1635-The Tangled Web

by Virginia DeMarce

  "Wesley?" Clara asked that evening.

  "Mmm?" Her husband's head was bent over a pile of papers he had brought home from the office.

  "You know that record keeping system that Jenny Maddox has in the Grantville Vital Statistics Office? The one with cards with holes punched around the edge, so you can pull out the ones you want with a wire rod?"

  "Umhmm."

  "Would something like that work for the whole SoTF. Or even the whole USE?"

  Wes finally raised his head and focused his eyes on his wife. "I don't see why not, if you had a centralized office. People will still need the records locally, of course, so they shouldn't send in the only copy. But there's really no reason why they couldn't send in a duplicate. Or even two duplicates. One at the level of the provincial governments and one at the national level. It would take a lot of clerks to track it, of course. Increase the cost of printed forms a bit."

  "Before the marriage takes place? Sort of like calling the banns, but with a . . . wider reach?"

  "Sure, you could do it that way." Wes subsided back into his paperwork.

  Clara settled the nursing Maria Eleonor a little more comfortably in her arms. A wolfish grin crossed her face. She took a silent vow to make it her personal project to see that the USE developed a system of centralized and cross-referenced marriage records.

  Just as soon as possible.

  Martin Wackernagel certainly had all the wives he needed.

  Probably more than he needed, but there was nothing she could do about that without ruining her niece's future.

  What did Kortney Pence say all the time? Yes. Prevention, the best medicine.

  Frankfurt am Main

  Wackernagel would have liked to return to Frankfurt by a different route. One that didn't involve Vacha and Steinau.

  That, however, would have caused him to miss any number of scheduled pickups and deliveries. So he just made sure that they didn't stop in either of those towns.

  This measure should have gotten him, and everyone else, to Frankfurt without incident.

  Except that Andrea Hill buttonholed him in Fulda with the news that Liesel Bodamer was bound and determined to go to Frankfurt and find her friend Emrich Menig. Since the episode the previous October when she tried to follow Dagmar and Gertrud, but had been caught, she had tried four more times. Not in the middle of winter—the girl had enough sense not to want to freeze to death. But three times since early April.

  "Menig's with your sister and her husband, isn't he?" Frau Hill asked.

  Wackernagel had to admit that he was. Still alive. As amazing as that might be, considering the boy's inquisitive nature.

  "Then take her along for a visit, please."

  He shrugged. What was one more?

  * * *

  Mutti was happy. Her son Martin had brought home a wife. She was ecstatic. The wife was Lutheran. From an important guild family in Badenburg. Closely related to the wife of the former SoTF civilian administrator in Fulda. With a dowry and income from her late father's shop, to boot. How could he have done better?

  Well, perhaps it would have been ideal if she wasn't encumbered by her half-brother and half-sister. Not to mention the four other children who were in her care. Nieces and nephews, presumably, since they called her "Auntie." Odd that they called Martin "Papa," but maybe they remembered their late mother better than they did their father. Helena said that she had died only six months ago. Poor little orphans.

  "Martin," Merga asked. "Why on earth did you bring this girl along?"

  "Frau Hill said that she kept running away. She wanted to get to Emrich."

  "Do you expect Crispin and me to keep her?"

  "If you can't make her go back to Frau Hill. Here's her address in Fulda. The two of you can work something out with the girl's guardians, can't you?" Wackernagel gave his sister his most engaging, impudent, mischievous, "have I been a bad little boy" smile.

  A smile of proven value.

  Merga drew a deep breath. "I am coming very close to choking you. On the general theory that you . . . you audacious and unrepentant scoundrel . . . have once more gotten away with your misdeeds. Not only free and clear, but with rewards."

  She stood there, her hands resting on her ever more ample hips.

  "I would choke you, if Mutti weren't so happy."

  He smiled again.

  Window of Opportunity

  Section One: In the beginning . . .

  The morning and evening of the first day

  Mainz, March 1634

  Eberhard was asleep. Rather, he had been asleep until the drumming started. "What in hell?"

  Tata stood up on the bed and poked her head through the tiny third-story window of the Horn of Plenty. "Just some soldiers."

  "They're not for me. I'm not late. The world may be full of sunshine, but it's my day off and I don't even have a hangover." He reached up for her wrist and pulled her back down.

  She plopped onto his stocky body, wriggled, and told him to quit it right now because he might have the day off, but she didn't.

  Reichard Donner's wife Justina also heard the drum. She looked out the front window of the main floor, more than a little warily. Her husband wasn't famous for his attention to submitting paperwork in multiple copies or keeping track of the details, so she thought that her wariness was fully justified. The Horn of Plenty had a record of too many times that its proprietor hadn't, quite, complied with those abundant city regulations designed to ensure good order and civic peace.

  "What events do we have scheduled for the coming week?" Anything that will cause problems with the Polizeiordnungen?

  "Nothing unusual," Reichard answered from behind the bar. "The two wedding parties are the largest functions. I have the written authorization from the city council for both of those. Well, it's almost approved. Everything will be ready by Thursday, certainly. Since both the groom and the bride's fathers for the Koster-Backe reception are local artisans, the families are bringing in a lot of the food and drink themselves, which is making a bit of trouble with the pastry shops and our regular sausage vendors. Fifty guests approved. Up to thirty guests permitted for the Biel-Braun wedding. I have the extra military paperwork for that, since Jost Biel is a soldier and so is the bride's father. It's . . ."

  Reichard scrabbled around in his piles of paper. "Well, I did have it, right here, somewhere . . ."

  Justina nodded. Marcus Pistor, Brahe's Hessian chaplain for the Calvinists in his garrison, would perform the Biel-Braun ceremony here at the inn, in the public room, since Mainz had no Calvinist church or chapel and they were all, in this family, good Calvinists from the Palatinate, subjects of the unfortunate Winter King's heir. May Elector Karl Ludwig's soul be preserved from the influence of those Spanish Papists in the Netherlands who took him prisoner, she thought. Chaplain Pistor will have made sure that Reichard received the permissions. Now, if he hasn't misplaced them . . .

  Reichard, who hadn't even glanced up, was still talking while he sorted more paper into various piles. "Here it is. Right here, under the receipts. Everything's in order. Why? Is there a problem?"

  "Lift up your head and listen. There are soldiers headed our way. That's what the noise is. Hear the noise?" She turned around, waving her hands at him. "There are four or so of them, Colonel von Zitzewitz's men from the uniforms, with a drummer. Also with a corporal and probably they're not just looking for a drink at this hour. What regulation have we offended now? Well, at least the children are at school, so I don't have to worry about having them mouth off and cause trouble. Except for Tata, of course; she's home. Anyway, four soldiers aren't enough to do too much damage, usually."

  Kunigunde Treidelin, Justina's widowed sister and the tavern's main cook, came out of the kitchen, complaining as usual about a world in which a woman could live for half a century and still not be permitted by the authorities to finish out her waning days in peace and tranquility. "It's your fault entirely, Reichard, for getting involved with those Commit
tee of Correspondence people and letting them meet here. The Swedes and the city council both keep a sharper eye on the Horn of Plenty than they would otherwise, just because of that. You know that as well as I do."

  "I am the chairman of the Mainz CoC," Donner pointed out rather mildly. "It would be rather ridiculous if I didn't let the group meet here. According to the theories of Althusius, since—"

  " 'The Mainz CoC'—as if that means anything. It's not as if you have anything like they do in Magdeburg, with toughs and enforcers. You get all the grief and what do you have to show for it? Nothing. It's not as if there's a CoC-raised regiment anywhere near Mainz. They're all up north with the emperor. We've got Swedish regulars, German mercenaries, and maybe a dozen soldiers scattered among them with even the slightest interest in politics. Hah!" Kunigunde turned her head. "Something's boiling over." She stomped back into the kitchen.

  Tata, more formally known as their daughter Agathe, who had pulled on her clothes and come down instead of going back to bed, took her place at the window. "Pffft. That's Corporal Hertling. You know him. He's been here often enough. He's in Eberhard's company, so it shouldn't be a problem, whatever it is."

  Walther Hertling motioned for his little troop to stop and rapped sharply on the door.

  Tata waved her parents back, opened the door, glared at him, and asked, "Why are you bothering us?"

  "Look, Tata, it isn't my fault."

  Justina relaxed. Interventions by one's social superiors that were likely to lead to measures of harsh oppression were rarely accompanied by plaintive apologies or the use of nicknames.

  "It may not be your fault, but you're here. With your goons."

  "They aren't goons," Walther protested, looking as firm has he could. Which, considering that he was barely twenty, was not particularly firm. He had gotten his rank because his father had once upon a time been Duke Eberhard's father's bootblack. "They're . . ." He tried to think of some term more martial, impartial, and less embarrassing to his captain than babysitters. "They're, uh, the Captain Duke's personal Leibkompanie. Bodyguards, sort of."

  Lorenz Bauer, Jacob Kolb, Ludwig Merckel, and Christoph Heisel strove mightily to look as un-goonlike as possible. Since all four were long-time mercenaries in their thirties, with the scars to show for it, this was not particularly easy. Still, if Corporal Hertling, otherwise known as the immediate conduit to their now-reliable paymaster, urged them to look harmless, the least they could do was try.

  "Eberhard says that he's off today."

  "That's not the problem. At least, the problem isn't about anything he's not done. It's about something he's supposed to do next. It's, uh, about Hartmann Simrock."

  "Theobald's friend?"

  "Yeah. Uh, Theobald Pistor took home a copy of some of the speeches that Simrock has been giving here at the CoC meetings."

  "Ouch. Dumb, dumb, dumb, stupid. University student or no university student, Theo has no sense at all. I can't believe that he's Margarethe's brother."

  "And, of course, he left them on the breakfast table where they're quartered. At least, that's what Margarethe told Lieutenant Duke Friedrich. He left them on the breakfast table where their father, Chaplain Pistor, found them. And read them. Especially the one about . . . well, you know. He is a military chaplain, after all, so he took it to someone on Brahe's staff. And we've been ordered to investigate."

  Reichard swept up his various piles of receipts and stuck them into a cubbyhole under the bar. " 'We' being?"

  "Uh, well, the captain's company. Him. Us. And his brothers."

  Hertling wasn't worried about Donner, but he was a little intimidated by Frau Justina, so he turned around so he could talk directly to her. "Uh, that wasn't the brightest thing Simrock could have done, you know. Calling for the equivalent of a Ram Rebellion in Mainz and the Rhine Palatinate. Especially not criticizing General Brahe the way he did. Captain Duke Eberhard has the highest respect for the general's military talent and bravery. So it's just lucky that . . ." He stumbled, not quite sure how to phrase what was coming next in a manner that might be interpreted as mildly tactful.

  Merckel was less concerned about tact. ". . . damned fucking lucky that the captain is actually fucking Tata here, or you'd all be in a deep pile of shit, you stupid assholes."

  Justina winced. It wasn't that Reichard was unhappy about the attraction that led the young German officer on General Brahe's staff to regularly attend meetings of the Committee of Correspondence at the Horn of Plenty, in the company of his brothers and then spend the night, even though he had finally been allotted a much nicer room in the new unmarried officers' quarters. He was perfectly aware that Eberhard's interest did not lie entirely in the realm of radical political theory. Or even primarily in the realm of radical political theory.

  No, Reichard was a practical man. His comment on the arrangement had been that this was the greatest stroke of luck the Donner family had ever had and was ever likely to have.

  Still, there was such a thing as tact. Maybe not where Merckel was concerned, though.

  Besides, with increasing exposure, Eberhard was gradually becoming more interested in the political portion of his evenings. Still, though, the Horn of Plenty's primary attraction for him had a neat figure rather than a lot of economic figures. Feminine cooperation rather than the need to establish a purchasing cooperative was the crucial element that led to the extension of the captain's regular presence at the inn and the protection that resulted from that presence.

  It was protection that they needed, in Justina's opinion, as long as Reichard kept flirting with those radical CoC ideas. She intended to take full advantage of it as long as there was a window of opportunity. Which meant, in effect, as long as Eberhard remained interested in their daughter. Which would be long enough, she hoped, to get the protection in some way institutionalized and make the continued existence of the Horn of Plenty and the Mainz CoC somewhat less precarious.

  "Uh," Hertling said. "The captain will have something to say about it, I suppose, once he talks to the boy."

  The subject of their discussion, having dressed somewhat less hastily than Tata, wandered into the taproom. Duke Eberhard of Württemberg yawned. "Which one of the boys is in trouble this time? About what?

  Hertling duly saluted the square-faced, brown-haired, slightly long-nosed young man. Personally, he thought that his noble captain looked more like most people's idea of a sturdy peasant than a dashing cavalier, no more aristocratic than anyone else on the streets of Stuttgart or Mainz, including, for what it was worth, himself. That wasn't an opinion he was given to sharing with other people, though. Der gute Walther was prudent for his years.

  "Neither of your brothers, sir. Simrock. If you could come down to General Brahe's headquarters with us . . ."

  "I suppose that's not a request?"

  Tata's eyes followed their departing backs. "So much for the idea of taking a boat down the river to Bingen with Friedrich and Margarethe and looking at Castle Ehrenfels today."

  "Castles," her father said. "Castles, bah!"

  Reichard Donner surveyed the room. The view was depressing. Mainz just wasn't a hotbed of revolutionary fervor. Perhaps he would have been better advised to move to Heidelberg. However, to be practical, there hadn't been an inn for him to take over in Heidelberg, whereas, in Mainz—owing to a fortuitous series of childless marriages and deaths from smallpox and plague, not to mention dysentery and measles, running through several imperial cities and tying all the way back to his long-ago godfather, one Reichard Wackernagel, belt-maker in Frankfurt am Main, husband of Justina's Aunt Maria—the Horn of Plenty had become available.

  Even so. In addition to the two students, Pistor and Simrock, the attendees were not politically promising.

  Pistor's sister Margarethe only came because her brother and her boyfriend did.

  Philipp Schaumann, perpetual belt-maker's journeyman, aged about sixty-five, the hapless and hopeless perpetual suitor of his sister-in-law Kunigunde, came
because Kunigunde lived here as well as because he was the younger brother of Justina and Kunigunde's late uncle's equally deceased wife. Also, he had been an acquaintance of Reichard's own late godfather back when they were both journeymen.

  Sybilla Binder, about fifty and never married, was a friend of Kunigunde and the unhappy daughter of a belt-maker. She faced being thrown out of work when her father retired or died—one of which was certain to happen soon—and had no wish to spend her declining years spinning in the municipal hospital.

  Ursula Widder, about fifty, Sybilla's friend, also never married, was the equally unhappy daughter of a tanner who had died and left her no option but to go into service. So she was now Kunigunde's general maid-of-all-work in the kitchen of the Horn of Plenty. It wasn't as if she had to put forth much effort to attend the CoC meetings.

  Plus four soldiers and a corporal who were definitely not from a CoC-raised regiment and who attended because they were tasked by Gustavus Adolphus's commander in Mainz to see what they could do to prevent problems with . . .

  . . . three very young dukes of Württemberg, one of whom was sitting with his arm around Tata's shoulder and twirling her reddish-tawny hair and fondling the various bits and pieces of her rotund body that he could conveniently reach.

  The rest of his children were already in bed, which was some comfort.

  "It's not an up-time idea," Simrock was insisting. "It's in Montaigne's Essays and they've been around for, oh, at least fifty years." For Simrock, not quite twenty himself, fifty years was ancient history. "How did he put it? 'No matter that we may mount on stilts, we still must walk on our own legs. And on the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.' "