by Eric Flint
To His Grace Ferdinand de' Medici, Second of that Name, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Magnus Dux Etruriae:
As you requested, I thoroughly investigated the claims of the Inghirami family to have discovered Etruscan antiquities of great significance in the vicinity of their villa of Scornello. I have heard the testimony of Curzio and Lucrezia Inghirami, the discoverers of the first artifact, and of the manservant who accompanied them. I have also questioned the tenant farmers who carried out the further excavations, under the direction of young Curzio, of the ruined citadel overlooking the Cecina. And I have also considered the words of Father Vadorini and of the noble Raffaello Maffei.
Naturally, we have spoken to scholars. They have not reached any consensus as to the authenticity of the artifacts. However, it does not appear that there is anything in the circumstances of these discoveries that would lead one to suspect that the chrysali are not of great age. The chrysali were found within ancient pottery, or in cracks in old masonry, or even entangled within great tree roots. We have no reason to suspect that someone has attempted to deceive your Grace in terms of their provenance.
Moreover, even the critics have conceded that, according to the ancient Greek and Latin writers, the Etruscans wrote on books of linen. If the artifacts are authentic, then they are the first such Liber Lintei to be found, making this an archaeological breakthrough. It is possible that the dissenting professors are merely expressing their indignation that such a discovery has been made by someone outside the usual academic circles.
Curzio's father Inghiramo is your Salt Inspector for Volterra, and his uncle Giulio is your Postmaster General. Both have urged that this young man be appointed "Defender of Etruscan Antiquities," with certain privileges pertaining to excavation of known and suspected Etruscan sites. Such an appointment would honor Curzio's achievements and also gratify two of your most steadfast supporters.
Sincerely, your kinsman, friend and servant,
Tommaso de' Medici
Provveditore de Volterra
* * *
Curzio and Lucrezia were by their fishing spot. They were temporarily alone, having sent the servant back to the villa to fetch something. "They fell for it!" shouted Curzio and Lucrezia simultaneously, and hugged each other in delight. Lucrezia's long, dark, Etruscan hair bobbed up and down.
For Lucrezia, the whole venture was just a lark. Like most twelve year olds, she was convinced that what adults knew could be written on the head of a pin. She had happily donated her hair to the cause, and had especially enjoyed her little stage role on the day of the "discovery."
Curzio's motivations were of a more somber nature. Curzio had attempted, several years before, to persuade his father to let him study history and classics at the University of Florence, or its counterpart in Pisa. Since his formal education had been limited to weekly lessons with Father Vadorini, the faculty had been . . . discouraging.
In order to prove himself as a scholar, Curzio had spent many hours at the archives of Volterra. He had painstakingly written up his findings on genealogy and local history, in both Latin and Tuscan vernacular, and had sent them to professors at the two great Tuscan universities. He had fondly hoped that his essay would impress the faculty members sufficiently so that they would insist that his father allow him to become one of their number. The only one who bothered to answer had crushingly remarked that he did not have time to tutor country bumpkins in the rudiments of historical scholarship. Curzio's father urged him to forget all the nonsense about studying history and become a lawyer. Curzio was not enthusiastic about this idea.
Then Curzio had gone to Grantville. The grand duke encouraged his trusted noblemen to visit, and study, that eldritch place, and, since the plague had not fully loosened its grip on Tuscany, his father had thought it was a good idea for his heir to leave the duchy for a while.
In the up-timers' libraries, Curzio had researched his pet interest, the ancient history of Tuscany. The saga of the glorious days when the Tuscans were the Etruscans, and Rome was just a village of primitives.
Nor was Curzio the only Tuscan fascinated with the past. The Medici collected Etruscan artifacts, such as the "Etruscan Chimera," found at Arezzo in 1554, and restored by Benvenuto Cellini. They also encouraged their court to speak in "Tuscan vernacular," supposed to be descended from ancient Etruscan, rather than in Latin.
After a few months in Grantville, Curzio had a stroke of luck. One of the Americans owned the "Lost Civilizations" series of "Time-Life Books." And these included one entitled, Etruscans: Italy's Lovers of Life. While the owner wouldn't sell it, there were alternatives. Thanks to one of the English-Latin translation services which had sprung up in Grantville, Curzio had been able to obtain a complete Latin translation.
Curzio had figured that over the four centuries which separated the up-timers and the down-timers, surely the former had made some interesting finds. And they had. Unfortunately, the most important ones were located on the property of other noble families. So they would get the lion's share of the glory.
Then Curzio had his brainstorm. He would use his secretly acquired up-time knowledge to plant Etruscan artifacts in his own neighborhood. The professors would reluctantly acknowledge his achievement, and the prestige he would acquire by "discovering" the antiquities could be parlayed into a grant of general authority over archaeological sites from the grand duke. Then he would go to the other sites and uncover them.
He would then lord it over the professors who had mocked him in the past. Yes, it was a perfect plan. And the up-time books had told him what he needed to know in order to fake an Etruscan message. Such as the fact that their books were written on folded, tightly woven linen with black ink.
Summer, 1634
Lieutenant Lewis Philip Bartolli was nervous. He had never expected that his first mission outside of Grantville would be a solo one. But here he was in Florence, the capital of Tuscany. His nearest superior, Ambassador Sharon Nichols, was a good hundred miles away, in Venice.
It was amusing, actually. Lewis' parents had planned a trip to Tuscany, but then the Ring of Fire had changed everything. But thanks to that cataclysm, and the USE Army, Lewis was now in Florence nearly four hundred years ahead of schedule.
The French, the Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs, and the USE's other foes definitely had the bigger battalions. If the USE was to win the war, it had to maintain its technological edge. In that war, the chemical industry had a vital role to play.
Trouble was, Grantville was just a small West Virginia hill town. Its technical people didn't know all the details of the important industrial chemical processes. That meant that it would have to do chemical research. And to do that research, it needed apparatus which was likewise in short supply.
If you wanted laboratory glassware, you wanted borosilicate glass. It was resistant to acids, high temperatures, and thermal shock. To make it, you needed boric acid, or one of the borate salts, such as borax.
Borax was available in seventeenth century Europe. It wasn't used to make glass, but it was used by goldsmiths as a flux, and by assayers as a reagent. It was imported, under the name "tincal," from Tibet. The Venetians held a monopoly on it and charged dearly for it, around three hundred thousand New U.S. dollars to the ton.
The Grantville encylopedias had revealed that, in 1777, boric acid had been discovered in the Maremma of Tuscany. During the nineteenth century, until large deposits had been found in the American West, Tuscany had been the world's chief supplier of boron compounds. An up-time picture book of Tuscany, owned by one of Grantville's many Italian-Americans, had directed the USE's attention to the town of Larderello, founded by Francesco de Larderel in 1827 to exploit the local boric acid.
Lewis' scientific training and linguistic skills had made him the ideal candidate for his current assignment. After his accelerated graduation from high school, he had enlisted in the Army, and was assigned to the Military Research Group. Joining the military didn't keep him out of school for long; they
sent him right back to the high school. There, he served as a teaching assistant, and received advanced training in chemistry.
There were only so many young men in Grantville who had chemical laboratory experience . . . and Lewis had grown up speaking Italian. Picked up Latin pretty quickly, too. So he was the logical choice, despite his age.
The plan, as devised in Grantville, was that Lewis would test Tuscan waters for boric acid. He would start in Larderello, and then move to the other sites mentioned in the up-time books. Once he identified the most promising locations, the Cavriani office in Florence would acquire the mineral rights and hire the workers and foreman. Lewis would then, somehow, figure out how to get the production process up-and-running. While a method of recovering boric acid had been described in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, Lewis was sure that he would have to improvise.
* * *
Lewis was welcomed to the Tuscan city of Florence by Niccolo and Lorenzo Cavriani. Niccolo Cavriani was the capo of the Cavriani Brothers branch office in Florence, and Lorenzo was his son. The Cavrianis were the USE's informal commercial agents in Italy.
After taking precautions to make sure that there were no eavesdroppers, Niccolo began briefing Lewis on the political situation. "Grand Duke Ferdinand II de Medici is only twenty-four years old, and has been ruling Tuscany for only the last seven years. Before then, his mother and grandmother were co-regents.
"Ferdinand's mother was Maria Magdalena, who died in 1631. That is probably just as well; the Austrians have enough influence in the Tuscan court as it is."
"What was her connection to the Habsburgs?"
"She was the Holy Roman Emperor's sister. After Breitenfeld, she persuaded her son to send a Tuscan contingent to join the imperial army. He promised six thousand soldiers, under the command of two of his brothers. He thought better of it, but allowed Francesco and Mattias to serve as volunteer officers. They are somewhere in Germany now."
"So Tuscany is an Austrian ally?"
"Nominally, at least. More in the hope that the imperials will support their designs on Elba, Urbino, and Piombino, than out of any deep-seated enthusiasm for the imperial cause."
"Does that mean that my venture is doomed from the start?"
Niccolo looked shocked. "Oh, no! Trading with the enemy is a time-honored custom in Europe. Indeed, the war in the Netherlands would not exist without it. When the Spanish merchants enter Dutch ports, they pay special charges, which go to the Dutch admiralties to pay for their warships. And then the Dutch turn around and sell grain, naval stores and even weapons to the Spanish, allowing the war to continue."
Lorenzo spoke up. "And the USE does have the advantage that it is not, strictly speaking, a Protestant state. You even have a Cardinal-Protector!"
"And the Medici are very much interested in trade. Nonetheless," his father continued, "it is premature for the grand duke to accept an embassy from the USE. This isn't Venice! In order to maintain appearances, when you deal with the grand duke, you will do so as the representative of an American company."
"Universal Imports and Exports," Lewis confirmed.
"We, in turn, will hint to the ministers that this company has a quasi-official character, like the Dutch East India Company. That way, you are much more likely to be granted a private audience with Ferdinand. Yet he may plausibly deny that he is treating officially with the USE."
"Why do I need to see Ferdinand at all? Why can't we just go to the mining region and talk to the local landowners?" asked Lewis.
"The state–meaning Grand Duke Ferdinand—controls all of the rights to extract minerals," said Lorenzo. "Usually it rents them out, but we might be able to negotiate a different arrangement since this venture is so speculative. Not like extracting iron, or copper, or mercury from one of the well-established sources in the Colline Metallifere.
"Now, where exactly is this Larderello you spoke of?"
Lewis took a map case out of his backpack. He opened it up and unrolled the map. Lorenzo helpfully pulled a few books off the shelves of the Cavriani study and strategically placed them at the corners, so the map would remain flat.
"Here!" said Lewis. He pointed to an area south of the town of Volterra.
"Hmm," said Niccolo. That is in what we call the Valle del Diavolo."
"And why is it called the Devil's Valley?"
"It is a most uncanny place," Niccolo said. "White vapors rise out of holes in the ground, the soffioni. Occasionally, steam gushes out, in great geysers." He sipped some wine. "Even when the soffioni are silent, the water bubbles in the lagone, the hot springs." To Lewis, the terrain sounded much like that of Yellowstone National Park. Minus the grizzlies.
Niccolo leaned back in his chair. "It is thought that one of the circles of Dante's Inferno is based on the Valle del Diavolo. It is a most uninviting place. Still, you are better off there than in the lowlands, the true Maremma." Lewis understood. The up-time encyclopedias had made it clear that on the coast and in the river valleys, malaria was rampant.
"So, how do we proceed?" Lewis asked.
"I will present you to the grand duke," Niccolo explained. "Once we obtain his blessing on the project, my son Lorenzo will escort you, first to Volterra, and then on to the Devil's Valley. He will do whatever on-the-spot 'facilitating' is needful."
"If we are successful, Larderello will come into being three hundred years ahead of schedule." Niccolo smiled. "It will have another name, of course. Bartollello? Ferdinello?"
* * *
Lewis was somewhat surprised by how quickly they received an invitation to the palazzo. Niccolo Cavriani told him that Grand Duke Ferdinand was known to be very curious about Grantville, for both political and intellectual reasons. Ferdinand had encouraged his more trusted citizens to visit Grantville as tourists and bring back reports. Spies on the cheap, you might say. However, he was probably tired of hearing secondhand accounts, and anxious to meet one of the mysterious up-timers in person.
The machinations of Niccolo Cavriani had no doubt helped, too. The Cavrianis liked to call themselves "facilitators." Lewis preferred the earthier term: "fixers."
The grand duke asked about Lewis' studies. Ferdinand was something of a scientist himself, with a well-equipped laboratory, and therefore was very interested in the science of Grantville.
Somehow, the conversation turned to Sherlock Holmes, Lewis' favorite literary character. Ferdinand asked many questions about Sherlock Holmes' feats of deduction, and seemed quite impressed by them.
Lewis knew certain parts of the Holmes canon by heart. "So Inspector Gregory asked Holmes, 'Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?' And Holmes replied, 'To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.'
"Gregory had no idea what Holmes was driving at. He said, 'The dog did nothing in the night-time.'"
"Can you guess what Holmes said next?" Lewis asked.
Ferdinand shook his head.
"'That was the curious incident,'" Lewis quoted triumphantly.
Ferdinand acknowledged Holmes' insight. "Ah. The dog knew the criminal."
Cavriani then brought up the purpose of their visit to Tuscany. He explained that according to their up-time books, Tuscany had become a great producer of boric acid, and that it could be used to make tincal available to Europe at a much lower price than had been the case, breaking the Venetian monopoly. Historically, this had been much to the financial advantage of Tuscany.
This was of great interest to Ferdinand. Tuscany was in economic distress. Florence had gone through a depression in the 1620's. Then the plague had hit in 1630, and only departed, carrying the souls of one-tenth the population with it, in 1633.
The Cavrianis proposed to set up a new company, jointly owned by Universal and by the Medicis. Universal would supply the expertise and starting capital, Ferdinand, the mineral rights. The USE would be guaranteed the right to buy a certain portion of the output at cost plus a fixed percentage, and the company could sell the rest at what
ever price the market would bear.
The key point was that the new company had to have exclusive boron compound collection rights for the entire duchy. Otherwise, once Lewis started operations in Larderello, competitors would spring up everywhere there was a suitable fumarole or hot spring.
Ferdinand told them that he was favorably impressed by their proposal, but would need to consult with his advisors. In the meantime, he would have one of his aides give Lewis the grand tour.
* * *
"I shall draw a fiery finger across the lands of the Turingii; a circle of fire I shall draw there. Let all beware the power of the Great Aesar."
–translated by Curzio Inghirami from the Latin inscription in Etruscan artifact number four.
* * *
Lewis and the Cavrianis were invited back to Ferdinand's palazzo for further discussions. Ferdinand agreed to give them a permit to travel wherever they wished in the Devil's Valley, and take samples for analysis. The financial arrangements would be negotiated once Lewis had a better idea of where the boric acid was located.