by Eric Flint
Ed Piazza wished that he dared reach up and massage his temples. Roberta Sutter's family tree—to be more precise, Mrs. Sutter's extended disquisition on the topic of her family tree—was giving him a headache. Not only the abstract "problems for the consular service" headache that would result from her intention to go kiting off into Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar's little personal sandbox, but a very real one, here and now, in the front of his brain. This was worse than Count Ludwig Guenther's librarian in full spate on the topic of relationships among the ruling families of the various states and substates of the USE.
"Of course, it's not entirely a male-line pedigree. It was male-line up to my sister Marilyn, but then she married Harry Tisdel, so Matt's a Tisdel. Of course, she'd divorced that bum even before the Ring of Fire and Matt didn't see much of his father. Maybe he'd be willing to change his name to Hooper and carry on the family name." Roberta smiled brightly. "I'll write him in Magdeburg and ask. He's up there training to be a Marine since he graduated from high school this spring. There shouldn't be any legal problems."
Ed pulled his shoulder blades together as inconspicuously as possible, trying to relieve the tension in his neck. Roberta Sutter had been in his office for an hour. Unfortunately, he hadn't primed his secretary to interrupt with an urgent appointment. Maybe the kid liked being a Tisdel. Who knew?
A knock on the door. A wonderful, blessed, knock on the door. It opened. Jamie Lee Swisher's head poked through. "Mr. Piazza, guess what? Mr. Ferrara is here. I just knew that you'd want to see him."
"Yes. Thank you, Jamie. Get him a cup of coffee, will you? I'll finish up here." He prepared for some difficulty in disposing of his current visitor, but Roberta Sutter was already picking up her purse.
Unfortunately, as she went out the door, her parting words were, "I just knew that you would understand how important the project is. I'm meeting Melvin and Henry Dreeson for lunch at Cora's. I'll tell them that you don't have any objections at all."
He did. He could think of a dozen perfectly reasonable objections. He just hadn't been able to get in a word edgewise, which was—unusual for him.
If she had stayed a little longer, he would have told her no. Now, unless he actually chased her down the corridor, she would be out in public announcing that he had given permission to go to Schwarzach before he could do anything about it. That kind of announcement was hard to retract without ending up with egg on your face.
He looked at Mrs. Sutter's departing rear and reminded himself to be careful, because sometimes you get what you wish for. In this case, an interruption. One more premature than timely.
Anyway, why did Mrs. Sutter think that Matt Tisdel needed to carry on the Hooper surname line if the ancestor was alive right now? Presumably carrying the line on himself. Why couldn't anything ever be simple?
At least, Greg was carrying two cups of coffee.
Ed smiled. "Greg," he asked, "do you happen to be interested in genealogy?"
Another hour later, well into the permutations of the Ferrara family tree, which involved the Trapanese family and the second marriage of Greg's mother to one of the Zeppi boys, Ed made a note to himself in regard to an addition to his personal list of "Questions a Sensible Person Never Asks."
Schwarzach on the Rhine, August 1634
Abbot Georgius of the Abbey of Saints Peter and Paul at Schwarzach on the Rhine looked at the papers on his pedestal desk. Then he reached out and felt them again. Maybe for the tenth time since the up-time woman arrived. Perhaps for the twentieth time. Possibly for the hundredth time. So slick, so smooth. He had received descriptions of up-time paper from the librarians of the great Stift at Fulda, but this was the first time he had seen it for himself. Much less touched it.
Schwarzach was a Benedictine abbey, an imperial abbey, but not an important one like Fulda. One small town and a few villages, occupying seven square miles. Seven square miles—not seven miles square. Smaller now than it had been in the middle ages—the tribulations of the past couple of centuries had forced the abbey to sell some of its holdings to the margraves of Baden. A few thousand subjects. A ferry across the Rhine at Greffern—the tolls from that, far more than the modest taxes and dues paid in by the village farmers, kept the abbey going in a moderate sort of way. A very moderate sort of way, as evidenced by the fact that there was not a single nobleman among the monks and had not been for generations. Schwarzach did not have sinecures that would support the younger son of an influential family in the style to which he wished to remain accustomed. The monks of Schwarzach did not have to make any significant effort to fulfill their vows of poverty. They doubled as the parish priests for the villages. Sometimes, in difficult circumstances when no fellow villager would serve, they also doubled as godfathers for the children of the abbey's parishioners.
Or for children who did not belong to the abbey. His mind wandered back, briefly, to the annus terribilis of 1622, when the imperial troops had been quartered on the abbey. Sometimes he wondered what had happened to those soldiers and the women to whom the abbey's monks had married them that winter. What was the fate of the children who had been born in a dozen different camps and finally baptized here, on the banks of the Rhine, sometimes three or four years later?
He picked up a piece of the wondrous, slick, smooth, paper.
"Photocopies" the up-time woman called them. "Photocopies" that she had made by a machine from something called "microfilm."
He turned to the other pedestal desk, the one he had borrowed from Father Gallus' cell. On it lay the church registers for Schwarzach and its villages, meticulously maintained—or as meticulously as possible, given the exigencies of the war—in accord with the prescriptions of the Council of Trent. He picked up one of the pieces of paper, turned a few pages of the register, and compared.
It was true. Exactly and precisely true, just as Father Gallus had said. This woman had brought, from the far future, copies of pages from their own church registers. Black, a bright white, and gray, rather than the gentle cream color of the paper in the church books. On the copy from the future, one could see little tears at the edge of some of the pages, broken corners, an occasional stain that didn't yet exist on the originals. But the abbey's own registers, without a doubt.
Father Gallus' own handwriting, plain and straightforward, just like Father Gallus himself. Gallus was a solid man. Plain spoken. Abbot Georgius' right hand in these difficult times.
Here was a page with Father Bonifacius' delicate script. It always surprised correspondents when they first met Bonifacius in person. He was a big man—bigger even than Gallus—who looked like he would destroy anything in his path, but somehow he walked without making a sound. Of all the monks, he was most successful at keeping the Great Silence. Abbot Georgius always chose him if there was detail work to be done.
The woman, Mrs. Sutter, had expected Father Christophorus to be much older. The style of his handwriting, she said, belonged to the middle of the previous century. But Christophorus, barely thirty, was the youngest of them all. Excited by new things, his writing was where he stepped back, at least in form. Not to mention, of course, that his village schoolmaster had been nearly eighty years old. Perhaps Christophorus simply shaped his letters the way he had learned them as a child.
Father Paulus wrote this page. His script, as usual, was clear, but a little cramped. Paulus was a fussy little man, insistent on getting the details right, sometimes at the expense of the big picture. But he was also the man who, wondering about the Latin baptismal record that listed a child's mother as "Regina" when no one in the village called her that, had gone back, year by year, realized that the priest from Lorraine who thought that he was hearing "Königin" and translated it into the Latin "Regina" was misunderstanding "Kunigunde," and had given the young mother her proper name back in the registers. Abbot Georgius smiled briefly at the thought of a village woman named "Queenie."
Father Augustinus, large and florid, but without flourishes. An excitable fellow. Sometimes loud
and with just the touch of a fanatic about him. Very sure of his beliefs, but kind for all of that. He had spearheaded that 1622 campaign to regularize the military marriages and legitimate the children, completely ignoring demands that he first seek permission from the regimental commanders.
Father Anselmus. His handwriting was difficult, but consistent. The up-time woman had remarked that she had found it hard to decipher originally, but once she had become used to it, had no further problems. Anselmus was also difficult, in a way. He struggles with his faith, the abbot thought. Anselmus wants to believe as a little child, but he can't help questioning.
Father Beda's small, angular, uncomplicated script—as close to a printed page as handwriting would ever come. A cold man, Abbot Georgius thought, though he tries to be a good one.
Father Geroldus. He always had Father Beda enter clean copies of his scribbled notes, kept on random scraps as he went from village to village, into the permanent register. Geroldus was a natural persuader and organizer. The scrawl of his signature indicated that everyone else should be grateful that he had persuaded Father Beda to write out his documents.
Father Gabriel. Abbot George smiled again at the up-time woman's description. What had she said? "Presuming that he believes in purgatory, I hope he spends a couple of centuries there, writing on the blackboard, getting his cursive improved under a stern taskmaster who will also break him of that obnoxious habit of throwing in non-standard abbreviations at random." It was true. Father Gabriel was creative and sometimes half out of control. His thoughts came too fast for him to keep track of. The other up-time woman, Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar's "nurse," called Gabriel, "an absent minded professor type."
Father Antonius, whose writing was even worse than Gabriel's. The up-time woman had said, "I couldn't even decipher his surname. If anyone ever wants to keep a secret, just have this guy write it down; flocks of cryptographers will perish in despair." Georgius had thought briefly that he might be able to get some money from Duke Bernhard by loaning him a short little red-headed monk with a pot belly and a goatee." Then Frau Sutter had destroyed this hope by adding, "Of course, the recipient won't be able to make heads nor tails of it, either. If possible, I would like to be permitted to work with him, and have him read his entries to me out loud."
And Father Gregorius, the paper consumer. One would think his entries had been written by a lady-in-waiting at the court of Ferdinand II, with the wide margins, the wide spacing between the lines, and all the flourishes on the capital letters. Still, the page was legible, and that was what mattered. Gregorius willingly assumed the tedious responsibilities associated with vestment repair, the mending of liturgical books, the cleaning of stained glass, the thousand minute and unending tasks associated with keeping a centuries-old church building intended for a far larger congregation usable and in a condition that honored God. In return, Abbot Georgius did not begrudge him twice as much paper as anyone else used.
And that was the venerable Benedictine abbey of Schwarzach anno domini 1634. An abbot and eleven monks.
Until Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar's Kloster arrived and took up quarters in their cloister.
Whatever else might be said about Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar and his advisors, they were scarcely monks. Georgius was grateful that they spent much of their time out campaigning or at the duke's new capital in the Franche Comté. Although, to give them credit, they appeared to be reasonably chaste. They had not defiled the abbey's walls with loose women.
The duke also insisted that his soldiers attend church services, albeit heretical Lutheran ones. His Protestant chaplains made an effort to keep a rein on the blasphemies falling from the soldiers' mouths, although they did little about other obscenities and profanities. Still, Bernhard's men refrained from taking the name of the Lord in vain. At least when the officers and chaplains were present.
Abbot Georgius picked up the sheet of paper again, sliding his thumb over its slick surface.
He was an old man. He had been in office since 1597. Every year became a little more difficult. He, too, like Father Anselmus, longed for the simple faith of a child. But it seemed as if nothing was ever simple. Duke Bernhard had recently gone south to join the troops he had called into the Breisgau. He would have to notify the duke of the woman's arrival. The duke would undoubtedly want to know that the up-time "nurse" had another up-time woman staying with her. One of Jerg Huber's sons-in-law could take a message down to Lörrach. They were reliable men, and close-mouthed. Simon Jerger, Sibilla Huberin's husband—he would do. Simon could take Susanna Huberin's son, young Regenold with him. The boy was fourteen, and didn't get along very well with his stepfather. He was restless. Eva Reinlin had been complaining about his behavior, just the other day. The errand would do him good.
* * *
Lawrence Crawford hated this job. He was twenty-three years old and had been a soldier since he was fifteen. From the age of fifteen, he had fought in the armies of Christian IV of Denmark and Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. He had fought in the name of young Karl Ludwig, the Elector Palatine, after the death of the Winter King, who was at least properly Calvinist. He had joined Duke Bernhard to fight, even though he, like the Dane and the Swede, was only a Lutheran, which was a poor substitute for the truth of God, if you asked him. Charles I and Laud were very close to being papists, and the Lutherans weren't much better.
Was he fighting? No. Instead, he had been assigned to a monastery to act as translator for the up-time "nurse." The woman's German was very poor. She said in excuse that she had spent the four years since the Ring of Fire mainly either at work in a nursing home, which seemed to be some kind of Spital, or attending her children's school events. In any case, it was still very poor and almost entirely limited to phrases such as, "When did her symptoms start getting worse? And "Is his temperature coming down?"
The woman's English wasn't much better. At least not from the perspective of a man who had been born in Jordanhill in Glasgow. In Scotland. He and Mistress Horton were divided by a common tongue. Not to mention by the fact that she belonged to some kind of sectarian church. Crawford did not hold with toleration of Independents and other religious radicals. Disciples of Christ—that was what she called her body of dissenters.
And now she had brought another up-time woman to Schwarzach. Whom he was to escort to meet the mayor.
Mistress Sutter's German was better, at least.
* * *
Jerg Huber was nearly sixty-five years old. An old man. Almost as old as Abbot Georgius. He had been mayor of Schwarzach since 1615, and on the town council long before that. The two of them had worked together for half their lives.
It was one thing for a man to have children. He had seven children who had survived. Five had already married and established families of their own. He had nearly two dozen grandchildren already—a blessing from God in these days of war and disease, these latter times of tribulation.
Though he could wish that Hans and young Jerg would get married. Except for Michael's two, all of his grandchildren came through the girls. He had only one grandson named Huber, so far-Michael's four-year-old Jerg.
They were good, steady, sons, though: hard-working and civic-minded, all a reasonable man could ask for. Barring famine and plague, one of them would probably, some day, become mayor of Schwarzach in his stead. Presuming Hans and Jerg got married, that is.
But.
He could not see that it was a divine blessing to have someone suddenly appear in the world who claimed to be his descendant thirteen times removed.
Not all miracles were necessarily blessings. Undoubtedly the fig tree cursed by Our Lord Jesus Christ had come to that conclusion somewhere in the process of being the object of a miraculous action. So he had ignored the letter from this woman, Frau Sutter, when it arrived the previous winter.
Now she was in Schwarzach.
It was hard to avoid a miracle when God wanted you to undergo it. Consider the fate of Jonah. Jerg Huber paused during his morning's work
and considered the efforts of Jonah to avoid destiny. The maneuvers of Joseph. The evasions of Elijah.
He had to answer the message from Herr Crawford. He sent his granddaughter up to the abbey to say that he agreed to meet with the up-time woman.
If a miracle wanted you, it would get you.
Although why God thought she really needed to learn his grandfather's name was well beyond his comprehension.
Anyway, it had been Huber. Of course. What had she expected?
* * *
Father Anselmus came with Frau Sutter, most times. Abbot Georgius thought that his faith could benefit from close contact with a modern miracle.
Officially, Abbot Georgius had assigned him to make copies of all the information that Jerg was remembering about earlier times in Schwarzach and the people who had lived there. He said that he would place it in the monastery's archives, next to the church registers. Perhaps, some day, if he had time, he could turn it into a chronicle.
Jerg Huber took exception to Frau Sutter's assertion that his family tree consisted of "perfectly ordinary people." He was, after all, a citizen of Schwarzach. The mayor of Schwarzach. Not some insignificant day laborer or vagrant.