1635-The Tangled Web

by Virginia DeMarce

  Butler slammed his fist on the table. "Let's try to swing around to his north, by way of Bietigheim and Backnang. Maybe we can get on a southeast track from there."

  Maulbronn, Duchy of Württemberg

  "Nice monastery," Jeffie Garand said. "I thought that Protestants had given those up."

  "The first Duke Ulrich secularized it when he turned Lutheran—took it away from the Cistercians," Friedrich said. "He kept the name 'monastery' for it, but it's been a boys' school ever since. Well, that is, it was up until the wars came. I was surprised to find anyone here at all. God knows, there's hardly anyone in Mühlacker. Before the war started, it had over a thousand people."

  Johan Botvidsson appeared on their horizon, a letter in hand. "Do you know this man?"

  Eberhard took the letter. "Konrad Widerhold? From Ziegenhain, up in Hesse? Of course I know him. I've known him since I was a child. He came into Württemberg military service in 1622, after Margrave Georg Friedrich of Baden lost that disastrous battle at Wimpfen to the imperials. Our father respected him immensely. When it comes to siege craft, nobody in this part of the Germanies is his equal."

  "I know him, too," Sergeant Hartke said unexpectedly. "At least, Dagmar knows his wife."

  Everybody in the room turned around.

  "Widerhold is married to Anna Armgard. Her father used to be the commandant of Helgoland. It's a pretty small island. Dagmar's father was—still is, for that matter—the schoolteacher there. He—Dagmar's dad, his name is Niels Pedersen Menius—is something of an antiquarian, too, which is why he gave Dagmar and her sisters such peculiar names."

  "Back to the topic," Derek Utt said.

  "Anna, Wiederhold's wife, and Dagmar are the same age. They went to school together—all the years they went to school."

  Utt smirked at Brahe. "Shall we tell Horn?"

  "Only if we want to watch his hair turn white before he goes entirely bald."

  Nils Brahe and Derek Utt were sharing a copy of the latest Frankfurt paper. The latest to reach them, at any rate.

  "To be honest," Brahe said, I'm more relieved than anything else. The king may not be overjoyed by this latest joint behind-our-backs maneuver of Bernhard and the king in the Netherlands, but it turns Lorraine into a shield, albeit a very thin and narrow one, between the USE and France."

  "By which you mean that if Turenne raids again, at least he'll have to go through somebody else's army first."

  "Basically. Also, Fernando has conveniently swallowed up a very large number of Catholics. If those territories had been folded into the Province of Westphalia, they would have seriously changed the complexion of the region that Frederik of Denmark is administering. I can't quite see Wettin and Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel, or, for that matter, Gustavus, wanting to add another province with a predominantly Catholic population to the USE. Either way, it would have turned into a huge bone of contention in parliament, right in the middle of the campaigning in the east."

  "Which way next?" Derek Utt asked.

  "Horn's block succeeded." Brahe gave one of his first genuine smiles in days. "So far, at least. How I love radios. His scouts say that the Irishmen are headed due east. If they keep going east, they'll hit Backnang, but the terrain isn't easy. Horn is moving his regiments east, south of Stuttgart, generally toward Schwäbisch-Gmünd. His cavalry's moving ahead. If they get there fast enough, before Butler gets past, the infantry are following in a forced march. Once they are there to hold the southern screen, the cavalry will start a screen to the north. He'll have a line between the dragoons and Bavaria."

  "Well, then. Onward and upward, I suppose."

  "General," Ulfsparre said. "General Brahe, sir, it's Duke Friedrich. Er, that is, it's Lieutenant Württemberger. He's back from our latest scout. What he saw doesn't match with what we were getting from General Horn."

  Mainz, April 1635

  Springtime at the Horn of Plenty meant spring cleaning at the Horn of Plenty. Kunigunde and Ursula, with a fleet of temporarily hired maids, were turning the inn upside down and inside out. Bedding fluttered from the window sills. Sweeps shook soot down from the chimneys.

  There was one resident for whom spring had no charms. "I wish I could have gone with Fritzi," Margarethe wailed. "I should have gone with Fritzi."

  "Look at the cartoon, Margarethe," Justina said. "It's lovely. Another van de Passe, with the archbishop of Cologne cowering in a tent somewhere out in the dreary countryside."

  "I don't want to look at cartoons. I just want Friedrich to come home."

  Kunigunde and Ursula each handed her a handkerchief.

  "If this weren't our own taproom," Reichard Donner said, "I would go out for a beer. Your wailing may drive me to it yet. Girl, if you don't stop sniveling, you are going to damage the child you are carrying. It will be born with the marks of teardrops running down its cheeks, not to mention snot dripping out of its nose."

  "At least the plague doesn't seem to have advanced east beyond Lorraine. Thus far. Except for the little pocket that our people stopped at the Rhine." Reichard Donner looked out at the meeting of the Mainz Committee of Correspondence. It could not be considered one of the larger or more effective CoC groups in the USE, but it no longer fit into the taproom at the Horn of Plenty. They had to rent space at the Freedom Arches. The holder of the Mainz franchise was of the opinion that business was business.

  "Unless, of course, some of the dragoons had already contracted it and carried it into Swabia when the Irishmen managed to cross ahead of Brahe and Utt."

  "You are a pessimist, Philipp Schaumann," Kunigunde said.

  "It has stood me in good stead throughout my life."

  "Does that mean," Margarethe asked, "that if Friedrich and Papa and Theo do capture the Irishmen, they might get the plague?"

  Ursula handed her a handkerchief.

  Justina sighed. "Pregnancy takes some girls this way. They weep from beginning to end."

  "If I had to choose between that and morning sickness," Kunigunde observed, "I think I'd rather cry."

  At the podium, Reichard was saying, "In regard to our campaign against the anti-Semitic agitators in response to the dastardly assassinations of Mayor Henry Dreeson of Grantville and the Reverend Enoch Wiley . . ."

  "No," Wamboldt von Umstadt said to Johann Adolf von Hoheneck. "No, I do not approve of riots, or of mobs taking the law into their own hands. When it comes to my obligations in connection with protection of the Jewish population in the archdiocese of Mainz, however . . . Suffice it to say that I believe that the actions of the Committees of Correspondence have greatly lightened my burden for the next few years. That isn't to say, of course, that the organization won't be taking other positions and actions in the future that will make other aspects of my burden heavier."

  Hoheneck pantomimed weighing items on the scales of justitia.

  "A pagan goddess, if there ever was one," the archbishop said. "It's amazing how thoroughly we have managed to incorporate her into our supposedly Christian ideas about life."

  Kornwestheim, Duchy of Württemberg, May 1635

  "I have to give Butler credit," Brahe said. "I'd have thought it over ten times, and then ten times more, before bringing even mounted dragoons that close to Stuttgart, given how heavily Horn has it garrisoned."

  "We're just lucky that our scouts caught them turning south. Horn's infantry—most of it—has stopped at Göppingen. He reports that he is prepared to turn them. The cavalry is going on north, in case the Irishmen head east again.

  Waiblingen, Duchy of Württemberg, May 1635

  "He's drunk," Dennis MacDonald's batman said, his face impassive.

  "Since when hasn't he been drunk?" Geraldin turned around.

  "He was possibly sober for about two hours, late Sunday morning. Father Taaffe conducted a field mass, with homily, that went on for ages and the colonel didn't remember to bring a flask."

  The batman's answer was completely deadpan.

  "So he's drunk. Old news."

&nbs
p; "This time, he's drunk and riding a horse. He's gone outside the camp. When the sentry tried to stop him, the colonel cut him with his riding whip."

  "Damn and blast. Send someone after him."

  "Butler and Deveroux are riding ahead. They want to get into Schorndorf before the city council realizes we are coming. You're the only person here of the same rank as Colonel MacDonald. If you just send people after him . . ."

  The batman didn't say it, for which Geraldin was grateful.

  If Dennis was drunk enough to fight and sober enough to remember, he would have every member of the party sent to retrieve him up on charges of insubordination. Striking a superior officer. Who knew what. Floggings would ensue. Floggings at a minimum.

  He sighed. "Order my horse saddled. Tell Shea to order his company mounted. I'll go after him."

  "There's some guy cantering down the middle of the road down there around the bend, singing," Theo Pistor reported.

  "So the local farmers are happy," Simrock said.

  "He on a really expensive horse and he's not singing in German."

  "Let's go see." Simrock shook his horse into a trot.

  "Come back here, you two idiots." Lieutenant Friedrich Württemberger admitted to himself that he had just issued an order that was not in the official book.

  Either they didn't hear him, or . . .

  Chaplain Pistor suddenly showed up next to him. "What do those two young idiots think they are doing?"

  For the first time since they met, Friedrich and his father-in-law were in harmony. Unfortunately, that was not enough to make Theo and Simrock rein in their mounts.

  Pistor rode after them, screaming fatherly admonitions.

  Friedrich looked at Hartke. "Move out. Catch up with them."

  By the time they came around the bend, Theo and Simrock had stopped the singing man. Theo had hold of the horse's head.

  A group of mounted dragoons appeared from around the next bend.

  From that point, it was hack and slash, with a counterpoint of pistol shots.

  "We won," Hartke pointed out a couple of hours later. "It wasn't exactly a by-the-book fracas, but we won. Sometimes these spontaneous skirmishes are the nastiest. In a set battle, the plan may not survive contact with the enemy, but at least you start with some kind of a plan. Sometimes you even have, 'if X, then Y, but if Q, then P and run like hell out."

  "All logic would have indicated that the dragoons should have been moving in the other direction out of Waiblingen. East, not west." Simrock frowned.

  "Human nature interfered with logic," Theo said. "The singing colonel was as drunk as a skunk."

  "If Captain Duke Eberhard loses another brother," Hertling said. "If he does . . ."

  "We were supposed to be watching out for them," Merckel said. "Two of us aren't even here. You left Bauer up at Euskirchen. I guess Heisel is still in the Irishmen's camp."

  "We won," Brahe said. "Lieutenant Württemberger's small detachment delivered two of the four Irish colonels to you, too. I understand that to mean that you are halfway to your goal."

  "You are perfectly correct," Derek Utt said. "We won."

  "Who is on the next cot?" Chaplain Pistor asked. "Who is on the other side of you?"

  Theo didn't have to twist around on his stool in the lazarette tent. He knew. "It's Friedrich."

  Pistor didn't reply.

  "Forgive them, Papa. Margarethe is expecting your first grandchild. 'Children's children are a crown to the aged.' Let me write and say that you forgive her, before it is too late. Remember, 'The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.' "

  Pistor snorted. "I am not so close to dead yet that you can get away with quoting scripture at me selectively. I taught you better than that, I hope, whether you learned the lesson or not. The next line from your first quotation is, 'And parents are the pride of their children.' Of your other one, the remainder of the verse reads, 'Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.' Nor should you try to bludgeon my tired mind with the parable of the wastrel son. The point of that is that the son repented. He realized he would be better off as the lowliest of his father's hired men. Can you tell me that Margarethe has repented this rebellious marriage? Can you assure me that she realizes she would be better off as a scullery maid in my kitchen than as the wife of that . . . ?"

  He found no word adequate to describe his opinion of Friedrich Württemberger.

  "Give her peace of heart, Papa. Please. 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.' and 'First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.' "

  Pistor shook his head. "No, the Word of God is not soft. Jesus said, 'All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.' Matthew reads also, 'I did not come to bring peace, but a sword . . . a man's enemies will be the members of his own household . . . anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me . . ."

  "Papa . . ."

  " 'For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.' Do not plague me further, Theo. The daughter I love chose a worldly treasure and until she repents, she has stored up for herself 'treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.' "

  "Forgive them before it is too late, Papa. Too late for Friedrich. Too late for you. Before you cry with the teacher in Ecclesiastes, 'In vain, in vain. Everything is utterly in vain.' "

  Chaplain Pistor turned his head to the other side of the cot.

  Derek Utt was tired of staff meetings. Still . . . he was holding one. Another one. "Brahe has to get back to Mainz to deal with the anti-Semitic movement in the Rhineland. Mostly it's been fairly orderly, but in places, it is getting out of hand."

  Joel Matowski stood at as close to attention as he ever managed to get.

  "You're going back to Fulda, Joel. You're in charge of the detachment returning MacDonald and Geraldin for trial. Kidnaping. Complicity to murder in connection with Schweinsberg's death. Have Hartke tell off twenty five men to go with you. He knows what I want, so he won't assign anyone who would get the idea of 'doing us a favor' by cutting their throats some dark night."

  "Envy may be a sin, so color me green. I wish we had gotten that duty," Simrock said in disgust the next morning. "We don't get to take them back and see them hang. We get to sort through all the debris they abandoned in their tents."

  "Yes, oh, whee." Theo picked up an oblong box that looked like a portable camp desk and unlatched it, unfolding the various parts. "This looks promising . . . what the hell?"

  Simrock shook his head. "It's not a desk. It's a field altar, with a little chalice and a tiny bottle of wine and some hosts—everything a priest needs to say mass."

  "Here's a book in the drawer underneath. It's by some guy named 'Carve' who says that he's Butler's chaplain, right on the front page," Jeffie said. "Maybe he's a friend of Gruyard and they go around carving up people together."

  "His name isn't 'Carve,' " Theo said with disgust. You're looking at capital letters, in Latin. There isn't any letter "U" the way there is in German—or in English, for that matter. The name's 'Carue' on the title page. In English, it ought to be "Carew,' I suppose, but if you printed that in Germany, almost everyone would want to say, 'Carev.' Stick with 'Carue.' Let me look."

  Jeffie tossed it to him.

  "This isn't a printed book. It's just a manuscript. He's just drawn the front to look as much like an engraved title page as he can. I guess he plans to publish it and wants the printer to have some idea of how he would like it to look, with family crests and stuff."

  "What's it about?"

  Simrock started paging through it. "God damn it, Jeffie. Run. Stop Matowski and the other the guys who are leaving with the Irishmen, right now."

&n
bsp; Jeffie ran.

  "Theo, get Colonel Utt."

  "See," Simrock said to Derek Utt. "He's labeled it a 'book of travels.' Reisebüchlein, that is. Just the front page of it has the Latin-shaped letters. The rest of it's in German. My dictionary says that Reisebüchlein means a 'guide for travelers,' but . . ."

  "It's a journal of the travels he's already done," Theo said. We read parts of it while Jeffie was chasing after you. It has notes on everywhere he's been, and where he's been is with Walter Butler as he ravaged his way across Europe these last ten years or so. He's been back to Ireland to visit his family a couple of times, but the rest of it, he's been with the Irish regiments—either with Butler or, if he wasn't in the field, with Deveroux."

  "He's written down everywhere they have been," Simrock added. "And everything they've done. Talk about evidence . . ."

  Jeffie shook his head. "He wasn't in Fulda with them when they kidnapped Schweinsberg, though. They left him behind with MacDonald."

  Derek Utt looked at him sharply.

  "Yeah, so we peeked."

  "But he does say when they caught up with their regiments again, chasing after Archbishop Ferdinand after he retreated from Bonn."

  "Simrock, take it to Joel," Utt said. "I'm sure the prosecutors will be happy to have it. Just let me write him a memo. Donner, you and Garand go with Sergeant Hartke to re-interview the rest of our prisoners. We're looking for someone named Thomas Carue, who may or may not be owning up to his name right now. Whatever he knows, we need to know it. Hartke, find me someone reliable in the middle of this mess. I need to send a memo on this over to General Brahe."

  "You can ignore all the young prisoners, Sergeant Hartke," Simrock said on his way out the door, adding "sir" at the last minute, "unless you just want them to point him out to you if you can't find him any other way. This Carue has to be somewhere in his forties. The book says he's been a priest for a long time now. If you have anyone with you who can sort out different Irish accents, take him with you." Again, he tagged on, "sir," barely in time.