by Eric Flint
Heinz had told them that the design was a variation of the nineteenth century Ewing system that had been briefly depicted in one of the books in Grantville. It moved very slowly, not more than ten miles an hour and usually less. But even at that speed, if you keep it up around the clock, a train can travel quite a ways. The distance from Amsterdam to Brussels was less than one hundred and fifty miles. Theoretically, they could have made it less than a day.
In the real world, it had taken them a little more than two days. The steam engine had had problems. One of the outrigger wheels had broken, almost derailing that coach—not theirs, thankfully. At several places along the way the track had gone askew. Still, it had been kind of interesting and it beat riding horses or (still worse) being hauled in carriages.
They hadn’t intended to make the trip on a train at all. The original plan had been to use one of the hot air dirigibles built by the same consortium that was building the hydrogen one. But there were only two of the airships, one of which was in Copenhagen, and the one that was available had promptly suffered engine failure—and of a fairly catastrophic sort. They’d managed to get the problem under control before the boiler exploded, but two of the crew had been hurt and the engine was pretty much a complete write-off.
They could have waited for the airship in Copenhagen to return, but that would have taken a few days and in any event none of them were too keen on riding through the air in a small basket right after seeing how another basket had just gotten partially parboiled.
There was this to be said for the seventeenth century. It made you reassess the way you calculated risks. Riding halfway across the Netherlands on a dinky one-rail train that was kept from falling over by a wooden wheel sounded just peachy.
“Oh, quit crabbing, Rita,” said Bonnie. “You’re just cranky because you’re nervous.”
“Well, yeah. No kidding. The last time I got dragooned into being Ms. Well-Connected Ambassadress, I got pitched into one of the world’s most famous prisons. They kept me there for a whole year. I wonder what’s waiting for us here in the Netherlands. That stands for ‘Low Countries,’ you know. They say it’s on account of the elevation but you gotta wonder a little. Dungeons have a low elevation too. ”
“Speaking of ambassadors,” said Heinz, “here comes your greeting party.”
Rita looked in the direction he was indicating. “Jesus H. Christ,” she said. Rita had little truck with down-time sensibilities on the subject of blasphemy. “That mob needs a damn train their own selves.”
* * *
A mob they may have been, but they were a courteous one—excessively so, in Rita’s opinion, although she didn’t make any objection. She didn’t, for two reasons. First, because despite her frequent complaints and protests, she understood that her job on this mission was to be a di-plo-mat, the dictionary definition of which included: “a person who is tactful and skillful in managing delicate situations, handling people, etc.” Second, because it is hard to be rude to people who are being nice to you. A few people can manage it—more than a few, if they have the benefit of New York or Paris training—but most can’t. Rita was in the latter category. There were some disadvantages to being brought up in a place like West Virginia.
When she—she alone, Bonnie and Böcler having been deftly peeled away by courtiers—was brought into the presence of Archduchess Isabella, Rita found herself being quite disarmed. Most people can manage to be polite, with a little effort. The archduchess, when she was inclined to do so—which was not always, by any means—could turn it into an art form.
She was one of the Grand Old Ladies of the European aristocracy, as grand as it can get short of being an outright queen—and for most of her life, Isabella had actually wielded more real power than all but a handful of queens in the continent’s history.
She was known as Isabella Clara Eugenia of Austria, although she’d been born in Segovia and was an infanta of Spain. Her father had been King Philip II—yes, that Philip II, the one who launched the Armada against England and whose reign was considered the heyday of Spanish power. His empire had included territories on five of the seven continents, lacking only Australia and Antarctica, and the Philippine Islands had been named after him. The reference to an empire upon which the sun never sets, which most Americans attributed to the English empire of a later day, was originally coined to refer to Philip’s.
Isabella’s mother had been no slouch in the royalty department herself. She was Elizabeth of Valois, the daughter of Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici. Isabella’s other two grandparents had been Emperor Charles V and Infanta Isabella of Portugal, on her father’s side.
While still in her twenties, Isabella Clara Eugenia had been a contender for the throne of France, being advanced for that position by the Catholic party that controlled the Parlement de Paris. In the end a different contender seized the throne, the Protestant Henry III of Navarre, who converted to Catholicism after supposedly making the famous quip “Paris is well worth a mass” and became Henry IV of France, the founder of the Bourbon dynasty.
As if in compensation—it was really just another move in the constant strife of dynasties—Isabella was given in marriage to her cousin, Archduke Albert of Austria. The representatives of the two Habsburg branches were given the Netherlands over which they would rule jointly. She was thirty-three years old at the time.
The marriage was a happy one, except for the fact that all three of their offspring had died in childhood. Their joint rule inaugurated a period of relative peace and prosperity in the southern Netherlands, and it was during that period that the great age of Flemish art began, with their patronage of such figures as Peter Paul Rubens and Pieter Brueghel the Younger.
Albert died in 1621, ten years before the Ring of Fire. Isabella then joined a religious lay order but continued to rule the Spanish Netherlands—the area that the up-timers would think of as Belgium and Luxemburg—until her nephew the Cardinal-Infante Fernando reunified the Netherlands during the Baltic War, whereupon she delegated her power to him.
Her formal power, that is to say. Nobody had any doubt at all that Isabella continued to be a major player in the continent’s power struggles.
She was a few months shy of seventy years old when Rita Simpson met her in Brussels. In one of the many, many, many examples of the so-called Butterfly Effect, she had now lived three years longer than she would have in the universe which sent Grantville through the Ring of Fire. And, despite her constant declarations of infirmity and predictions of her imminent demise, seemed as much a force of nature as ever.
* * *
Rita never had a clear memory of what she and Isabella talked about in that first meeting—first audience, rather. The archduchess said nothing at all concerning the matter that had brought Rita and her companions to the Netherlands, or anything else that could be considered business. The occasion was purely personal and informal, insofar as the term “informal” ever applied in the presence of Isabella. Even with members of her immediate family, the archduchess maintained a certain reserve—a guardedness, if you will, which was the product of a lifetime spent both watching and participating in the game of empire.
Rita spoke no blasphemies and used no terms not blessed by Good Society. And for a wonder, enjoyed herself.
* * *
Rita’s verdict on the encounter, as told to Bonnie and Heinz right afterward, was simple and quite West Virginian.
“I liked her a lot. She’s a nice old lady. Not gathering any cobwebs, though, I’ll tell you that.”
* * *
Isabella’s verdict on the encounter, as told to King Fernando and Queen Maria Anna right afterward, was simple on the surface but not below, and quite what you’d expect from a Spanish infanta whose daddy had ruled in five continents.
“She’ll do. She’s not her brother, of course. Thank God. But she’ll do.”
Dresden, capital of Saxony
By the time Gretchen finished probing Jozef and Lukasz to s
ee what they might have left out of their report, inadvertently or otherwise, she and they were sitting at the table rather than standing. Several other people had joined them there as well: Tata, Eric Krenz, the CoC leader Joachim Kappel, and the Vogtlander Wilhelm Kuefer.
She leaned back in her chair, with both hands planted on the edge of the heavy table, and gave the two Poles a long, flat-eyed, considering look.
“All right,” she said abruptly. “You need to tell me what you are willing to do for Saxony”—there was a slight stress on Saxony—“and what you are not willing to do. Before you begin, I will make clear that I do not expect you—either of you, not just Lukasz Opalinski—to do anything that could be considered opposed to Grand Hetman Koniecpolski.”
“Anything opposed to Poland,” Jozef immediately countered.
“That’s too broad,” said Gretchen. “Pissing outdoors could be considered opposed to Poland because the wind might blow foreign piss onto sacred Polish soil.”
She leaned forward, still with her hands planted on the table. “What do you really care about King Wladyslaw, Jozef? Or that pack of squabbling szlachta who’ve made the Sejm a byword for incompetence and selfishness?”
Neither Jozef nor Lukasz said anything, but they both had mulish expressions on their faces.
Gretchen shook her head. “And they say we Germans are pig-headed. Fine. I will narrow this down still further. What I want you to do is go back into Poland and spy for Saxony”—again, she emphasized that name—“with particular regard for seeing if Holk has any plans to extend his depredations into my province.”
My province. Gretchen was guessing, but she thought that a proprietary term used in such a vaguely monarchical manner might help reassure the two Poles. The Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania was what Americans would call “an odd duck.” It was partly a monarchy and partly an aristocratic oligarchy, with the royal side providing the form of the realm and the oligarchy its real content. But you could never forget what made Poland so unusual, politically. Its aristocracy was a far larger percentage of the population than in any other European country. One in ten Poles could—and did, most surely—call themselves szlachta. Even if, as was very often true, they were not significantly richer nor in possession of more land than their commoner neighbors.
Coupled to the peculiar privilege of Polish aristocracy called the liberum veto, which allowed any member of the Sejm to single-handedly nullify any proposed legislation, the end result was a nation whose real affairs were almost entirely managed by way of informal and unofficial channels. People had fierce loyalties to each other, but that abstract entity known as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth got little of it, for all the sentimentality that was so common in Polish politics.
She was pretty sure that most of Lukasz and Jozef’s real attachments were to the person of Grand Hetman Koniecpolski—with whom Gretchen had no quarrel. The war that Gustav Adolf had started against Poland was his war, as far as she was concerned. One Swedish Vasa butting heads with a Polish member of the same family for reasons that meant little or nothing to Germany’s common folk.
Let them play their stupid royal games up there by the Baltic. Gretchen’s concern was with Saxony.
Lukasz and Jozef looked at each other.
“Okay,” said Jozef, after a few seconds. “But only as it concerns Saxony and Holk!”
He raised his forefinger in admonishment. Lukasz’s came up to join it. “Only as it concerns Saxony and Holk!” he echoed.
* * *
Afterward, when they had left the Rezidenzschloss and the two Poles were alone, Jozef shook his head. “That was very rash, what you did. Telling her who you really were.”
Lukasz shrugged. “She’d already figured out we were lying about something. Aren’t you the one, o great spymaster, who keeps telling me that the best way to cover up a big lie is to confess to a small one?”
Jozef frowned. It was true that he had said that—yes, often—but…
“What really matters here is not my true identity, Jozef,” Lukasz continued. “It’s yours. It’s one thing for Gretchen Richter and her comrades to know that I’m a hussar in service to the Grand Hetman. It’s another thing entirely for them to discover that you’re his nephew and his spymaster in the USE.”
“Well. True.”
* * *
“We can’t trust them!” Eric protested. “Especially now that we know Jozef was lying to us all along.”
Gretchen studied him for a few seconds, her expression impassive. Then she shook her head. “What does trust have to do with this?”
Eric stared at her, then at Tata. Then, shook his own head. “Sometimes, Gretchen, you’re a little scary.”
“You just noticed?” said Tata.
Chapter 29
Magdeburg, capital of the United States of Europe
When Noelle entered the small audience chamber in the royal palace with Janos Drugeth, she was surprised to see the other people already there: Rebecca Abrabanel, Ed Piazza, Wilhelm Wettin and the Landgravine of Hesse-Kassel, Amalie Elisabeth. The four of them were seated in a semi-circle facing Gustav Adolf. The two still-empty chairs in the center of that semi-circle made it clear where she and Janos were supposed to sit.
Glancing around, she saw that there were no servants in the room except the one who had ushered them into it—and he was already leaving, closing the door behind him. Clearly, as had Wallenstein, the emperor of the USE had taken to heart the up-time cautions on the subject of letting servants be within earshot whenever critical matters of state were being discussed. So far, Janos had had only partial success in persuading his own emperor to follow suit. Old habits die hard with anyone; harder still, with aristocracy; hardest of all, with royalty.
Gustav Adolf gestured toward the two empty chairs. “Please, sit down. Wilhelm and Amelie, I do not believe you have met Janos Drugeth before now. He is here as an Austrian Reichsgraf and Ferdinand III’s envoy.”
Reichsgraf, was it? Janos had enough titles he could attach to his name that you’d need a team of horses to drag them around. “Reichsgraf”—the term could be translated as “imperial count”—was a rank that went back into the Middle Ages, and originally denoted someone who held a county in fief directly from the Holy Roman Emperor himself, rather than from one of the emperor’s vassals. As time passed, the real content of the title shifted and became detached from land-holding. Some Reichsgrafen held land as such, others didn’t. Janos was one of the ones who didn’t, although he retained a great deal of land in Hungary deriving from his other positions and ranks in the empire.
The significance of the title as used in this context by Gustav Adolf was subtle but unmistakable. As Reichsgraf Drugeth, Janos was here as Emperor Ferdinand III’s direct emissary and was presumed to be empowered not only to speak on his behalf but to make treaties. That also explained the presence of the four central leaders of the two major parties—at least, those parties which were well-enough organized to seriously contest the current election. There were a lot of reactionaries in the USE, some of them with real power and influence. But they’d been so demoralized by the outcome of the Dresden Crisis that they spent most of their time and energy these days bickering among themselves. For the moment, they were a minor factor in the political equation.
With the emperor of the USE and the four central political leaders present, Janos could not only make proposals but could expect them to be agreed to and signed.
Or not. But at least the possibility existed.
Prague, capital of Bohemia
To Denise’s surprise, when Eddie landed the plane at Prague’s airstrip, her mother, Christin George, was there to greet her. So far as Denise had been aware, her mother was still living in Grantville.
“Hi, Mom!” she said, rushing up to give her a hug. “When did you get to Prague? And what’s the reason for the visit? I hope you didn’t come all the way here just to see me. ‘Cause once I talk to Don Francisco so he can set Minnie and this doofus st
raight”—the thumb of accusation pointed over her shoulder at Eddie Junker, who was now getting out of the plane—“I’m heading straight back to Vienna. Where everything’s happening.”
* * *
Christin George took her time with returning the hug. Her daughter had reacted to her father’s murder during the Dreeson Incident the way Denise usually reacted to things—vigorously. She’d thrown herself into working for Francisco Nasi with the same energy that she’d thrown into becoming Eddie Junker’s girlfriend.
Christin approved of the boyfriend. Eddie was a solid guy and she thought he was a good influence on Denise. She wasn’t sure about the new boss, which was one of the reasons she’d come to Prague.
The main reason, though, was as simple as it got—she and Denise were the only close family each of them had left and Christin wanted them together again. As much as possible, at least. Having Denise for a daughter was a lot like herding a very big and hyperactive cat.
“I have talked to Don Francisco, Denise. That’s one of the reasons he told you to come back here. I asked him to.”
“Mom!”
* * *
By that evening, Denise had settled down a lot. First, because the meeting she’d had with her employer—she’d demanded it, of course, right off, and a bit to her surprise had gotten it—had not gone the way she wanted.
* * *
“No. You should spend time with your mother. Minnie is quite capable of taking care of herself—better than you are, being honest about it. I don’t need two of you in Vienna and I’ve got another assignment in mind for you.”
“Which is what? Uh, boss.”
“Spending time with your mother. So off you go. Now, Denise.”
* * *
But there were other reasons, too, for her more settled state of mind. First and foremost, just being back in her mother’s company after a separation of several months. Denise’s father Buster Beasley had generally encouraged her free spirits. Her mother hadn’t dampened them, exactly—women who marry bikers in the face of fierce family disapproval are not given to caution themselves—but she had provided Denise with a certain maternal circumference. Denise had always known that she was free to roam a lot, but there were limits, mostly set by her mother.