1635-The Tangled Web

by Virginia DeMarce

  Brahe returned to the pile of paperwork on his pedestal desk.

  Fulda, December 1634

  Melvin Springer had brought up-time office furniture to Fulda with him. He had brought a wagon-load of it. His office in what had once been the abbot's administration building now had a vinyl-covered swivel chair, a somewhat larger than standard size oblong desk with a very shiny varnished finish, a matched set of four chartreuse-green molded vinyl chairs for visitors, two steel filing cabinets, and a large framed portrait of Ronald Reagan on the wall.

  He folded his hands across his chest. "If I had known about the 'posse' project in advance, Utt, I never would have sanctioned it."

  Derek nodded solemnly. In the week since Melvin Springer's arrival in Fulda, he had heard this sort of thing a lot.

  At the moment, he was standing near one of the windows of the conference room of the SoTF administrative headquarters, positioned in such a way that if he nodded in one direction, his head was in the sun and his hair was carrot-colored, but if he cocked his head in the other direction, it appeared more rusty in the shade. Andrea Hill had previously protested that this maneuver had a very distracting effect on anyone who had to watch it.

  Not that he would deliberately do something to distract Springer, of course. Springer would probably be okay once he got settled in, he told himself firmly. Just because Springer wasn't Wes Jenkins . . .

  He refrained from saying, "At least, now we know where the Irishmen are and Brahe has planted a couple of our men and a couple of his men as horse handlers in their camp. To me, that counts as 'ahead of the game.' " He pushed his attention back to Mel Springer.

  "Prudence as a watchword . . . caution . . . all due deliberation . . . approval by the proper authorities . . . moderation . . . a temperate approach in the face of uncertainties . . ." Springer's lecture marched on.

  "Is Hoheneck back from Mainz, yet?" Harlan Stull asked. "Or did we miscalculate when we let him leave?" The veterans of NUS/SoTF service in Fulda had fled to Andrea Hill's chaotic domain since Mel Springer's arrival. He was perched on one of the high three-legged stools that her clerks used when they were searching through land records.

  "He's not back that I know of." Roy Copenhaver shook his head. "He hasn't run off to the Bavarians, though. The last I heard, Brahe had parked him with Wamboldt von Umstadt for temporary safekeeping."

  "There's some good news." Andrea pulled a pencil out of her hair. "Neuhoff, another of the provosts for the abbey, showed up yesterday, with several wagons. He brought back the monks' archives—they took them along when they ran away, back when Gustavus came through here the first time. That makes me suspect that Hoheneck intends to settle in. Neuhoff also brought back whatever they haven't used up that was in the treasury that they took along when they absconded in 1631, but I hear there's not much left."

  "When it comes to funding, something's better than nothing." Harlan slid off the stool. "That does make it seem more like Hoheneck isn't intending to scarper. Back to the old salt mines, I guess. Mel Springer has been talking to Derek. Now he wants another briefing from me."

  "This makes how many?" Roy asked.

  Harlan just rolled his eyes.

  "There's a man out in the cathedral place with an easel set up." Simrock was talking way, way too fast.

  Joel Matowski yawned. "He must like brisk weather. Other than that, there's almost always some artist wandering around town making sketches."

  "But this one is sketching almost exactly like van de Passe engraves, and he's not doing it slowly and carefully, as if he were trying to imitate van de Passe's style. He does it quickly, offhand, as if the style is natural to him." Simrock bounced up and down on his toes.

  "Well, go back and try to make friends. Chat a little. Find out if he'll open up."

  "He's not likely to chat very freely with a guy wearing an orange uniform. Artists, especially if they're political cartoonists, tend to have a sort of antsy feeling about soldiers."

  "You may have a point there. I'll go farther than that. You probably have a point there. Where are the girls?"

  "They went into the stationery shop with Eberhard and Friedrich."

  "You go in, tell Eberhard and Friedrich to stay right where they are, you stay with them, and ask the girls to come out on their own and go look over the guy's shoulder at what he's drawing. It's not as if Tata and Margarethe are ever at a loss for words."

  It took the girls about fifteen minutes to make friends.

  Friendship led to an invitation. The artist said he would be delighted to attend a Committee of Correspondence meeting held in a "wedding chapel" attached to the Fulda Barracks Regiment sutlery. In fact, he expressed the opinion that he had never imagined the existence of such an arrangement. He asked if the owners would be willing to let him sketch it. Tata said that she couldn't speak for Riffa's parents, but imagined that they certainly would be agreeable.

  A half hour after first contact, peace had broken out all over.

  "Van de Passe, yes. Your guess was correct. I am flattered, very flattered, to know that you recognize my family's style. That is my name. Willem van de Passe. I have been working in England since 1621, but this autumn I decided that it might be prudent to leave. My father has lived a charmed life—a checkered life, but a charmed one, taking into consideration that he is alive and well at the age of seventy. Those who despise him also, for some reason, merely expel him rather than arrest him or execute him. This has led to numerous sudden decisions to move all his belongings, but his life has not really been a dangerous one. The king of England, by contrast, has been arresting almost anyone who comes to his notice recently. I stopped in Utrecht to see my father and am on my way to Grantville to see my sister Magdalena."

  "Why did you come by way of Fulda?"

  "It's pretty much on my path. I came up the Rhine to Mainz, did some sketching there and picked up some ideas, and ran into Paul Moreau, who had been working up here in Fulda for a while."

  "Will you be staying in Grantville?"

  "I don't know. My brothers Crispijn the younger and Simon have been in Denmark for several years. They both say that Copenhagen is a good place to work, so I won't make my mind up until after I've talked with Magdalena."

  "Did you see the cartoon that Hartmann made of Friedrich and me while you were there? The Mainz newspaper published it. Of course, the publisher is his uncle, but it's still exciting that he got something in the paper."

  "It's really nice of you to let me look at your portfolio," Simrock said. "A lot of these are great. Is this all?"

  "There's only this one folder more. When I left Utrecht, I headed down to the southeast, following some rumors. The rumors were right. Ferdinand of Bavaria is headquartered in Euskirchen for the winter. I didn't dare sketch in public, so these drawings are from memory."

  Tata and Eberhard poked their heads over Simrock's shoulder.

  "Sit down," Margarethe said. "I'll bring them all around and show you where you are sitting. One at a time. The least we can do is behave in a decent and orderly manner when the man is kind enough to show us his drawings."

  "Yes, my dear would-be schoolmistress," her brother said.

  "I would have been, if I hadn't met Friedrich."

  "I know. I've heard it often enough." Friedrich grinned. "It's probably proof that there's no point in making plans for you Calvinists. Predestination will get to you every time."

  "Friedrich." Theo frowned. "Don't be so irreverent." He picked up one of van de Passe's drawings and frowned again. "Who's this?"

  "Didn't I label it?" Van de Passe took it back. "Ah. The Countess von Dohna—Colonel Walter Butler's wife—in full spate of a temper tantrum in the Euskirchen marketplace. She had just come from early weekday mass. Some girl selling cabbages from a wheelbarrow crossed her path and impeded her progress." He scribbled something in a corner. "Just to make sure I don't forget, as time goes by. Maybe I'll be able to use her."

  "Butler?" Simrock asked. "Walter Butler? T
he Irish colonel? The one who kidnapped the abbot and Wes and the others in August?"

  "In August," van de Passe said, "I was on the water, being very seasick during an interminable crossing on a boat that would have been over-ambitious if it called itself a decrepit tub. There was no hope of getting out on a short crossing, like Dover-Calais. King Charles's guards have too strict a watch up. I ended up having to do Bristol-Dublin on the tub and then book a separate passage to Amsterdam. Current events were my very lowest priority."

  "You have the wife," Eberhard said thoughtfully. "Do you have Colonel Butler?"

  "Oh, sure. All of them." Van de Passe shuffled around in his leather case. "Small scale—I couldn't very well try walking out of Euskirchen carrying an easel." He tossed a page on the table. "Deveroux." Another page, "Dislav, the countess's footman."

  "We really ought to take these to the major, for him to look at, if you're willing," Friedrich said. "Maybe we should get them into the papers. That way, people all over the country can be on the lookout for the kidnappers, not just the posse. It's already back, anyway, so I guess they didn't find any of them."

  Another page, "Just a hard case I spotted out on the edge of the dragoon camp."

  "Good Lord!" Jeffie Garand screeched. "That's my future father-in-law."

  "Did I get the wrong impression of him?"

  "Hell, no. I guess the posse found something, after all."

  "I'm not sure that I'm authorized to approve expenditure for such a purpose." Mel Springer pursed his mouth. "It's not a budget category. I'm willing to include a memorandum to George Chehab in the next despatch bag going to Grantville, but unless he's willing to approve a variation—"

  "These guys killed Schweinsberg," Harlan Stull exploded. "Well, not them directly, but they kidnapped him and handed him over to the actual murderers. The guy who drew them is an engraver. There's equipment here in town—not what he's used to, but basic, at least. He's willing to stay and turning the drawings into etchings, but he has to eat while he does it. And you're not willing to pay him a piddling amount to get 'Wanted' posters printed up? That's . . . Wes would have . . ."

  Andrea Hill put a hand on Harlan's elbow and tugged. On the other side, Roy Copenhaver kicked his ankle.

  "I'm a what?" Willem van de Passe asked.

  "You're a military contractor." Derek Utt nodded solemnly. "Count yourself lucky. I've arranged for you to have your own cabin out in Barracktown and meals on wheels delivered by Riffa's mom. The printer who had the engraving equipment in his back room, but no engraver, will have it carted out tomorrow."

  "What are 'meals on wheels' and who is Riffa?"

  * * *

  After supper in the Hartkes' cabin was still the best time and place for general shooting of the breeze when there wasn't a full-scale CoC meeting.

  "Why are we going to all this trouble for a Mennonite?" Theo Pistor asked. He had perched on the end of one of the picnic-style tables with his boots on the bench.

  Sergeant Hartke frowned at the boots. "Put them down."

  Theo moved. "Getting the administration to pay for publishing van de Passe's sketches, and all. They're heretics. Mennonites, I mean. He's a heretic."

  "We're getting the caricatures, dimbulb. If he uses the equipment to engrave his other drawings after hours, as long as he pays for his own disposables, it's no skin off our noses." Jeffie leaned back. "Besides, I want a copy of the one of Hartke here to give to Gertrud's mother for Christmas. Three Kings. Whatever. Whenever. For the holidays."

  "Where is Dagmar?"

  "Over at the sutlery, plotting something with Mama," Riffa said.

  Jeffie, his right thumb pointed at Theo, looked at Hartmann Simrock. "For a CoC member, I don't think that Theo is making much ideological progress."

  "Ah, his politics are radical enough to satisfy almost anybody." Riffa came over from the other side of the room. "It's just when it comes to religion that he's not making much progress."

  "Probably the best word is 'incremental,' " Simrock added. "Pretty small increments, too."

  "Stop talking about me like I wasn't in the room." Theo shook his head so hard that both of his cowlicks stood straight up.

  Joel Matowski ran through the front door, a panicked expression on his face. "Guess what just came in on the radio."

  "Okay, I'll guess. What?"

  "We're not going to have our Major Utt any more."

  Everyone else in the common room jumped up with shrieks of horror.

  "Was there an accident? Is he dead?"

  "Did someone kill him?"

  "Oh, God, please tell me that they aren't going to transfer him. The Fulda Barracks Regiment has established such a reputation for the overall worst military etiquette in the USE that anyone they send in his place will be trying to 'shape the men up.' "

  "Tsk, tsk." Joel shook his head. "Such leaping to conclusions. You should all be ashamed of yourselves."

  Gertrud took a swat at him. "Damn it, what?"

  He struck a dramatic pose. "They gave him a promotion. We're going to get Colonel Utt back next month."

  Gertrud looked at Jeffie. "You put him up to this, Jeffrey Garand. Didn't you? You had already heard, but if you had come running in like that, none of us would have believed it, you joker, so you got him to do it."

  Hartke made a gesture that threatened to take off the head of his fellow sergeant. "For this, I should forbid you to marry my daughter next month."

  His hands wrapped protectively around his neck, Jeffie ran out the door. Gertrud, pretending to be swinging a frying pan, followed him.

  Mainz, December 1634

  "Here we are, back in dear old Mainz." Eberhard sighed. After counting the cost, Tata had proclaimed that it would be cheaper for all of them to make the trip from Fulda and back again on a freight wagon instead of renting horses and then having to pay for their stabling for two weeks. Freight wagons did not deliver their passengers door-to-door. They were walking, slipping on the filthy, slushy, cobblestones.

  "It's just for Christmas," Tata said. "General Brahe asked Major Utt if you and Friedrich could come. That was quite a while ago, a couple of months. Remember, that was when you ordered your new suit." Tata frowned suddenly. "How much did you pay for that suit? Margarethe says that Friedrich is just going to wear his Fulda Barracks Regiment dress orange whenever he has to go to some official function or unavoidable party. That's much thriftier."

  "I get tired of the uniform. There's something to be said for dressing to match your status."

  "Have you paid for it?" Tata put her hands on her hips. "Who loses when the forces of oppression fail to pay the hard-working people who supply their needs? How can a shoemaker feed his children when the tooled art objects that he creates for the feet of arrogant aristocrats result only in invoices that aren't paid for months, or sometimes for years? How . . ."

  "Horn of Plenty in view," Friedrich called. "And none too soon. By the way, Tata, he paid for the suit."

  Reichard and Justina, Kunigunde and Ursula, Philipp, and three youngsters with reddish hair came pouring out the door, all yelling, "Tata! It's Tata!"

  "Veit, Lambert, Hans." Agathe did her best to hug all three of her younger brothers at once, but they, Veit in particular, were getting too big for her to accomplish the task. "Mama, Papa, Tante Kuni . . ."

  The others went on in to the taproom, leaving the delirious jumping around of the family reunion to occur in the middle of the street.

  "Good grief," Friedrich said. "She's only been gone for six months. We haven't seen our sisters for more than three years."

  "Unless the political situation calms down, we may not see them for three more." Eberhard frowned. "When is the last time you wrote?"

  "I am a virtuous brother. I write them regularly at least once a month." Friedrich stuck his nose up in the air.

  Margarethe pinched it.

  "Well, I've written them at least once a month ever since I got married. Before that, ja, it had been a while."
>
  "Quite a while," Margarethe said. "More than a while."

  "Margarethe makes me write them, so even though they've never met her, they already love her. Margarethe ordered ginger-flavored Kuchen from Nürnberg for the little ones and sent some of the treats that Riffa's mom bakes for Antonia. They should have it all by now, and love her even more. I thought maybe she should send them toys."

  "Fritzi." Margarethe yanked on his hair. "Think how long it has been since you have seen them. The 'little ones' are fifteen and fourteen. They are growing up. You don't even know how tall they are. You don't know what colors they like. The sweets were all I could do. How can you know so little about your own family?"

  Theo looked at Friedrich. "This isn't about you. This is about us. She misses Papa terribly, no matter how irritable he always has been a lot of the time." He gave her a quick hug. "We'll try, Margarethe. I'll go see him first. Maybe he'll be willing to reconcile."

  "I really don't think so," she said. "He'll just be angry that we are celebrating Christmas with Tata's family. He thinks it's a papist holiday because the early popes matched it up to some pagan celebration. The Bible doesn't say exactly what day of the year Jesus was born."

  It was a very fine new suit, Eberhard, thought, even if he was admiring himself. The extraordinarily large mirror that General Brahe's wife had installed in the vestibule of a house that had once been occupied by one of the more prosperous cathedral canons was impressive. The canon was now residing, in appropriate ecclesiastical poverty, in a small room in a boarding house near the cathedral.

  He made another half-turn, admiring the effect of his hat.

  He had bought the hat here in Mainz. It just wasn't possible to pack a hat with plumes for a trip from Fulda without crushing one of them.

  Well, maybe it was possible for a professional valet, but he didn't have one. He was doing his own packing these days. He was not capable of packing a hat with plumes in such a way that one of them did not get crushed.