by Eric Flint
"So that's it," Raudegen said. After the debacle with the convoy, he had switched into Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar's service. "That's why I took service with the convoy. It's only a suspicion, Your Grace. Nonetheless, I was sure enough to take the risk of following them."
"If it is the Austrian archduchess, the admiral's wife, and the mayor's wife," Duke Bernhard answered, "it's more than worth risking a few men to lay hands on them. Take your three men—I'll give you a few more—and start back toward Ulm. Try to get back on their track. Before you leave, interview everyone in the convoy who is interned here. Try to find out the last time anyone saw those four people. Once you find out where they left the convoy, track them from there."
* * * *
From Ulm to Donaueschingen
Every time that Marc and Susanna saw soldiers, they took to the fields again. That was, if they saw them, or heard them, soon enough to get into the fields without being seen themselves. The morning that they crossed paths with Raudegen and his men, they didn't have time. The riders were moving fast.
Being seen running attracted attention. Marc had impressed that on Susanna. It gave people the idea that you had some reason to run. This time, the two of them had just moved to the side of the road to let the cavalrymen going the other direction move past.
Susanna turned her face away from the road. Marc noticed that her hair was starting to grow longer. Not that much time had passed since they left Munich, but he really ought to cut it again. She looked more like a girl when she had hair. Should he cut her hair while he was thinking about the girl-ness of her? Maybe not. Probably not. Definitely not.
Once the riders were well out of sight and hearing, Susanna said, "The captain. He was with the guards in Bavaria for the wedding procession. I remember him."
"He didn't seem to recognize you. He just glanced; he wasn't really paying attention."
"I wasn't a boy then." Susanna sniffed. Then she frowned. "He was very careful, though. Always watching. He never just sat on his horse like some of the soldiers. His eyes went back and forth, all the time. Checking people along the streets. Checking where the group or horses or carriage next in front was going to stop to look at a display. Looking back to see if the procession was starting to bunch up. It could be, after he thinks about it a bit, that he might remember me."
"All right, then," Marc answered. "It's back to the fields."
A half mile later, he regretted his idea. They couldn't get beyond where they were without fording a good-sized stream; they couldn't get to the ford because a bunch of men, not upstanding farmers but rural louts, were lolling around at a water hole just above it on this hot autumn afternoon, drinking and splashing.
Mark looked around. They took refuge in a hay shed to which, presumably, the louts were supposed to be bringing the cut hay that was in the field. Marc climbed the ladder to the loft. It was already full; no reason for the louts to come up there, even if they did eventually start hauling hay.
* * * *
Hay was not as comfortable as it looked. It was not the straw. Susanna had slept on straw mattresses all her life. However, that straw had been stuffed inside heavy hempen ticking and, usually, crumpled or softened through use. This hay could not have been in the loft more than a few weeks. It was stiff and prickly. It had weeds and a variety of other stiff and spiky things mixed with it. If she turned one way, it poked her left cheek; if she turned another way, it poked her right forehead. She gave up and sat up.
Marc was looking at her.
"Have they gone?" she whispered. "Can we move on?"
"No, they are still there. Still drinking. Disgustingly drunk, but not dead drunk."
Susanna peeked out through a crack that had opened in the daubing. The five men were still sitting by the river, wasting a perfectly good afternoon. She wished that their employer would come. She wished that his wife would come. She wished that his son would come. She wished that his steward would come. She wished that someone would come and drive them back into the fields to gather up the hay shocks or back to whatever else they certainly should have been doing. Lazy, worthless, servants—that was what they were.
Marc leaned over her shoulder. "You might as well sit back down. I think that they're going to stay."
Susanna looked back. The sun, coming in through the cracked daubing, made a stripe down his face, focusing on the left eye, which he was using to peer out.
Suddenly, the unfairness of life was too much for her. She flopped down on the crude planks of the floor and sobbed. "Why?"
"Why what?" Marc asked with pardonable bewilderment.
"Why does God do it? Look," she sat up and leaned toward him. "Look at my eyelashes."
Marc looked. "Yes. So? I mean, they're there."
"But they're plain." Susanna would have wailed, if she hadn't had to whisper. "They're light brown, and they're thin and they're straight and they're short."
Marc backed away a half-step, looking a little apprehensive.
"Marc," she asked. "Have you ever looked at your eyelashes?"
"Well, no," he admitted. "At least, not in any detail."
"They're black. They're thick. They are long and curly and wasted on a boy." Except, she thought, really, they weren't wasted. They were very attractive right where they were, even if their possessor didn't appreciate them properly. "Do you know how much any girl would like to have lashes like that? Do you know how we paint and darken and crimp the poor things trying to get that effect?"
Marc thought at moment. "We could," he suggested, "try to exchange them. Since we're here anyway."
"Exchange them?"
"Yes. Here. Like this. You stay there." He sat down next to her, facing the other direction. Carefully, he folded his arms behind his back. Then he leaned forward and fluttered his eyelashes against hers. Left eye to right eye; right eye to left eye.
Startled, Susanna pulled back a little. Still, it wasn't an unpleasant sensation. She leaned forward and tried it again. It was perhaps ten minutes later that she folded her own arms firmly behind her back. And ten minutes more before she felt compelled to say, "I don't believe that it's working."
Marc looked at her. "No," he said judiciously. "I don't believe that it is."
They sat for a few moments. "Your eyelashes are perfectly fine the way they are, you know. They go with the rest of you. It's all sort of cute, the way it fits together."
"Thank you." She might have said more, but there came the sound of someone opening the door to the barn below. As quietly as possible, they slipped into their respective, separate, piles of hay.
* * * *
Raudegen and his men stopped at noon to eat something and rest the horses. He was frowning. There was something. It had been bothering him all morning. No, not all morning. Just since they passed the man and boy. Nothing about the man. He had never seen him before; he was sure of that. The ridiculous curl that fell down in the middle of his forehead made him easy enough to remember. The boy, then. He chewed on his bread, thinking.
He was looking for the archduchess. If the sight of the boy was bothering him, then it should have something to do with the archduchess. "Just stay here for a few minutes," he said to the others. Sometimes, looking in water helped him remember; using it like a mirror, letting the reflections carry his mind. He hated to let other men see him doing it; they would think him a fool. He led the rested, cooled, horses down to the brook, standing quietly as each of them drank.
Passau, he thought. Passau, at the edge of the pavilion. In the archduchess' household. A girl, standing on her very tiptoes, straining to see to see the ceremony. The line of the neck, the ears. The boy. Neck. Ears. Archduchess. Not a boy; a girl. She had not been traveling with the other four, as far as he knew. But it was worth splitting the party—and he would follow the girl. He sent his corporal and one of the men on toward Ulm, with a copy of the questions they were to ask, and turned back towards Donaueschingen.
* * * *
"I know it isn't safe to
travel at night," Marc said, "but we have to keep moving, I think, as late as we possibly can, every single day. If you recognized that captain, then, if he crossed the convoy that Papa was with, coming this direction, maybe he recognized the archduchess and the other ladies. Maybe they are riding to get assistance. We have to catch up with Papa, now, as fast as we can. Even if we do things that are riskier. We have to warn them."
* * * *
Donaueschingen
"Nobody here saw Papa when the convoy from Ulm went through. Or any of them."
"Maybe they were keeping out of sight," Susanna suggested. "This town does belong to Count Egon von Fürstenberg. He's an imperial commander. Sometimes under the Bavarians and sometimes under Tilly. But he's been in Vienna, sometimes for weeks on end. He would certainly recognize Archduchess Maria Anna if he saw her. So would quite a few of his staff, I think. He isn't someone she would want to meet while she is running away." She paused. "He's not someone I would want to meet."
"Would any of the count's people have been in Bavaria? For the wedding procession, that is, or in Munich? Could they have seen Frau Simpson and Frau Dreeson, also?"
"Maybe. It's not as likely, but it's possible. Count Egon is a powerful man, the right kind of wedding guest for Duke Maximilian to invite."
"Well, we can't just stay here. We have to make up our minds. Let's just figure that Papa did what he planned. It's still pretty decent weather. Better, really, than it was last summer; not so hot. Let's turn south tomorrow morning and go on to Basel. If he isn't there..." Marc paused, mentally reviewing Susanna's demonstrated history of being able to finagle him into doing things that he didn't think were the best idea available. "If he isn't there, I'm taking you straight to Geneva and letting Mama deal with you. I have four sisters. She's used to girls."
Chapter 60
Magnus Dies
Basel
The bright mid-morning sunshine of a perfect autumn day did not improve Diane Jackson's mood, which had been very bad for several weeks. After all the trouble she had gone to, coming to Basel to let this son of Gustav Adolf's ally inspect an up-timer for himself, she had hardly spoken to Margrave Friedrich V of Baden-Durlach. Or, more precisely, he had hardly made time in what he asserted was a very, very busy schedule to speak to her. She did not regard guided tours of the Basel region as an adequate substitute, even though her guide was doing his best.
"So then, Your Excellency," Johann Rudolf Wettstein said, "my father and his brother came to Basel from a little place called Russikon in the administrative district of Kyburg in the canton of Zürich and started to rise in the world. Father became the business manager of the Spital. From what you have told me of your world up-time, that would be a kind of combination of an orphanage, a retirement home, and an assisted living center. He did well. When I was sixteen, in 1610, he applied for both of us to become members of the vintners' guild."
Diane blinked. When she had agreed to become an ambassador, she had not realized that almost everyone she met would substitute "Your Excellency" for her name. She still had to pause and remember that people were talking to her.
"How did managing a hospice lead to manufacturing wine?" Diane asked. "Was he starting to sell supplies to this hospital?"
"Oh, we were not vintners. We had never been vintners; we will probably never be vintners. I was studying to become a notary public, a chancery official. But in Basel, to qualify to participate in city politics, you have to be a member of one of the guilds, and the vintners' guild is the most influential. He could afford the fee, so that's the one we joined. Some people are members of more than one guild, to qualify them to be members of different sections of the city council. For instance, for some you need to be in a merchant or finance guild; for others, you need to be in a craft guild. In this city, you do not have to work at either one. Guild membership is, you might say, a figment of the imagination. Of the political imagination. It is not an occupation, not a profession. One does need to be Protestant, of course. The city turned Protestant over a century ago. It threw off the prince bishop of Basel's claims to lordship and exiled the Catholic families of the old medieval patriciate, so the bishop no longer has rights in the city and hinterland—only in his own territories."
"And you have continued to rise in Basel politics ever since your father joined this vintner's guild?"
"Not, ah, entirely smoothly. It is not easy for outsiders to enter the Basel political system and many still consider our family outsiders. Not really part of the oligarchy. In spite of the fact that Basel accepted Protestant refugees from France, Flanders, and Italy as residents, it has not admitted many of them as citizens. The government of the city is still largely in the hands of the leading guilds. For all practical purposes, because the merchants and bankers can purchase membership in more than one guild, in a craft guild also, leadership has stayed in the hands of a small number of wealthy, influential, elite families."
"Oh," Diane answered. "Yes, like the book that I read once. Animal Farm, it was called. The pig says that all animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others. This is always true. In Grantville, the UMWA members like Mike and Frank now are somewhat more equal than others, no matter what they say. Not according to the law, but really." She looked at Wettstein. "I will ask them to send me the book. For you."
"When I was in my early twenties," Wettstein continued, "after a slight difficulty, I entered the Venetian military service for a while—nearly four years." He looked a little abashed. "It was there, with the Venetians, that I met some persons from the kingdoms of eastern Asia. So when you came to Basel, the city council decided...."
"That you would be a 'perfect liaison.'" Diane sniffed. "Then you find out, when I point to spots on the great globe in your city hall, that I am from a place you never heard of. But it is too late, so you must still play guide."
* * * *
Wettstein smiled down at the cynical little woman. Asiatic ambassador sent by the king of Sweden, absurd as that might be. He rather liked her. Although he had more than enough to do in his current job as district supervisor of Riehen, Basel's territory on the right bank of the Rhine, he had still learned a great deal during their tours. That made them worthwhile for a man with political ambitions. Someday, when his title was, perhaps, mayor of Basel; perhaps, who knew, even ambassador in Magdeburg. These weeks would have been well-enough spent, even if his colleagues were laughing at him behind his back because he had been assigned to watch her. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
"Escorting you is a refreshing change from considering customs and tolls, which are the main concern of the district administrator of Riehen, Your Excellency," he said. "Or from calculating budget projections for procurement of provisions. The citizens of Basel eat a great deal and the council has no intention that they should starve in case of adverse political events."
"In case the French should attack you?" Diane asked.
"I would prefer not to be too specific," Wettstein replied. "But certainly, it is always possible that someone might attack the city. It would be a mistake to focus solely upon the French. If you look here, for example," he gestured to a series of stones mounted in the ground, "this is the boundary between Basel territory and that of Austria, here on the right bank of the river. Basel never thinks of the Austrians as being far away, in Vienna or Prague. We always think of them as being next door. Always. Uneasy neighbors." He paused. "Some day we Swiss will be legally free of Austria. Not just effectively free of Austria. That is my goal."
He shook his head. He tended to tell this little woman more than he should. Damn, but she was shrewd. Not articulate, in the way one ordinarily expected of envoys, but clever and observant.
"In any case," he continued, "that is about all there is to see here in Riehen. Tomorrow, I think, if the weather remains fine, we will drive upstream along the Rhine to see the Roman ruins at Pratteln."
Diane nodded her head. She seemed to expect very little from Roman ruins.
> * * * *
Margrave Friedrich V of Baden-Durlach was reading his mail. Because he ran the Baden-Durlach government-in-exile for his father, here in Basel, he got a lot of mail, some of it through the postal system and some through private courier. For the predictable number of urgent but brief messages, he kept a pigeon loft. So, as far as he knew, did every major bank and commercial firm in the city.
The current letter had arrived by pigeon. The signature at the bottom had nothing to do with the sender's real name. Margrave Friedrich smiled. He appreciated ambitious young men. Ambitious enough to take risks; young enough to take some really stupid risks. Talented, carefully sheltered young men with prosperous middle-class parents who provided them with tutors and Latin schools and university educations in law or in political economy.
He stood up and thumbed through his files. Johann Freinsheim, also known as Ioannes Freinsheimius. Age twenty-five, he confirmed. Born in Ulm. Most recently at the University of Strassburg studying history and German literature under Professor Matthaeus Bernegger until he decided to make a journey to France as part of his grand tour and somehow managed to enter the royal household there as a secretary in the interpretation service. In which capacity he met Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar who was, although a traitor to the king of Sweden, nonetheless the brother of Wilhelm Wettin. And of Duke Ernst in the Upper Palatinate, whose secretary, Heinrich Böcler, had also studied under Bernegger, at the same time as Freinsheim, it so happened. Through which connection, Freinsheim came into correspondence with Margrave Friedrich's father, who was in the service of Gustav Adolf and who had managed to ship the young man a small crate of pigeons who believed that Basel was home. And thus into correspondence with Margrave Friedrich.
It was astonishing how much a simple secretary in the French interpretation service could learn. It was also gratifying, given the proximity of Baden to Alsace, which until very recently had been the secondary focus of Duke Bernhard's military operations. Secondary, at least, until Bernhard's recent abandonment of the Mainz front and probe into Swabia. Margrave Friedrich was very concerned about what Duke Bernhard was doing in Swabia.