by Eric Flint
Ed thanked them profoundly. And put his shoes back on. If the radio was still up, this needed to go to Mike Stearns. If not, it would have to wait until morning and there wouldn't be a thing that he could do about it.
And he had to ask Mike whether or not he could tell this last bit to Henry and Annalise.
Ed knew that Mike was back in Magdeburg for a few days, fortunately. The radio connection to Magdeburg was a lot more reliable than the one to Copenhagen.
****
Mike said not to tell them. Not that Mary and Ronnie were with the English Ladies and out of Munich. It was okay to pass the rest on, since Egli said that it was going to be in the papers in a couple of days, anyhow.
****
Magdeburg
Mike Stearns looked around the room with some exasperation. Being fair, most of his ill humor was not the fault of anyone in the room. It was simply due to the fact that Mike didn't like to fly, had never liked to fly-even in late twentieth century commercial aircraft, much less Jesse Woods' World War I-era equivalent of a tiny down-time air force-and had just had to make another flight from Copenhagen to Magdeburg to deal with pressing Prime Minister-type affairs.
To make things worse, he was fretting over Becky's medical condition. Her pregnancy was far enough advanced now that she'd decided to leave Copenhagen and return to Amsterdam. He'd wanted her to come to Magdeburg to have the baby-Grantville would have been better still-but Becky insisted that she'd be in good hands in Amsterdam, with Anne Jefferson in the city. And she needed to be in Amsterdam, able to talk readily with Don Fernando and Fredrik Hendrik, given the way the diplomatic situation was developing.
Mike had conceded, since he couldn't really argue the point. But given the mood he was in, the last thing he needed was to have a brand new development dropped on him the moment he got back to Magdeburg. It didn't help his mood any that Francisco Nasi was in a snit. And a damned childish one, in Mike's opinion.
Francisco had been scooped. Rumors that Duke Maximilian was not entirely pleased with his prospective bride-yes, he had received those, and had passed them on. But nothing that would have escalated the difference of opinion to the point that the bride returned to Austria. After all, nobody required the spouses in important political marriages to be personally compatible.
He was not made happier by Landgrave Hermann's question. "Do we know that she is returning to Austria?"
Sattler said, "Presumably. Where else would she go?"
That led to a long and meandering discussion. Don Francisco was not happy that he could not provide a definitive answer to the question. He was in a mad scramble to get more intelligence and anxiously awaiting the arrival of the diplomatic pouches.
Finally, Mike interrupted. "The answer is, we don't know. Let's just table it until we do know something. Now, as to Mary and Ronnie."
Don Francisco was also not happy that the Jesuits had known more about their whereabouts than his agents did. Overall, Don Francisco was not happy with the state of his operations in Bavaria. He expressed his exasperation that two such important, but unrelated, events had happened more or less simultaneously, so the few informants whom he did have in the duchy were having their attention pulled in two different directions.
"Are you sure," Landgrave Hermann asked, "that they are unrelated?"
"At present, I do not see any reasonable causational relationship. Nor any clear link. In the reports on the archduchess' daily activities," -he paused and thumbed through them- "she did pay one formal courtesy visit. The English Ladies paid one formal courtesy visit to her apartments. That is all." Don Francisco sighed. "Of course, I may be missing something. I certainly do not have enough agents in Bavaria that I could have her entire household observed."
"Is there anything," Hermann asked, "that we should be doing in regard to Frau Simpson and Frau Dreeson. And the nuns?"
"Well, at a minimum, if they really are headed for Grantville-which we do not know for a certainty, but have only the Jesuits' word for it-we should notify Duke Ernst and Baner of the possibility that they may attempt to cross the Danube into the Upper Palatinate. But we have no idea where."
Just in case somebody might be getting fancy ideas, Philipp Sattler warned, "And there's no point in having us send somebody to look for them. Not in a territory as large as Bavaria."
"Damn," Mike said. "I wish that I had some idea what Cavriani is doing. And once this news gets out, Frank Jackson is going to start driving me nuts, the way he'll pester me for news of Diane in Basel."
He cocked an eye at Francisco. The Sephardic nobleman shrugged. "There is nothing new there, Michael. And Basel is hardly close enough to Munich for these latest developments to have any impact on Diane's situation."
"Famous last words," said Mike darkly.
Nasi chuckled. "Michael-please. How could Basel get involved in this?"
"Who the hell knows?" Mike replied irritably. "But I'm telling you-mark my words-any situation that involves Mary Simpson and Ronnie Dreeson being kidnapped and hauled down the Danube in barrels and a princess of Austria decamping from her fiance's capital on the eve of their wedding-going who knows where, and for what reason-and with Mary and Ronnie escaping from captivity at the same time-by who knows what means or with what end in mind-can wind up damn near anywhere."
After a moment, he added gloomily. "Do we have any agents in China? Or Timbuktu? If not, maybe we should send some. You never know, with something this screwy."
****
Nurnberg
Veit Egli had underestimated the growing German press corps. A daredevil reporter left Munich the morning after the news of the disappearances became known there. He made it to Ingolstadt in a remarkably short time, bribed the owner of a small boat to ferry him across the Danube, and hitched a ride north on an army truck. The special edition came out in a day and a half. The reporter deposited his very large bonus in his bank account and had the nerve and energy to go back to Bavaria.
The disappearances made the papers in Magdeburg and Frankfurt am Main two days after that-with the stories datelined Nurnberg. The publisher gleefully informed the public that the court in Vienna had attempted to suppress one entire issue of the Vienna newspaper, but that the "entirety" had not been fully successful. The edition had been reprinted in Prague and smuggled into Austria in large quantities.
****
Grantville, State of Thuringia-Franconia
Ed Piazza inspected the collection of newspapers in front of him with some bemusement. The news articles, per se, weren't that bad. The reporters didn't know much, so kept them short and stuck to what they did know. The Case of the Disappearing Archduchess got the most play, with Mary and Veronica a close second. The English Ladies were barely on the horizon. The paper from Frankfurt am Main gave their departure from their house in Munich a two inch notice at the bottom of a column on page three.
The editorials were another matter. Speculation, on a level that amounted to fantasy, was running rampant, especially in France and Venice. Ed's personal favorite was the one which stated that the archduchess, forbidden from following a true religious vocation by the depraved political ambitions of her father, had been saved by the personal intervention of the Virgin Mary, who had transported her to a cloistered convent on the borders of Transylvania, where her diligent prayers would henceforth prove to be a bulwark of Christian civilization against the marauding Turk.
Not bad. Maybe a bit hard to reconcile with the more succinct version which asserted that the archduchess had secretly converted to Calvinism and was known to be making her way to Geneva, but not bad.
A batch of them were sentimental-the archduchess had eloped with, take your pick, a valiant Austrian revolutionary, a member of the lesser nobility who was not of equal birth, or a former tutor. Alternatively, one could have a bit of gruesome. This writer considered it likely that the archduchess had been murdered by Duke Albrecht and Duchess Mechthilde in order to prevent a marriage that would bar their sons from the Bavari
an succession.
Ed folded up the pile, wrote "archives" on a piece of paper he put on top of it, and tied the bundle with red tape. Historical documentation. Not of what had happened, but good primary evidence for what people were guessing.
****
USE army camp, outside Luebeck
"I don't believe this shit," grumbled Eric Krenz. Sourly, he studied the battery wagon he'd be riding from the army camp outside Luebeck on the Baltic all the way down to Bavaria. More precisely, one of whose horses he'd be riding, since there was no way a man could ride on the limber for that great a distance. Leaving aside the fact that doing so was against army regulations, he'd probably have a broken back by the time he got there. An injured back, for sure. The suspension on the limber's axle, such as it was, had been designed for metal, not flesh and bones.
Eric didn't like horses much, and he hated riding them.
"Oh, stop grousing," said his commanding officer, Lieutenant Thorsten Engler. "Look on the bright side. Once we get into the Thueringerwald, and from there south except parts of Franconia, the roads are so lousy that you'll probably have to walk most of the time anyway."
Krenz wasn't mollified. He gave the officer's insignia on Engler's uniform a look that was every bit as sour as the one he'd given the battery wagon.
"I can remember you being a friendly and sympathetic fellow, back when you were a mere sergeant."
Thorsten snorted. "Not on this subject. Your memory's rotten. I never had any sympathy for your idiot refusal to learn to ride a horse properly. I warned you back in training camp that you'd come to regret it."
Krenz didn't argue the point, since…
Well, it was the plain and the simple truth.
Instead, he shifted his grousing elsewhere. "And that's not all that's rotten about the situation," he whined. "We're supposed to be heroes. Basking in the glory of our triumph at Ahrensbok. Since when does 'basking' last only a few weeks?"
Grinning, one of the other members of the flying artillery battery gave the inevitable reply. That was Olav Gjervan, one of the gunners. "It's called 'the army,' Eric. Not 'the fairy tale.'"
"I still say it's lousy," insisted Krenz. "Unfair. Unjust. Let one of the green regiments go down there to Bavaria."
"Which syllable in 'the ar-my' don't you understand?" demanded Engler.
"See!" Krenz pointed an accusing finger at the silver bar on Engler's shoulder. The army of the United States of Europe had wound up adopting the rank insignia used by the now-dissolved army of the New United States-now also dissolved, into the State of Thuringia-Franconia-which, in turn, had been taken from the army of a United States of America located in a different universe.
"Back when he just had chevrons like the rest of us grunts"-that word was English, one of many American loan terms adopted by the new Amideutsch dialect that was becoming the common language of the USE-"he wasn't that sarcastic."
"Like the lieutenant says," jeered Olav, "you're memory's rotten. Thorsten never suffered fools gladly."
Engler was looking sour himself, now. "The promotion wasn't my idea, anyway, Eric. As you damn well know. They forced it on me."
Krenz usual good humor returned. "Well, sure. Who can blame them? What could be more silly than 'Sergeant the Count of Narnia?"
Everybody laughed at that. Even Thorsten.
Chapter 46
Servus Mori
Dr. Donnersberger was the first member of the privy council executed. He was not the last. Abegg was gone, too. Both chanceries were in chaos.
Duke Maximilian concluded that those most responsible for the debacle were the members of the privy council who had at first been inclined to oppose his remarriage, but had subsequently changed their minds. They were guilty of not having provided a counterpoise to those who directly urged him to remarry. They were guilty of not having made him listen to the words of his own vow.
The formal charge was misprision of treason.
Their estates, of course, escheated to the duchy, after payment of court costs.
Dr. Richel had performed some rather deft footwork to bring the duke to this point of view. He was now generally regarded as the most influential among the lay councillors, second only to Father Forer. The duke was known to be listening to the Spanish ambassador, as well.
In the week that led up to Dr. Donnersberger's execution, quite a few of the lower nobility who held seats on the privy council sent their families out of Munich, to their country estates. Followed, as quickly as they could make arrangements, by themselves.
Duke Maximilian told the colonel of the garrison and the captain of the guards not to worry about it. They could take care of the problem later, at leisure. There were more immediate and important tasks.
****
It was clear, Duke Maximilian concluded, that Ferdinand II, from the beginning, had intended to make a fool of him. He ordered the members of the archduchess' household who had remained in Munich interned; questioned; then ordered them executed.
With due attention to protocol, of course. Countess Polyxena and the other three ladies-in-waiting who had remained behind were beheaded; the remainder, Frau Stecher among them, hanged in the Schrannenplatz. The seamstress had protested to the last that she had been a faithful informant to the inquisition and had no part in the departure of the archduchess. This was manifestly contradicted by the note from Countess Polyxena that Dekan Golla's associate had found. The countess had first denied writing it, as was to be expected, but had later admitted it under torture.
Their heads were sent to join those of the privy councillors, lining the outer walls of Munich, above the gates.
****
Vienna, Austria
"Mama," Cecelia Renata asked anxiously. "What are we going to do. Papa is practically apoplectic."
Empress Eleonora looked at her stepdaughter wearily. "I know. I have used every soothing and cooling potion that I know, but they are not doing him any good. Not even the poultices. I have had snow and ice brought down from the mountains, but even so, it is clear that every day his humors are a little more choleric."
Mariana leaned over and kissed her cheek, giving her a comforting hug.
"I can't nurse him. But I can, and have, written to my Ferdinand. Telling him that he needs to come home from the Hungarian border now. Whether Papa and the privy council authorize him to or not."
She leaned back on the bench in the empress' private garden. "If only it weren't so hot."
****
"Maximilian has done this, you are telling me, in spite of Our official assurances, sent to him in the diplomatic pouch, that these members of the archduchess' household were personally loyal to Us?"
"Yes, Your Majesty."
"They were personally loyal to Us, weren't they?"
Father Lamormaini looked very unhappy. "Most of them, certainly. With the exception of a few, such as Countess Polyxena. I don't believe she was disloyal, as such, if only for the reason that no sane person would have attempted to use her as an agent or informant. Though we could not avoid including her among the appointments, given how essential her husband is to the proper operation of the imperial treasury."
Cardinal Dietrichstein nodded. "She was completely useless-not a thought in her head beyond clothes and getting a high-status position at court. Little idiot. Pretty, though."
"Is it true that We do not have any information at all in regard to the archduchess and the remainder of her household?"
The emperor had ceased to refer to Maria Anna as his daughter.
"Yes. Freiherrin Lukretia, who left Munich a couple of days before the disappearance to return to Vienna for her expected confinement, has taken refuge with the Count of Ortenburg. She is afraid to proceed on to Passau, for fear of being arrested by Maximilian's agents, which is not unreasonable, under the circumstances. Ortenburg sent a courier to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm. According to the Freiherrin, all the other members of the household were going about their usual tasks at the time she left."
"Is that all she knows?"
"It is all the information that was in the letter that the courier brought."
"Is there ambivalence in your sentence?"
" Freiherrin Lukretia is far from being a pretty little idiot. It may well have occurred to her that as long as she stays in Ortenburg, Maximilian cannot question her-but, then, neither can we."
****
Munich, Bavaria
Carafa prudently withdrew from Munich to Passau. From there, he went to Vienna. As Richel noted, it still had not been explained just how the nuncio had happened to leave his mule so conveniently tethered that it had been readily available for use in Dona Mencia de Mendoza's escape from the archduchess' apartments.
The Spanish ambassador did not miss the opportunity to point out to Duke Maximilian that the withdrawal of the nuncio necessarily gave rise to a suspicion that Urban VIII might have been in league with the Austrians. Ungrateful wretch that he was, not to appreciate all that the duke had done for the papacy and for the cause of the church.
The duke was inclined to listen to this theory, especially in view of the pope's recent appointment of a cardinal-protector for the heretical United States of Europe. One of the up-timers, no less.
****
A cardinal-protector from Grantville. Which is where the two damnable women with whom Mechthilde of Leuchtenberg had saddled him came from. He needed to look into that more deeply. It would have been easier if Landgrave Wilhelm Georg had not finally died the week before.