by Eric Flint
"I have one of the books," Dorothea said. "It is quite lovely to read. This girl is traveling alone on a road in Spain…"
" Fools," Veronica snapped. "I would not have believed that one of those pernicious books had traveled as far as Grafenwohr. Stupid, stupid books. Infecting even my Annalise with ideas about romance. Sit down."
They sat.
"Can you boil water here?"
Moser blinked. "Yes, I have a small brazier."
"Do you have cups?"
"I have four cups."
Veronica reached into the tote bag. She should not be too hard on Annalise about her romances. All of them had learned vices in Grantville. "Very well. What all of us need right now is a good cup of coffee. Which, with your brazier and cups, I can prepare."
She made it black and she made it strong. It was clear that neither of the others cared for it much, which made no difference to her whatsoever. She wanted them awake and paying attention.
First things first. "Do you want to get married? I am quite prepared to list all the problems that it will bring for both of you, if you haven't bothered to think about them. And don't think that you have to say that you do, either of you. If you don't, either one of you, I can see to it that Dorothea and her child are taken care of. Family is family, after all, and she's not the first girl to find herself in this fix and won't be the last."
They wanted to get married. Problems and all. So they said.
"What you need, then," she said, "is money. How much do you have?"
Dorothea didn't have any. Moser still had most of his most recent month's pay.
"You'll need more. And a map of how to get to Grantville from Amberg. You do know how to get to Amberg, I presume? Grantville doesn't have any laws against Calvinists and Catholics marrying one another. Henry, my husband, is a Calvinist. I am, owing to the damned Bavarians, Catholic. And likely to remain one; changing again at my age would be more trouble than it's worth."
"And one final thing. You're not leaving Grafenwohr until after I do. Do you understand me? Not! I'm willing to help Dorothea, but being left behind to deal with Kilian when he finds out that you have eloped is way above and beyond any duty I may have to her." Veronica glared at them fiercely. "Do you understand that?"
They understood.
"Go home, now." That was to Dorothea. "Go back to work."
Moser shuddered slightly. There had to be words that were more, well, descriptive, than just "terrifying."
Veronica walked back to the pedestal where she had left the ledger she was using. On top of the ledger lay the packet of papers that Dorothea had been holding when she came in. Without the slightest sense of shame, she started thumbing through them. Paused. Read more slowly. Decided that she had better consult Rastetter again, as soon as possible. Hopefully, by the time she returned to Amberg, his family would have recovered. She tucked the papers into her tote bag, inside one of her greatest treasures-a semitransparent blue plastic expanding pocket folder, somewhat larger than the average sheet of paper, with a flap that fastened with a snap. She really loved that envelope; she had no idea how she would manage St. Veronica's Academies without it. Rain or snow, she could go anywhere and the ink on her papers never smeared or ran.
She should, perhaps, have left it in Grantville for Annalise to use.
But she hadn't. It was too useful.
She turned back to the ledger.
Chapter 27
Optiones Ineptae
Amberg, the Upper Palatinate
They had collectively kicked themselves. Mary had been so tired when she got back to the Schloss the night after Veronica left that she hadn't brushed her hair-just washed her face, brushed her teeth and then collapsed into bed. So she hadn't found the note until the next morning. It had been an object lesson on the dire consequences of sloppiness.
The other Grantvillers, Duke Ernst, Erik Haakansson Hand, her lawyer Rastetter-any of them or, if necessary, all of them combined-would normally have managed to stop her from taking off on her own, but they had been too distracted by the epidemic. Those who knew her personally were not really surprised that she had gone. She just wasn't accustomed to thinking of herself as a person of national, much less international, significance, even if the rest of them realized her importance. Her symbolic importance, at least. To some extent, as the wife of the mayor of Grantville, she even had actual importance.
Spilt milk. And, according to the report that the mayor of Grafenwohr had provided to Duke Ernst, she was having an enjoyable visit with her family. So, as Keith said, they might as well relax a little. At least, there were no reports that the diphtheria had spread to Grafenwohr.
****
The epidemic in Amberg was definitely tapering off. Balde made his entries. Only two deaths yesterday. One a child. The other, Afra Forst, a chambermaid from Pfreimd who had worked at the Schloss. Catholic. No family in Amberg, poor girl. Frau Simpson, although not Catholic herself, had generously provided a stipend for a funeral mass. She said that the maid had cleaned her rooms, and those of Frau Dreeson.
****
Grafenwohr, the Upper Palatinate
Kilian Richter and his son Hermann came back to Grafenwohr together. Johann Rothwild came separately, bringing an associate remarkably like himself. Kilian had to find them a place to stay in a cottage outside the town. Johann was, unfortunately, persona non grata with the Amberg authorities.
That didn't mean, of course, that the two men couldn't enter the town during the day. Johann's face wasn't that well-known after several years of absence. Day laborers, looking for a bit of work; transients, perhaps. Those were common enough sights in any town. If they didn't stay too long, it shouldn't be a problem, Kilian thought.
What he did think was a problem was the disappearance of quite a few of his business papers from his chest. The last ones that he would want anyone else looking at. The old ones that he had pulled out to refresh his memory about just how much pressure he could put on Arndt.
So, not even papers he could explode about. He couldn't shout and slap his wife. She was scarcely the model of the frugal and prudent housewife. The odds were high that she had been so drunk that a military company could have marched through the house playing their fife and drum and she wouldn't have noticed them. Nor could he scream at his daughter. Why hadn't she been home?
He did ask her where she had been. She answered that she had gone to her godmother's house at mid-morning and remained there the rest of the day. So much for the possibility that she might have noticed someone lurking around. Who in hell might have known about those papers?
His daughter Dorothea's reply had the advantage of being perfectly true. No matter that Tante Veronica had told her to go home, she hadn't wanted to spend the rest of the day hearing her mother snore. When she left the city hall, she had gone to her godmother's and had stayed there until it began to get dark. Kilian didn't think anything about it. Dorothea had spent a lot of time at her godmother's these past few years.
It had been a relief to Dorothea, although a little undermining to her general sense of self-importance, that apparently no one in town had taken any notice of her visit to the city hall. Not even the mayor and aldermen who, naturally, had offices in the building. And she spent so much time thinking of Nicol and their planned elopement that she forgot entirely that she had left her father's papers there.
If Dorothea had grown up in Grantville, her classmates would have been of the opinion that her head wasn't screwed on too tight. Or that she was a ditz. There were a lot of ways a person might describe Dorothea Richter, such as "sort of cute." No one would have included, "Really, really smart."
****
Nicholas Moser was working really, really, hard at not paying any attention to Dorothea Richter in public. This was in order not to arouse suspicion. He certainly did not want her father to guess about their planned elopement. This meant that whenever she was in sight, on the streets or in the marketplace of the town, he carefully looked somewh
ere else.
He had no idea who Johann Rothwild was. Rothwild had been banned from Grafenwohr years before Moser was hired. He naturally had no idea who Rothwild's companion was, since the man had never been in town before. However, when he looked at places where Dorothea wasn't, he kept seeing them.
Seeing them, sometimes, in places where a couple of casual laborers had no business being. Sometimes near Dorothea.
Horrible visions crept into his mind. He was, after all, a Calvinist. Could Dorothea's father have guessed, in spite of all his precautions? The man was Catholic. Was he going to have Moser's beloved kidnapped and-the terms came with capital letters-Immured in a Convent? Being Immured in a Convent was, in Moser's mind, roughly equivalent to being Chained in a Dungeon. Or worse than being chained in a run-of-the-mill dungeon, since it would involve a Papist Plot.
The two men disappeared from the streets of Grafenwohr for a couple of days. Moser relaxed a little. They must have moved on.
Then they came back. All of Moser's fears returned. They must have been making arrangements with a Wicked Abbess to deliver Dorothea as a prisoner.
Unlike Dorothea, Moser was "really, really smart" in the sense of book learning. Clever, conscientious, and competent in his work, just as Rastetter had said to Veronica. Cooperative and helpful to the people who came to city hall needing to receive or file documents. He was, however, somewhat deficient in the ordinary common sense department. Not to mention being, in this matter, a victim of his upbringing, complicated by a bad case of hormones.
In any case, he sat down and wrote a letter to Herr Hieronymus Rastetter, the Amberg lawyer who was working for Dorothea's terrifying aunt, expressing all his fears. He was a little doubtful about the wisdom of this. The aunt was, as she had admitted, Catholic herself. She might be in on the Papist Plot, however improbable that seemed on the face of it.
The lawyer, however, was not Catholic. He was a Calvinist, and a friend of Moser's father. He would be fully reliable. Moser told him everything he knew of the matter, without reservation.
****
Amberg, the Upper Palatinate
Rastetter had just reopened his office the day Moser's letter arrived. His family, thankfully, were all recovering. He had a huge backlog, so he put the letter on the bottom of his correspondence pile. When he did read it, ignoring all the nonsense about Immuring in Convents, the words Dreeson, Kilian Richter, and "two dangerous-looking men" practically shouted off the page at him. He grabbed his hat and headed for the Schloss.
Frau Simpson was there. He gave it to her. She took it to Duke Ernst. Or, more precisely, to Bocler, who took it to Duke Ernst. That didn't matter; the delay was approximately five minutes by her watch.
While they were waiting, Rastetter asked her if she had heard the news about Augustin Arndt-the lawyer representing Frau Dreeson's opponent in the lawsuit.
Mary shook her head. She had never even known the man's name.
"He was found dead two days ago."
"Will this epidemic never end?" she asked. "I had thought that it was pretty much over. I hope that a new chain of infection isn't starting up."
"He didn't die of diphtheria, Frau Simpson. He was found by a man who works for him, more or less regularly, as an agent and had come to the city to consult with him about some matter of business he had been handling on his behalf in Grafenwohr. Arndt's throat was cut."
Mary looked at him. "Grafenwohr?"
Rastetter never utilized profane or blasphemous expressions. He wished, right now, that he did.
After they had presented their concerns to the regent, Duke Ernst also commented, "I do wish that General Baner were here this very instant. He could say what I am thinking."
Hand did question Arndt's agent, Valentin Forst, the one who had found the body. However, there seemed to be no connection. The man was quite forthcoming about the matter he had been working on, involving ore barrels and barges, disputed payments and delayed deadlines-the ordinary routine work of a practicing lawyer. So Hand let him go back to Grafenwohr.
Forst had, of course, omitted any reference to the landgrave of Leuchtenberg from his narrative. They hadn't asked him about Leuchtenberg. There was certainly no reason for him to volunteer the information.
****
Mary Simpson had been right. The epidemic was almost over, at least the part of it on which she had been working. There had been no new infections yesterday or today. There were still people sick in the hospital, of course, and numerous convalescents.
So, she said, she was going up to Grafenwohr herself to see what was going on. At the very least, she could keep Veronica company and then make sure that she didn't walk back to Amberg alone. This was, Duke Ernst thought, basically a good idea. Naturally, she should not go alone.
"I wouldn't," Mary assured him, "even dream of it."
"Take Bocler. I will give him a letter of authorization, under my own signature, to investigate whatever is going on. A personal representative of the regent. Otherwise, talk to Hand. He'll find you someone else."
He turned and told Bocler to draft the letter.
Mary thanked him and went looking for Hand. Who, in turn, was talking to the Cavrianis.
Marc Cavriani knew perfectly well that he should stay in Amberg. Herr Pilcher had returned to the inn; the epidemic was tapering off; the negotiations were resuming. But at the thought of getting to go on a trip to Grafenwohr with Mrs. Simpson and Bocler, he started to look wistful. Marc did "wistful" very well. He had, ever since he was three or four years old. Which his father knew perfectly well, but still found it hard to resist. So Marc didn't have to progress to "wheedle." Leopold actually suggested that his son be included. Marc went off to talk to Bocler about it.
Unlike a lot of people, Marc did not find Bocler boring. They were on first-name terms by now. Or second-name terms, or nickname terms, to be precise, since Bocler was named Johann Heinrich. Marc called him Heinz. Or, if he deliberately wanted to be annoying, when Bocler was being just a tad too meticulous, Heinzerl. It really annoyed a Franconian to have someone stick a Bavarian diminutive on the end of his name.
Who else? Well, Rastetter, of course. And his clerk. And Elias Brechbuhl. Anyone else? No, that was enough.
Hand didn't see any reason why they shouldn't go ahead and leave tomorrow morning. He thought that he would come himself, as soon as he worked through some of the things on his desk. Let him know if they actually found anything behind this-send a messenger and get a company of Grenzjaeger in return. It would be that simple.
****
It was a little awkward that Veronica was staying with family. She apologized that the Hanf house really was not large enough to receive six more guests. Nor could she, really, extend hospitality in someone else's home, even if it was.
Mary said that was fine. They would take rooms at the inn. Could Veronica recommend the best one in town?
The best was not by any means first class. Except, perhaps, from the perspective of the fleas.
Veronica joined them for supper. The inn's food was not gourmet. That was why she brought a basket with her in a laudable effort to ward off the danger that her friends might come down with food poisoning. The residents of the town were well-acquainted with the facilities available at their local inns. She recommended that they buy food at the market and live on sandwiches and fruit. Bread for breakfast at the inn should be all right; however, the butter was often found to be rancid.
All in all, the five down-time men concluded, Grafenwohr offered fairly typical small-town lodgings for travelers-nothing comparable to the well-appointed establishments in cities such as Amberg and Nurnberg.
Two men watched them from a corner table at the back of the little dining room. One of them stayed.
The other went out after he had eaten, to see Kilian Richter, who was not happy to have Johann Rothwild show up at his house. If someone saw the two of them together, it might trigger memories about just who Rothwild was and why he wasn't supposed to b
e in Grafenwohr. That would completely ruin his usefulness from his Uncle Kilian's point of view. Since he was already here, however… He called Hermann in to his Stube as well and began to explain his views on the best way to eliminate the nuisance that his sister-in-law Veronica had made of herself by coming to town.
By the time Kilian had finished talking to them, it was well after dark, which meant that the city gates were closed. Rothwild had to spend the night in town. Since he had told his companion to wait for him at the inn, that man had to stay the night in town, also. He begrudged the money for a straw mattress on the floor of the inn's common sleeping room, even if it would be covered by the expense money Rothwild had gotten from someone. "Blame it on the old lady," Rothwild said. "The guy holding the purse says that she's been making a nuisance of herself for quite a while."
****
In the morning, Rastetter and his clerk, Brechbuhl, and Bocler headed for city hall to talk to the town officials. And, just in passing, while they were there anyway, to the town clerk. Marc went to talk to a shipping company about the sources of the iron ore they sent out.
The basket that Veronica had taken to the inn the night before had given her an idea during supper. She had decided to show Mary some of the places where she and her brothers and sisters had played when they were children. She wouldn't bother with a basket, though; a basket would be stiff and awkward to carry around all day. She stuffed their lunch into her trustworthy tote bag and they headed out into the country.
Veronica had her walking stick. Mary declined her offer to stop by the Hanf house on their way out of town and borrow another one. She was mildly embarrassed by her own refusal but, well, she had always prided herself on staying in shape. At her age, canes would become a fact of life soon enough; no sense in hurrying the inevitable.