Worlds

by Eric Flint

  "You are no longer in that world," Rubens pointed out. "Please. In this world of mine, you will do me the favor. And—who knows?—perhaps the portrait will somehow help shorten the war."

  He took it off the easel and presented it to her. Hesitantly, Anne took it.

  "You're sure?"

  "Oh, yes. Quite sure."

  After Jefferson left, Rubens turned to his wife. "A pity she is such a skinny thing," he murmured. "Of course, she wouldn't let me portray her breasts properly anyway. Odd, the way their American modesty works."

  Fourment simply smiled. It was a rather self-satisfied smile. She was even younger than Jefferson, had a bosom that no-one would describe as "skinny," and there was nothing at all odd about the way her modesty worked. In her world, she was a proper wife and always properly attired as such. In her husband's world, she was whatever he needed her to be.

  "When are you going to do The Three Graces?" she asked. "Or The Judgment of Paris?"

  He shrugged. "Perhaps never."

  Fourment pouted. "I thought I looked good in those paintings!"

  Rubens didn't know whether to laugh or scowl. In another universe, those paintings would have been done in the year 1638. Bad enough for an artist to be confronted with illustrations of his future work. Worse still, when the wife who served as the model for them began wheedling him about it!

  In the end, he laughed.

  Another man was scowling.

  "I still don't like the idea," Jeff Higgins grumbled, as he and Anne Jefferson brought up the rear of the Dutch delegation returning from the parlay to Amsterdam. "And Gretchen'll be having a pure fit."

  "She'll get over it," Anne said firmly. "Look, I had orders. So there's an end to it."

  She gave Jeff a none-too-admiring sidelong glance. "How is it, three years after the Ring of Fire, that you still can't ride a horse?"

  Jeff gave the horse he was mounted on a look that was even less admiring. "I don't like horses, dammit. I'm a country boy. The only breed of horse I recognize is Harley-Davidson."

  "You own a Yamaha."

  "Fine. I'm a traitor too."

  "Give it a rest, Jeff!" Now Anne was scowling. "I had orders."

  "Mike Stearns is too damn clever for his good," Jeff muttered.

  "So run against him, the next election."

  Jeff ignored the suggestion. His head was now turned to his left, where the Spanish batteries were located. "Well, at least it looks like they've stopped firing. I guess we'll get back into the city after all."

  "Like we have every other time. You're paranoid. And what are you complaining about, anyway? I'm the one who has to ride a horse carrying a great big portrait. The only thing that's saved me so far is that he didn't have it framed."

  Jeff looked at the portrait Anne was balancing precariously on her hip. He couldn't see the actual image, because it was wrapped in cloth.

  "I can't believe it. A Rubens. When are you going to show it to us?"

  Jefferson looked very uncomfortable. "Maybe never. I haven't decided yet."

  "Like that, huh?" Jeff's scowl finally vanished, replaced by a grin. "Gretchen won't let you keep it under wraps, you know that. She'll insist on that much, at least."

  When Rubens was ushered into the small salon which the Cardinal-Infante used for private interviews, Don Fernando rose to greet him. The courtesy was unusual, to say the least. The Cardinal-Infante was the younger brother of the King of Spain, in addition to being the prince in all but name who now ruled the Spanish Netherlands. People rose for him, not the other way around.

  But he was a courteous young man, by temperament—and, even for him, Rubens was . . . Rubens.

  "What is it, Pieter?" asked Don Fernando.

  "Thank you for responding to my request so quickly, Your Highness." Rubens reached into his cloak and drew forth several folded pieces of paper. "After Miss Jefferson departed my studio and returned to Amsterdam, we discovered that she had left this behind. It was lying on the side table near the entrance."

  The Cardinal-Infante frowned. "You wish me to have it returned to her? Forgive me, Pieter, but I'm very busy and this hardly seems important enough—"

  "Your Highness—please. I would not pester you over a simple matter of formalities. Besides, I'm quite certain she left it behind deliberately." He gestured toward a desk in the corner. "May I show you?"

  The Spanish prince nodded. Rubens strode over to the desk and flattened the papers onto it, spreading out the sheets as he did so.

  "She is a nurse, you know—a term which, for the Americans, refers to someone very skilled in medical matters. But I'm quite sure she didn't draw these diagrams. That was done by a superb draftsman. Not to mention that the text is in Latin, a language I know she is unfamiliar with."

  The Cardinal-Infante had come to his side, and was now bent over examining the papers. As was to be expected of a royal scion of Spain, Don Fernando's own Latin was quite good.

  "God in Heaven," he whispered, after his eyes finished scanning the first page.

  "Indeed," murmured Rubens. "It contains everything, Your Highness. The ingredients, the formulas, the steps by which to make it—even these marvelous diagrams showing the apparatus required."

  The Cardinal-Infante's eyes went back to the lettering which served as a title for the papers. How to Make Chloramphenicol.

  "But can we trust it?" he wondered.

  Rubens tugged at his reddish beard. "Oh, I don't doubt it, Your Highness. I realize now that was why she agreed to pose for me, even though it obviously made her uncomfortable. That strange American modesty, you know. Scandalous clothing combined with peculiar fetishes regarding nudity."

  The Spanish prince cocked his head. With his narrow face, the gesture was somehow birdlike. "I am not following you."

  Rubens shrugged. "Over the days of a sitting, an artist gets to know his model rather well. Well enough, at least, to be able to tell the difference between a healer and a poisoner." He pointed to the papers on the desk. "You can trust this, Your Highness. And, in any event, what do you have to lose?"

  "Nothing," grunted Don Fernando. "I'm losing a dozen men a day to disease now. Mostly typhus. We can test it on a few of them first. If we can make the stuff at all, that is."

  "That's no problem, I assure you." Rubens hesitated a moment. "We're in the Low Countries, you know. Not—ah—"

  "Benighted Spain?" The Cardinal-Infante laughed. "True enough. Outside of Grantville itself—maybe Magdeburg too, now—there is probably no place in Europe better supplied with craftsmen and artisans and workshops."

  The two men fell silent, looking down at the papers.

  "Why?" the Cardinal-Infante finally asked. "From what you're saying, she could hardly have done this on her own."

  The continent's greatest artist pondered the matter for a moment. Then, shrugged. "Perhaps we should just tell ourselves they also have peculiar notions of war. And leave it at that."

  "That won't be good enough, I'm afraid." Don Fernando sighed. "I have no choice but to use it. But . . . why do I have the feeling I'm looking at a Trojan Horse here?"

  Rubens' eyes widened. "It's just medicine, Your Highness."

  The Spanish prince shook his head. "Horses come in many shapes."

  * * *

  Gretchen was, indeed, still in a steaming fury. "Why don't we hand them ammunition as well?" she demanded.

  Anne was tired of the argument. "Take it up with Mike, dammit! I was just doing what he told me to do, if I ever got the chance."

  Gretchen stalked over to the window of the house in Amsterdam where the American delegation was headquartered. Along the way, she took the time to glare at the wife of the man in question.

  Rebecca just smiled. Diplomatic, as always. "It's not just the soldiers, you know."

  Diplomacy was wasted on Gretchen. "You propose to tell me that? I am the one who was once a camp follower, not you!"

  Gretchen was at the window now, and slapped her hand against the pane. Not,
fortunately, quite hard enough to break it. "Yes, I know that three women and children die from disease in a siege, for every soldier who does. So what? It's the soldiers who do the fighting."

  Rebecca said nothing. Eventually, Gretchen turned away from the window. To the relief of everyone else in the room, her foul humor seemed to be fading. If nothing else, Gretchen could always be relied upon to accept facts as given.

  "Enough," she stated. "What's done is done. And now, Anne, show us this famous portrait."

  Anne fidgeted. Not for long.

  "Do it!" Gretchen bellowed. "I will have that much satisfaction!"

  After the portrait was unveiled and everyone stopped laughing, Gretchen shook her head.

  "You coward," she pronounced. "If we're to play at this posing game, let us do it properly. I will show you."

  The next morning, Rubens was summoned by the Cardinal-Infante to that area of the siegeworks where the Spanish prince was positioned every day.

  Once he arrived atop the platform, the prince handed him an eyeglass and pointed toward Amsterdam.

  "This, you will want to see."

  After peering through the eyeglass for a moment, Rubens burst out laughing. "That must be the famous Richter."

  He lowered the eyeglass. "No odd modesty there. What a brazen woman! And I see she's read the same books I have. One of them, at least."

  Don Fernando cocked his head. "Meaning?"

  Rubens pointed toward the distant figure of Gretchen Richter, posed atop the ramparts of the besieged city. "That's a painting that will be done—would have been done—two hundred years from now. By a French artist named Eugène Delacroix. It's called Liberty Leading the People. And now, Your Highness, with your permission, I must gather my materials. The opportunity is impossible to resist. What magnificent breasts!"

  The Cardinal-Infante's eyes widened. "You will not give it the same title!" The words were half a command, half a protest. "Damnation, I don't care if she's naked from the waist up and waving a flag. She's still a rebel against my lawful authority!"

  "Oh, certainly not, Your Highness. I'll think of something suitably archaic."

  A moment later, Rubens was scampering off the platform, moving in quite a spry manner for a man in his mid-fifties.

  The prince sighed, and gave in to the inevitable. "Tell the batteries not to fire on that portion of the city's defenses, until I say otherwise," he told one of his officers. He smiled ruefully. "Hell hath no fury like an artist thwarted."

  After the officer left, Don Fernando went back to studying the distant tableau through the eyeglass. A magnificent pair of breasts, indeed.

  By the time Rubens returned, with his needed paraphernalia, the prince of Spain had made his decision.

  "You will call it The Trojan Horsewoman," he proclaimed. "That seems a suitable title, for a portrait depicting what has become the most peculiar siege in history."

  Steps in the Dance

  "Stop whining, Harry," said Anne Jefferson. "If I can do it, you can do it."

  "No way am I posing half-nekkid," growled her male companion. He gripped the rifle with both hands, as if ready to deal with any threatening horde.

  Any horde.

  Mongols.

  Huns.

  Famous artists.

  "Ha! The truth about Macho Man, exposed to the world at last! A coward. A craven." Anne swiveled her head to give him her best sneer, even if it was mostly wasted in the twilight. The lamps which were starting to be lit in front of the taverns on the street in Amsterdam didn't yet add much to the illumination.

  "I'm not a coward," Harry Lefferts insisted stubbornly. "And I'm not cravin' anything at the moment except relief from pushy women."

  He tried a lusty grin, directed at Anne. Alas, it was a pale version of her sneer.

  "Not relief from all women, o' course. Just pushy ones. If you were to change your ways . . ."

  "I'd call that a nice try, except it's so feeble." She tried to stride forward, but the combination of the absurd sorta-wedding dress she was wearing, the cobblestoned street, and her seventeenth century Dutch version of high heels caused her to stumble.

  Fortunately, Adam Olearius was there to catch her arm and keep her standing, if not exactly steady. He'd been walking alongside her ever since they'd left the USE embassy, as he listened to the repartee between Anne and Harry.

  Smiling, as he did so. By now, several weeks after Harry's arrival in Amsterdam, Adam had long since recognized that Harry was not a rival, despite the young American's seemingly irrepressible flirting. In fact, he'd rather come to like the man, even if he was a little scary at times.

  Scary this time, too, in a way. Adam had been keeping an eye out for the possibility that Anne might stumble, which Harry had not. Adam had a very personal interest in the young woman, and was more familiar than either of his companions with the hazards of negotiating the streets of the era. The cobble-stones as such hadn't caused Anne to stumble. Rather, her shoe had skidded in the material covering one of the stones. There were unfortunate consequences to using horses for transport in cities.

  Partly, too, because Adam Olearius was a more solicitous man by nature than Harry Lefferts was or ever would be. And finally—being honest—because he was not pre-occupied with the prospect of shortly becoming the model for one of the half-dozen most famous artists of the time. Of all times, actually, judging from the American history books Adam had read.

  So, he'd been half-expecting the stumble, and was there almost instantly. But Harry was only a split-second behind him. Somehow, he managed to shift his grip on the rifle and his footing in order to seize Anne's other elbow, with such speed and grace that Adam was not really able to follow the motions.

  In the three short years since the Ring of Fire, Harry Lefferts had become a rather notorious figure in certain European circles. For several reasons, one of which was his skill as a duelist. Seeing the way he moved, Adam had no trouble understanding the reason.

  Yes, frightening, in its way, especially given the man's incredibly sanguine temperament. Fortunately for the world, Harry was also—as a rule—quite a good-natured fellow. He was not actually given to picking fights, Adam had concluded, after observing him for several weeks. He was simply very, very, very good at ending them—and instantly ready to do so if someone else was foolish enough to begin the affair.

  That notoriety, of course, did not fit well with Harry's official role as a combination "secret" agent and what the Americans called a "commando." Anne Jefferson had teased him about it.

  The other two women in the USE embassy in Amsterdam had not. Rebecca Abrabanel had subjected him to a long, solemn lecture on the subject. Gretchen Richter had subjected him to a short and blistering excoriation.

  Blistering, indeed. Adam happened to have been there himself, to hear it. The expression one of the up-timers had used afterward struck him as most appropriate. She really peeled the paint off the walls, didn't she?

  Had she been a man, her tirade might have led to a challenge.

  Although . . . perhaps not. Adam was pretty sure that Gretchen Richter was one of the few people in the world who intimidated Harry Lefferts. If not as proficient as he was with weapons, she was every bit as ready to employ them—and with attitudes as sanguine as his, and then some.

  There was more to it, though. Adam knew, at least in its general outlines, how Harry had first met the woman, very shortly after the Ring of Fire.

  "Shithouse Gretchen," was the way Harry sometimes referred to her, when she'd done something to get on his nerves. But he never said it in front of her—and there was always more than a trace of grudging respect even when he did. In the end, for all his often-debonair manners and the way he was idolized by a number of young European gentry and noblemen, Harry Lefferts was a hillbilly and a former coal miner. Getting one's hand dirty, and being willing to do so, was something he deeply respected.

  Oddly enough, Harry's thoughts seemed to have been running parallel to Adam's. After An
ne's footing was steady again, Harry released her elbow and went back to his grumbling.

  "And why me, anyway? Shithouse Gretchen's built like a damn brick shithouse. And she's willing to pose."

  "Don't be vulgar, Harry," scolded Anne.

  "Who's being vulgar? The truth is what it is. Those tits of hers would intimidate a Playboy bunny—and it's not as if she's kept them under wraps. Not hardly. Not after she posed for Rembrandt."

  He barked a laugh that was half-sarcasm, and half genuine humor. "Ha! You watch, Anne! Give it a century or two and that damn painting will be hanging in the Louvre. Or the—what's it called?—that famous museum in Spain. The Pardo, I think. Lines of tourists a mile long all shuffling past to stare at the world's most famous tits."