1634: The Bavarian Crisis (assiti chards)

by Eric Flint

  "Are you accustomed to taking this much exercise?"

  "Exercise?" Cavriani was puzzled.

  "Does he usually run, walk, like this, for hours on end?"

  "What? Oh," Mengersdorf said, "no, no."

  No sugar. No hot bath. Some food, though. She gave him a little jerky, some water, and said, "No help for it. He goes into the wheelbarrow and I walk." They hefted him up from the ground.

  "He's quite a bit heavier than you are," Cavriani said. "Let me push it for a while." He grasped the handles; felt the stickiness, let loose again.

  "Your hands," he said sharply to Maria Anna. "Are they blistered? Are the blisters breaking."

  She held them out; then realized that it was too dark to see. "They are raw; much of the skin is gone."

  Cavriani swore. "How long have you been pushing this by yourself?"

  "Veronica helped."

  "How long have you been pushing it?"

  "Since Pornbach, most of the time. But we rested in Pobenhausen, waiting for you. You know that. You found us. They weren't quite so bad, then."

  Cavriani shook his head. Then, to Mary Simpson, "If you have enough water, a little to spare, perhaps you could wipe off these handles. And pour a little on her hands, to rinse them. Who has the salve and the bandages? We don't dare make a light; do the best you can by feel."

  ****

  Past Weichering. Darker than ever, a steady drizzle. Without a moon, no way to guess how much time had passed. From Weichering to Neuburg, only seven miles. The Bavarians would be sending out patrols before the bulk of the army marched; mounted patrols, moving much faster than people on foot. The English Ladies made no complaints; neither did anyone else. They trudged on steadily.

  Hoofbeats, behind them, following the road. It was still dark, just the slightest hint of a false dawn. No way to get the wheelbarrow out of the rut and out of sight. Mengersdorf looked, Cavriani thought, dead enough to pass for a corpse. The patrol wouldn't risk a shot; if one of them paused to spear him to make sure-well, they would have traded one life for a dozen. The rest of them hid.

  The lead horse slowed a little; the patrol walked single-file around the wheelbarrow, in the other rut. They didn't bother moving it from the road; neither did they bother examining the apparent corpse.

  I hope, Mary Simpson thought, that they go back another way. She could feel the new, tender, skin on her feet breaking through again, the gauze of the bandages grinding into the soles.

  Cavriani went back to pushing the wheelbarrow.

  Dawn. A little village, to the left. "Zell," Mengersdorf whispered. Two and a half miles to the Neuburg gates, perhaps.

  Hoofbeats again. Not the same patrol. Muffled, this time, slower. Closer than the first patrol had been when they heard it. No time to disappear; they moved to the side of the road. Stood. Just refugees.

  We are not worth your time, we are not worth your time, Mary Simpson thought. We are not worth your time.

  Cavriani pushed her forward. It was a man with a horse and cart, whom Cavriani seemed to know.

  They abandoned the wheelbarrow. She, Mengersdorf, Veronica, Sister Winifred with her bad ankle, got onto the cart. The man turned the horse. The rest of them ran, trying to keep pace with it.

  "Tell me, Veit," Cavriani gasped, "how did you do it?"

  Egli looked at him in some surprise. "Your runner arrived last evening, just before dark, so I knew you were coming. I bribed the gatekeeper-this is his cart. Let's hope that he stays bribed."

  He had. Scarcely a testimony to the Neuburg city militia's tight security procedures, but nonetheless welcome.

  Egli did notify the Swedes about it. After the people for whom he felt immediate responsibility were safely at his house.

  ****

  Neuburg

  "I am not," Maria Anna said, "going to Grantville."

  Mary Ward looked at her. "You are my responsibility."

  "You are not," Maria Anna retorted, "my Mother Superior. Or, for that matter, my aunt. Nor am I your responsibility. I have traveled with you. I am grateful that you allowed me to. It has made my trip thus far a lot easier."

  Easier? Mary Simpson looked at the archduchess' hands. As bad as her own feet. She wondered exactly what Maria Anna had been expecting when she left Munich.

  "It is perfectly clear what you should do," Mary Ward insisted.

  "You have instructions from the pope. Obey them." Maria Anna paused. "They do not include me."

  "I am sure," Mary Ward said, "that if the holy father had the slightest idea that you would be leaving Munich with us…"

  "The fact remains," Maria Anna answered, "that he did not. Nor am I sufficiently arrogant to believe that I can gauge his intent and desires when he is in Rome and I am in Neuburg. Once again. Your instructions do not include me. Is that clear?"

  Narrowing her lips, Mary Ward said, "I will check on Sister Winifred. And on the unfortunate man who came with us." She left the room.

  Veit Egli rested his chin on his hand. His house was not large. Four rooms, which included the kitchen. Two up, two down. And, at the moment, very full, not that all of Neuburg was not very full. Right at the moment, he wished that he were somewhere else. There were all too many strong-minded women in one small space. "I believe," he announced, "that I will take a walk. See if there is anything to see at the perimeters."

  "Please check at every entry point," Cavriani said pleasantly. "You know what I mean."

  "Enjoy yourself," Mary Simpson said pleasantly.

  Veronica's contribution was, "Don't get shot. There are a lot of stray bullets going up. You'll be just as dead if one falls on your head by accident as if somebody deliberately aims one directly at your chest."

  "Just a little ray of sunshine, this morning, aren't we?" Egli retorted. He was seriously thinking about eating lunch out. Perhaps supper as well, if Herr Cavriani did not need him, of course. Cavriani had gone to the bridge, to see if anything could be done to expedite the safe conducts for the English Ladies. The runner whom he had sent ahead had arrived and delivered the message, but had not been seen since. Egli hoped that he had crossed the bridge and had reached Baner's radio. He had no real way of knowing. No one would admit having seen the man after he left Egli's.

  ****

  At the moment, they had Egli's office to themselves.

  "Why not?" Mary Simpson asked.

  "Why not what?" Maria Anna returned the serve.

  "Why not go with them?"

  "I do not trust the Swedes. The Swede. The usurping so-called emperor."

  Mary nodded slowly. Sometimes, she almost forgot that this energetic, shrewd, practical young woman, knowledgeable in the ways of gardens and dairy barns, was also the daughter of Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor. It occurred to her that Maria Anna probably never forgot that.

  Maria Anna was talking, rather slowly. "At the moment, I hope, General Baner does not know that I am with the English Ladies. In all of the newspapers that we have bought, there has not been any speculation at all that I left Munich with them. Some seem to believe that I have already returned to Austria but am being, as you say, kept under wraps. If I am not in Hungary praying for the defense of the border. Or somewhere else. If Herr Cavriani has not told the General… somehow, I do not believe that he has told the general. Then, in any case, there is no reason for the Swedish commanders here to take a special interest in one more refugee from the countryside."

  "Honestly," Mary said, "I don't think that Mike-that Prime Minister Stearns-would agree to an effort to hold you against your will. I don't think that the people in Grantville would let anyone imprison you, if you came to them voluntarily."

  "Why not?" Maria Anna asked simply. "In a way, they are holding Princess Kristina hostage, aren't they? No matter how politely and gently? Even if she spends time in Magdeburg and joined her father for the Congress of Copenhagen. Bars are bars, even if they are woven of spider silk rather than cast of steel. And I am not a young child, who is accustomed to h
aving adults such as your future Imperial Countess of Narnia molding and forming her actions, limiting where she can go and telling her when, happy enough if her cage is fairly large. I am an adult, with a place I need to go and a task to complete. A place and a task that, I think, the Swede would try very hard to find out. He would, I think, feel obliged to put me under much tighter constraints than you have done to Princess Kristina, knowing that I ran from Munich. In the last analysis, the prime minister serves the emperor. Not the other way around."

  Mary looked down.

  "No, you have no reason to be embarrassed. I don't bear you any grudge, for it. It is just the reality of political power. If I put myself within Gustav Adolf's control, he would be a fool not to grasp the chance to use my presence as leverage against my father. Against… never mind. And the king of Sweden has demonstrated, quite consistently, that he is no fool. I will go into the USE only if I am taken captive here in Neuburg and carried there. Tied as tightly as you and Frau Dreeson were tied when the Leuchtenberger dumped you out of the barrels before me."

  "Then," Mary said, "you will not go there. Wherever you go when you leave here, I will go with you. Not on to Grantville with the English Ladies. As-as a kind of guarantee of our good faith."

  "As, I will," Veronica added. "We cannot leave you alone. I will stay too." She cast around for a reason that would not make her seem a sentimental fool. "Henry would certainly not approve if I left you here alone." Then, more slowly, "If Annalise were here, I would not want everyone else to go away and leave her by herself." She shook herself. "And, of course, I can't leave Mary by herself, either. I'm sure that both Mike and Admiral Simpson would be quite irritated with me if I did such a thing."

  "Ronnie," Mary said, "I hate to tell you this, but you do not have the 'dutiful and compliant down-time woman deferring to the menfolk' act down anywhere near as pat as you have the Abbess of Quedlinburg when you need her."

  "Abbess of Quedlinburg?" Maria Anna asked.

  Since Mary Ward still had the rest of the English ladies upstairs, they started reminiscing about Magdeburg. The Hesse-Kassel soiree. Princess Kristina. The Abbess of Quedlinburg. And, somehow, the women's college that would be opening there.

  Mary Simpson had serious doubts that Maria Anna, if and when she returned to some variety of being an archduchess, would be inclined to fund a college located in a Lutheran Damenstift, but the general principle of serious fundraising was that one just never knew. And, after all, there were also Catholic convents within the borders of the USE. She managed to get in a few words about the proposed normal school, as well.

  ****

  Cavriani came back with a packet of safe conducts. For Mary Ward and the remainder of the English Ladies, only.

  That was fine, of course, since they were the only occupants of Egli's house who would be crossing the bridge today. But a little surprising. How did he know it?

  Mary Ward did not want to leave the archduchess behind. She did not want to leave Frau Simpson and Frau Dreeson behind.

  As formidable as she was, in the ensuing test of wills, Maria Anna prevailed. Hitting below the belt, possibly, by reminding the mother superior that one of the things that the Jesuitesses would have to take, if they were to be true Jesuitesses, was that additional vow of obedience to the pope, so they had better start practicing. But, then, it would be a pity to waste her own Jesuit education. She was aided, of course, by the deadline for crossing contained in the safe conducts.

  ****

  Mary Ward had simply expected to cross the bridge carrying their papers and start walking toward Nurnberg. With all the attendant hazards that might involve, if the Swede was sending still more troops south to reinforce Baner. Which she did not know. If he was, it had not been reported in any of the out-of-date newspapers they had been able to find.

  Of all things, she had not expected to see Father Rader and Father Drexel waiting for her. Father Rader looked exhausted; he was not a young man. "We have come," Father Drexel said, "somewhat the long way around. By way of Regensburg and Amberg." He handed her a piece of paper. A radio message, he said. From Grantville.

  "You are expected. Kircher."

  That was all. It was enough.

  Father Drexel smiled. "He sent the wagon and team, as well. Prepaid. With a sufficiently large number of certifications signed by people in sufficiently high places that not even General Baner has dared to requisition them. So. Shall we be on our way? He backed the team and wagon from where it had been halted, rather skillfully. As he did so, he handed a newspaper to Leopold Cavriani. "The most recent I have been able to purchase on this side of the bridge. I thought that you might appreciate it."

  Father Drexel looked at his left hand with surprise. He was still holding something. A small packet. Carefully, he placed it inside his robe

  ****

  Cavriani obtained a copy of a newspaper from Frankfurt am Main. Frankfurt was much more cosmopolitan than Nurnberg, so the paper had a lot of international news. The lead article was on the Spanish Netherlands. The cease-fire was holding. The emperor was negotiating.

  Cavriani took a closer look at the article. Somewhere behind this reporter, there was a fairly sophisticated military analyst. The level of Gustav Adolf's weaponry-more advanced than anyone else's to be sure, but still not enough, in terms of his main forces, to end any siege quickly without the ironclads and their guns. Evaluation of the flashy weapons that he did have, such as airplanes, being not enough to make a decisive difference. Someone had been reading about the American Civil War and knew that sieges took a long time then, also.

  Then some discussion of whether Gustav Adolf would have anything to gain by such a series of sieges. The reporter, or the man behind him, concluded that Gustav Adolf had already, in regard to Denmark and France, gained his major objectives. Denmark had been forced into a new Union of Kalmar. There would be, in time, a marriage between Princess Kristina and Prince Ulrik.

  Ah, Cavriani thought. That would, what did Ed Piazza say, oh, yes, frost Axel Oxenstierna. Frost him but good.

  The French had been decisively defeated at a place called Ahrensbok, near Luebeck. As soon as the news arrived, Gustavus' administrator in Mainz had struck west, largely on his own initiative. The emperor said that he considered Nils Brahe second only to Torstensson as a strategist among the Swedish officers. Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar had pulled his regiments back into Alsace and the Breisgau. Brahe had gone all the way to the border of Lorraine. The USE had a new Province of the Upper Rhine. West of the Rhine. There was little question that Gustav Adolf would force a punitive treaty on the French, with huge reparations.

  The reporter asked whether, in view of the above, the Swedish king really had any desire to let Don Fernando drag him into a long, slow, bloody and protracted campaign in the Netherlands. Particularly in view of the big problems looming for the USE to the east. The article ended with a rhetorical question. Was it not likely that the king/emperor would like to settle the conflict in the Netherlands as soon as possible?

  Yes, Cavriani thought, it seemed likely. He wondered who had planted the article. Nasi? Stearns? If so, Mike or Rebecca? Don Fernando himself? Fredrik Hendrik?

  Leopold re-read the article. What had Ed Piazza called him once? A "foreign policy junkie."

  ****

  "To the Spanish Netherlands," Maria Anna said, as they waited for Cavriani to come back. She looked down at her bandaged hands. Sore, so sore. She was sitting in Neuburg. Hundreds of miles to go. Not much of her money left. On the strength of a note that Don Fernando had written months ago. How much of a fool was she making of herself?

  Mary and Veronica just looked at her. That was-um, a long way to walk. Farther, somehow, than either of them had expected when they promised to stay with her.

  How did she intend to get there, anyway?

  And why was she going?

  ****

  Leopold put his foot down. He was not leaving Neuburg right away. They were not leaving Neuburg right a
way. Any of them. Maria Anna's hands had to heal. One of them was slightly infected and inflamed, and required regular cleaning with boiled water. Plus, he thought, considerable prayer, if the infection were not to spread into the arm. If it did…

  He watched it very carefully; so did Mary Simpson. They both wished that they had some sulfa, chloramphenicol, anything. Frau Simpson's feet also had to heal again.

  And, he declared, they would ride, not walk; ride if he had to bring horses from fifty miles away. Veronica accepted this dictum with minimum good grace.

  They would, he said, wait at least a week before trying to move out of Neuburg. In spite of all the risks of the war around them. In spite of Maria Anna's anxiety that General Baner might find out that she was there.

  Which, since he had been forced to used Baner's radio, he shared to some extent. The very private and personal message his runner should have transmitted to Piazza and Stearns by way of Baner's radio had been so vague, though, that he wondered if Ed Piazza himself could make any sense of it at all once he deciphered it, much less anyone else.

  "The other three are with the rest. I am with them. L." That had been, of course, the message that he had sent from Reichertshofen. It had been the only way he had of letting them know that Mary and Veronica, the archduchess, and the English ladies had escaped together and that he was traveling with them.

  He was sure that the packet he had sent with Drexel would make them less happy. The news that although the English Ladies were en route to Grantville, the other three were at present remaining in Neuburg for some time. Even ciphered, he would not risk that going through Baner's radio.

  Not, Leopold was sure, that the general was not a fine man. But he fought to win. The archduchess would be a tempting prize.