Part II
December, 1636
Before they made the trek up to the Citadelle, Carey had thought there was really no reason to do this in the dead of winter. Surely a public dedication ceremony for the new central heating and intercom systems in the garrison's barracks and mess hall could have been postponed until…um…somewhat…better…weather. Everyone invited, at least everyone who accepted, which for a grand ducal invitation was almost everyone invited, was arriving on foot. Grand Duke Bernhard refused to allow his horses to be taken out unnecessarily in this minor storm, which certainly said something about how the ghastly stuff falling from the sky today related to the rest of the winter yet to come. So, as the grand duke was walking, they were all walking.
Once the Rohan household managed to climb up the steep, winding, path, in spite of sleet borne by the prevailing wind, she sent a mental apology to the grand duke, and also to his soldiers who had endured the first couple of months of the oncoming winter without central heat. And also, she thought, all of last winter up here, too. It was like being on top of a windswept mesa. In the Arctic Circle. The only thing missing was a hungry polar bear.
At least the number of invited guests had been limited, so the ceremony was in the mess hall rather than outdoors. The grand duke, his important officers including Rohan, and the technical staff, both up-timers and down-timers who had completed this job successfully, headed for a set of temporary bleachers at one end. When Carey looked around, Marguerite was shrugging off her furs and the other girls draping their cloaks and hoods over large wooden pegs set around the walls.
The speeches didn't keep them long. The technical staff undoubtedly appreciated the complimentary nature of the comments, but, as the grand duke said, he was pretty sure they would appreciate the bonuses for coming in ahead of schedule and under budget even more. The expressions on their faces when they opened the envelopes he handed out indicated that his assumptions were quite correct. Within two hours, everything, including the remarkably terse and concise remarks by a few town officials (the grand duke tried to be nice to the city fathers, given that he had stolen their status as an imperial city right out from under them) and the refreshments, was over. The grand duke had said that it had better be over on time, given how early it got dark this time of the year, because he didn't want anyone falling and putting himself out of commission by breaking a limb on the way back down to the town and the Quartier Battant.
The invited guests moved across the drill field and down the path as a group. The grand duke, the Kloster, and Rohan were spending the night in the barracks as guests of the garrison commander and would hold a review of the troops in the morning, weather permitting. Marguerite stopped just as they reached the door and ran back to make a curtsied good-night to her father, so the rest of them paused. By the time they came out, they were several yards behind the last stragglers among the other invitees. Then Dominique called, "Where's my tote bag?" They stopped again, while she, with one of the footmen, ran back inside to retrieve it from the peg where she had hung it.
Carey drew a relieved breath when she spotted the outline of the Church of St. John the Baptist ahead. It was getting dark fast now, but once they reached the church, the worst of the downward slope would be behind them, and the path would turn into a street—a narrow street, but at least paved.
"Watch yourselves," the footman in front called back as they walked around the little bend where the path skirted the steps into the church. "Just as soon as you get to the paving, this sleet has frozen hard and you'll be trying to walk on ice." Then he called again, "Wait a minute, everybody. Stop now." Past the church, toward the archbishop's residence, there was a small cart overturned, blocking the center of the street, with two donkeys standing on the right side, tethered to one of the cart wheels, and no driver in sight.
Marguerite tried to stop, stepped forward just enough to put a foot on the paving stones, slipped and grabbed for Carey's arm. Both of Carey's feet went out from under her. She landed hard on her rump, pulling Marguerite down with her, also rump first. Shae, close behind, tripped over Marguerite and landed on her face a little to the left, her arms thrown out in front of her. They would have been in the ‘over her head' position if her head hadn't been pointed along the downward slant of the path.
Then a man came running out of the archbishop's winter-dead gardens, slipped when his feet hit the pavers, and tripped over Shae's arms. The footman who had been walking in front of them turned around in time to see a second man who held in his left hand something that was glinting in the bit of light that came out of St. John's doors behind the group. He started to move, but was defeated by the rain that was freezing on the now-upward slope he was trying to traverse. He fell on top of the man who had fallen on Shae.
Dominique, still standing on the rougher path above the paving stones, yelled, "Ride ‘em, cowboy!" swung her tote bag by its long handle at the second man, and let it fly. He dodged back a little, slipped, and fell.
The footman at the rear of the party managed to stay on his feet long enough to come forward six feet and deliberately sit on the second attacker.
Carey shook her head. "What happened?"
Marguerite blinked. "I don't have the slightest idea."
Three of the watchmen who were responsible for security on the archiepiscopal grounds showed up. Two helped Rohan's footmen. The third did not exactly run, but at least minced cautiously around the overturned cart and down the narrow street in search of the city guards. Carey and Marguerite scooted backwards onto the rougher path where Dominique was still standing and managed to clamber up without falling again. The two footmen stood up cautiously, holding onto the attackers with the help of the watchmen. Once the attacker who had tripped over her arms had been pulled part-way off her body, Shae tried to push herself up, screamed, and vomited all over him.
The city watch arrived with bags of sand that they strewed in front of themselves before they put a foot down, which Carey, now huddled with Marguerite and Dominique in the vestibule of St. John the Baptist and drinking hot mulled cider sent over by the archbishop's cook, decided was the most sensible thing that anyone in Besançon had done all day. The archbishop's housekeeper sent out heated blankets to put over Shae. Kamala, moving very cautiously, arrived with her medical bag and several more members of the city guard bearing mantle lanterns and even more sand. She diagnosed a triple break in Shae's left arm, one in the forearm, one right above the elbow, and another not four inches above that. The first, she said, probably was a result of the fall, but the other two were caused by the attacker's accidentally stomping on the arm with his heavy boot when he tripped.
She put splints on right there in the street and then looked around.
The watch sergeant shook his head. "There's no way we can take her down these icy streets on a stretcher tonight, Madame. There is too much danger that we will fall while we try to carry her and hurt her even worse."
The archbishop's housekeeper had arrived with more hot blankets to go on the stretcher before they carefully rolled Shae onto it. "Bring her inside the palace," she said.
One of the watchmen looked a little worried. "Will Archbishop von Rye agree to that?"
"Well, he's not home. He's in Dôle this week. But if he was, he certainly ought to," the housekeeper answered, "since he's supposed to be a Christian man. His uncle the late archbishop certainly would have agreed, which I know because I had the honor of serving in his household for nearly forty years before he died last summer."
Rohan's footman nodded. "Hard to argue with that." He picked up the front end of the stretcher, with two of the archbishop's watchmen on the back.
"But why?" Marguerite asked the next morning. It was closer to noon, actually.
"Grand Duke Bernhard's people are questioning the attackers," Rohan answered. At first light, they had sent a footman up to the citadel to let him know what had happened and he had come down immediately. "It appears that they are supporters of Ducos, the
man who led the assassination attempt on Urban VIII. The first one, that is—the one in Rome that the Stone boys and their associates averted. These two men have been in the city since last summer, doing casual labor. Their original purpose was to disrupt the conclave, but apparently they never found a suitable opportunity. Or, possibly, their astonishing incompetence became so obvious that Ducos' other supporters excluded them from their counsels. Neither man appears to be a clear thinker. They both rant, making odd connections between hating popes, and hating up-timers because they prevent the death of popes, and hating me because I sent my brother Soubise to England in an effort to bring their leader to justice—or, as they think, in an effort to persecute their leader for heroically attempting to rid the world of popes. They do not appear to have had any contact with Ducos himself, even by way of correspondence, for nearly 18 months, so they can't provide us with any good intelligence as to where he may be.
"So far, it is not clear whether the attack was aimed at any specific one among you, or at all of you, or had any determinable purpose at all. They certainly did not take into account that there isn't a single one of you who has ever so much as seen a pope."
****
"This Hamilton's father began life as nothing but a schoolmaster," Rohan's secretary reported, "the son of a Presbyterian minister, who in turn was the illegitimate son of some minor ‘laird' as the Scots name their untitled nobility, but still just a schoolmaster who went to Ireland fortune-hunting and opened an academy in Dublin, thereafter becoming associated with the founding of Trinity College there. A cunning fellow, by all reports, but still just a schoolmaster. Then, in the service of King James of Scotland as he weaseled his way onto the English throne, the father became first Sir James Hamilton when he was 50, after he had acquired a lot of Irish land by more than dubious means, and then, some dozen or so years past, Viscount Clanboye. Thus the young man coming is the heir to a title of nobility. A new title, a minor title, an Irish title, but still a title. All this comes, of course, from my recent brief and hurried visits among the Scots officers in the service of Grand Duke Bernhard and is hearsay. Or gossip. Still…The father holds a lot of land in County Down, acquired by defrauding Con MacNiall O'Neill, one of the most powerful of the native Irish chiefs, but still a lot of land, with his title confirmed by the English monarch when said King James of Scotland became King James of England, and more granted to him by the same King James elsewhere in Ulster. Old man Hamilton is past 70 now, but still very much alive and healthy—he divorced two childless wives before he took a third. She is Welsh and some thirty years younger than he is. Her father bought one of the baronetcies that King James put on the market for money; her brother now holds it. This boy is an only child, so one can only assume that Clanboye puts a lot of faith in the lady's virtue by believing that her son is his."
"Or was so anxious for an heir that he was willing to accept any son born in wedlock," Marguerite interrupted.
"Little cynic." Rohan smiled. His daughter rarely bypassed an opportunity to make a snide reference to her illegitimate maternal half-brother, Tancrède.
"I would say," the secretary commented, "that the precise relationships among the dates of the boy's conception, his father's second divorce, and his parents' marriage appear to have been somewhat obfuscated."
Rohan rapped his knuckles on the table. "This O'Neill you mentioned—what relation is he to Owen Roe O'Neill who was here in the summer?"
"Was, not is. Brother-in-law. They were also multiply cousins in varying degrees, of course, but that is the closest connection. Con MacNiall O'Neill left two sons also—when he died in 1619, they were just children. They were taken as wards of chancery, raised in England as Protestants, and are currently both serving as officers in the Low Countries. Thus far, neither of them has married."
"So the Hamiltons will be in feud with Owen Roe?"
"Certainly, and with the Montgomerys as well, who did the first level of fraud against Con MacNiall and then old man Hamilton pulled a favor from King James and got a third share of the whole of the Clanboye lands. Hugh Montgomery did the work of breaking O'Neill out of prison at Carrickfergus and then Hamilton cut himself in on the payoff."
****
"As the second element, I believe . . ." Rohan paused for a sip of coffee. "When I first tasted this beverage, Madame Calagna, I thought it to be surely the most horrid substance that any person ever voluntarily took into his mouth. Yet, within the week, I tried another cup of it. Then another, a couple of days following. Now every morning, and occasionally, as now, in the evening. It is quite insidious, so enlivening for the mind, rather than the dullness that ensues from hot cider."
Carey nodded. She had no objection to drinking coffee at the duke's expense. It still cost quite a lot.
"As the second element, I believe I will focus on this And to Think that I Saw It on Mulberry Street. The analysis must inquire what was, or will be, the role of simple entertaining imagination in up-time culture. In this book, we see the encouragement of a child's imagination as the imagery becomes ever more elaborate, while simultaneously warning that he should never lose his hold upon reality, as indicated by the final passage in which he goes back to the plain horse and wagon before he replies to his father's question. This, too, as in Hop on Pop, can possibly be tied to the nature of relationships that the up-timers assumed to exist between fathers and sons.
"I think ‘relationships that most up-timers thought ideally ought to exist between fathers and sons' would be closer to the mark."
****
"He hulks," Shae said.
Dominique nodded.
The guests, Mr. Hamilton and his tutor Mr. Traill, had arrived.
"He's disgusting," Shae said, "and I'm not the only one who thinks so. Twenty years old, twenty pounds overweight, too much hair, and the expression on his face only manages to go from pout to sulk and then back again. For all the world, he looks exactly like some over-entitled WVU frat boy trolling through the evening in search of a girl who's stupid enough to swallow a doctored drink."
"Shae!"
"Mom's a nurse, and she's a realist. They may not have roofies down-time, but they'll probably come up with something else, so she's made sure I know all about what some guys do. All he does is grumble and gripe."
"Well, I'll grant that." Dominique giggled. "First he gripes that he hasn't had any fun at all on his European tour, stuck with this tutor, meaning Mr. Traill, who was recommended to his father as ‘a very learned, discreet, and religious master.'
"I'd love to go to Italy, myself, but Hamilton just said, ‘We went to Florence and Rome, first, which involved a lot of art galleries and language lessons.' Then he griped, ‘After that, he made me go to Geneva, of all the dull spots on earth that he could have found. We were there much longer than I had any wish to be, because Mr. Traill decided to qualify for his ordination and receive it there, in the home of Calvin himself. We have duties of piety at the beginning and end of each day. Once we got to France, I got to start my day, after prayers, mind you, at 7 a.m. with two hours study of French or Latin, then classes in dancing and fencing, then oral French, followed by an hour of translation, followed by logic and mathematics.'
"On he goes, blah, blah, blah."
"Dominique, you are a wicked mimic." Shae grinned.
"I tried, honestly. I said that surely Mr. Traill gave him some time for entertainment and off he went again. ‘Only if you think that literary salons are entertainment. Or, while we were in Geneva, sermons.' "
"Then what's he doing here?"
"Well, according to Susanna, who heard it from the cook, who heard it from one of the footmen, who heard it from Hamilton's manservant, while they were in France, he and Mr. Traill heard the gossip regarding a search for a husband for Marguerite. Given the troubles in England, Scotland, and by extension Ulster, Hamilton decided that it's probably not smart for him to put all of his eggs in the basket his father manipulated his way into, and that he, being definitely not
only Protestant, but Presbyterian, and not quite a nonentity, clearly qualifies as Marguerite's future husband. So they weaseled their way into getting the duke's sister to send them here. It looks like Marguerite has a suitor on her hands."
****
Hamilton did not like Shae and Dominique any more than they liked him.
He was outright rude to Susanna.
Hamilton and Traill had not been in residence for a week when a package arrived from Marc Cavriani, "wherever he is at the moment," Susanna said. Her face was cheerful enough, but Dominique thought that the bright tone in her voice was more than a little forced.
The girls all started pulling off the wrapping paper right there in the entryway.
"Oooohhh!" Susanna screeched with delight. "It's a little nativity scene such as the Italians make. He must have ordered it all the way from Naples. Unless he's back in Naples, of course."
Traill's voice came from the door leading into the salon. "Destroy those idols at once."
"No!" Susanna screeched, hugging the box to her chest. "It's mine!"
Hamilton, following Traill into the entryway, reached out and snatched the box out of her hands. He was about to pull the little carvings out and smash them on the floor when Shae and Dominique each grabbed one of his wrists, Dominique with both hands and Shae more by poking her good arm through the crook of his elbow and tugging.
"Give me back my crèche!" Susanna's voice, echoed and amplified by the tile floors, resounded as far as the duke's second-floor study.
"Mom," Dominique screamed. "Mom!"
"Marguerite," Shae yelled. "Ms. Calagna!"
The footman stationed by the front door looked on rather helplessly, not at all sure what his duties might be in a situation where dissension arose among his betters in the household in which he had taken service.
"Give her back the crèche," Rohan said as he came down the stairs, followed by Carey.
Grantville Gazette, Volume 65 Page 13