He asked Dennis if he could remember anything more than "dumpy" about the man.
"Down-timer," Dennis said. "Not a miner or a construction worker or a guy who does the kind of work that keeps himself in top shape." He paused. "Wait a minute. You're not planning on doing anything dumb, are you?"
"Uh, uh."
"You're not even planning on doing anything that you maybe think is smart, are you?"
"Uh, uh. I'm not planning on doing anything at all. I'm just curious. We could ask some of the kids who live out that way . . ."
"Who's saying 'we,' white man?"
"Okay, then. I could ask some of the kids who live out that way . . . Just in case, you know."
Dennis shook his head.
****
"They were real people," Dom said that Sunday afternoon of March 4, 1635. "Real people, and now they're dead. Mayor Dreeson and the Reverend Wiley and Buster Beasley. People shot and people axed. There was blood and guts all over the street when we came out of mass."
Father Nick had clustered as many of his CCD kids as he could gather back into St. Mary's church basement to keep them away from the violence outside.
"But none of them were Catholic, were they?" Thilo Scharfenberg asked.
"What difference does that make? We knew them."
"I didn't know them," Aloys Carroll said.
"That's because they weren't Catholic," Thilo said.
Dennis shook his head. "Naw. That's because you're not grown up, so you didn't have any reason to know them. Ask your families, both of you. I'm sure that Watt Carroll knows them all. Well, knew them."
Dom looked at Pete Bartolli. "Your dad, my Uncle Phil, knows them, too. I know that. Buster came into both sporting goods stores a lot." He looked back at Thilo. "He ate at your folks' cafe sometimes, too."
"It's one thing to do business . . ." Thilo protested. "But . . ."
Father Nick started to intervene, but didn't have to.
"Turn it around, Thilo," Jacqueline said. "Think that if, oh, somebody, maybe the Ottomans, came and attacked the Catholics here in town, would you want the other people-the Baptists and the Lutherans and such-not to care because they didn't know us? Or would you want them to help?"
The afternoon wore on and as the riots were brought under control, parents gradually showed up and claimed their children. Charlotte Kovar picked up Dom as well as Dennis very late, saying that Nora was still on duty, pulling a double shift at the hospital.
It made things awfully . . . real . . . that there was a policeman escorting her.
"Okay," Dom said after they were safely in bed with the lights out. "What do we do now?"
"Ain't nothing we can."
"Yeah. There is?"
"Dom, what did you do?"
"I found out who the dumpy man is. He doesn't live here. He's only been here a few weeks, but I guess he had to get ready to make his Easter communion. Caspar knew who I was talking about, once I asked. His name's Weirauch. They call him Endres, and he's Catholic or he wouldn't have been at confession. It was a Catholic who got those people out in front of the synagogue all wound up, Dennis. We can't let him get away with it. We've got to tell someone."
"No matter how much trouble it gets us into ourselves?"
Dom pushed himself up on one elbow and punched his pillow. He nodded and then realized that Dennis couldn't see him in the dark. He sat up and hugged the pillow to his knees. "I think that's where we're at."
"We could go confess it."
"That wouldn't do any good. The priest would have to keep what we said secret."
"I'm not going to the police. They'll tell Mom."
"Anyone we go to is going to tell our moms." Dom lay down again and turned over on his stomach. "I should have just stayed hungry that night to begin with. I ended up having to stay hungry anyhow."
He thought the same thing when he got up the next morning.
"Are they having school?" he asked at breakfast.
"Oh, gosh," his Aunt Charlotte said. "As far as I know, but I didn't think to check." She turned on the radio.
Most of the news was all about the riots, but every five minutes or so, the announcer interrupted to say that the schools were closed.
Dom sighed. No reprieve. For once in his life, he would really have looked forward to going to school.
"Do we have to stay indoors?" Dennis asked.
"Not as long as you stay here in the neighborhood, I think." She stood up. "I wish at least one of your dads was in town. I wish your Uncle Dennis was in town. I'd like some backup on this decision. But no, they're all out saving the republic."
Dennis sighed. For once in his life, he would have sort of appreciated being grounded.
"Uncle Brian's here," he said hopefully. "And Uncle Phil."
"Brian's helping out at the hospital, just like practically everyone else in town who has had so much as a first aid course."
"That leaves Uncle Phil."
Phil Bartolli answered the phone and said that he thought it was okay if the boys went outdoors, as long as they stayed right in the neighborhood.
"Some days," Dennis said to Dom as they sat on the trampoline in the back yard, "a guy just can't win for losing."
"So what are we doing next?"
"I'm not going to the police."
"Father Nick?"
Dennis shook his head.
"Mr. Piazza used to teach CCD," Dom suggested.
"He's the president, now. He's way too busy to talk to a couple of kids."
Dom looked up. A middle aged man, gray with exhaustion, was dragging his footsteps in the general direction of his home. Before Dennis could stop him, he got up and ran. "Mr. Adducci," he called. "Hey, Mr. Adducci."
Eventually, Tony Adducci managed to persuade Dennis that they did have to go to the police after all. But it was better than it might have been, because he went to Press Richards with them.
****
"They're dead, guys," Dennis announced in CCD class. "We saw them when we came out of mass the day it happened, and so did a lot of the rest of you. Dead as splat can be, and now they're buried and in the ground."
"They're in heaven," Ottilia said.
"They can't be," Thilo protested. "They were all heretics. I'm not even sure, from what people said about the memorial service, that the Buster fellow was a Christian at all."
"But they are in heaven," Ottilia protested. "They have to be. Not the attackers. They're in hell. But Mayor Dreeson and the Reverend Wiley and Buster Beasley. They were good people. Mrs. Prickett says so."
"No, they were sinners. All of us are sinners," Blaise pointed out.
"Well, then, for sinners they were good people."
"Mrs. Prickett isn't a Catholic," Thilo proclaimed. "Your foster mother is a heretic, Tillie."
"Mrs. Prickett is a good heretic," Ottilia yelled.
"Dennis was right to start with. They're dead. Dead and buried and in the ground." Dom whistled a note and chanted, "The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout."
"What's pinochle," Jacqueline asked.
Father Nick drew a very deep breath.
****
Easter finally came. Sometimes, this year, it seemed like it never would. It seemed like Lent went on forever. But the church calendar said that Easter would show up on April 8, and it did, right on schedule.
"Is it wrong to celebrate," Dom asked Father Nick as he robed for early mass. "Is it wrong to celebrate when so many horrible things have been going on?"
"Never," Father Nick said. "Never, when you think about what we are celebrating. Terrible things happened in the days before the resurrection also, but they did not stop Jesus from rising from the grave. What we celebrate is that man's sin cannot prevent his salvation, so great is God's love for us."
****
The next morning, the VOA early news announced the arrest in Wurzburg of a man named Hans Andreas Weihrauch who was alleged by the authorities to have been one of the masterminds behin
d the attack on the Grantville synagogue.
Dom and Dennis felt a lot better.
Tony Adducci Sr. spent the afternoon writing a long letter to his son Tony Jr. in Basel.
****
On the first day of school after Easter vacation, Blaise put the French translation of "Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy, Gopher Guts" into general circulation, thereby winning a lot of bets.
****
Tony Jr., after he finished reading his father's letter, made a final decision in a matter he had been contemplating for nearly two years and wrote a long letter to "Father Larry, Your Eminence."
****
In Magdeburg, after he read it, Cardinal Mazzare lifted up his head and looked at Friedrich von Spee. "He'll make a good priest, and he comes to it with enough diplomatic and political experience that he won't be surprised by anything he sees."
"Why?" Spee asked. Meaning, of course, whence comes his vocation?
"He says that it's because the up-timers, the ones who have stayed behind at St. Mary's in Grantville, really need someone who knows where they are coming from and how they think. Not all the down-time priests do. Having men with down-time attitudes there, English or German, just isn't going to cut it, not in the long run."
Spee raised his eyebrows.
"They all have the highest respect for Nicholas Smithson, but . . ."
Spee waited.
"According to the boys-something that bothered them so much that they didn't even want to think about it, much less talk about it or deal with it, and that Tony Sr. held back from the police-Father Bissel, in the confessional, did not counsel Weihrauch against his plans to attack the synagogue."
"And Herr Adducci felt justified in withholding this information from the police because . . .?"
"Bissel didn't instigate the action. He didn't apparently, even encourage it. He just . . . omitted to discourage it strongly. There was nothing the police could have done with the information if they had it. So Adducci advised the boys to omit that from their narrative. Father Kircher will be counseling with Father Bissel. Plus, there were other complications."
"Aren't there always?"
"Preston Richards is a Baptist." Mazzare paused. "According to Tony Sr., there are stresses developing within the Baptist church in Grantville. Tony did not want to burden Press' conscience unduly in his dealings with Deacon Underwood, who is, among other things, not a lover of Catholics, whom he considers to be idolaters and drunkards among other undesirable personal characteristics. So . . ."
"What about the boys?"
"Press Richards told Tony that since the police managed to find other evidence linking Weihrauch to the attack, once they knew where to look, he'll try to set it up so they don't have to testify. No point in making them targets for the fanatics if it's not absolutely necessary."
Spee nodded.
"Charlotte and Nora checked with Dennis Grady, too-he being the boys' uncle and as tough a cop as they come. Basically, he said that you avoid unnecessary risks and try to minimize necessary risks, but there's no such thing as a risk-free life. And if you try to make yourself one, you're setting it up to let the bad guys win. So they both have said that they will testify if they have to and their parents have agreed-no matter how reluctantly. Not one of them wants to see Weihrauch wriggle out of a conviction."
Spee meditated briefly on the nature of a sinful world, so awry and askew that the deeds of adult men forced children to contemplate multiple shades of gray before they had even achieved a firm grasp on the distinction between black and white. "If the younger Tony is to become a priest, then you will need a seminary to form him, Your Eminence. Here in Magdeburg, among the heretics, for they will be going out into a world full of heretics and will need to accustom themselves to . . ." Spee paused, searching his memory for the up-time word, since there was no precise German or Latin equivalent. "Accustom themselves to interacting with them. Moreover, if you wish to form the priests it produces in your own image rather than as down-timers, then you must find time in your schedule-somewhere-to teach a significant number of its courses. Specifically, I would recommend, those in moral philosophy."
****
"What d'you think? If a guy swallowed a lighted grenade . . ."
Dennis whapped Dom on the shoulder. "I don't think that would work. A grenade's probably too big to swallow."
"Ja," Thilo Scharfenberg agreed. "Remember when Cunz Kloss tried to swallow a whole hard-boiled egg and it got stuck on the way down? They had to take him to Leahy to get it up again."
"Yeah, but if a guy did manage to swallow a lighted grenade . . ."
"His stomach acid would probably put the fuse out."
Dom was persistent. "All right then. If he did manage to swallow a lighted grenade, and his stomach acid didn't put the fuse out, and it exploded, how far do you think his body parts would fly? Would it be gruesomely gory?"
All of them looked at Blaise, who folded his arms, closed his eyes, and started to do mental calculations in regard to the geometrical implications of flying body parts. The variables were interesting. There would be some nice and hard like vertebrae and some soft and squishy like intestines. Soft and squishy like great green gobs of greasy, grimy, gopher guts.
****
Saint George Does It Again!
Kerryn Offord
June 1635, Grantville
Svetlana Anderovna was caught up in a most delightful dream. Yesterday she'd married the man she loved and they'd spent the night making love. She snuggled up to her lover.
Suddenly she was totally awake. Yes there was a naked body in bed with her, but it wasn't, couldn't be, Jabe McDougal. Terrified of what she'd see she slipped gently away from the warm naked male body she'd been all but wrapped around. From six feet away, with one hand on her dressing table and the other grasping her hair brush as a weapon, she was able to identify the man-John Felix Trelli.
The same John Trelli who'd been her escort to Jabe's wedding. The same John Trelli she'd been trailing along behind for months while he helped sell war bonds. The same John Trelli who'd never even tried to flirt with her. She dressed quickly and retreated to the door, her eyes never moving from the pulse she could see beating at his throat at less than a third of her own heart beat. He had to still be sleeping. Nobody could fake that low heart rate. In the near silence of the room she could hear the gentle rumble of a cat purring. But that was impossible. There was no cat in the room, just the slumbering form of John Trelli, known to some as Puss.
Svetlana carefully closed the door and walked off. Hopefully John would take the hint and remove himself before she returned. She shook herself. How could she have been so foolish as to make love to John, a virtual stranger? She'd been distraught, but surely not that distraught? Unfortunate memories of the previous evening flashed past her eyes. Someone she didn't know had thrown herself at John, and he had taken advantage of her distraught state. Svetlana nodded. Yes, it was all John Trelli's fault.
July 1635, Grantville
Sveta swung her head to see how the new hairstyle moved. Not sure what she thought about what she was seeing in the mirror, she turned to the three girls who'd dragged her to the beauty salon. "What do you think?"
"Katy's done a great job," Janie Abodeely said, referring to the beautician who'd been working on Sveta's face and hair for most of the morning. "You look absolutely scrumptious." Julia O'Reilly and Diana Cheng nodded their agreement.
Sveta badly wanted to believe her friends, but the way she'd been brought up, without a woman's influence, meant she'd never learned how to be a woman. In the mirror, she compared her appearance against her friends. She decided that she looked quite passable. She wasn't as beautiful as Julia, who was an acknowledged beauty, but she was at least as good-looking as Janie and Diana. She sighed. She'd love to be exotic looking like Diana, or at least have hair that same beautiful raven-black color, instead of the sort-of-pale-honey color she was cursed with.
She leaned closer to the mirror,
to better inspect Katy's handiwork. The eyebrow plucking had been painful, but nowhere near as painful as having her body waxed had been. However, she couldn't complain about the results. She reached out for Katy and hugged the tiny-at least compared to her-beautician. "Thank you, Katy."
"It was fun," Katy said.
"Like exploring uncharted territory," Diana suggested.
Katy giggled. "Now remember, Sveta, you need to take proper care of your skin and hair."
Sveta sighed. This new look was going to be expensive to maintain. Maybe she could . . .
"Don't even think about it," Julia said. "Just pay the nice lady so we can find you some clothes to match your new look."
The "nice lady" was Frau Trelli, the owner of Carole’s Beauty Salon. It had been Frau Trelli, John Trelli's aunt, who'd first introduced Sveta to his cousins Julia and Janie. Sveta couldn't understand why Frau Trelli was being so nice to her. If there was anybody who knew that the supposed relationship between her and her nephew was nothing more than a face-saving exercise, it was Frau Trelli. She had barely had anything to do with John since Jabe McDougal's wedding to Prudentia Gentileschi. For moment-a very brief moment-Sveta felt guilty about that. John had been the perfect camouflage for her distress when the man she loved married That Female. But it was only a brief moment. Then the memory of how he'd taken advantage of her when, distraught that Jabe was forever denied her, she threw herself at him surfaced, and she was able to firmly suppress the guilt.
"I bet she's thinking about Puss," Julia said.
Sveta looked at her friend. Why was Julia thinking that she'd waste a moment thinking about John Trelli? She knew there was nothing going on between them.
"Okay, okay, George then," Julia said, holding her hands up defensively.
The reminder that she'd jokingly said her pet name for John would be "George" lifted her spirits. She wondered how he was enjoying that nickname.
Magdeburg
"You got yourself your own pet, George?"
Puss looked away from his horse, who was thoroughly enjoying his dust bath, to the source of the comment. The speaker was another sergeant in his platoon, and the smirk on his face told Puss that the story had made its way to Magdeburg. Not that he was surprised. It had been too good to expect his family to keep it to themselves.
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