"Can you hear me? Your eyes are open, can you see me?" The words began to make sense. The angel spoke good Frisian. "Who are you?"
He moved and groaned. He couldn't be dead, because he wouldn't hurt so damn much. And he probably wouldn't smell this bad either. Ah, he remembered his name, Hans, and said it.
"Hans? Is that your name?" the angel asked.
"Yes, I am Hans. And you?" Hans shook his head and strongly wished he had not.
"Maria … that is, Marieke," she said.
"Where am I?"
"At the Freedom Arches in Bremen," she replied. "And before you ask, no, I don't know how you got here. You were brought in on a wagon with some others found after the great wave."
"I remember the wave," Hans said, rather tenuously. "I think …"
"Where were you? Where were you coming from?"
"I was taking a wagon to Bremerlehe."
There was a pause.
"How long?" Hans made a helpless gesture with his left hand. His right arm, he found, was bound to his chest.
"It is now two weeks after the night of the wave. Somebody has named it ‘The Great Drowning of Men.' " Marieke wiped her hand down her face. For November, it was very warm. Or maybe, Hans thought, it was very warm in the Freedom Arches.
"You should rest now," Marieke said, pushing up from where she had been kneeling on the floor and the mat Hans was lying on. "Someone will come soon to help you with the pot."
Hans dozed, then drifted into deeper sleep. After some time, he woke with some urgency, found the chamber pot and used it, with some difficulty with only one hand. He was very thirsty, and looking around, he spotted a glass on a short table near his pallet. It was very weak and very warm beer, but he drank it down with pleasure.
In the morning, Hans made his aching body rise off the yellow and blue plaid pallet to look for some breakfast and perhaps some clean clothes. It was pretty obvious to him that he'd been in the same clothes since the great wave hit him. The combination of damaged leg and arm made it harder than usual for him to get up but the only other choice was to lie in filthy clothes with hunger eating a hole in his already thin belly. Hans had never been heavy and an extended time on the pallet had not added any bulk to his whip-cord thin frame. Rise and eat he must so he groaned and rose.
Hopping on one foot, because he found he couldn't put weight on the other, he followed his nose to the kitchen. There was hot cider, fresh bread, and a pan of still sizzling sausages sitting on a sideboard. He gathered what seemed like a feast on a wooden trencher, but he found he couldn't carry it to the trestle table in the front room of the Arches. White-washed walls shone with cleanliness around him. The open windows had no glass but he could see white shutters partially closing out the outdoors. A tortoise-shell cat lay in one of the few open windows in a pool of sunlight. The floor was freshly swept wood. The ceiling was maybe twelve feet high with large beams crisscrossing the room.
Hans wondered about the Committee of Correspondence and the Freedom Arches. He could see a much larger hall through the doorway at the back of the room but everyone seemed to be in this room with him. Hans could see people of all ages, men and women, a few children, and some older folks. The bread and sausages were finger food, which was good because he was very much right-handed. His right hand was in a sling, tightly strapped to his chest and useless. His splinted leg made Hans feel even more helpless.
"Ah, good morning!" It was Marieke. She immediately understood what the problem was, and picked up Hans's tray and carried it to the trestle table. She had come up while he was wondering how to eat without just standing there holding up a wall. Her marvelous hair was wrapped up around the top of her head like a crown. She may have been dressed in a white cotton underblouse with a tan and blue cotton bodice over a yellow cotton skirt that had seen better days but she gave the impression she was just as comfortable in silk and velvet. "How are you feeling? How is your leg?"
"Okay, but my arm and leg hurt a lot and I ache," Hans complained. "It is, I think, better than how I would feel being dead, though." He gave her the deadpan look Japik knew so well.
"When you are dead, you don't feel …" she started, then favored Hans with a shy smile. "Oh. You have a sense of humor, I see."
"When I can," Hans grinned weakly. "When I can." She smiled, and he felt the sun shone through that smile. She seemed human, so maybe she was a princess instead of an angel. Hans's luck that the first princess he met would save him, not he her. Wait till he told Japik … Then it hit him. He had not seen Japik! Where was Japik? Was he even alive? He had to be alive! Japik had to be alive! How could he find him??
"Marieke, my friend Japik was with me when the wave hit. Have you seen him or know who might?" Hans could not believe he had not asked about Japik until now.
"I have not seen any Japik but many people were seriously hurt. He could be at the emergency center." Her lovely features clouded over. "There will be a list of those who are recovering and those who … are not." She glanced down and away, unable to meet Hans's worried eyes.
She glanced up and changed the subject quickly. "So, your name is Hans. Where do you come from, Hans?" Marieke sat down, sitting gracefully on one side of the same bench he sat on as he kept shoveling the welcome food into his mouth.
"I am from a small village east of Bremerlehe. My family collects the night soil and delivers it to the tannery there. I was taking a wagon load to the Bremerlehe tannery." Liesel's face passed across his closed eyes. "My sister, my father … I have to get home to let them know I am alive. I have to find Japik, my friend …"
Marieke sat quiet for a minute. Then she said, "I've never met a night soil carrier before. Or a tanner, or any of those other occupations."
"And you, Miss?" Hans was suddenly much more formal. "From what family do you come?"
"My father was the Prince-Bishop's senior administrator," Marieke said. She paused. "Of course, he works for Prince Frederick of Denmark, now." Her explanation flowed off her tongue the same way he would have said he had a little sister.
"I do not mean to be rude, but what are you doing at the Freedom Arches?" Hans was stunned. This girl was as close to a princess as he'd likely ever meet. She wore a bodice embroidered with dark blue cotton thread instead of gold or silver but she did not need that to be a princess, at least to Hans. Marieke was beautiful beyond the stories he read or told his little Liesel. And she seemed to like him! Der Herr Gott!
Marieke gathered her thoughts and straightened her light yellow skirt, smoothing it out nervously as she stuck her chin out.
"I believe that the USE will change the class structure in Germany," she said, almost in a singsong. "There should be no nobles, no commons, and no proscribed occupations! The Committees of Correspondence are at the forefront of this struggle!" She sounded like she was parroting some of the things she had heard and read.
"What do you mean?" Hans had heard of the USE but nothing of any such changes in society.
"You will see later. The local CoC will be at dinner, and they can answer your questions. Ever since the royals started to clamp down on the commoners, things are in flux."
"And what does your father think?" Hans asked.
"He thinks I am a silly girl with no understanding of what is actually going on," she said, frowning. "But with the political situation since William Wettin is almost certain to become prime minister, I think I understand all too well. The nobles and burgher classes must be let down easy, as the lower classes rise. Or there will be much violence and many deaths." Her face grew very serious, and her frown deepened. "It may well be worse than the Bundschuh and the Bauernkrieg were."
Hans took a bite of sausage, and thought about what she had said. "And the Committees of Correspondence will have what role in this?" he asked.
"We are teaching political understanding to the people. We are also teaching things like saving and budgeting money, and sanitation, so they get something useful as they listen to us. There was an up-timer called
Bertold Brecht who lived … would have lived … in Germany in the 1920s. He said, ‘Erst komm das Fressen, dann komm die Moral!' "
Hans and Marieke shared a laugh over that. "First you must feed us, then you can preach to us!"
"And so the Freedom Arches, and our life skills teaching," she said.
Then she gathered herself and briskly said, "You will see our doctor today, and she will decide how long your arm needs to be bound and how bad your broken leg is. None of your other injuries are serious enough to matter, so you will be able to resume most of your normal activities."
"Let's talk more about this later. You have only recently come up off your sick bed." Marieke changed the subject. "Can you read?"
"Yes, well enough to read my Bible and a news sheet," Hans replied.
"Then you might well use the library here at the Arches while you heal."
She stood, and put her hand on his shoulder. "Please take care of yourself. You are one of the few we have found alive."
He stood, with respect, as she left the room. He hopped along the wall as he took his now empty plate back to the kitchen, and was told that with only one arm useful and a splinted leg, the dish would be washed for him. "But don't get the idea that we are servants," the crusty woman who seemed to be kitchen boss said. "If you hang around here, you will do your turn as a washer of dishes."
"Yes, Frau … I am sorry, but I do not know your name."
"Schultz," she said, wiping her hands on her apron. She was small and wizened, with a widow's hump, but looked as solid as a boulder. "The midday meal is in two hours. Don't be late or you won't get fed."
"Yes, Frau Schultz."
"Now scat!"
He was alive. And as soon as he was able, he would find Beatrix and Japik and return home to make sure Liesel and Papa were all right. But for now he returned to his little alcove. He was exhausted, he hurt. It was quiet around him, so Hans lay down on his thin pallet and gave himself back to sleep.
****
A Week Later
Hans stood in the library of the Freedom Arches, looking at the bookshelves and all the books sitting on them. He had never seen that many books before. He moved closer, so he could look at the titles. At the bottom of each book's spine was a tag with a number. He pulled a book out at random and looked at the tag. It read, "943.01 Geschischte von Deutschland." He wondered what Deutschland was. Maybe it was a new word from up-time. It seemed to mean "land of the Germans," but which land?
On the wall near the bookshelves, he saw a poster with a list of the numbers and what they meant, headed, "The Dewey Decimal Classification System for Libraries."
He saw with interest that there was a whole section in the chart on engineering … Section 620, and that there was a special section on "Sanitary Engineering—Section 628." He remembered all his daydreams of working with the Committees of Correspondence on sanitation. So he went to the 600 section, and started looking for books.
Almost immediately, he found one that he grabbed and took to the big table in the center of the library. There were reading carrels on the table, and chairs in front of each one. He sat down, and opened the book. It was called, Die Wissenschaft vom Wasser: Konzepte und Anwendungen. According to one of the inside pages, it was published in German by the CoC in Magdeburg in 1634, from an up-timer book called The Science of Water: Concepts and Applications, by Frank R. Spellman, which had been published in 1998 up-time.
Excitedly, he began to turn the pages. As he did so, though, he became more and more frustrated. "Lieve God in de hemel!" Hans swore in his dialect. "Dear God in Heaven!"
"What is the matter?" It was Marieke. She'd come in quietly, while he wasn't paying attention.
"I need this book! I need to read this book!" Hans shouted at her, and banged the book on the table. "This book will tell me how to be an expert on sanitary for the CoC."
"I think you mean ‘sanitation'," she said, "but I think I understand."
"I cannot read it. It is in German, not Frisian, and I can't read all that well anyway."
"May I see it?" Marieke said, holding out her hand.
Wordlessly, Hans handed her the book.
Marieke sank down into a chair and opened the book. After a moment, Hans sat in the other chair next to her. The chairs were padded and comfortable, so that reading in them would be easy.
"To the Reader," she slowly read in German, looking at Hans to see if he understood. Hans nodded. "In reading this text, you are going to spend some time following a drop of water on its travels. When you dip a finger in a basin of water and lift it up again, you bring with it a small glistening drop out of the water below and hold it before you. Do you have any idea where this drop has been? What changes it has undergone, during all the long ages water has lain on and under the face of the Earth?"
"I … can you read me more of it, and help me learn to read German?" Hans asked, somewhat diffidently.
"Yes," Marieke said. "But we should go eat our midday meal now. Or Frau Schultz will be annoyed. You do not want to make Frau Schultz annoyed." She grinned at Hans.
"No, I don't guess I do." Hans grinned back. He took her hand as they walked toward the kitchen. She didn't pull it away until they got to the kitchen doorway.
****
The splint on his arm came off a couple of days later.
"You must carefully build up your strength in the arm again," the doctor said, manipulating it through its range of motion. "Or you won't be able to use it. You broke it pretty badly."
Hans winced as the doctor moved his arm, but it definitely hurt less, and it was straight, too. He had gotten off lucky. His leg was still strapped together, and the doctor told him it would be several weeks yet before he could get around easily.
Frau Schultz had him washing dishes immediately, and eventually he graduated to heavier tasks like carrying wood for the huge bake oven and cooking fireplace. Frau Schultz had just received some plans for an up-timer innovation called a "stove," but she didn't have enough money to order it from the catalog. So every spare pfennig went into a big ceramic pickle jar that had the word "stove" painted on it.
Every afternoon, Marieke read to him out of the book. Soon they were sitting close together on the bench under the library window, and he was following her reading by putting his finger on each word as she read it.
It felt very nice to be this close to Marieke, Hans thought, and it seemed to him that she didn't mind it either.
As the days went by, Hans began to read the book aloud to Marieke. She seemed to be very interested in what was a really technical subject.
They took a break every so often from Die Wissenschaft vom Wasser and read from books that Marieke liked. She really liked an up-timer author named Jane Austen. They read Pride and Prejudice because it had been serialized in the newspaper, and the library had almost all of the chapters.
****
Two Weeks Later
Marieke rushed into the library with a stack of newspapers in her arms and collided head on with Hans. They both fell to the floor, Hans's weak leg giving way, he landed with Marieke on top of him. Their eyes locked, and suddenly, she kissed him. The kiss lasted for quite a while. Finally, she broke away, and sat up, surrounded by newspapers. "I have wanted to do that for a long time," she said, a little defiantly.
Hans lay there stupefied. He'd been having those dreams about Marieke, and suddenly, it looked like they might come true. He took a sharp breath.
"Marieke, we can't do this. I am a night soil collector. I am proscribed. You are nearly noble!"
"You were a night soil collector. Now you are studying sanitary engineering. That's different," she said. "And besides, nobody saw us. Nobody is here. Kiss me again."
****
The afternoon study sessions continued, but now they were study-and-kissing sessions. Marieke encouraged Hans to study harder.
"You must rise above being a night soil collector," she said. "If you are an engineer, that is not a proscribed occupation. If
you become wealthy, you could become a burgher. Maybe even here in Bremen."
Hans held her close, and said, lightly, in case of rejection, "And if I did, what would you do?"
"Why, I'd marry you, you silly!"
They kissed to seal the bargain.
****
Late November, 1634
Hans was eating when Marieke arrived. Marieke looked down at his leg, now freed of its splints. "Do you need crutches still?"
"No, but the nurse said to ask her for a pair if I am going to be going far. I haven't needed them so I did not ask. Do I need to get a pair now?"
"Yes, it is time to look for your Beatrix. The rescue barn is not a far walk but it is too far for you to hop on one foot."
"I can walk now!" Hans was mock offended. "I won't have to hop!" Marieke ignored him, loftily.
"Well, you'll need crutches to get there and back." She glanced out the open window at the cloudless, sunny day. "I'll find you a pair." Marieke rose and headed swiftly in the direction of the medical station.
Hans finished his meal and was considering returning for more when Marieke strode up with a new pair of wooden crutches in her hands. "Now, see how these work. I think I guessed your height correctly." She handed the crutches to Hans and sat down on a bench next to him. Close enough that Hans noticed how her braided blonde hair lay gently down her back, just like Liesel's. Was his little princess all right? What about his Papa? He must find out soon.
"Hans, Hans, are you well?" Hans's mind had wandered, and Marieke was shaking his unharmed shoulder with one porcelain-delicate hand. "Hans, can you hear me? Can I get you something? A nurse?" Worry shone from her delft blue eyes and creased her angelic features. Hans wanted to reach out, hug her, and tell her not to worry. Instead, he drew himself up and away from stepping across that in-public forbidden line. He could never touch her in that way, not where people could see them. She was a princess and he, he was a night soil driver. No! He was not a night soil man. By der Herr Gott, he was a sanitary engineer!
Hans shook himself and Marieke stepped away from him. He stood up using the crutches. "Now, where is the rescue barn? I would like to look for Beatrix. She must wonder where I am."
Grantville Gazette, Volume 64 Page 7