1635-The Tangled Web

by Virginia DeMarce

"Not a pig. A Harley."

  David realized that didn't help.

  He tried again. "A motorcycle."

  Still no resonance in Hanau.

  "A horseless carriage with only two wheels. Like the ATVs they showed during Mayor Dreeson's tour, cut in half. If anyone among you bothered to go look."

  He sighed. He shouldn't have said that.

  "They ride astride them, as if they were horses."

  Another question.

  "No, I have no idea at all why they call them hogs. But they are machines, not swine." Of that, at least, David was certain.

  "If they never broke into the synagogue, how come some of ours were injured?"

  "They were the Hebraic Defense League members who came to fight off the attackers."

  A lot of questions, all at once.

  "A better question," someone said, might be, "what is the proper commemoration of gentile martyrs killed while opposing an attack on a synagogue?"

  The Hanauer rabbi sighed. "I expect that will occupy many a discussion for a long time to come."

  "On Purim," someone else added. "Who is our Mordechai? Our Esther?"

  "If you mean the Hebraic Defense League," David answered, "I think it has about fifty members. Most of them Sephardim. Which, if you ask me, ought to give us something to think about. But no Esther, as far as I know."

  "Rebecca Abrabanel," someone else said. "Even if she was not present, she is the new Esther."

  The Hanauer rabbi sighed. He did not care for visionaries.

  Grantville, mid-March 1635

  "Wes," Preston Richards said. "I've got some bad news for Clara, I'm afraid."

  "What now?"

  "Well, we've been tracing the men who were killed in the demonstration out at the hospital on the fourth. It's pretty slow. But we did manage to figure out that most of the guys that Bryant Holloway brought in came through his fire department training contacts. So the fire watch wardens from towns around have each sent someone down to take a look in the morgue."

  "And? Is it doing any good?"

  "Fourteen identifications so far. But that leads me to the bad news. One of the corpses belongs to a boy—young man—named Dietrich Hamm, from Badenburg. Pretty well known as a malcontent. Not about anything in particular, most of the time. Just always unhappy about life in general. The kind of kid who carries a grudge against fate. But he was Clara's nephew. So—we'll need the names of next of kin, if you can give them to us. We can take it from there. Arrange for him to be sent back to his family. She doesn't have to do anything, considering that she's pregnant. And that you've got problems of your own with Bryant and Lenore."

  Badenburg, 27 March 1635

  "It was a brawl, Helena," the neighbor said. "Willibald objected to some things that people were saying about Dietrich—what he was involved in, over in Grantville. Defending the family honor. I don't think anyone meant to kill him, but these things can get out of hand. Meinhard was swinging a bottle. Just to hit him with, but it broke against the corner of the bar when he brought it around. It was sharper than any knife, what was left in Meinhard's hand. A point of glass. Thick glass. It just kept coming around, that swing. It slashed his throat."

  "Helena?" Jergfritz asked. "Helena, what are we going to do now?"

  She didn't say anything.

  His voice got shriller. "What?"

  "Right now?" She looked around the shop. "It's closing time. I'd better bar the door and pull the shutters closed." "Right now, I'm going to fix supper. All of us have to eat. Mama, you, NaNa, our half-sister and brothers, Martin's children. Me. No matter what happens, we still have to eat. The watchmen will be here soon enough."

  Badenburg, 30 March 1635

  The baby was crying. The midwife handed it over to Helena to clean up. She took a look. Another girl. Warm rose water. Dim light. A gentle welcome to a difficult world for this last child of the late Agnes Bachmeierin, verw. Fraas, verw. Hamm.

  Twice a widow. Ten times a mother in two marriages. Seven children alive to mourn her.

  "Helena," her sister asked. Her name was Anna Clara, now nineteen years old, but everyone had called her NaNa since she was a baby. "What are we going to do now?"

  She finished swaddling the baby and turned around. "Hire a wet nurse. We don't have any time to waste. Get down to the pastor's house and tell him we need one right now. Get a couple of references. Whatever else happens, she'll need to eat if she is to live."

  NaNa walked across the room to look at the baby. "What are we going to call her?"

  Helena looked over to where the midwife was starting to prepare her mother's body.

  "Willibald wanted to name Mag for his mother, but Mama wouldn't. We'll call her Herburgis." She looked back at her sister. "On the way back from the pastor's, stop at the sexton's. We'll need his horse and wagon for Mutti's funeral."

  Grantville, April 1635

  "Clara, I tell you," her brother said. "That man is not only still stopping in Badenburg to see Helena every single time he passes through, but he was married. His wife died in January. She's been taking care of his children ever since. And now, with Willibald and Agnes both dead. And Dietrich, too. The shop isn't bringing in a cent. There's nothing to sell. Willibald concentrated on meeting special orders—he didn't have much stock on hand. We have to do something."

  Clara eyed him consideringly.

  What should she say?

  Her first temptation was to ask "which wife," but she was prudent enough not to.

  Maybe she had learned something from Wesley.

  At eight months pregnant, she was not going to risk Wesley's precious baby by running up to Badenburg to handle this, either.

  "I'll do something," she promised. "Something drastic. The very instant that I have time. But with all the problems—Mayor Dreeson, Reverend Wiley. The person I would usually ask to assist me is Veronica, but she has her own difficulties. It was hard enough going up for the funerals."

  He got up to leave.

  "Wait," Clara said. "Just in case they don't have enough cash on hand to hire a really reliable wet nurse for the baby. I saved quite a lot, really, while I was in Fulda." She handed him a purse.

  Badenburg, May 1635

  "Don't keep standing up," Helena said. "It doesn't make sense for you to stand up. I have to keep walking. She cries unless I walk with her. All night, sometimes."

  Martin didn't sit down, but he did lean against the wall. "It's the only thing that makes sense," he said. Coaxing. "Come to Frankfurt. Mother my children. They have become very attached to you."

  "How can I leave my brothers and sisters?"

  "How can you stay?" he asked practically. "Are you willing to marry a man chosen for you by the pewterer's guild?"

  She looked at him. "You already have two wives."

  He inclined his head. Slowly. "But I am free to marry."

  "You are also the sexiest damned man I have ever met in my life."

  He smiled.

  "What about the people who know? Aunt Clara. Mrs. Dreeson. Young Kastenmayer?"

  "You will be my legal wife. In Frankfurt. The one my mother and sisters know about."

  Herburgis's wails gradually subsided to sleepy sniffles. Her head drooped onto Helena's shoulder. Carefully, very carefully, she put her in the cradle. "And that will pardon the existence of the others in their eyes?"

  Martin sat down on the other end of the kitchen bench. "So far, your aunt has not carried out her threat to tell."

  "So far, I haven't married you."

  They looked at one another for a while.

  "What you do in Steinau and Vacha will be your own business."

  He looked at her sharply.

  "We can see Pastor Schultheiss and have him start calling the banns before you leave this time. It takes three Sundays."

  Badenburg, June 1635

  "Actually, Cunz, it's really easier for me, don't you see, to marry Helena than it would be for me to explain the whole thing to either Rufina or Edeltraud?"<
br />
  "I have no doubt at all." Cunz Kastenmayer smiled. "Have you tried explaining it to Steffan Schultheiss?"

  "Helena thought it would be more prudent not to bring it up. She said that it might trouble his conscience." Martin looked at him anxiously. "You don't feel like you have to, do you?"

  Cunz looked at him. "Why simpler?"

  "They both think they are already married to me. When, actually, they aren't. Plus, I would have to choose between them—which marriage to legalize—which I could scarcely bear to do, because they are both such darling girls."

  "Is Helena?"

  "Is Helena what?"

  "A darling girl?"

  "She was, I thought. Last summer."

  Clara Bachmeierin verw. Stade and verh. Jenkins traveled to Badenburg, her new daughter in her arms, to express the view that she was more than a little upset by this plan. Considering that the man had two other wives, which she told Helena months and months ago!

  She arrived in the middle of a family battle.

  "I'm not going to leave school and apprentice to a pewterer," Jergfritz proclaimed. If you try to make me, I'll just run away from home." He stopped a minute. "Like Liesel Bodamer did. Martin told me about that."

  "You're the heir, now that Dietrich is dead."

  "Let someone else inherit it." At thirteen, he was too young to focus on the economic realities, Clara thought.

  But he wasn't.

  "David Schreiner is going to marry Aunt Marliese next month."

  Clara nodded. This was true. Maria Elisabetha and David had been betrothed since the previous autumn. She had told Wesley's family about it at Thanksgiving. She remembered that.

  "He's the city clerk. He says that I can live with them while I finish Latin school. And he'll see to a university education for me. And find me a clerkship when I'm done, if I do well." Jergfritz looked up defiantly. "And if you let me stay with them, they'll take Hanswilli and Mag, too."

  Those were Agnes's two oldest children by Willibald Fraas. Johann Willibald and Maria Agnes.

  Now the boy had his arms crossed over his chest. "That will just leave Hansjerg and the baby for the rest of you to worry about. I think it's a good deal, myself. And I made it with them. Without help from any of you," he waved one arm, encompassing everyone else in the room, "grown-ups."

  "But," Helena sputtered, "how did you figure all this out?"

  "If the king of Sweden could fight battles when he wasn't any more than a year older than me, I figured that at the bare least I ought to be able to take care of myself." He reverted to looking like a sulky child. "I'll be damned if I'm going to spend my life in a pewter shop."

  "I'm not about to marry Johann Drechsler just because he's a competent pewterer."

  "But . . . what else can you possibly do, NaNa? He's willing . . ."

  "Uncle . . . you didn't have to live with it." She turned her head. "But you did, Helena. You heard it every single day of your life, the way Mama and Willibald fussed at each other because he hated so much that it really wasn't his business. Do you think I want to live that again? What's so wonderful about this shop?"

  "It's been in the family for generations untold. Our grandfather, our grandmother's father, and before him."

  "I don't see you volunteering to marry Drechsler and take it over. You're marrying your courier and going off to live in Frankfurt."

  "And if I did marry Drechsler, who's to say that Hanswilli or Hansjerg will want to be pewterers, any more than Jergfritz does? That's years away."

  "What do you want, then?" Clara asked.

  "Let's sell him the business on a mortgage. Drechsler can run it well enough to make a good living for himself. I think that with the changes in the guild rules that Karl Schmidt has pushed through, the Badenburg city council will let us do that. All of us will get some income. Not a lot, but some. Johann's sister Dorothea is already married to Jorgen Fraas, who's Willibald's nephew. Well, his father was Willibald's half-brother. So it's all in the family, sort of, even if he doesn't marry in."

  Helena shook her head. "He isn't married. He'll still need a wife before he can take over as a master. The guilds won't change that rule. Someone needs to run the household and take care of the apprentices he brings in. Say that he does apprentice Hanswilli in a few years—would you want him living somewhere without a master's wife to look out for his welfare?"

  "Well, let Johann find his own wife. It doesn't have to be me. Maria Anna Fraas would do fine. She's only three years older than I am, but she's Willibald's half-sister, even if she is twenty-five years younger than he was. She's our own cousin, too. Aunt Anna Catharina Bachmeierin's daughter, even if that aunt did die so young that I don't even remember her." NaNa grinned a little maliciously. "And I know she wants to get married. It's all she talks about. I expect she would marry a gelded ox if he agreed to put a ring on her finger."

  "That says where you think you can get money. And how you think we should handle the shop." Clara looked at her niece again. "What do you want to do with the money once you have it?"

  "I want to take my share and go to Grantville. Study to be an apothecary. I've talked to them, already—Raymond Little, the man's name is. And to Frau Garnet Szymanski at the Tech Center. I have to learn to be a nurse, first. Then I can apprentice at one of the 'pharmacy' businesses. It would take a long time, at least three or four years until I can start the apprenticeship, but I can do it."

  She looked at the others, her expression an echo of Jergfritz's. "I know I can."

  "Where will you live?"

  NaNa relaxed. Just the question meant that Helena had surrendered.

  "With us, this year." Aunt Clara answered the question for her. "Until there is room in Bamberg for the Bureau of Consular Affairs to be moved. After that . . . Lenore will be going to Bamberg even before we do, but I'm sure that Chandra—Wesley's other daughter—will be happy to have another adult in her house."

  So much for complete independence, NaNa thought. But Chandra, whatever she was like, had to be a big improvement on Johann Drechsler as a prospective roommate.

  "My share of the mortgage money coming in from the shop . . ." Helena said. "You'll have a big household to support in Frankfurt."

  "Not that big," Wackernagel said. "You and my four children."

  "You're forgetting Hansjerg and Herburgis. Plus a wet nurse for Herburgis. For quite some time, yet. If you think that I'm going to raise my half-sister on pap . . ."

  "Of course not." That answer came fast. Fast enough to suit his—betrothed.

  "You can't let your other children starve, so whatever you've been contributing to those households will have to keep going to them. I trust that you do have whatever money you got from selling Maria's cottage and garden put safely away for her children?"

  "Yes." Wackernagel nodded. "With the mayor and pastor of Bindersleben as trustees, along with a banker in Erfurt."

  "Good enough. Now about my share of the money from the mortgage . . ." Helena looked at her future husband consideringly. "Your income should be going up. With my share of the income invested, you can start expanding your business to include additional riders and small packages. You mentioned that idea, once, when we were talking in the shop, last summer, when you first began flirting with me at the retail counter of the Sign of the Platter. However . . . before you get the use of my money, there's going to be a prenuptial contract. Ironclad, believe me."

  She looked at Cunz Kastenmayer. "Draw one up. I know you can use the money. I'll have a licentiate look it over, but paying him for that will be cheaper than paying him to do it from scratch."

  "Helena," Clara asked that evening. A little anxiously. "What are you going to do if his other two wives die? What if you end up having to take their children into your household, too?"

  Helena winced. She would really rather not think about that prospect. But she was a realist, so she had thought about it. "Open a school," she said a little snippily.

  Which should have ended that p
articular conversation, but Aunt Clara wasn't a woman to let well enough alone.

  "What if he has . . . you know . . . more children? With them?"

  Helena's mouth tightened. "I can't see that it's any worse than whoring around. Which men do, often enough, when they are away from home. Probably better, since he's not likely to catch syphilis from them and bring it home to me."

  "But . . ."

  "Leave it be, Aunt Clara," Helena said firmly. "He's a courier. I won't see significantly less of him than if those other women were not in the picture. And I will be, after all, the legal wife. Plus, unlike Maria, I know the truth. Unlike her, I will have leverage if Martin gets out of line. Not to mention that since I have family here in Badenburg and in Grantville, I'll have a good reason to travel with him occasionally to see my brothers and sisters. To see you. Check up on what he's doing when he's out on the Imperial Road. And with whom. I know what I'm getting."

  She stood up. In the cradle, Herburgis was starting to fuss.

  "I've told him that what he does in Vacha and Steinau is his business. I'll keep my word on that. But if he thinks that he's ever going to acquire another 'darling girl,' he'd better think again."

  Grantville

  "Cunz," Clara asked Pastor Kastenmayer's son. "How much danger is there that one of these days the pastors from Grantville and Badenburg, Bindersleben and Vacha and Steinau, might all get together—at a conference or something—and compare notes on Wackernagel and his multiple families? That all of it could come out?"

  "Well . . . I'm speaking as a lawyer, now. Not to the morals of the matter."

  "Yes."

  "It's not very likely that their pastors would ever be at the same ministerial conference, since Rufina is Catholic and Edeltraud is Calvinist. Getting them together at one conference is more . . . ecumenical, I think the Grantvillers call it . . . than anything likely to happen in our lifetimes. If Maria's pastor ever got together with Steffan Schultheiss in Badenburg, there wouldn't be a problem. Maria was dead before he married your niece. That's okay—it's fine with the church if widowers remarry. Even rapidly, when they have children to take care of. Papa married Salome a lot sooner after my mother died than Martin is marrying Helena."