by David Weber
"May I bid you all greetings," the man said. "On my behalf, as well as that of King Charles. I am Sir Thomas Wentworth—"
He broke off, briefly, an odd look coming over his face. It was a subtle thing. Half-surprise; half-delight—the look of a man who has suddenly remembered a recent and very unexpected stroke of good fortune.
"The earl of Strafford, actually. The king saw fit to bestow the title upon me recently." He cleared his throat. "I'm afraid the king himself is indisposed at the moment. The queen is quite ill, and between his concern for her and the press of state affairs, His Majesty asked me to greet you on his behalf. He also asked me"—another clearing of the throat; louder, this one—"to extend his apologies for not providing you with lodgings at Whitehall. Alas, the queen's illness is shared by many of the courtiers and servants, and the king fears for your safety should you be installed in what has, sadly, become a palace rife with disease."
He got that out quite nicely, thought Melissa, given that she was almost certain it was a straight-up lie. Strafford bestowed that quick smile upon them again. It was quite a striking expression—as much due to its brevity as its gleam. As if the man who made it distrusted his own tendency toward warmth.
"To be perfectly honest—I've stayed in Whitehall myself, at times—you'll be more comfortable here anyway. The royal palace is a madhouse, half the time, and so crowded we'd have been forced to cram you all into one or two tiny rooms. Whereas here—"
His hand, in a slow-moving regal gesture, indicated the charms of their surroundings. "Separate rooms—good quarters for the servants, even—one of the finest fireplaces in all England, and quite possibly the best beds this side of the queen's chambers in Whitehall. Much better."
That much was probably true, Melissa suspected. She'd barely recognized St. Thomas' Tower when they'd been led into it. From the outside, it looked not too different from the way it had looked when she'd visited the Tower in the late 20th century. But the inside, on her tours, had been barren. More than that, really, because the people who managed the Tower had deliberately left some of the old architecture exposed so that tourists could see the way in which the Tower had been constructed in layers, century after century. Today, she was seeing the place the way it would have actually been used in those long-gone centuries. Carpets, rich tapestries, linens on the beds and the fine upholstery of the furniture looking as if it had been used recently. Most impressive of all, to her, was the great fireplace which dominated the suite. She remembered the thing, from her visits as a tourist. But there was a great difference between the cold if majestic structure she remembered, and this fireplace warm with ashes and half-burned logs.
Of course, I could have done without the authentic smell.
But even that was something wafted in through the open windows on the Thames side of the suite. Most of it came from the still waters of the moat, which was, for all intents and purposes, an open-air sewer. The rooms in St. Thomas' Tower themselves were immaculately clean.
Melissa was about to say something when Rita spoke. "I thank you, Lord Strafford. And please convey my appreciation to His Majesty. But when, may I ask, will we be able to meet the king himself?"
Strafford clasped his hands behind his back and leaned forward a bit. "I'm afraid I can't say. The press of affairs really is frightful at the moment—and was, even before the queen took ill. And with that coming on top of it all . . ."
Strafford's expression was a diplomatic marvel. Melissa almost laughed. It conveyed the subtleties of a man who, moved by bonhomie and good will, would impart a confidence to strangers in whom he had taken a sudden trust and liking. False to the core, but—well done. Oh, very well done indeed.
"If I may say so, the king perhaps dotes a bit too much on the queen. Personally, I think the accusations that he is besotted with her are quite false—even slanderous. But there's no doubt the man treasures her deeply. When she's ill . . . it's difficult to tear him away from her side, and then only for the most immediate and urgent matters."
Melissa decided Rita was handling the situation well, and let her continue. However nervous the young woman might be at the role she had been called upon to play, it was a role she would have to learn. No way to do that, after all, other than to just do it.
"I see. Well, let's hope for Her Majesty's quick recovery, then. In the meantime . . ." Rita glanced toward the window overlooking the rest of the Tower of London. The aplomb she'd managed to retain thus far seemed to desert her a bit.
Perhaps sensing the awkwardness, Strafford intervened smoothly. "Your servants, of course, will be quite free to move about the Tower in order to obtain whatever you need." He gave Darryl a quick, skeptical glance, but left it at that. "They will not, however, be able to leave the Tower itself. And I'm afraid I must ask you, Lady Stearns, as well as your husband and—ah—"
He was looking at Melissa. Like Rita herself, Melissa had not quite been able to force herself to wear the plumage of a noblewoman of the times. But, also like Rita, she was clothed in garments which were considerably finer than those worn by the Bruchs or Darryl and Gayle.
"Melissa Mailey," she announced.
Strafford frowned slightly, as if searching his memory. Melissa was struck by how rapidly the frown vanished. "Ah, yes. You are one of the members of—what's the term?—yes, 'the cabinet,' I believe, of your government." He nodded graciously, extending a personal welcome. "And yourself as well, then. Please do remain in your quarters."
Rita seemed unable to think of the right words with which to register a protest. Neither could Melissa, for the simple reason that she was in something of a state of shock.
Not at the restriction to quarters—she'd been expecting that; it was standard practice for important "guests" in the Tower—but at the simple fact that Strafford knew who she was.
God in Heaven, the man can't have arrived in London but recently. And he's already learned this much about us?
As suavely as ever, Strafford glided on. "The restriction is for your own safety, do please understand that." He turned his head, scowling at the river visible beyond the southern windows. "I'm afraid there's been some turbulence in the kingdom recently. No way to know how much of the sedition may have spread into the Tower itself, and who knows what madmen might think to do?"
He straightened a bit, bowed. The gesture—very well done, as everything the man did—conveyed, simultaneously, regrets and cordiality and firm resolve and . . . I've done what I had to do and I'm getting out of here. Adios, amigos—and don't even think of messing with me.
A few murmured words of polite departure, and he was off. Moving more quickly than he had arrived, perhaps, but still with that same, solid, dignified tread.
When he was gone, and clearly beyond hearing, Melissa blew out a breath and stifled a curse.
More or less. "Damnation. Wentworth! And they've already made him an earl!"
Shit-shit-shit. But she kept that vulgarity to herself, from the lifelong habits of a schoolteacher.
Everyone was staring at her. Melissa turned to Gayle. "Can anyone hear us?"
The stocky woman shook her head. "Nope. While Darryl was busy playing macho-man with the guards, I checked everything. So did Friedrich. There's no place for hidey-holes or listening posts, and the guards outside can't possibly hear anything in here short of a shout or a scream. Or a gunshot."
Melissa nodded. "All right, then." She moved over to a nearby armchair and plopped herself into it. Very plush and comfortable, it was. "Gather round, folks. Let me explain the situation—as near as I can figure it out, anyway."
When they were clustered about, Rita and Tom perched together on a small couch and the rest standing, Melissa pointed a finger at the entryway through which Wentworth had departed.
"That man is probably the most dangerous man in England. For us, anyway. Sir Thomas Wentworth, later to become the earl of Strafford. Except in our universe, the king didn't make him an earl until . . ." She groped in her memory. "I can't remembe
r the exact year, but it sure as hell wasn't as early as 1633. He's supposed to be on his way to Ireland right now. Just recently appointed Lord Deputy of the island."
The name finally registered on Darryl McCarthy. Melissa had been wondering when it would. For all that Darryl had the typical Appalachian working-class boy's indifference to history, there was one subject on which he didn't. Darryl's father Michael had been a long-time supporter of NORAID, the Irish Northern Aid Committee, and the whole McCarthy clan were rabid Irish-American nationalists.
"Black Tom Tyrant!" he snarled. "The fucking bastard! He's the one who killed the Men of '98!"
Melissa sighed. And, as usual, he had his history all jumbled up. She could remember a test question, years before, which Darryl had answered: "George III, first president of the United States."
"He's forty years old, Darryl!" she snapped. "So he'd have been five years old when he 'killed the Men of '98'—assuming, of course, that those had been the men of fifteen ninety-eight instead of 1798, which is when the rebellion actually happened. You're almost two centuries off."
Darryl was glowering. Not at the reproof—water off his back, that; always had been—but with the glower of a man who knew what he knew, dammit, and don't confuse him with the facts.
Melissa rubbed her face, reminding herself that she was a diplomat these days, not a schoolteacher. No point in trying to correct Darryl's grasp of history. For whatever reason the young man detested Strafford, the detestation was probably good enough. She wasn't certain yet, but all the signs pointed to an England which was already lost to them. She'd come here looking for peace—even, possibly, an alliance—but with Strafford now an earl, and all the rest she'd seen . . .
"The point's this, people. Wentworth was always—by far—the best adviser and official King Charles ever had. But, in the world we came from, Charles never much cared for the man. Basically, because Wentworth was too smart and too capable and too efficient."
"Didn't trust him, huh?" grunted Tom.
Melissa shook her head. "No, it wasn't that. Wentworth—Strafford—was loyal to the bone. When the time finally came, oh, when was it? In 1641, I think, give or take a year. When the time came when the English revolution demanded Strafford's head, King Charles let them have him—even though he'd sworn to Strafford that he would stand by him no matter what."
Melissa, unlike Darryl, had a sense for the grayness of history. Heroes were rarely simply heroes, nor villains always "villainous." Strafford, like Richelieu—like Wallenstein, even—was a man of many parts. Some of which could only be admired, however much the men themselves might be enemies of what she stood for now, in this time and place.
"Strafford's quite a guy, actually," she said softly. "He sent—would send, years from now, in that other universe—a letter to the king absolving him of his vow. And by all accounts, even those of his enemies, went to his death with great courage and dignity—and not a murmur of complaint about his—"
There was no reason to be diplomatic. "His worthless, treacherous, useless, incompetent, feckless, shithead of a king."
There! I feel better.
Darryl was grinning at her use of the vulgar term. Miz Mailey!
Everyone in the room chuckled. Melissa grinned herself.
"King Charles the First was—is—one of the dumbest kings the English ever saddled themselves with. Well . . . 'dumb' isn't exactly the right word. Frankly, that's giving him too much credit. He was—is—probably smart enough. So he doesn't even have that excuse. But he's got the temperament of a child. He sulks, he pouts, he always wants to have his cake and eat it too. For years he neglected his French Catholic wife, in favor of his infatuation with his favorite courtier, the duke of Buckingham—who was an even bigger jackass than he is. Buckingham was assassinated in 1628. That's happened in this universe too, because it was before the Ring of Fire. Since then, Charles has been doting on his wife. And—never fails!—Henrietta Maria is another royal twit. She's Louis XIII's sister, and she's pretty much cut from the same cloth as her brother. If Louis didn't have Richelieu running France for him—at least he's smart enough to know talent when he sees it—he'd be in a mess."
Tom chuckled heavily. "Are there any kings or queens who can tie their own shoes, in this day and age? Outside of Gustav Adolf, of course."
"Several, as a matter of fact. King Christian of Denmark is quite an impressive monarch. The biggest problem he always had was trying to bite off more than he could chew. But—capable, no doubt about it, even if he is drunk half the time. And if the current rulers of Spain and Austria aren't anything to write home about, their younger relatives are something else. Don Fernando of Spain—they'll already be calling him the 'cardinal-infante,' I imagine—is just about to start his impressive military career. That's the Spanish Habsburgs. On the Austrian side of the family, Emperor Ferdinand's son the King of Hungary is also on the eve of coming into his own."
She twirled her fingers in the air, trying to depict the confused workings of space and time. "In the universe that was—would have been; hell, probably is somewhere else—the cardinal-infante and the king of Hungary would lead the Habsburg armies that defeated the Swedes at Nordlingen in 1634. Of course," she added, comforting herself, "they didn't have to face Gustav Adolf himself, since he died at Lützen."
Tom Simpson, if nothing else, knew his military history. "November of last year, that would have been." His thick chest rumbled a little laugh. "Not in this universe, though. We pretty well put the kibosh on that at the Alte Veste."
Rita shushed him with a hand on his arm. "Keep talking, Melissa."
"The point is this," she repeated. "The reason Charles didn't like Wentworth—and his queen Henrietta Maria disliked him even more—is because the man pestered him. 'Do this, do that.' The fact that he was unquestionably loyal and his advice was generally good didn't matter to Charles. He just found the man tiresome, that's all. Wentworth distracted him—tried to, anyway—from his beloved round of masques and the flattery of that pack of toadying courtiers he and the queen always had around them."
She snorted. "Earl of Strafford! Wentworth didn't come from the nobility, he came from the gentry. Like any capable and ambitious man of his time—this time—he wanted honors and recognition. For years, hard years in which he served the king ably and even brilliantly, he petitioned Charles to make him an earl. And, naturally, Charles—God, what a sorry man he was—is—rewarded him with indifference. He showered earldoms on every twit of a courtier who gained his or Henrietta Maria's favor, but nothing for Wentworth. Nothing except another assignment. Not until almost the very end, when England started to blow up under his feet, did Charles finally make Wentworth the earl of Strafford. Years from now, that should have happened. Right now, Wentworth is supposed to have just arrived in Ireland—where he'd spend years hammering that place into shape for the English."
Darryl scowled but, thankfully, kept quiet.
"Do you see what I'm getting at, people?" She pointed again at the entryway. "In this time and place, Charles has already made him the earl of Strafford. And you can be sure it isn't because Charles is any brighter or less of a jerk. So what does that tell us?"
"They know what's going to happen," said Tom immediately. "Of course, we were already pretty sure of that, once Rebecca found out that Doctor Harvey took some copies of pages from that history book he ran into while he was visiting Grantville. But knowing is one thing, figuring stuff out is another."
He rose, and went to the window overlooking the street between St. Thomas' Tower and the inner wall of the Tower of London. "The shit's hitting the fan, isn't it? That's what you're telling us, Melissa."
"Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that," she said primly—until the laugh which swept the room reminded her that she'd use the vulgar term herself, not minutes past. Then, smiling a bit sheepishly, she continued:
"But, yes, that's the gist of it. Charles obviously knows there's a revolution coming and the 'historical agenda' has him schedul
ed for the chopping block. It's like Samuel Johnson said: 'Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.' Not even Charles is silly enough to let his petty irritation with Wentworth stand in the way of staying alive and staying in power. So he must have called him back from Ireland and given the task of stopping the revolution before it even starts into his very capable hands."
She nodded toward the window overlooking the Thames. "We all noticed that the shipping pattern in the Channel was odd."
Then, nodded toward Bruch. "To be precise, Friedrich told us it was." In years gone by, Friedrich had served as a sailor on one of the Hanseatic League's ships. "And then, how busy the river traffic on the Thames seemed to be. Remember that most so-called 'warships' in this day and age are just armed merchantmen. At a guess, I'd say the English are preparing some kind of naval expedition."
"What for?" asked Rita, her face creased with a frown. "I'd think that if Charles was worried about revolution at home, that he'd be keeping his attention on that. Not playing games with military adventures somewhere else."
"I don't know myself, Rita. But . . ." Melissa tried to figure out a quick and simple way to explain the complexities.
"Look, we've been hearing about the new Spanish expedition against Holland for months now. And about France's reaction to it. Well, the English aren't all that fond of the Dutch themselves at the moment. In our own history, Charles and the court actually favored the Spaniards over the Dutch, despite all the English pride in having defeated the Armada. Of course, our Spain didn't get around to launching its 'Second Armada' until several years from now in our history, so the fact that they're planning one now seems to indicate that they've been doing a little future research of their own.
"But my point is that even though 'official England' favored Spain then, there's no way Charles would have actually helped the Spaniards. However much he disliked Holland, he recognized a certain commonality of interest with them. And he knew Richelieu's policy was always directed at defeating Habsburg power, so siding with Spain against the Dutch would have made him France's enemy, as well. That's why he stayed neutral in this particular little conflict in our own past.