1635-The Tangled Web

by Virginia DeMarce

  "Every literate person in Europe corresponds with Grotius, I think."

  Hoheneck resisted turning his head to see where the sotto voce comments were coming from.

  "That's no special distinction," whoever it was continued.

  "Schweinsberg could hit back by accusing Neuhoff of Arminian sympathies," the Jesuit said. "That's why Grotius had to get out of the Netherlands. That would turn off the landgrave of Hesse pretty fast."

  "Arminianism is a Calvinist fight—not a Catholic one." The Capuchin pushed back his hood.

  "Hesse-Kassel is a Calvinist," Hoheneck pointed out.

  "What difference does that make? If a slur works, use it."

  Hoheneck shook his head with annoyance. It was the voice from behind him again.

  "Where do we start?" That was Hatzfeld.

  "Let's hire somebody to write a pamphlet," Hoheneck suggested. "Just to test the waters."

  "Obscene illustrations?" the muttering voice behind him asked in a hopeful tone.

  Hoheneck turned around and glared at the group of men. "If you pay for the woodcuts," he said. "Whoever you are."

  "Lovely," the voice continued. It came from a little man wearing a flat hat. "The serpent's long, long tongue extending and . . ." He smiled.

  "This is," the Capuchin said, "the archbishop's palace. Control your imagination, Gruyard."

  "Hoheneck's getting cold feet," Archbishop Ferdinand's confessor said.

  "They've never been warm," the archbishop answered. "He's a cold fish, overall. Your putting Gruyard to mutter behind him today got more of a rise out of him than I've ever seen before."

  "How much practical assistance can we expect from your brothers?"

  "Very little, this summer. As you know, Maximilian and Albrecht have more immediate concerns. The recent events in Bohemia have been very worrisome. Austria needs Bavaria's support."

  He frowned at the Capuchin. "For that matter, we have more immediate concerns than Fulda, too. One of Gustavus Adolphus's generals with twenty-five thousand men looking at my eastern border is one of those thoughts that make worries about the status of Fulda seem comparatively insignificant."

  "Great oaks from little acorns grow," his confessor said piously. "Moreover, I doubt that there are more than ten thousand men looking at your eastern border. And those are mostly Hessians under von Uslar rather than Swedes."

  The archbishop frowned his displeasure.

  "Think of Fulda as the first domino in bringing down the CPE and unraveling? Something?"

  "As a grand conspirator," the archbishop said, "you . . . never mind. And get Gruyard out of my palace. I don't care where you put him, except not in any other building that belongs to the archdiocese, but get him out. He makes my flesh crawl."

  "He's good at what he does."

  "That's the problem."

  Where Are We and What Are We Doing Here?

  Stift Fulda, June 1633

  "Where are we?" Mark Early asked.

  "This is Neuenberg," the abbot answered. "I served as provost here before I was elected abbot. Among several other places where I was provost. That's why I came along today, to introduce you to the people here."

  "What does a provost do?"

  The abbot started a long explanation.

  "Middle management." Clara Bachmeierin inserted the English term into the conversation.

  Mark nodded.

  The breeze picked up. Clara grabbed for her files. She was acting as clerk today. Boyneburg's horse boy picked up a couple of rocks and gave them to her for paperweights.

  "Why are we sitting under a tree instead of inside?" Mark asked.

  "It's a linden tree," Boyneburg said.

  "Why are we sitting under a linden tree?"

  "People around here conduct important business under the village linden tree. Always have, as far as I know. Well, maybe not in the dead of winter or a pouring rain, but generally that's where the village council meets and anything else important gets done."

  Mark sighed. "When in Rome." He put on his sunglasses.

  "I'd take those off if I were you," Clara recommended. "There will be better times to introduce the peasants of Neuenberg to modern technology."

  He put them back in his breast pocket and squinted into the sun. A bunch of people were coming out of the chapel.

  "Bailiff," Mark said, "announce that the session of the Special Commission on the Establishment of Freedom of Religion in the Franconian Prince-Bishoprics and the Prince-Abbey of Fulda will come to order."

  An elderly farmer looked at him. "The bailiff's sick. Something he ate, probably. You don't want him here."

  "Do you have an under-bailiff?"

  "Nein."

  "A constable?"

  "He's the bailiff."

  "Somebody," Mark said, "announce that the session of the Special Commission on the Establishment of Freedom of Religion in the Franconian Prince-Bishoprics and the Prince-Abbey of Fulda will come to order."

  None of the villagers moved.

  Urban von Boyneburg got up and announced it.

  "Pardon, Your Honor," the elderly farmer said, "but we would like to bring to Your Honor's attention that it's a good day for making hay, and we would just as soon be done with this business by the time the dew goes off."

  Fulda, June 1633

  "It's gross," Andrea Hill said. She was holding the pamphlet by one corner, between her thumb and her index finger, as far away from her body as she could get it. "And the town is plastered with them."

  "Come on, Andrea," Wes Jenkins said placidly. "Whatever it is, it can't be that bad."

  "Oh yes it can." She threw it onto the table in front of him. "Poor Clara. They put her name in the thing, in the caption to that hideous picture. And all of our soldiers I saw out on the street were looking at the placards that go with it and going 'har, har, har!' So you"—she stopped and pointed at Derek Utt—"can just get up and go out there and make them stop it."

  Derek reached over and pulled the pamphlet out from in front of Wes. Thumbed through it once. Got up.

  Orville Beattie came into the conference room, carrying another copy. Wes grabbed the first one from where Derek had dropped it. As he looked through it, his face went white and pinched.

  "Clara I understand," Fred Pence said as he came in, "but who's Salome? The one in the Bible?"

  Andrea glared at him. He realized that it was one of those mornings when it was just generally a bad thing to be a male human being, and a worse one to be a son-in-law.

  "The prioress," Andrea said. "At the Benedictine convent here in town. You've surely walked past it. Ascension of Mary, it's called. There's a plaque by the door. She's been here since 1630. She and three others came from the abbey of Kühbach in the diocese of Augsburg to start it up. They've been through hard times, what with the Hessians and everything. And us, considering that we confiscated the estates that the abbot had assigned to support them. They're dirt poor. There are days when they're going hungry, until Clara or I take the rest of our supper over to them. This is just so . . . unfair. Her name is Salome. Salome von Pflaumern."

  Harlan Stull raised an eyebrow. "Does that explain why your per diem has gone up, you and Clara? You're feeding six rather than two? Or ten rather than two? How many are there?"

  "Well, we felt bad about it. If we hadn't taken away all of the abbot's income-producing property, the provosts on the abbey's farms would be sending them something to eat, at least. And they could fix the roof. It's leaking into the chapel."

  "Why the hell do they name girls Salome, anyhow?" Orville Beattie asked. "It seems like a bad omen from the start."

  "Not that one," Andrea said. "Not the one with the seven veils and John the Baptist's head. There's another one, who stood next to Mary at the cross. She's a saint. Girls get named for her."

  "More than enough room for confusion, if you ask me," Fred said. He was clearly going to be on Andrea's shit list today no matter what he did, so he figured he might as well earn it.<
br />
  "Where did Mark and the rest of the Special Commission go today?" Wes Jenkins asked.

  Andrea looked at his face and shivered.

  "Neuenberg," Orville Beattie answered. "That's not far."

  "Go get them. Bring them back. Take a dozen guards with you, at least. God, this is sick!"

  Orville moved fast.

  "Andrea," Wes spit out. "Get your tame lawyer in here this minute. And the mayor and the whole city council."

  "We've let you keep your gate guards. Did somebody bring this smut in through one of the gates. If so, which one, and when?" Wes Jenkins glared.

  The captain of Fulda's militia shook his head. "There has been no large shipment of printed matter for several weeks, sir. Not to the best of our knowledge. I do have confidence in my men."

  "Are you interested in the other option, then?"

  "Which other option?" Adam Landau asked rather hesitantly. He was the mayor. It was his job to speak for the others, no matter how dangerous an activity that currently appeared to be.

  "That some sick creep brought a manuscript and the woodcuts into Fulda in his private baggage and it was printed here?"

  The council members looked at one another. Then at the militia captain. Then back at one another. This possibility was even less pleasant.

  The head of the clothmakers' guild cleared his throat. "Ah. Freedom of the press, sir?" Esaias Geyder said tentatively.

  Wes blew up. "There are a few little things for you to think about. First, this is a military occupation force, when you come right down to it. Fulda has not adopted the constitution of the New United States. It hasn't even voted on whether or not to adopt it. And if your friendly local collection of imperial knights doesn't manage to get its act together, it's not likely that there will be a vote any time soon, because we won't be able to organize an election. Not that things here are any worse than they are in the rest of Franconia, but that's neither here nor there.

  "Second." He looked at the head of the clothmakers' guild. "There are some things that I am simply not having happen in the name of freedom of the press. Andrea's lawyer here can write back to Grantville. He'll have somebody send the information, if you want to footnote me, but there really are court decisions about this stuff. Freedom of speech doesn't extend to yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater. 'Your right to swing your fist ends where it collides with someone else's nose.' That sort of stuff."

  "What aren't you going to have happen here?" the militia captain asked.

  "Witch hunts, first and foremost. How old are you, Captain Wiegand? Old enough to remember them?" Wes waved at the group. "You have to be old enough, Kaus. You're at least sixty, and they were only thirty years ago. What about you, Rabich? I've never heard that you suffer from memory loss when it comes to your property rights. You're here at city hall hassling Andrea every other day. Has 'burning alive' slipped your mind? Not a few cases, precisely. Somewhere between two hundred fifty and three hundred, from what we've been able to find out."

  Otto Kaus swallowed nervously. Eberhard Rabich took a half-step back.

  Wiegand stepped forward. "They're old enough, sir. So am I, for that matter. I was ten at the last burning, but for three years, Judge Nuss took the school to watch."

  "Took the school," Andrea Hill gasped.

  "It was a regular sort of thing, ma'am." He turned back to Wes Jenkins. "Herr Kaus is a bit nervous. Some of his relatives were burned. Some of Frau Rabich's relatives, too. It's hard for families to get away from the taint, somehow."

  "Well, and shouldn't it be?" Lorenz Mangold, new head of the butchers' guild, pushed himself to the front. "Think about it. Anna Hahn, old Hans's widow, got away. And then had the gall to come back and live here after Judge Nuss was arrested and put in prison. But there's bound to have been some truth to the accusations, or the bishop of Bamberg wouldn't have burned her son as a witch a few years ago, would he? Not when he had risen as far as chancellor of the diocese. I say that where there's smoke, there's fire."

  The other members of the Fulda city council appeared to have forgotten about the up-timers. They had all turned and were staring at Mangold.

  Captain Wiegand backed inconspicuously out of the room. Derek Utt got up from the table and followed him. By mutual, unspoken, consent, Wiegand ran to summon his elite guard unit; Derek headed for the corridor where the MP office was.

  The situation in the city hall conference room was deteriorating rapidly. Rabich pointed at Mangold, yelling that he was related to Judge Nuss's second wife. Mangold retorted that Mayor Landau was married to a cousin of the Kaus woman who, like Hans Hahn's wife, had escaped. Mangold raised accusations of witch-friendliness against the late Landgrave Moritz of Hesse-Kassel. Someone pointed out that the prince of Isenburg-Buedingen had also sheltered accused witches who escaped. This led to rancorous comments by Mangold about the role of the imperial cameral court, which had denied that Fulda could exercise jurisdiction over non-resident accused witches.

  Derek Utt came back with two soldiers per council member. This crowded the room, but quieted things down quite a bit.

  Wes Jenkins wasn't exactly happy, but he was feeling rather vindicated in his decision to push hard. It looked like this sort of thing was still a lot closer to the surface than anyone in the NUS administration had realized before.

  With Lorenz Mangold, at least. The rest of them were looking at the man very unhappily, with sort of Return of the Creature from the Black Lagoon expressions on their faces, Wes thought.

  Wiegand came back.

  "Mangold has had a man staying with him for several days," he reported. "He left first thing this morning. I've sent the guard company to try to track him."

  "Description?" Derek Utt asked. "Do you have a sketch?"

  "He was wearing a brown doublet with leather buttons."

  "Half the men in Stift Fulda are wearing a brown doublet with leather buttons."

  "Some people prefer bone buttons," Esaias Geyder said. He was wearing a brown doublet with bone buttons himself.

  "How many people here have seen Mangold's guest?" Captain Wiegand asked.

  Nobody admitted to having seen the man.

  "How did you find out about him?" Derek Utt asked.

  "Mangold's cook. She's been having to serve up an extra plate each night, but he didn't give her any extra market money."

  "Is there anyone around you can take to her to and get a sketch from her description?"

  "There's the painter who lives in the St. Severi church," Rabich suggested nervously. "He's been there for four years, now, through imperials and Hessians, and the New United States. Sleeps in the sacristy and paints murals on the wall. They're not bad. The sexton brings food in for him and empties his slops. That's all he's asked the vestry board for—food and his paints."

  "Go get him," Wes said to Captain Wiegand.

  "Don't frighten him," Andrea added. "Tell him that he's not in trouble before you haul him over to the city hall. Even better, just take him to Herr Mangold's kitchen."

  Wiegand shook his head. "I have the cook here."

  "Then take her to the church."

  "No, this has to be official. I'll bring him here. Nicely, ma'am."

  "He really, really, did not want to come with me," Captain Wiegand said. "But it's just as well I brought him. Otherwise, he wouldn't have seen the placards."

  "Are those still nailed up all over town?" Wes exploded.

  "Nobody said to take them down."

  "Well, get somebody out to take them, then. Before Ms. Bachmeierin and the abbot get back. I'm not going to have Clara see that filth."

  Derek Utt gestured. Two soldiers per council member became one soldier per council member.

  "Why is it important that he saw the placards?" he asked.

  "He says that he knows the artist," Wiegand said. "Recognizes him from his style. He says that it's as plain to an artist as a signature, if two men have ever worked in the same studio. Last time he heard of this woodcut maker, he w
as working in Cologne, in Bonn, really, since that is where the archbishop resides, for a Lorrainer named Felix Gruyard."

  "Does that name ring a bell with anyone?"

  Head shakes all around. Negative.

  "Who's the printmaker?"

  The artist himself answered. "Alain van Beekx. A Netherlander."

  Head shakes again.

  Wes looked at the artist. "This van Beekx. What does he do for a living?"

  "He makes filthy pictures, sir."

  "Well," Wes said, "I'm happy to meet you. One man today who tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

  "That isn't the whole truth, sir," the artist said.

  Wes waited.

  Waited some more.

  "He forges documents. That's how he makes most of his money. If someone needs 'evidence' and doesn't have any, van Beekx will come up with it. There's a lot of 'evidence' against me on file in Cologne. It looks very real. Any court would convict me on it. If he's involved in this, with Gruyard, there's probably a lot of 'evidence' against you tucked away somewhere, just waiting until some court asks for it. If you don't mind, I'd just as soon go back to the church, sir. It's been a very peaceful place for me these last few years."

  "As soon as you make a deposition and sign it."

  The artist's shoulders drooped. Andrea's lawyer, whose name Wes could never seem to remember, led him out.

  Wes dismissed the city council. They left the conference room but kept milling around in the vestibule. Captain Wiegand closed the door from the outside.

  "Okay," Andrea said, "tell me something." She picked up the pamphlet with which the morning had started, again between thumb and forefinger.

  "What?"

  "Who from here went up to Cologne and described Clara to this van Beekx creep? The 'Salome' doesn't look a thing like the prioress. It's just a sort of generic nun, and not even wearing the same kind of habit that the Benedictines do. But the 'Clara,' even if there wasn't a name to the picture, you could almost recognize."

  Orville Beattie looked at it. "The abbot, too. Even when he's a snake."