1635:The Dreeson Incident (assiti shards)

by Eric Flint

  Sandrart shook his head. "Don't stay at an inn. After you were so cooperative about letting me go over to meet with the duke, the least I can do is extend the hospitality of my father's house. We've got plenty of room."

  "Vengeance," Ouvrard said. "We have this wonderful chance to avenge the failure of Ducos' plot to assassinate the pope in Rome. It has fallen to us, into our laps like a ripe plum. We did nothing to seek it out. The Stone brothers. Two of the three culprits are right here! To think that Antoine Delerue predicted that we were unlikely to encounter them again."

  "Antoine is scarcely a prophet. Certainly not an infallible one. Count your lucky stars that they're staying at Sandrart's house," Brillard said. "And keep your face out of public view. Maybe they wouldn't recognize any of us, and wouldn't remember having ever seen us talking to Michel anywhere in Italy. But then again, one of them might. Talk about good luck. If the Sandrart son hadn't invited them, they'd be right here at the Swan and we'd be huddling in the sleeping chambers all day to avoid them."

  "Another heaven-sent, predestined, foreordained, clearly God-given opportunity wasted because of Michel's…" Ouvrard shut up before Guillaume could tell him to.

  "Working within the limitations that our leader has placed upon us is an exercise in humility," Locquifier said. He didn't look at his hands. These past two days, he had chewed his own fingernails down to the quick in frustration.

  "At least tell Michel about it. Why did he and Antoine have to go as far away as Scotland? What can they possibly be trying to accomplish in Scotland, of all places?"

  "Robert." Locquifier paused. "I will send another letter to him, explaining what has happened. After that, all we can do is wait for his further directions."

  There were musicians at one end of the room. A sort of string quartet. Lots of candles in sconces reflecting off the window panes, of which there were also a lot. Downtown Frankfurt mostly looked sort of Gothic in its architecture, but it was clear that Sandrart's father had remodeled this house not too long ago. Modernized it.

  There was a buffet table at the other end of the room. A big one, loaded with more food than Ron had seen in one place since the last reception he'd attended at the Barberini mansion. Off in a corner by himself, behind the table, Gerry was eating a plate of fruit and cheese and keeping one eye on Artemisia's little girl, who was standing right by the table, eating everything sweet that she could identify by the sugar crystals sprinkled on the top. That was okay.

  There were polished blue and white tiles under foot. They had to be marble. Marble was a rock, when you came right down to it, and these were as hard as rocks. Joachim Sandrart's mother would start the dancing up in a few minutes, he expected, and he'd be expected to punish his feet on them. She'd be dancing with the Burgermeister. He'd be dancing with whatever girl they told him to dance with. He'd gone to a depressing number of fancy parties since that first one in Venice, and was getting, in his own opinion, depressingly good at doing what he was supposed to do at them. Bourgeois, his dad would say.

  Overhead-Ron took another surreptitious glance upward. Woodcarvings and murals. The murals were a bit amateurish. He wondered it Sandrart had painted them on the ceiling in his own father's house. Maybe for practice, when he was a teenager?

  Simon was sitting down, talking to a middle aged man garbed in what Ron had come to think of as the Calvinist preacher's uniform. A Geneva gown, they called it. Black pleats and a white collar. He thanked his lucky stars that Simon still had diplomatic credentials, in case the other guy took offense at some of his theological opinions.

  Joachim was-he looked toward the big fireplace with its ornamental mantel-over there. Ron had met the man he was talking to, earlier in the evening. He was a banker, another Calvinist refugee from somewhere, named Philipp Milkau. The girl next to Artemisia was his daughter Johanna. Milkau's only daughter and sole heiress. Fraulein Walking-pots-of-money. The girl that Sandrart was going to marry, most likely. She was exactly the kind of wife that a promising young artist with ambitions to enter the diplomatic service needed. Paying for a reception like this a couple of times every week wouldn't even start to drain the exchequer she would bring along as a dowry.

  She seemed nice enough. Pleasant looking. Good manners. Couldn't be more than about sixteen. Of course, Joachim hadn't ever met her until this week, but his relatives and her father had reached a sort of preliminary arrangement. Nothing legal, like a betrothal. An understanding that was contingent on the main parties to the agreement not taking a dislike to each other on first sight and developing an even greater loathing on longer personal acquaintance.

  But they seemed to be getting along fine. She had her hand on Joachim's arm. He was sort of sniffing at her hair. Which was a good thing, Ron supposed. Sandrart said that his own family could only afford to put on a party like this once a month or so.

  The Stone brothers left the city the next day. Mathurin Brillard and Robert Ouvrard made one last effort to persuade Guillaume Locquifier to allow them to go in pursuit. But Locquifier was adamant.

  Michel has given us no such instructions!

  It was enough to drive a man insane. Michel Ducos was far distant-they had no idea where, precisely-so how could his "instructions" possibly cover any eventuality that might develop?

  Brillard and Ouvrard did not share Locquifier's adulation of Michel Ducos. Both men thought Ducos' grasp on reality was shaky, in fact. Still, they were not prepared to wage an outright rebellion. True, Ducos' "authority" was mostly a matter of prestige, nothing formal. Insofar as the organization of Huguenot zealots had an officially recognized leader, it was Antoine Delerue and not Ducos. But Ducos' force of personality was such that any dispute with him almost invariably became ferocious.

  As much as Mathurin and Robert would have enjoyed getting their revenge on the Stone brothers, they didn't feel strongly enough about the issue to risk getting into a brawl with Ducos. So, off the brothers went. Not touched, not even pursued.

  On the Reichsstrasse between Frankfurt and Hanau

  "Philipp Milkau is being blackmailed," said Artemisia Gentileschi.

  The part of the Reichsstrasse they were following this morning was headed generally uphill, a steeper grade than a person would think unless he looked back to see what he'd already climbed, so they were going slowly to spare the horses. That gave them plenty of time to talk, but the sentence that she'd just dropped on him wasn't Artemisia's ordinary horse-riding conversation.

  "He is?" Ron hoped that he didn't sound too dumb.

  "By some Huguenot extremist group."

  Ron groaned inwardly. The last time that he'd met a Huguenot extremist, it had been at the hearing for Galileo. He didn't really want to meet any more of them.

  "Why's he being blackmailed?" If the man turned out to be a pedophile or something, he definitely didn't want to get involved.

  "Something involving real estate. Buying an estate called Stockau. It's over near Ingolstadt, somewhere. In Pfalz-Neuburg."

  "Didn't that belong to the abominable Wolfgang Wilhelm? Before he got himself killed in the Essen War last summer?"

  "That's the one. If you can think of a triangle between Augsburg, Munich, and Augsburg, it's in there."

  "The south side of the river?"

  Artemisia nodded. "It's noble land. So it's tax exempt, for all practical purposes. Plus being a way for Milkau to lever his family up into the nobility, if he played his cards right. But somewhere along the way, he bribed the wrong person, or didn't bribe the right person, or… something."

  "Like he maybe told Wolfgang Wilhelm something that amounted to treason to get him to approve the sale?"

  "You are young to be so suspicious, my friend Ron. The problem, I think, is that the purchase would have made him landsassig to an ally of Bavaria. It's a bit moot, now that General Baner has occupied Pfalz-Neuburg south of the Danube for Gustav Adolf and it's in the USE, or soon will be. But in any case, whatever the specifics, during the negotiations it was enemy territor
y. If the Frankfurt council finds out what he did, or was prepared to do, he will be tossed out of the city, bank and all. These…"

  " 'Fanatics' is probably the right word."

  "Fanatics. Yes. Zeloti. These zealots are using their knowledge to force him to finance their projects. Whatever their projects are. He is not sure. But he believes that he is probably not alone. That they are extorting money from other prominent members of the Calvinist diaspora."

  "And I need to know this… why?"

  "Your father is important. And rich. Therefore, you have ties to influential men in the State of Thuringia-Franconia, and through them into the highest circles of the USE. He thought that you might be able to bring the problem to the attention of the appropriate persons. Discreetly, of course. Naming no names, since you are a friend of his future son-in-law. But letting someone know of the existence of the zealots. That they have established themselves in Frankfurt."

  Ron had never thought of himself as having ties into the highest circles of the USE. But if Frank could get married in the Sistine Chapel… The only important man he knew was Mr. Piazza. That was because Mr. Piazza used to be the high school principal, so everybody in Grantville knew him, pretty much. But he did know him, and Piazza was as thick as thieves with Mike Stearns. Whom he'd also actually met. Once. In a bunch of other people at the Thuringen Gardens. Everybody knew that Francisco Nasi worked for Stearns.

  "I'll see what I can do."

  Chapter 11

  Frankfurt am Main

  Nathan Prickett figured he'd done his duty to common courtesy already by looking up the other Grantvillers in Frankfurt and saying hi, letting them know where he was staying. He hadn't expected that he'd have much in common with them, except for being from Grantville, and he didn't.

  Jason Waters was a newspaperman. He was here to establish an American-style newspaper. If he could get permission from the city council, that was. And from Magdeburg, since the guy who was publishing the big paper in Frankfurt now had a kind of grandfathered-in imperial monopoly that went back to the days before the Ring of Fire.

  The USE parliament hadn't gotten around to abolishing monopolies yet. They probably would, but the country had only existed for less than a year and a good portion of that time, there'd been a war on. It looked like there'd be a war on a good portion of next year, too, if Gustav decided to take on Saxony and Brandenburg.

  Waters was from Charlestown and only settled down in Grantville to start with because he'd married Serena Trelli. Nathan had no idea why he'd brought Ernest Haggerty with him, unless to be a gofer.

  Wayne Higgenbottom was studying the post office system. Wayne was here because the Grantville post office had sent him. None of them were likely to stay long. It wasn't as if Nathan had ever gone to school with any of them. Haggerty did belong to the same church-Methodist-but he was married to Bobbie Jean Sienkiewicz, who was Catholic, and didn't attend regularly. Ernest was some kind of a cousin of Gary Haggerty and them, but not close.

  Odd, but by now, after all the time he'd lived in Suhl, Nathan had more in common with Ruben Blumroder than he did with some of the guys from back home.

  He picked up his pen.

  Dear Don Francisco,

  He didn't have a lot to report. He'd only been here a week. But he owed the don a letter.

  Johann Wilhelm Dilich, who is in charge of Frankfurt's fortifications, knows a lot more about city defenses than I do, or probably ever will.

  I expect you already know that way back before Grantville arrived, the father of the guy who's the landgrave of Hesse now put Dilich's father in jail. And, I sort of think from what I've been picking up, it was for unfair reasons. As soon as the father got out in 1623, he went to work for the elector of Saxony. That's John George. He's still working there, and he's famous.

  I guess that worked out fine in the world we came from, because Frankfurt and Hesse and Saxony were all on the side of Gustavus Adolphus.

  Well, sort of, at least. Seems like John George was always a bit iffy, to put the best face possible on it.

  What with the war coming up next spring, though, I thought I'd at least better remind you that the guy in charge of the fortifications at Frankfurt, which is a really important city (province, I guess, since the Congress of Copenhagen) for the USE and smack on the Main River, is the son of the guy who's in charge of the fortifications for John George.

  Just in case.

  The militia captain told me all this. He's an old friend of a gunsmith named Heinrich Dilles. He-Dilles, that is-has been dead for almost ten years, but Blumroder used to know him pretty well and said that the captain could tell me a lot. Blumroder gave me a few other names of men to look up beyond the ones I've already talked to on my sales trips over here. Kolb and Mohr. Hung and Rephun. And Schmidt. I don't exactly have high hopes of finding the right person named Schmidt. It's a good-sized town and they don't have street numbers.

  Otherwise, Simon Jones, the minister of my church back home, came through town, with that hippie Tom Stone's two younger boys and an Italian woman painter, on his way back to Grantville. Funny company for him to be keeping. But I expect you've already heard that.

  Best wishes,

  Nathan Prickett

  "I'm not here to tell you how to put your men through drill," Nathan said firmly. The Frankfurt militia officers were a touchy bunch, a lot of them. Not the captain, who was the head guy, but several of the lieutenants.

  "I'm a veteran, yeah. One three-year enlistment from 1986 through 1989. Not an officer. I went in right out of high school, because I couldn't afford to start college right away. We were in the middle of an economic bust in Grantville, the year I graduated."

  Someone asked a question.

  "College? I guess you'd call it your 'arts faculty' at a university like Jena. Or a 'philosophy faculty.' But I'd planned to major in engineering, or something technical."

  The man nodded. "Leiden," he said.

  Nathan didn't catch the reference, so he kept going. "Never did get to college. By the time I got out of the army, I'd decided to start my own business, so I took a job to start saving money." He looked around the room. "Any questions? Is that clear?"

  No more questions.

  "Okay, one three-year enlistment. 'That's all, folks,' just like the cartoons say. I've been in the National Guard ever since, but that's weekend warrior stuff."

  More technical terms to explain.

  "Look, the main point is. You keep on teaching your troops to fight. I teach them how to take care of the new guns the city council has paid out their good tax money to buy." He looked around the room again. "Any questions? Is that clear?"

  He'd learned the hard way, his first few trips over to Frankfurt for Ruben Blumroder, that "Any questions?" and "Is that clear?" were his best friends.

  He hadn't expected Jason Waters to come tracking him down at the tavern where he ate dinner, but here he came. So he nodded. The two of them consumed stew and bread in silence for a while. Waters broke it.

  "Ever run across a guy named Wackernagel?"

  "The courier?"

  "Um-hmmn. Guess you have, if you know his name."

  "Read it in the paper. He's being the friendly local guide for Henry Dreeson's trip this fall."

  "Yeah, that one."

  "Never actually met him. Haven't gotten back to Grantville much these last couple of years."

  "He works out of Frankfurt."

  They both went back to dipping rye bread in the stew juice. That was about the only way to make it chewable, once it got stale.

  Waters broke the silence again. "He's got a brother-in-law who runs a print shop here. Name's Neumann."

  "Haven't met him." Nathan figured that he had the home court advantage and wasn't about to give it up. If Waters wanted something, he'd have to come right out and ask for it.

  "Higgenbottom's run into him several times."

  "Haven't seen much of Wayne since I got here."

  "You run across some pre
tty odd people in Frankfurt. It's big enough that they can sort of keep themselves under the radar, if they're careful. Not like a village, where you've only got a couple hundred people and they all know each other."

  "Odd, as in peculiar? Or odd, as in this could get to be a problem?"

  "Plenty of the first around. Harmless religious nuts of various persuasions. Wayne's thinking that there's some of the second kind. Religious nuts of the ayatollah persuasion."

  Nathan nodded.

  "Jessica-sister of Bill Porter over at the power plant-divorced Wayne last year. He worked in Morgantown all his life. Managed the campus mail system for WVU. Doesn't belong to a church in Grantville. Wasn't born there. Didn't go to school there."

  "So?" Nathan hated having to put that question mark at the end of his words. It amounted to giving up points. But Waters was a reporter. A word professional, so to speak. He'd probably had whole classes in turning conversations around on the people he talked to.

  "There's at least one of the ayatollah bunches that's gotten hold of their own duplicating machine, Neumann says. One of the Vignelli machines. Got it used from Freytag when he bought a new model. They've been on the market for more than a year now-the machines, I mean. A trickle at first. Now it's a pretty wide stream. They're coming out of Tyrol, mostly, but there are already some knock-offs on the market."

  Nathan gave up and asked a straight question. "What does that mean?"

  "It means they're funded. The group of would-be ayatollahs, I mean. And well-funded. Even second-hand, a Vignelli will set you back a couple thousand dollars. The price will be coming down, of course, but for now, it's almost entirely print shops that are buying them. For small runs, they're cheaper than setting type."

  "And?"

  "Higgenbottom thinks somebody ought to know. And since you're Wes Jenkins' son-in-law and he's still the grand pooh-bah over in Fulda and since they had a problem with those pamphlets a while back…"

  "You're nominating me for the fall guy."