquiries for the remainder of the morning, through such venues—preselected by Walpurga—as the office of the "home economics" teacher at the middle school and Karen Reading's bridal shop, he knew that he had his answer. He returned home with a considerable feeling of relief. This was certainly going to simplify life.

  After all, the pertinent passage in Deuteronomy did not say a word describing the prohibited garments. It did not state that they were any variety of trousers or indicate what they looked like. It merely forbade "that which pertaineth unto a man."

  Grantville, October, 1634

  "Okay," Gary Lambert said. "I'll come to Jena with you all and tell them what I know about the whole 'spouse left up-time' marriage thing. They need to come to some kind of a final resolution. Roland Worley seems a nice enough guy, so we ought to clear the decks if he wants to marry Rahel Dornheimer. I can kill two birds with one stone. Beulah McDonald has been nagging me to come and meet some of the faculty members there outside just the school of medicine. Dean Gerhard is planning a dinner party. I'll have her invite Pastor Kastenmayer and you, too, Jonas. Since you're going to be there anyway."

  * * *

  "Daddy," Ronella Koch said. "Do you mean to tell me that you haven't said a word to Jonas yet?"

  Ron Koch looked miserably uncomfortable. "Honey," he said. "Uh. That is. Don't you think that if Jonas wanted to marry you, he would do something about it himself?"

  "To be perfectly honest, no. I think that left to himself he'll be noble and self sacrificing until the end of time."

  "I really don't want to do this."

  Ronella knew that already.

  "Please, Daddy. Please. Maybe you could say something to Pastor Kastenmayer and then he could say something to Jonas?"

  That was a little ray of sunshine. Thin, watery, and wavering. But at least not his own personal rain cloud following him around.

  Ronella looked at him. If Daddy hadn't done something by Christmas . . . Well, she would think of something. Right now, she had papers to grade. Stacks and stacks of papers to grade. Oodles and gobs and mountains of papers to grade. One of the few things that could be said for the first year of teaching was that it sure took your mind off your other troubles.

  Jena, October, 1634

  Johann Gerhard, dean of the faculty of theology at the university of Jena, looked at his dinner party.

  Overall, he was satisfied. Basically, the handling of the case of Roland Worley's up-time marriage in the briefs submitted by expert advisers from both law and theology schools throughout much of Lutheran Germany indicated that a spouse left behind in such a way should be considered deceased. Without requiring an extended waiting period or an individua
l decree in each case. The Saxe-Weimar consistorial court had ruled accordingly this morning, concurring with that of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt.

  This meant that in addition to the now basically Philippist consistory in Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, they had a ruling from the basically Flacian consistory in Saxe-Weimar. Flacian Lutherans basically thought that Philippists were suspiciously lax with tendencies toward crypto-Calvinism. Philippist Lutherans frequently thought that Flacians tended to be uptight, overly orthodox, ultrarigid pains. They rarely agreed on any point of doctrine.

  Gerhard was orthodox himself, of course. Though suspected of pietist sentimentalism by even stricter Flacians. All of the Jena faculty was Flacian.

  That the two consistories agreed on the marriage issue was a relief, since the alternative would have been the need for the party now in the seventeenth century to apply for divorce on the grounds of abandonment and that would have proven impossible. Abandonment, as everyone knew, had to be willful. It would be impossible to interpret the parting of spouses caused by the Ring of Fire as having been deliberate on the part of either one. That would have been a dilemma. A serious dilemma when it came to finding a wife for Gary Lambert. Now . . . he had representatives of both contending schools of Lutheran thought at the same dinner party. Which might possibly turn out to be touchy.

  Gerhard's wife Maria smiled at him from across the room. She was talking with Beulah McDonald. Since her father had been a well known physician in Coburg, the two had common interests. Standing with them were Catharina Barthin, the wife of Friedrich Hortleder, and her daughter. The Hortleders had come from Weimar specifically to attend this dinner.

  Ludwig Kastenmayer was talking to Hortleder himself, introducing Gary Lambert.

  Hortleder as a historian was delighted to be meeting another up-timer.

  Hortleder as a lawyer was as happy as Gerhard to have one more issue surrounding the up-timers pretty well settled. A settlement to which his own brief had contributed as much as Kastenmayer's tact.

  Hortleder as a bureaucrat, the former tutor of the young dukes of Saxe-Weimar and the chancellor of the duchy at the time the Ring of Fire occurred, always felt a need to be very cautious around the up-timers. It had been, after all, on his watch that Grantville "slid" Saxe-Weimar out of the grasp of its rightful rulers while they were away fighting on behalf of the emperor Gustavus Adolphus. Logically, since the dukes appeared to bear the up-timers no major grudge, they should bear Hortleder no major grudge, either. But human beings were not always logical, so Hortleder remained careful, even though the nature of his position as chancellor, which he still held, required him to work closely with the up-timers.

  Hortleder had been a bit startled when he first discovered that Herr Michael Stearns was, if anything, a Calvinist, while Herr Edward Piazza was a Catholic. But he had borne up well, under the circumstances. He had also provided them with the loan of many young, well-trained administrators and bureaucrats—a commodity of which they were acutely in need.

  When humans were being logical, Gerhard thought, Hortleder was the kind of man who logically ought to appeal to the up-timers. Not a nobleman. Not even close. He came from very modest circumstances. His father had been a farmer and local administrator at Ampfurth bei Wanzleben. He had studied law at Helmstedt, then at the universities, Wittenberg and Jena, as a scholarship student and gotten his doctorate in 1606. He spent some time as a private tutor. Two years later he had become tutor to the young dukes of Saxe-Weimar. Wilhelm Wettin, as he was now, Bernhard, Ernst, Friedrich, and the others so sadly deceased. A year later, he received an additional post as lecturer at the university of Jena. In 1617, they appointed him court historian, in recognition of the publication of his history of the League of Schmalkalden. And, as so often was the fate of scholars, moved him into administration. He became a member of the ducal council and was placed in charge of the duchy's archives.

  Catharina, his wife, was the daughter of the chancellor of Brandenburg's Neumark. They had married while he was still a student, which was most unusual. It was even more unusual that Chancellor Barth had permitted it. There had certainly been no guarantee back then that Hortleder would have an outstanding career.

  The joy and sorrow of their life was their daughter Anna Catharina. Joy because now, at twenty, she was a lovely girl. Sorrow because she was their only child.

  Gerhard's gaze continued around the room. Zacharias Prüschenk von Lindenhofen had accompanied the Hortleders. He had come to the university of Jena four years ago to get his law degree. He now wanted to marry Anna Catharina. More precisely, he wanted to marry the only child of the chancellor of Saxe-Weimar, who happened to be Anna Catharina. Gerhard feared that in Prüschenk's view, she could just as well have been anyone else.

  From Sulzbach in the Upper Palatinate, von Lindenhofen was twenty-four and ambitious. The Ring of Fire had destroyed his prospects of an advantageous betrothal to Gertrud Romanus, the daughter of the mayor of Naumburg, when the political constellations changed. Although he was of the lower nobility, or at least claimed to be, he was now willing to condescend to marry the only daughter of the commoner who was chancellor of Saxe-Weimar for the connections she would bring him.

  Prüschenk was . . . Gerhard looked around . . . over there, talking to young Muselius, his back turned to Kastenmayer, Hortleder, and Lambert.

  That was good, because Beulah McDonald was clearly about to introduce Hortleder's wife and daughter to Gary Lambert, whose role at the Rudolstadt Colloquy made him of such piquant interest to many of Thuringia's Lutherans. Gary was a wonderfully orthodox Lutheran, Gerhard thought with satisfaction. The up-time LCMS to which he belonged was nearly equivalent to being a Flacian. Whereas the ELCA to which families such as that of Herr Ronaldus Koch and his wife belonged was essentially Philippist. Gerhard found it comforting to discover that the eternal verities had continued so far into the future.

  Though a little startling that Gary continued to be personal friends with the Kochs and Muselius—even with Kastenmayer—in spite of their theological differences.

  Gary clearly piqued Anna Catharina Hortleder's interest a great deal. She seemed to be in no way disillusioned by the reality of the slightly stocky build, prematurely receding hairline, and thick spectacles of the first real up-timer she had ever met.

  Gerhard sighed. He and Maria had hoped to find some nice, suitable girl in whom Gary might take an interest once his matrimonial status was cleared up.

  But not that one.

  Friedrich Hortleder was looking at his daughter and Gary with one of those "What the hell have I done?" expressions on his face.

  It was too late to change the list of guests Maria had invited to dinner and back Chancellor Hortleder and his family out of the room.

  Prüschenk would not be pleased to have a second prospective fiancée slip out of his grasp.

  * * *

  Pastor Kastenmayer had not wanted to stay in Jena to attend this dinner. He would have preferred to return home at noon, as soon as the court had issued its ruling. Salome was very near her time. He didn't care for the idea of leaving her alone with the children longer than absolutely necessary. However, since he was here, he would do his duty. His telling of the story of his adventures among the up-timers in pursuit of enlightenment in regard to Deuteronomy 22:5 was the hit of the evening.

  Zacharias Prüschenk von Lindenhofen did not find it funny.

  He was also dissatisfied with the matrimonial ruling that had been issued that morning. After all, no matter what had been concluded by the consistory of Saxe-Weimar, on the basis of the majority of the expert opinions it had gathered, it had failed to take into consideration advice from the saner portion of German Lutheranism. The more prestigious university of Wittenberg, in Electoral Saxony, under the patronage of Duke John George, had not yet ruled in the matter of presumption of death for spouses left up-time. Nor had the Saxon consistory. In Prüschenk's view, the Jena faculty and Saxe-Weimar had acted prematurely.

  Prü
schenk frowned at Anna Catharina Hortleder, making his disapproval of her obvious interest in the up-timer Lambert clear. She ignored him.

  Perhaps it was not too late to change his allegiance. If he could obtain an appointment in Saxony, then the possibility of his marrying Gertrud Romanus from Naumburg might be revived. She wasn't betrothed yet.

  He could probably start by writing a pamphlet denouncing Kastenmayer's methodology and conclusions in regard to Deuteronomy 22:5. A pamphlet with woodcuts. Citation to legal precedents. Something involving heresy and the whore of Babylon as well as skorts and culottes. Prüschenk's mind drifted as the guests moved into the dining room.

  Weimar, October, 1634