1635-The Tangled Web

by Virginia DeMarce

  Simrock shook his head. "They started on building a new electoral residence about six years ago, but it got interrupted by the war. Now it's just a muddy mess."

  Jeffie shook his head. "The whole town doesn't look much like the pictures in the guidebook that was in Len Tanner's collection—the one Mary Kat saw."

  Joel was getting tired. "Can it with acting like a brat, Jeffie. That's because all the stuff they built between now and then is missing. It's like Fulda, that way. Mainz hasn't gone Baroque yet."

  "Where are Friedrich and Margarethe?"

  "They said they had things to do."

  Friedrich looked over his shoulder. "Shouldn't we be sneaking in at night, or something?"

  Margarethe shook her head. "If it were night, Rohrbach would be here. He hasn't moved out of the room over the shop just because Sybilla is dead and old Binder has moved to the Horn of Plenty to cough the rest of his life away. If it were night, he would be right here, asleep. The whole point, Fritzi, is to come in the middle of the day while he is gone, carrying the key in my hand for everyone to see. Anyone who notices us will suppose that old man Binder sent us on a very proper and public errand." She looked at him, her dark eyes big and round. "That's something I learned when I was much younger. If you plan to disobey your father, it's tremendously important to look like such an idea would never cross your mind."

  "Where did you get three dozen rotten eggs, anyway?" Friedrich was honestly curious. He had no idea how to go about procuring such an item.

  "I have my methods."

  "Where, my delightful little doe?"

  "Don't call me that. I hate it. That's what Theo calls me."

  "Where did you get the eggs?"

  "It's spring, Fritzi."

  "What does spring have to do with it?"

  "Kunigunde's hens in the back courtyard of the Horn of Plenty have been setting, but she doesn't have a rooster and since she keeps them in coops no neighbor's rooster can get to them, so the eggs they lay are sterile. They're a nasty bunch of peckers." She held out her arm, demonstrating several small wounds. "She's left them alone, because they won't lay any more while they're broody, anyway. The eggs are nice and ripe."

  She pulled the ticking back from the mattress very carefully. It wouldn't do to have feathers flying loose all over the room. Even a clod like Rohrbach might notice that. She situated the eggs among the feathers and replaced the ticking even more carefully.

  "Hah."

  "That's it?"

  "No, of course not." She scowled at him. "Now we go up to the garret and pack up Sybilla's clothing. Everyone in the neighborhood will know that she would have wanted Kunigunde and Ursula to share it between them. We will carry it out. We will stop and talk to a few people in the street who will see us carrying it. We won't mention that we are carrying it, because they might wonder why we are talking about something so obvious, but we will answer if anyone asks how old man Binder is."

  "We do? We will?"

  "Of course we do. Don't they teach you anything practical in 'how to be a noble school'?"

  The morning and the evening of the sixth day

  Fulda, April 1634

  "And the news from Mainz is?" Derek Utt contemplated his delegation.

  "We spent quite a bit of time with them," Joel said.

  Derek Utt raised one eyebrow. "Doing what?"

  "Hanging out, sort of," Jeffie Garand said cheerfully. "Actually, they're a lot like us when we were their age, if our parents had been rich when we were born and sent us to fancy prep schools, that is. Not outstandingly smart or dumb. Not unusually ugly or handsome. Just regular guys. If they don't watch what they eat and keep up an exercise program, all three of them are going to be buying their clothes in the corner of the men's shop that has a sign hanging over it that says 'Portly Short' by the time they're thirty. By the time they're forty for sure."

  "What we were doing was trying to find out what Wes wanted to know." Joel Matowski seriously tried to look helpful and conscientious. "Eberhard's nineteen. Friedrich's eighteen. Ulrich will be sixteen next month. The reason all three of them are on Nils Brahe's staff in Mainz is that they're supposed to be learning their trade in the army, so to speak. Eberhard thinks that Ulrich should still be under a tutor's guidance, but he wouldn't go to Strassburg with their sisters—he made a big fuss about it, apparently—so the older boys brought him along where they can keep an eye on him."

  "Why Mainz, given all the problems in Swabia? And given that in theory they're dukes of a good chunk of the general geographical spot that's Swabia. Why not with Horn?"

  "Well, if he sent them to Horn, it might make problems with the margraves of Baden. That's Swabia, too. Or remind the Württembergers that they do have their own dukes when other European countries aren't using their home turf as a battleground. I doubt that Gustav wants a self-determination movement on the Ram Rebellion model down in the southeast right about now."

  Utt grimaced. "Damn, but I hate politics."

  "They're all over the place," Joel said earnestly. "Politics, I mean. If it wasn't for the problems in the Netherlands, these kids would probably be with Frederik Hendrik. They can't very well be with Gustavus up north, given that they're first cousins to Christian IV of Denmark's sons—their moms were sisters. I gathered from Eberhard that it would be sort of touchy. Plus, on their mom's side, too, they're also some kind of cousins of George William over in Brandenburg, who's probably next on Gustav's tick-off list, once he deals with the Danes. So our illustrious emperor was sort of short on options about where to put them, I guess. Didn't want to offend them to the point that they would swing over to the other side. Didn't want to put them in the way of temptation, either. Actually, they haven't taken offense too bad. Eberhard's pretty realistic about the whole thing and the other two are following his lead."

  "Is that the whole family?" Wes Jenkins asked.

  "They've got three sisters hiding out from Horn and Bernhard in Strassburg." Jeffie grinned. "According to Eberhard, all three of them swear that they're going to grow up to be old maids. Antonia's older than the boys. According to their description, she was born to give Ms. Mailey a run for her money in the 'terrifying bluestocking' sweepstakes. For the time being, though, she's got the two little sisters on her hands, to finish bringing up in her image."

  "So, if Brahe were to send them up here for a short course in Americanization—where are the potential pitfalls?"

  "Eberhard doesn't racket around in whorehouses, if that's what you're asking," Joel said. "He's got one girl—Agathe Donner, they call her Tata—and he'll probably bring her along if he comes up to Fulda."

  Derek swallowed. "Tata?"

  "Yeah." Jeffie winked. "She's got quite a pair of tatas on her, really impressive, but that's not the reason for her nickname. It's just short for Agathe. One of her little brothers couldn't say her name right when he was learning to talk. I don't think it would be smart to tell them what it means in English."

  "Really, Derek—ah, that is, sir," Joel said. "It's not as if she'd be the only informal alliance out at Barracktown. Sure, he sleeps with her, but otherwise, he pretty much keeps it zipped up, which is pretty fair behavior for a nineteen-year-old kid who was brought up to think the world ought to be his oyster and then got slapped in the face by real life the year after his dad died. Some 'grand tour' his mom could afford by the time the uncles got their claws into what was left after she dealt with their dad's debts—their Junior Dukeships got to go to Strassburg, Basel, Mömpelgard, Lyon, and Geneva. Then they came straight back home. I suppose you could stretch a point and say that Lyon counts as France, but . . . they didn't make it to Italy or Austria or England."

  "Who's the girl?"

  Jeffie grinned. "Would you believe the daughter of the head of Mainz's Committee of Correspondence? Such as it is."

  "Ah," Derek Utt moaned. "No."

  "Her dad's perfectly happy about it. He's a lot happier than the father of Lieutenant Duke Friedrich's girlfriend."
<
br />   "Who is?"

  "The chaplain for the Calvinists in Brahe's regiments."

  "The father's the chaplain, not the girlfriend," Jeffie said deadpan.

  "He's from Hesse—from Kassel, really. His name's Marcus Pistor. A real extremist, in a Calvinist sort of way. The way Eberhard put it was, 'He studied under Gomar himself and is fanatically anti-Vorstian,' as if that was supposed to mean something to me. Well, hell, it definitely means something to him, so I guess we ought to look it up." Joel sighed.

  "Her name's Margarethe and believe me, her dad has really pissed her off, not to mention vice versa." Jeffie grinned. "She looks like Bambi's mother, but don't believe all that sweetness and light for a minute. Margarethe looks harmless, but it's deceptively harmless. Theo even calls her Rehgeißchen when he wants to make her mad."

  " 'Little Doe," Joel nodded. "Like some made-up American Indian maiden in a movie."

  "They don't like making it easy on themselves, do they?"

  "Not really."

  "Ensign Duke Ulrich doesn't have a steady girlfriend," Jeffie offered hopefully.

  "He's only fifteen," Joel snorted.

  Jeffie plowed on. "He's getting to that age, though. But I made it clear that if they do come up to Fulda, I have dibs on Gertrud Hartke."

  "Does Gertrud agree to this condition?" Wes Jenkins asked.

  "Oh, sure." Jeffie beamed confidently. "She absolutely adores me."

  The morning and the evening of the seventh day

  Essen, May 1634

  Louis de Geer stood at the window, looking out at the ever-expanding industrial base of his new republic. It wasn't pretty, but neither was his copper mining franchise in Sweden. The beauty of industrialization lay in the money that arrived in an entrepreneur's bank account.

  "The rumors seem to be," his informant was saying, "that the archbishop of Cologne has hired three, maybe four, Irish generals—well, colonels, at least—with their mercenary regiments, out of Austria. Supposedly, he made the down-payment the end of April. People seem to expect that they'll arrive in Bonn by the middle of May."

  "Which ones?"

  "Butler, Geraldin, and Deveroux, Deveroux, something like that. Dennis MacDonald is supposed to be with them, but none of my men have actually seen him. They managed to get their cavalry across Swabia somehow. Maximilian let them cross Bavaria, of course, since his brother wanted them. As for their route the rest of the way, I hear that Nasi is peering suspiciously at Egon von Fürstenberg. He is not at all happy about the proposal that the emperor is floating to unify Swabia and set a Lutheran margrave of Baden on top of him as administrator. Probably with a Lutheran military commander, too, if Sweden leaves Horn with the USE after this year's campaigns."

  "We could have lived happily and successfully without the arrival of those three—without all four of them, really. Oh, well." De Geer turned to his secretary. "Send a memo to Nils Brahe in Mainz."

  Ignoring the interruption, de Geer's informant continued on. "Also, our men have lost track of Felix Gruyard."

  "Any idea where he may have gone?" the secretary asked, steno book in hand.

  "Wherever the charming Ferdinand of Bavaria, archbishop and elector of Cologne and faithful minion of his elder brother Maximilian, chooses to send him—with uniformly undesirable results, from our perspective."

  "Such sarcasm. Your Calvinism is showing, Louis. Ferdinand's not the only ruler who employs a full-time torturer."

  "He's the only one who employs Gruyard."

  "There is that."

  "It's not that I don't have faith in God's providence," Louis de Geer said. "It's just that there are days when I suspect that He's resting again."

  Section Two: A good and spacious land . . .

  Mainz, May 1634

  Morning prayers could be hard on one's conscience, if one went about the process of self-examination honestly.

  Nils Brahe was inclined toward honesty, as much in judging himself as in judging others. As Montaigne had written, quoting Cicero, "to judge a man, we must for a long time follow and mark his steps, to see whether constancy of purpose is firm and well-founded within him." Cui vivendi via considerata atque provisa est. Not to mention that the Bible also contained more than a few well-chosen words on the topic of hypocrisy. So.

  Ahrensbök.

  Envy was not an admirable characteristic. Indeed, it was a sin. The Catholics classified it as a mortal sin. Although Lutheran theology insisted that all sins were equal in the sight of God, perhaps it was particularly sinful to envy Lennart Torstensson, who had just brought Gustavus Adolphus such a great victory. Even if the king had been heard to say that "after Torstensson," one was the prospective best strategic talent in the Swedish army.

  Oh, but the word "after" did grate.

  Envy of one's older brother was not an admirable characteristic. In anybody, at any time. Being a younger brother was a dispensation of divine providence. It was particularly un-admirable when one discovered it in oneself. Still, Per's political career in Sweden was taking off like one of the airplanes at the USE's landing field in Mainz.

  Whereas one was more or less stuck in Mainz.

  Or was one?

  Nils Brahe, still a few months away from turning thirty years old, looked up from his daily Bible readings and folded his hands behind his head, shifting his thoughts from the impersonal mode to the personal.

  According to his own close friend Erik Hand, the king had approved Johan Banér's project against Ingolstadt. Which was exasperating.

  In spite of that grating word "after," he drew some consolation from knowing the king trusted him enough that there was no equivalent of Hand watching over his activities.

  His sister Ebba was already married to Banér's brother Axel.

  His sister Kerstin was still unmarried. She was only about fifteen years younger than Erik who was, after all, the king's cousin, even if his mother was illegitimate. Fifteen years wasn't bad. Even with the crippled arm, Erik was a handsome man. Almost everyone agreed on that. Opinion was as close to unanimous as it ever got.

  He missed his wife. He would write her and ask her to come to Mainz, bringing Kerstin along. They could stay for a while—preferably until such time as Anna Margareta was expecting another child. Then she could go home again. After all, somebody had to run the estates while he was himself off contributing to the king's imperial dreams.

  Anna Margareta could bring the children. He missed his children, too.

  "Are you sure?"

  "As sure as I can possibly be," Botvidsson answered. "My information is absolutely reliable. Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar has withdrawn his cavalry units to the south. Ohm, Caldenbach, and Rosen—all three of them. They should be south of Strassburg by the day after tomorrow, which is, in my best opinion, about where they will halt and set up a screen. Which means that he's not contemplating a Turenne-style raid up the Main into the State of Thuringia-Franconia, which makes me happy. Nor is Bernhard moving any of his infantry north from the Franche Comté, so it doesn't look like he plans to meet up with the cavalry and strike east against Württemberg again, which probably is making Gustav Horn a happy man, or at least as happy as he ever gets."

  Nils Brahe smiled at his council. "True. Now he'll be worrying about what else Bernhard has in mind as far as Swabia is concerned. Or where else. If I were in the Breisgau, I would be nervous. But come, gentlemen, we have no time to waste."

  "What?"

  "Since Bernhard has been so kind as to make straight what long was crooked and the rougher places plain . . ."

  Every man at the table grasped the reference to the fortieth chapter of the book of the prophet Isaiah at once.

  Botvidsson nodded. "A highway for our God into northern Alsace." His mouth quirked. "A highway to the oil fields at Pechelbronn, which should be of great value, given what has happened at Wietze."

  Brahe nodded, his manner a little abstracted. "Of great value to us, or at least something we need to keep out of the hands of the French.
Do we need to talk to the count of Hanau-Lichtenberg?"

  "Already done. He's willing to agree to the same terms as the Brunswickers have done in regard to the exploitation at Wietze."

  Brahe nodded again, this time with satisfaction. "Remind me. What's the place called now?"

  "Merkwiller. Or Merckweiler, if you prefer the German spelling."

  "Are we getting any support from Fulda?" Stenbock asked.

  Botvidsson shook his head. "Jenkins only has the one regiment there. He'll try to send a few 'observers' with us, for at least part of the campaign. Major Utt himself and a couple of the other up-timers, for a month or so. They're already on their way. I don't think we can reasonably ask or expect any more from him. It's not as if he doesn't have problems of his own."

  The only additional question anyone asked was, "When?"

  "Tomorrow," Brahe answered. "I have plans in place, of course."

  Which he did. Of course. Envy might be a sin, but honest ambition and a desire to serve one's king well were not.

  And an unexpected window of opportunity had opened up. He had planned for the contingency.

  The other men scrambled out of the room. The next twenty-four hours would be very busy. Brahe smiled as he watched them go.

  Envy was a sin. But perhaps one could reverse the king's estimate of one's abilities in comparison to those demonstrated by Lennart Torstensson, in which case envy would no longer be an immediate problem, there being no cause for it.

  In the von Sickingen lands, near the Rhine Palatinate, May 1634

  Jeffie Garand squirmed into a somewhat more comfortable position on a rock that had never been designed as a stool. Leaning over, he whispered to Eberhard, " 'Every dog has his day?' I can't believe that some down-timer said that."

  "Montaigne did. General Brahe was just quoting him."

  "Why do General Brahe and Major Utt sound like my high school history teacher?"

  "They're trying to understand each other," Joel Matowski said. "Anyway, Major Utt's sister teaches English at the high school, so maybe he caught that teacherish attitude from her."