by Eric Flint
At least, he had known enough to treat her with outward respect. He had been warned about her already in Magdeburg, before he took the letter of recommendation to Grantville. Which meant that he owed a big favor to Graf August von Sommersburg. A very big one which, undoubtedly, the count realized. And would, someday, call in. Dealing with these up-timers could be a touchy business.
Chapter 9:
“Unless It Should Happen That I Am Unlucky”
Franconia, February 22, 1634
David Stannard had been quite right the previous fall when he said that down-time Amtmaenner really had lists down pat. They had the electoral lists in shape. Every Amt had just as many pre-printed paper ballots as it had potential voters, with a dozen or so to spare in case someone made a mistake. The spares were sealed. If one was used, two different election officials had to sign an explanation of the circumstances why it was needed, written on the envelope next to the opened seal. With the spoiled ballot, crossed out, put into the envelope.
In a few places, such as the town of Gerolzhofen, the election had to be conducted under military supervision. Not many, though.
The administration had given the ram its point three. Every adult in Franconia got to vote, even the people living in the little independent enclaves, just as long as they were within the general boundaries of Wuerzburg, Bamberg, and Fulda.
So in quite a few more places, the electors had to be conducted under military supervision, so to speak. Conducted from their village of residence, where some sputtering local lord was trying to prohibit voting, to the nearest functioning polling place.
Followed by a visit from the military police to the lord or Reichsritter to explain what they planned to do if they received any information in regard to attempted retaliation against legal voters.
“We mean it” did very well in the Franconian election of 1634. “Motherhood” and “Apple Pie” were not on the ballot.
The Amtmaenner had counting the votes down pat, too. The results were tallied, certified, and delivered to Wuerzburg within a week.
With a few exceptions like Bamberg and some of the industrial towns nestled against the Thueringerwald, the towns and cities had not been enthusiastic. The guilds had led a bitter opposition, largely based on the argument that if incorporation passed, the “foreigners” would impose points six, seven, and eight of the “Twelve Points.” In most of the towns, incorporation either failed or barely squeaked by.
However, eighty percent or more of Franconia’s population did not live in chartered towns.
Some villages were solidly opposed; some few were a hundred percent opposed. Dave Stannard proposed to take a look at possible undue pressure from landlords, here and there, in spite of all the precautions that he and Scott Blackwell had taken in regard to secret ballots. The simple truth was that if a precinct only had a dozen voters, if one of them disagreed with the local boss, the boss could probably find out who it was. Even with a ballot held secret, there were a very limited number of choices about who it might have been.
Overall, however, sixty-three percent of the registered voters cast ballots in favor of the incorporation of Franconia into the State of Thuringia and citizenship for its inhabitants.
Grantville, State of Thuringia
On March 5, 1634, the Congress of the State of Thuringia adopted a formal name change, subject to a future referendum, from the State of Thuringia to the State of Thuringia-Franconia. There had originally been some discussion to the effect that as a courtesy and in the name of welcome, the name of the new region should be placed first. Arnold Bellamy pointed out that this would result in the acronym SoFT, not an image which the USE or its component states wished to present to the League of Ostend just now.
Therefore, it was SoTF. Unpronounceable, of course, but also not evocative of any undesirable associations whatsoever.
Until the next crisis, which occurred very shortly thereafter, Bellamy was in an unusually good mood.
Franconia, mid-March, 1634
Several minor lords, mostly Protestant, whose lands were enclaves within Wuerzburg and Bamberg, objected vociferously to the incorporation vote. Especially the Fuchs von Bimbach family, which turned out to have not only a Protestant branch centered in Bayreuth but also a Catholic branch with estates intermingled among those formerly belonging to the prince-bishop of Bamberg.
This, Johnnie F. found out from Meyfarth on one of his jaunts up to Bamberg, was not at all unusual in Franconia. A lot of the Reichsritter, Freiherren, and lesser local nobility had split into Catholic and Protestant branches, in order to have a foot in each camp and someone among the relatives with an arguable and viable claim to the family’s lands whenever the politico-religious situation underwent a minor shift or major earthquake.
Bamberg, mid-March, 1634
“So how are the CoC English lessons going?” Janie Kacere asked.
Eddie Junker sighed. “Apprentices. Unruly apprentices.”
“’Amid gloom and doom’ is the normal situation for first-time teachers,” she consoled him.
“Most of them are just antsy and energetic. If I tell them to write a sentence using the words pink, green, and yellow, they’ll toss paper airplanes at one another – those are quite a fad, these days – but they’ll write something like, “I got out of bed, put on my pink shirt, harnessed up my green wagon, and looked at the yellow sun.’”
“That’s not bad,” Stew Hawker said.
“Yeah.” Eddie sighed deeply. “Then there’s Otto. Frau Else’s younger son.”
“He wrote?”
“The telephone greened. Green, green. I pinked it up and said, ‘yellow!’”
“I take it,” Janie said, “that he knows better.”
“Oh, sure. He’s the best student I’ve got. He’s just … Well, he knows he’s the best student I’ve got and he takes advantage of it. None of the rest of them are anywhere near to the point of making puns in English.”
* * *
Noelle shuffled through the mail that had arrived at the Bamberg Schloss in the diplomatic pouch and picked out the letter from Ed Piazza to be read first. The one from the administrators in Suhl, second. Arnold Bellamy’s went to the bottom of the pile.
Fuchs von Bimbach is going to be the key. That was the gist of Piazza’s letter.
Well, she didn’t disagree. Here on the ground in Franconia, His Bimboship maybe looked even more key than he did from Grantville. Or from Magdeburg. There was a letter from Don Francisco Nasi’s office, too.
* * *
“I have to get inside,” Noelle said that evening. She rapped her knuckles on the table in front of her.
“I don’t like the idea.” Eddie Junker was chewing on his lower lip. “Ja, Helmut has supporters among the servants there. Bimbach’s subjects don’t have any love for their lord and master. Frau Else can put you in touch. But if the bosses catch on that you’re not just one of the Ram’s people but also that you’re an up-timer, there would be hell to pay.”
“It’s not that dangerous. After three years talking mainly to Germans, my German is pretty good. Plus, with all the different dialects, accent isn’t that much of a problem. I can avoid the castle authorities. I’ll be Downstairs, not Upstairs. Even if His Bimboship’s personal staff hear me say something, it won’t be fatal. They’ll know that I’m not from right around here, but with all the population displacement that the war has caused, they’ll just think that I’m from somewhere else.”
“Do you actually trust the old Neidecker woman?”
“Not as long as her daughter is in that castle. She lived through the witch trials. It’s not like the nun who’s helping us.”
Eddie nodded. Anna Maria Junius at the Dominican convent in Bamberg was so grateful to Grantville for saving her sister Veronica when those fanatics hauled her into Suhl a couple of years ago that she had really gone out of her way to help the NUS administration.
“Taking Johnnie F. and Willard in and patching them up last fall. Every
thing. I’d trust Sister Anna Maria with my life.” Noelle grinned. “I do trust her with my political maneuvers. That history of Bamberg during the war that she’s writing has been a lifesaver when it comes to figuring out the various factions and such. Die alte Neideckerin, though. In her heart, I think, she’s afraid that we’ll be putting Judith in a lot more danger if she helps us deal with von Bimbach. After all, they sent her away in the first place in order to keep her safe.”
“If you go,” Eddie said, “I’m going too.”
Noelle shook her head.
“Yes,” Eddie persisted. “I am.” He pulled out his own stack of mail. “I bet you put your letter from Arnold Bellamy on the bottom of your stack, didn’t you?”
“Umm. Yes.”
“Well, I opened mine. He’s written to Steve Salatto and Vince Marcantonio. He can’t rescind your ‘special envoy’ status when it comes from Prime Minister Stearns, but he’s made it clear to them. If you go in there, I go with you. Down-time muscle. Thick of skull and strong of arm, that’s me.”
Noelle leaned back, looking at him. Eddie was better known for brains than brawn, even though he was quite big.
“You think they’d let in someone who looks like a huge hulking bodyguard coming with the new maid that Judith Neidecker’s mother sent her from Bamberg? Me, they won’t even notice.”
Noelle pulled out her letter from Arnold Bellamy and read through it before she answered.
“Okay. It looks like you’re coming. But I don’t like it. You’re just a kid.”
“I’m as old as you are,” Eddie said. “And just as stubborn. I may not be as wrong-headed and snobbish as my father, but I’m just as stubborn as he is. Plus …” He flashed her an impudent grin, “I got my mother’s smarts, too. The combination is unbeatable.”
“Except, maybe, by Otto Kronacher.”
“Well, yeah. There’s always Otto.”
Wuerzburg, mid-March 1634
“The person with whom you are meeting this morning,” Weckherlin said, “is an agent of the Fuchs von Bimbach family. A lawyer and administrator. His name is Dr. Polycarp Lenz. Nicknamed by almost all who know him, I hear, ‘Pestilenz.’ Signifying…”
“Plague,” Steve Salatto interrupted. “Why?”
“Irascible. Irritable. Obnoxious. Obstructionist. Uncooperative. Unreasonable.”
“Got it. Enshrines all the worst qualities presupposed in a Libertarian’s view of the typical bureaucrat.”
“What is a Libertarian?” Weckherlin asked.
“A person who thinks that sort of thing about us-the noble civil servants who give of themselves unstintingly that the citizens of their country may receive their driver’s license renewals in a timely fashion.”
“What is a driver’s license?” Weckherlin had, after all, spent only a week in Grantville and that had mostly been devoted to acquiring a passport from the consular service, a health certificate from the Leahy Medical Center, and other mandatory activities that interfered seriously with getting to know more about life in the twentieth century.
“A permit to drive a motorized vehicle. Did Lenz tell us what he wants?”
“No.”
* * *
Dr. Lenz delivered a petition, signed by over two hundred of the Protestant imperial knights and petty lords of Franconia. All of Franconia, not just the parts included in the SoTF, but also Bayreuth, Ansbach, and the Nuernberg hinterland. In fact, mainly Bayreuth, Ansbach, and the Nuernberg hinterland, since the majority of those inside Wuerzburg, Bamberg, and Fulda were Catholic.
The petition was addressed to Gustavus Adolphus. It requested that he annul the election that took place on February 22, revoke its effects, and remove Franconia from the unnatural administration imposed by the foreign up-timers. That he restore it to its rightful lords, the native-born Protestant nobility. Offering, in a spirit of noble self sacrifice, that they, should the emperor see fit to burden them with the onerous task, would be willing to assume the duty of governing the heretical, rebellious, Catholic principalities.
Dr. Lenz announced that this was the third copy of the signed and sealed petition. The first had been sent to the emperor directly; the second, through one of the administration’s auditors, Herr Johann Friedrich Krausold, to Duke Wilhelm of Saxe-Weimar, who was now using the name Wilhelm Wettin. Lenz’s distaste for the latter version of the name was clear in his voice.
Steve said that he was delighted to hear it.
He didn’t know what Dr. Lenz had been expecting, but it clearly wasn’t that.
Steve really was delighted to get the full list of signers. It was the first really concrete information he had about which of the knights and lords were not going to budge from their objections to what the administration was doing. Not to mention external confirmation that Krausold had not just been griping to Meyfarth but was actively involved in undermining the administration.
Weckherlin saw Dr. Lenz out.
Steve wished he had a buzzer. But he didn’t, so he got up to walk down to the auditors’ office, where once the special commissioners had sat. He looked around. The coast was clear.
“Maydene,” he said. “You may have a little problem in your bailiwick.”
The gals promised to get right on it.
* * *
Within a minute after she stopped by to visit Eddie at Frau Kronacher’s print shop, Noelle was having to fight down laughter.
She wasn’t entirely successful, either-which drew a quick glare at her from Eddie, where he was standing at the front of the little storeroom that served him as an impromptu classroom for the apprentices.
“No, Melchior,” he said, “I know it’s pronounced the same way. But”-here he pointed to a small slate chalkboard propped up against the far wall-“in English, it’s actually spelled women. W-O-M-E-N. Not wimmin.”
“Makes no sense,” protested Melchior’s brother Otto. “That should be pronounced ‘Woe-men.’”
The glare now fell on Otto. “And you think our German doesn’t have plenty of quirks, when it comes to spelling?”
“Not as many as English,” Otto countered stoutly.
Noelle got the sense this was an old and long-running argument. Eddie shook his head, a bit wearily, and went on.
“Never mind. Let’s run through the verses again. Just the first six.”
Obediently, the small group of apprentices began chanting in English:
“Once upon a time there were three Brillo Rams Gruff – a little baby ram lamb, a medium-sized ram lamb, and their great big, sturdy, strong, daddy ram.
“Every day they trotted over to the field where there was sweet green grass and all the wimmin. Sometimes there was a fence, but that wasn’t much of a problem. The daddy Brillo ram would give the fence such a PINCH, and it would tumble over.
“One day, a bridge and a set of tracks were laid on the way to the field with the sweet green grass and plenty of wimmin. That was no problem, because the three Brillo Rams Gruff just made a nice trit-trot sound on the tracks as they went to the field with the sweet green grass and all the wimmin.
“They went to the field with the sweet green grass and all the wimmin every day. Every afternoon, the Flo lady would take them back to their own place. First she would take the daddy Brillo ram, then the medium-sized Brillo ram lamb, and last of all the little baby Brillo ram lamb.
“One day, a terrible troll blocked the tracks. It puffed and steamed with terrible smoke, and it made a loud chuffing sound, and it rattled its terrible noisy tail. It even made a terrible screeching sound, and had a terrible tinkly bell sound.
“The three Brillo Rams Gruff wouldn’t let that troll stop them from going to the field with the sweet green grass and all the wimmin."
Later, as they went out to share lunch at a nearby tavern, Noelle did start laughing. “Why in the world do you use those Brillo fables? Even by English standards, the spelling in them is crazy. Most of that stuff is supposed to be a joke.”
Eddie sighed. “Yes,
I know. But the Brillo fables are the one thing that is always sure to interest them. Especially these new ones, about Brillo and the railroad people.”
“Why’s that?”
“You need to ask? Ever since the Suhl Incident, Germans in Franconia associate everything involving your American railroad people with things they find favorable about you. Well, the farmers and most of the poorer townspeople, anyway. The guild-masters aren’t too fond of you, of course.”
Noelle thought about it, for a moment. “Still seems odd. In every one of those fables I’ve heard, Brillo’s pretty much at odds with TacRail people.”
Eddie shrugged. “Yes? So much the better. They like the interchange, you might say. Yes, Brillo is at odds with the railroad people-but it usually gets sorted out in the end, to everyone’s reasonable satisfaction. There’s a political lesson there, if you think about it.”
They walked on a very more steps. Then, Eddie added:
“Your Anse Hatfield is now quite a hero, for many people here in Franconia. Not so much because they think he is one of them, you understand. Just… that he is someone strong, whom they can deal with without fear.”
Noelle laughed again.
“What’s so funny?”
“Without fear! You do know who Anse was named after, don’t you?”
Eddie shook his head.
“Ah, wonderful. A whole new set of American fables you need to learn.” They’d arrived at the tavern. “But you’ll need to brace yourself, first. A stein of beer and a good sandwich. Then I’ll tell you about the Hatfield-McCoy feud. And the man they called ‘Devil Anse Hatfield.’”
* * *
On their way back to the print shop, Eddie said to her, “I don’t think I’ll tell the apprentices about Devil Anse.”