by Eric Flint
The prospect of doing so wasn’t attractive anyway. While Gretchen wasn’t afraid of horses she didn’t much like to ride them, either, any more than her husband did.
“Fine,” she said curtly. “We’ll leave tomorrow afternoon.”
“We could leave today, if you wish. There’s still plenty of daylight left and the weather’s good.”
“No. I have business to attend to before I leave.”
Eddie shrugged. “Whatever you say.”
* * *
“It may be a trap—a trick,” said Georg Kresse. “When you get there, they will toss you into a dungeon.”
Captain Eric Krenz shook his head. “I doubt if they even have a dungeon in Magdeburg. Most of the city is new, you know, built since the sack. That’s true of the Royal Palace and Government House, for sure.”
“So what?” demanded Kresse, scowling. He and Krenz didn’t get along very well. The leader of the Vogtland rebels found the young officer’s insouciance annoying.
Gretchen intervened before the dispute could escalate. “I’m not concerned about its being a trap, Georg. Gustav Adolf would have to be an idiot to do something like that, and whatever other faults he may have he’s not stupid. What concerns me is simply what the purpose of this summons might be. I don’t see what the emperor and I have to talk about.”
Kresse immediately veered from being suspicious of the emperor to being suspicious of… Gretchen herself.
“He plans to suborn you. Turn you traitor to the cause.”
Krenz barked a laugh. “What part of ‘the emperor is not stupid’ are you having trouble with, Georg?”
“It’s not funny!”
“Yes, it is. The next thing you’ll be saying—”
“Enough!” said Tata. She didn’t quite shout, but given Tata that hardly mattered. She was a young woman and short to boot, but had a very forceful personality. “There’s no point to this argument.”
She gave the Vogtlander a fierce look. “Even if Gretchen were to be swayed to treachery by the emperor’s mystical force of will—that would be in between his seizures, I guess—it would take a bit of time. By then she’ll be back and can give us all a report and we can make up our minds whether your worries are well-grounded or—”
“Stupid beyond belief,” Krenz muttered.
Tata glared at him. “I said ‘enough’! I meant it! Don’t try my patience, Eric!”
Krenz seemed suitably abashed. Gretchen doubted if he really was. More likely, he’d just decided that risking Tata’s wrath wasn’t worth the pleasure of baiting the Vogtland leader any further. When all was said and done, after all, Tata was the one in the room in position to expel Eric from her bed. Krenz might not view that possibility as a fate worse than death—not quite—but he’d certainly not be happy about it.
She herself didn’t find Kresse’s dark thoughts more than mildly exasperating. The leader of the Vogtland rebels was a capable man, but he tended to be rigid and prone to suspicion. He reminded her a lot of Gunther Achterhof—except Gunther at least had a good sense of humor. If Kresse had one, she’d never seen any evidence of it.
“Are we all agreed then?” she asked, looking around the table. “I will accede to the emperor’s summons and go to Magdeburg tomorrow.”
Her expression got rather sour. “By airplane. May God have mercy on my soul.”
Which he might or might not, she thought. She hadn’t been inside a church in years. In her defense—assuming it would carry any weight with the Creator, which it might or might not—she felt she’d been betrayed by the Catholic church she’d been raised in. The soldiers who broke into her father’s print shop, murdered him and then subjected her to more than two years of torment had claimed to be defending the Catholic cause, had they not?
Gretchen wasn’t an outright non-believer like her husband, but she’d never found another church that suited her. The Protestant denominations all seemed… drab. Reverential but joyless.
She gave everyone at the meeting plenty of time to register any further objections or raise any questions. Since there didn’t seem to be any, she declared the meeting adjourned.
* * *
“I need to talk to Jozef before I go,” she said to Tata after everyone had left the room. “Do you know where he might be found?”
Tata sniffed. “Wherever there’s liquor available and young women whose tits are bigger than their brains.”
Gretchen smiled. It was true that Jozef Wojtowicz was an incorrigible womanizer. The Pole was handsome, charming, quick-witted—rather tall and well-built, too—and never seemed to lack female companionship.
Well… “Incorrigible” was perhaps unfair. He wasn’t stupid about it. He’d never once tried to seduce Gretchen, for instance, although it was obvious he found her attractive. He’d never chased after Tata, either. Unlike most womanizers Gretchen had known, Jozef—to use an American quip—generally thought with his big head, not his little one.
“Find him, would you?” As Tata started to leave, Gretchen stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Not you, yourself. You and I have other things we need to discuss before I leave. Get someone else to do it.”
Tata sniffed again. “I have just the person.”
* * *
“Why you?” Tata gave Eric Krenz a squinty look. “Two reasons. First, because you’re handy. Second, because you know every tavern in Dresden, including the ones with the prettiest barmaids that Wojtowicz will be chasing after.”
She held up a hand, forestalling Eric’s protest. “I didn’t accuse you of chasing after them yourself, did I? But don’t tell me you don’t notice these things because you do. I’m tolerant—I used to be a barmaid myself; it’s a necessary skill in the job—but I’m not blind. Your hands may not roam but your eyes do.”
Eric’s open mouth… closed. “Um,” he said.
“Be off,” Tata commanded.
* * *
Wojtowicz arrived a little over an hour later. Krenz’s guesswork had been good—he’d found Jozef in the second tavern he’d searched.
Then, of course, half an hour had been needed to negotiate with the fellow. Like all Poles of Eric’s acquaintance, Jozef was inclined toward stubbornness. Happily, like all Poles of Eric’s acquaintance, he was also inclined to drink. So, a pleasant if too brief time had passed in which a Pole and a Saxon commiserated on the unreasonableness of women.
“What does Richter want with me now?” wondered Wojtowicz.
“Don’t know, but it’s probably nothing good.” Eric drained a fair portion of his beer stein. “As I recall, the last time she summoned you into her presence she talked you into leading a reckless sortie against besieging troops.”
Jozef looked a bit apprehensive—but only a bit. “It can’t be anything like that. We’re not at war at the moment. Well… not here, at any rate.” He waved his hand in a southwesterly direction. “Over there in Bavaria they are, but we’re not involved with that.”
Eric shrugged. “There’ll be some unpleasant task that needs doing. There always is. It’s because of Adam’s fall, I think. Although I’m not sure. I’m not a theologian.”
Jozef’s laugh was a hearty, cheery thing. A passing barmaid gave him a second look. For probably the fourth time that evening, Eric suspected.
“’I’m not a theologian,’” Jozef mimicked. “Indeed, you are not. I, on the other hand, am an accomplished student of the holy texts so I know that it was all Eve’s fault. It’s always the woman’s fault, you heathen.”
* * *
After Gretchen explained her purpose, Jozef didn’t find the quip amusing any longer.
Damned woman!
“I really think you’re… what’s the up-time expression?”
“’Spooking at shadows’?” Gretchen supplied. “You’re probably right—but I still want to find out what’s happening over there.”
“Why me?” Jozef asked, trying not to whine openly. It was a stupid question, because the answer was obvious.
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“Don’t be stupid. You’re a Pole. I want you to go into Polish territory and spy for us.”
“And that’s another thing! I am Polish, just as you say.” He tried to put on his best aggrieved expression. “And now you’re asking me to be a traitor—”
“Oh, stop it! I’m not asking you to sneak into King Władysław’s palace in Warsaw and steal state secrets. I’m asking you to go just over the border—well, a bit farther—and see what that swine Holk is up to in Breslau, or wherever he is now. Holk’s Danish, I think, or maybe German—and most of his men are Germans. So stop whining—which is phony and you know it—about your Polish pride. You know perfectly well you’ll get most of your information from other Poles on account of Holk’s men will have been plundering and raping and murdering them in the name of protecting them.”
Jozef made a face. Heinrich Holk’s reputation as the worst sort of mercenary commander was something of a byword by now in central Europe. What in God’s name had King Wladyslaw been thinking, when he hired the bastard?
“All right, I’ll do it,” he said. A sudden thought came to him. Maybe…
“But I want a favor in return.”
“What is it?”
“I want some batteries.”
Gretchen frowned. “Batteries? You mean… the electricity things? That store the electrical power?”
“Yes. Those.”
“What for?”
He tried to look simultaneously secretive and mysterious. “I’m not saying. It’s my business.”
That was fairly lame, but it was better than the alternative: I want the batteries so I can start using my radio again and get back in touch with my uncle and employer Stanislaw Koniecpolski, the Grand Hetman of Poland and Lithuania and the commander of the army facing the forces of the USE at Poznań, so I can resume spying on you for him.
Not wise.
After a moment, Gretchen shrugged. “I suppose I can spare one or two batteries.”
* * *
Later that night, having finished her preparations for the trip to Magdeburg—that hadn’t taken long; just packing a small valise—she mentioned Jozef’s request to Tata.
“What in the world would he want batteries for?—that he’d be so close-mouthed about?”
Tata sniffed. “Wojtowicz? He probably got his hands on one of those up-time sex toys—what do they call them? Bilbos, or something like that—and figures if he can get it working again he can impress one of the town’s—what do they call them? Bimbos, I think. Or dumbos.”
Chapter 6
Vienna, capital of Austria-Hungary
Minnie Hugelmair was not easy to impress. Her best friend Denise thought that was simply a function of her personality, but Minnie herself ascribed it to her glass eye.
Well, not the glass eye so much as the absence of the real one. She’d lost that in the course of a riot in the streets of Jena which got started when some drunken Lutheran apprentices interpreted a song she was singing—a German rendition of Toiling On, which had followed The Romish Lady, whose verses were as stalwartly anti-Catholic as you could ask for—as advocacy for Popery and work righteousness.
Prior to that time, Minnie had been a foundling with no particular political or theological convictions. She’d been taken in by the American Benny Pierce and taught to play the fiddle and sing, something she discovered she had a real talent for and enjoyed doing. Then she lost her eye to a thrown cobblestone—she’d gotten a concussion out of that, too—and when she regained consciousness she came to several conclusions to which she’d held firmly since.
First, since Benny had adopted her in mid-riot to keep her from being arrested and hauled away to prison, she had a fierce attachment to him. And, by extension, to all his fellow Americans since she now considered herself one as well.
Second, all theology was idiocy and all theologians were idiots.
Third, theologians being invariably supported by the state, you had to keep a close watch on all public officials, who were also prone to being idiots.
Finally, having only one eye was an advantage in some respects. In particular, a one-eyed young woman was not likely to be fooled by swindlers, charlatans—theologians being prominent in that category—or any other manner of scoundrel, especially official ones. That, because all such rascals depended upon the illusions created by stereoscopic vision. Seeing everything in two dimensions allowed a young woman to see them for what they really were.
Still, there were times…
“Wow,” she said, looking around the chamber she and Denise had been ushered into. “This is ours?”
Denise seemed a bit abashed herself—and she was normally about as easy to abash as a hippopotamus. “That’s what Noelle said.”
A few seconds of silence followed, as they continued to examine the room. Then Minnie said: “I don’t think there’s more than ten square inches of undecorated wall anywhere.”
“Doesn’t look like, does it? I’ve never seen this many portraits outside of a photographer’s studio in Fairmont my mom dragged me into once. Except these are painted. I bet one or two of them are even by that guy Michael Angelo.”
“Who’s he?”
“Some famous Italian artist. He painted the… Pristine Chapel, I think it was. Or maybe it was the Vatican. I can’t remember.”
As they’d been talking, they’d been slowly circumnavigating the room—or it might be better to say, navigating it, since there weren’t all that many open square inches of floor space either.
“It’s like a furniture show room,” Denise said, maneuvering her way around an expensive looking armchair. It was ornately carved but, from an American viewpoint, scantily upholstered.
Once they completed their investigation of the quarters they’d been assigned in the royal palace, they began examining the central item of furniture in the room.
“That is a bed, right?”
“I think so. I want this side,” said Minnie, pointing.
“Yeah, sure.” Denise and Minnie had shared a bed plenty of times and Minnie always wanted the side that let her good eye see what was coming.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come—” But the door was already opening before Denise could finish the invitation. Noelle Stull came through, looking simultaneously pleased and preoccupied.
Neither Denise nor Minnie had any trouble interpreting the peculiar combination. Noelle was pleased because for the past two days, since they’d arrived in Vienna, she’d been able to spend considerable time in the company of Janos Drugeth. She hadn’t seen the man in person since…
Well, since she more-or-less tried to shoot him on the Danube but wound up shooting the river instead. She even had a tattoo placed on her butt to commemorate the occasion, depicting a death’s head topped by a debonair feathered cap over crossed pistols and the logo I Shot The Danube.
That had been almost a year and a half ago. Since then they’d conducted their courtship by mail. Janos hadn’t seen the tattoo yet but it was becoming increasingly obvious that he would before much longer.
Probably not before they got married, though. Both of them were devout Catholics and, allowing for some leeway in how one interpreted the phrase, pretty straight-laced.
The preoccupied part of her expression was due to the reason for Noelle’s presence in Vienna. She hadn’t come here simply or even primarily to conclude a courtship. That had been an excuse which everyone found convenient because it allowed the USE and Austria-Hungary to begin comprehensive negotiations without anyone having to formally admit it.
Which they weren’t prepared to do yet because the diplomatic situation had any number of awkward aspects.
For the Austrian emperor—Ferdinand was still using that title even though he’d disavowed any intention of reconstructing the Holy Roman Empire—the awkwardness began with the fact that he was a Habsburg and his Spanish cousins were still enemies of the United States of Europe. That enmity was no formality, either. Spain and the US
E had clashed militarily in the recent past and both nations expected such clashes to continue.
For the USE and Austria both, there was the still more awkward problem that the USE was allied to Bohemia and now wanted to make peace and if possible develop an alliance with Austria—which still officially characterized King Albrecht of Bohemia as the traitor Wallenstein whose head needed to be removed as soon as possible. Not surprisingly, Wallenstein was adamant that any rapprochement between the USE and Austria had to include a settlement on the status of Bohemia that was acceptable to him.
For the moment, no ambassadors were being exchanged. Instead, a lovestruck American lady who just happened by coincidence to have the confidence of the current president of the State of Thuringia-Franconia and the probable future prime minister of the USE just happened by coincidence to be in Vienna visiting her betrothed who just happened by coincidence to be one of the Austrian ruler’s closest friends and advisers.
Hence the mixed expression on Noelle’s face. Pleased; preoccupied.
“So when does Count Dracula get to see the tattoo?” asked Denise.
Noelle gave her a look that would have been irritated if she hadn’t been in such a good mood. “That joke stopped being funny at least a year ago. And it’s particularly inappropriate since I just got back from spending a couple of hours at Janos’ church talking to the priest who’d be officiating at the wedding assuming it happens which seems pretty likely given that Janos was right there with me discussing the same issue.”
Minnie nodded solemnly. “That settles it, then. Janos Drugeth is not a vampire. Can’t be if he was standing on consecrated ground and didn’t burn right up on the spot.”
Now she looked at Denise. “And I have to say I’m with Noelle on this. That joke stopped being funny at least a year ago.”
Denise grinned. “Fine. I’ll let it go. What’s up, Noelle? I don’t think you came here just to tell me that your squeeze turns out not to be undead after all.”
Noelle pointed over her shoulder with a thumb. “They’re going to be holding some sort of fancy formal feast tonight, officially in honor of some official but really for our sake.”