1635-The Tangled Web

by Virginia DeMarce

  "Next Lutheran theological colloquy? They were at it from January through May. Count Ludwig Guenther of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt reported the results at the Congress of Copenhagen."

  Botvidsson looked at his superior with some pity. "But, sir. Everybody pretty much believes that the king—the emperor—will move against Saxony and Brandenburg in the spring. Then it will all have to be done over again, factoring in the practical problem that the electoral family of Brandenburg is Calvinist and the heir is the nephew of Gustav's queen. The next Lutheran colloquy must face reality. Under the USE constitution, although it grants Lutheranism 'state church' status, it does so in such a way that the emperor must either formally abolish the 1555 Peace of Augsburg or somehow integrate the Calvinists and sects into it."

  Brahe nodded. "Either way, Lutheranism will lose the privileged position it has held under it, ending up with—as our friend Major Utt might say, 'all of the flash and none of the cash.' "

  "Correct," Botvidsson admitted. He smiled. "But, then, so will the Catholics, which is one reason, I'm sure, that Mazzare wants archiepiscopal representatives there to watch the Lutherans while it happens."

  Barracktown bei Fulda, September 1634

  By September, the Barracktown CoC meetings had moved from the Hartke cabin to the main room of the sutlery. This was partly because they had quite a few more members than they had two months earlier. This was partly because Gertrud did, after all, have several younger half-siblings. Dagmar thought they had a right to do their lessons and play their games in peace. It was partly because the meetings sometimes became rather raucous. Mostly, however, it was because Riffa's mother was such a good cook.

  "What I think," Tata began.

  "What she thinks," Jeffie echoed.

  "What they think," Joel Matowski said, pointing at Friedrich, Tata, and Margarethe.

  "Is pretty much what the Committees of Correspondence think, at least as far as the Fulda Barracks Regiment is concerned." Eberhard laughed.

  "Well, it is," Tata said. "We're the organizers here, just like my father is in Mainz. We keep our ears to the ground, our eyes on the prize, our fingers busy corresponding with the leaders of the Ram Rebellion in Franconia, our posters of Brillo and Ewegenia posted, and any other description you can think of to indicate that we are true sons and daughters of Gretchen Richter."

  "Have you ever seen Henry Dreeson's house?" Joel shook his head. "No, don't answer that literally. I know that you haven't. It was a rhetorical question, Tata. You have an unfortunately literal mind. Gretchen doesn't need any more sons and daughters. She has a quiver full already, to borrow biblical language."

  "Ideological sons and daughters," Tata answered with dignity. "Disciples. Followers."

  "Pains in the . . ."

  Margarethe slapped Jeffie's ear. "Watch your language. You are in the presence of a respectable married lady."

  "I am? Where is she? Ow! Gertrud, she'd already swatted me. You didn't have to slap me, too."

  "What I started to say was—"

  "What she started to say was . . ."

  "Jeffrey Garand, if you don't stop that, I swear that I will hang you."

  "I apologize, teacher. I swear. Only pardon me this time and I promise to be good forevermore."

  "It's not really a good idea to make promises that you can't keep," Eberhard commented.

  "I might be good forevermore. Who knows?"

  "Try, 'until Tuesday at noon.' It has a higher level of probability."

  The door swung open.

  "Hey," Jeffie said, "it's the mailman."

  "With news, I'm sorry to say."

  "Why?"

  "It's just in from Mainz, by way of Frankfurt. Hoheneck, the Probst at the St. Petersburg estate of Fulda Abbey, arrived in Mainz. He says that Archbishop Ferdinand of Cologne had Schweinsberg tortured to death by a man named Gruyard. We took a casualty. There won't be another rescue. No legends like in your 'westerns.' The cavalry won't be riding out to bring him home."

  For several minutes, the meeting lost whatever semblance of order it had ever possessed.

  "Tata," Friedrich said. "What were you going to say before David came in?"

  "We need a publicity campaign. We need to make everyone aware of the contribution of the common man—and woman, of course—and ordinary citizens of Buchenland to the rescue of the kidnapped administrators." She threw a kiss to Joel.

  "We need newspaper articles." She pointed to Theo. "We need cartoons." She pointed at Simrock. "Actually, we need better cartoons than you draw, but beggars can't be choosers and you do have a knack for making the faces easy to recognize."

  "But everyone knows that the Fulda Barracks Regiment marched out bravely, singing its anthem, and rescued Wes and Clara. That's already been in all the papers."

  "Anthem, schmanthem," Riffa zur Sichel said. "They spend a lot more time singing naughty lyrics set to the theme song from the 'Bridge over the River Kwai' in every language any man in the barracks has ever heard of than they do to singing their anthem."

  "It's all very well to give credit to the regiment, and they did go marching out, but so did a lot of civilians. We need a campaign to give credit to the housewives, to the farm boys, to the . . ."

  Eberhard laughed. "Although it may be covetousness that settles in the mind of a shop apprentice, brought up in idleness and ease, and gives him so much assurance that he does not hesitate to leave his home-bred life, forego his place of education," he paused and waved to Theo and Simrock, "and enter into a small boat, yielding himself to the mercy of the blustering waves, merciless winds, and wrathful Neptune, yet it is also true that ambition teaches discretion and wisdom."

  "Montaigne again, I assume?" Jeffie said.

  "Yes."

  David Kronberg, Riffa's husband, otherwise known as the mailman although he was actually a post office clerk, shook his head. "What Eberhard was hinting, Tata, is that even though we're willing to admit that a lot of the searchers volunteered just because they wanted to help, still—there was a reward out. Your publicity campaign is going to have to work around that."

  She glared at them both. "We'll manage."

  Frankfurt am Main, October 1634

  Derek Utt sat on his horse, watching, as Veronica—Gretchen's grandma, Henry Dreeson's wife, and terror of the known universe—disembarked onto the pier and greeted Henry, who was halfway through his goodwill tour of Buchenland County, SoTF, in preparation for the upcoming elections. While the crowd watched Veronica and Henry, he switched his eyes to the man dressed all in black in the back of the boat.

  A couple of other passengers got off. Veronica, bless her miserly soul, had bought the cheapest possible ticket on a regular passenger barge—not, of course, that the barge captain didn't know who she was. He had made every effort to provide her with a comfortable trip up the Main.

  According to one report, Duke Bernhard's man, Raudegen, who had accompanied the old terror on the Rhine portion of her journey back from Bavaria, had threatened, in the hearing of everyone on the Mainz pier, to break the fingers of all the barge's crewmen if they did one single thing that would cause him to receive one more complaint from Veronica Schusterin verw. Richter and verh. Dreeson.

  The man in black slid out of the group, heading directly toward Utt, holding out a sheaf of paper. Credentials and more credentials, including a salva guardia from Nils Brahe in Mainz and another one from Wamboldt von Umstadt.

  His credentials were much more impressive than his appearance. Personally signed safe conducts from Brahe and the archbishop of Mainz equaled "another VIP on hand."

  Utt, who had to stay with Dreeson for the entire time he was scheduled to be in Frankfurt and then return to Fulda with Grantville's mayor safely in his charge, passed Johann Adolf von Hoheneck on to a junior officer with orders to take him up to Fulda with an escort. For the time being, Wes Jenkins could worry about him.

  Barracktown bei Fulda, October 1634

  "Every cartoonist in the country must be a
bout to fall dead with exhaustion this month." David Kronberg threw a stack of newspapers on the sutlery sales counter. "Look at this. Dreeson and Veronica leading the march against the taverns in Frankfurt where the anti-Semitic agitators were congregating. Here's another one showing the treaty between Gustavus and the king in the Netherlands."

  Simrock grabbed it. "Hey, this is a van de Passe. Here are Fernando and Maria Anna, Mike and Rebecca, Frederik Hendrik."

  Margarethe giggled. "And here, on the next page, are all the prominent fat nobles, wealthy fat merchants, and their wealthy fat wives in the Spanish Netherlands, fighting over invitations to Maria Anna's wedding."

  Jeffie took a look. "He's lightening up on all those dark lines he used to have in the background. Opening up his spaces." He handed the folded newspaper across to Pierre Biehr, the Barracktown schoolteacher, who shared it with Theo Pistor.

  "There was an article in the Jena university paper a while back," Theo said, "The student paper that publishes technical stuff. Someone in Grantville took a camera and photographed a bunch of 'plates' she found in art books and encyclopedias. Some were English, by a man named Hogarth. Some were French. The article mentioned a man named Daumier. She—the photographer in Grantville was a woman—sent a package of them to van de Passe in Utrecht."

  Simrock nodded. "Even though he's about seventy, now, he's not afraid of changing his style some. The lines here are different from what he was doing last spring. Let me run back to the barracks and get my cartoon folder." He dashed out.

  "Tonight's CoC meeting is hereby cancelled," Tata announced. "I can tell already that everyone's going to be reading the papers instead of paying attention."

  Fulda, October 1634

  Johann Adolf von Hoheneck talked. Then he talked some more.

  Wes Jenkins kept taking his glasses off and polishing them. Andrea Hill kept pushing her pencil into her hair, pulling it back out, and sticking it in somewhere else. Harlan Stull looked at the table as if his life depended on finding some kind of a bad spot in the beeswax polish. Roy Copenhaver looked at the ceiling. Fred Pence chewed thoughtfully on his thumbnail.

  About an hour into Hoheneck's presentation, Derek Utt got up, walked over to the window, and leaned against the sill.

  "So," Hoheneck concluded, "I told the priest who had been in the torture chamber, the one observing Gruyard at his work, to mark Schweinsberg's grave. I left for Mainz the same evening." He bowed.

  Wes thanked him solemnly.

  He withdrew.

  "Whew," Andrea said. "I think that falls into the general category of 'getting all the gory details.' "

  "The monks here at the abbey—the ones who stayed when the Swedes came in—aren't happy that the ones who ran away to Bonn have elected Hoheneck as the new abbot. Some of them are planning to appeal to . . ." Wes stopped. "Who do Benedictines appeal to? Do they have anything like the Jesuits' 'Father-General' who's been in the news lately?"

  Harlan shrugged. "We can ask. I can't say the question had occurred to me. We've just been dealing with this one bunch of Benedictines here. None of them ever mentioned a higher-up to me."

  "They've got something like regions—I think. But they don't have one guy at the top who can tell the individual abbeys what to do until you get up to the pope."

  Henry Dreeson, on his way back to Grantville, was sitting in on the meeting. "That's their business. Might be interesting for us to know the answer, but it's their problem—internal. This guy is our problem—external. The point is, how do you plan handle Hoheneck?"

  Harlan frowned. "I can't say that I like it that he stuck with the brother of Evil Duke Max for so long. Which side is he really on? In my opinion, he's being very cagy about where he was and what he was doing while the archbishop was arranging to have Schweinsberg and the others kidnapped."

  Dreeson shifted in his chair. "How does he know so much about how Schweinsberg died? If he wasn't right there, involved in it himself, then he must have managed to have a really long talk with that priest before he 'immediately' left for Mainz."

  "No telling." Wes Jenkins took off his glasses and polished them. "He has offered to continue his 'insider' ties with some of the archbishop of Cologne's men, for the time being. Essentially, he's offered to act as a double agent."

  "I should put him in touch with Francisco Nasi," Utt said. "Nasi's not likely to be overly trusting, and he has more contacts than we do, in a lot of different places. Louis de Geer in Essen has been feeding quite a bit of information to Nils Brahe in Mainz, but that's one other thing that I suspect Nasi knows more about than we do.

  Dreeson nodded.

  "Actually," Derek continued, "Hoheneck has gone farther than just the offer to continue his 'insider' ties. He's volunteered to General Brahe that he's willing to return to Archbishop Ferdinand's headquarters and gather further damning evidence against Gruyard and cohorts, since he thinks he'd better make a trip to Bonn and Cologne anyway, to talk the rest of the monks from the abbey into coming back to Fulda."

  Harlan Stull tipped his chair back. "I have to say that I'm surprised."

  "He made that offer to Brahe in Mainz, before he came up here to Fulda. It's not that he thinks up-timers are wonderful. I think we—right here in this room—are the first contact he's had with anyone who came back in the Ring of Fire. But he feels a most un-Christian need to obtain retribution for Schweinsberg's death, and it looks right now like Swedes and the USE and SoTF authorities are his only options."

  "I radioed Magdeburg last night," Wes said. "I'd like to see the kidnappers get theirs. I'm grateful that Hoheneck has pinned names on the marauding Irishmen and told us something about this Gruyard fellow. In the long run, though, I agree with Brahe that the material that Hoheneck brought from Archbishop Anselm Casimir is more important for a peaceful long-run settlement among all the parties that have interests along the Rhine than doing something about Schweinsberg right now is. Since Fulda borders on the Province of the Main and that's on the Rhine, peace in the region is not something we can ignore. I'm going to send the man back to Mainz, no matter how many suspicions I may have at the back of my mind."

  Roy Copenhaver said, "The newspaper editorials aren't happy that we haven't managed to catch the Irishmen. The radio commentators aren't either. Jen sent me transcripts of some of the VOA broadcasts."

  Wes shook his head. "The general theme coming down from the central office, as far as Schweinsberg is concerned, is, 'we can't get them now, but just give us time and we'll get them eventually.' " He stood up. "I'm adjourning this meeting. There's a party tonight for Henry and Veronica. Clara and I will be heading off with them tomorrow morning for Grantville. We'll all benefit from a little nap this afternoon."

  * * *

  "Couldn't you have put this meeting off until tomorrow?" Andrea Hill yawned. "Last night was about the best party we've ever thrown."

  "No. I have a proposal. As I see it, we have a window of opportunity." Derek Utt stretched his lanky frame up to its full not quite six feet and leaned his head against the window frame. The thin morning sun lit the top of his head, making it look almost as if it were on fire. When he moved away, into the shade of the room, his curly rust-colored hair reappeared. "No matter what Wes said, I can't just half-ignore the fact that they abducted the abbot of Fulda right out from under our nose and tortured him to death. And kidnapped a bunch of our own staff and held them prisoner."

  Harlan Stull crossed his arms over his barrel chest. "Wes would never have approved this crazy idea."

  "That's why I didn't bring it up until after Wes and Clara left. When he first arrived, I sure never thought that I'd be saying this, but in a way I agree with what Wes said in that farewell meeting. I sort of miss Schweinsberg."

  "Why can't it wait until after Mel Springer gets here?" Harlan asked. "You know I have to go back myself, to brief him. He's been the man on the 'Fulda desk' in Grantville ever since Stearns reached his agreement with Gustavus Adolphus. That's not the same thing as having bee
n here, living through it, but he's been assigned to replace Wes. Wes has to plunge right into his new job in the consular service, so he won't have time to give us any advice. Besides . . ."

  "Besides, you're UMWA like Mike Stearns. Wes wasn't UMWA and Mel isn't UMWA, which really means that you're in charge of making sure that the civilian administrator in Fulda doesn't get all too bureaucratic and cautious and CYA."

  Harlan jumped.

  Derek lounged against the window frame again, grinning. "That's no skin off my nose. If we get it started before Mel arrives, it will be too late for him to reverse gears. We couldn't do it by ourselves, but with Brahe's help, and his men . . ."

  "Why can't we do it by ourselves? Why involve him?"

  "We're just too damned conspicuous, Harlan. Look around. Most up-timers stand out like sore thumbs in a crowd of down-timers, even when they're wearing down-time clothes and shoes, have their hair cut by a down-timer barber, and speak German. I'm not sure what it is. Body build, to some extent. Posture. Attitude. But we're just not inconspicuous. We glow like light bulbs. It's the same for the Swedes. Think what it would be like if Brahe showed up in Naples, for a comparison, or if young Wrangel had gone into Bavaria instead of Cavriani's son. Talk about easily identifiable. The only way we could chase them down is in a regular military operation. Gustavus isn't going to give us enough manpower for that. He has different priorities. If someone is going to go sneaking after the guys who took Schweinsburg and hope to succeed, then it isn't going to be us. For just one thing, we don't have the intelligence contacts inside Ferdinand of Bavaria's people."

  "Does anyone?"

  "Hoheneck does, if he's telling us the truth about being willing to cooperate, which I think he is. Not out of idealism, but because he thinks having abbots of Fulda, 'of which he now are one,' so to speak, tortured to death is a really bad idea. Especially when it's guys who are supposed to be on their own side who did the torturing. It seems to have made him rethink his position rather drastically."