by Eric Flint
"Where are the damsels in distress?"
"Various spots. We made the archduchess stay upstairs with Mary Simpson. They both have guns, but Tony has orders to keep them away from the windows, like we did with Diane here. Ronnie is back in the kitchen. Except that there were two of us and one of Diane, but there's one of Tony and two of them, so at least one of them was probably looking out. Mrs. Simpson, if you want my guess; the other girl is used to having heavy security around her."
Diane turned. "Corporal, take someone back to get Mrs. Dreeson. Then go up and tell the other ladies they can come down."
Jack Whitney followed the corporal, who motioned at a door and then started up a set of back stairs. He looked into the embassy kitchen. Ronnie Dreeson was sitting on a three-legged stool next to a double-barreled shotgun the size of a small cannon, which was pointed at a ground-level window. The window was covered with iron bars, but they looked a little rusty and shaky. She looked quite prepared to shoot anyone who tried to pull them loose and come in through it.
He stopped a minute. He had helped Dan Frost with quite a lot of the firearms training in Grantville. He was a veteran of Ronnie's epic refusal to carry a gun. She was no better a markswoman than Rebecca Stearns, so they had given her a small shotgun. She had taken it home, cleaned it just as she had been taught, oiled it, and locked it away unloaded, first in Jeff's gun cabinet in the trailer and then, presumably, after she got married, in Henry's gun cabinet, where it probably still was unless someone else in the Dreeson household was using it at present.
Why was she willing to carry a gun now? he decided to ask.
"I am not carrying it," she answered logically. "The barrel is resting on a sawhorse. The stock is resting on the table where the cook chops vegetables. Those heavy candlesticks hold it in place very well. I do not have to carry it at all—just take off the safety and pull the trigger if someone comes. I do not mind shooting people with a gun if I need to. But carry one all the time? No, I will not. It weighs many pounds. It does not fit in my tote bag. If I try to carry it on my back, with a strap, it keeps knocking down the bun." She motioned at her hair.
Jack Whitney suddenly realized that communication between English-speakers and German-speakers in Grantville during the early days after the Ring of Fire had been far from perfect. She had literally been trying to tell them that she did not want to carry such a heavy, awkward weapon, day in and day out.
"Oh." Maybe, he thought, they ought to consider revising the manual for basic firearms training. Possibly even implement some standard other than pure marksmanship as the basis for deciding what type of gun to issue to whom.
* * * *
Maria Anna led the way into the reception room.
Mary Simpson paused to watch from the door. The two of them were such a contrast. Don Fernando, like so many of the Spanish Habsburgs—it still came as a surprise to her—was a blue-eyed strawberry blond, rather fine boned and with delicate features, in spite of the heavy lower lip. Now that she saw them together, Maria Anna was as tall as he was, possibly even a little taller. With the brunette looks of her Wittelsbach mother—black hair, dark brown eyes—and rather full-bodied, the two made a striking couple.
With a flourish of his feathered hat, he bowed at the same time that the archduchess curtseyed.
The bow seemed to make a most favorable impression on Maria Anna. Of course, it would be such a contrast to the stiffness of Duke Maximilian. Mary knew perfectly well that Don Fernando's other main attraction—being twenty-four years old instead of sixty-two years old—was something that Maria Anna had known about in advance. The archduchess had even told Mary, once, on the long trek to Basel, about her youthful hopes for a bridegroom who would die in a timely manner so she could become a formidable regent, joking that she would be willing to make an exception to this requirement in the case of her cousin.
Maria Anna, in turn, seemed to be making a most favorable impression on her fiancé. Mary could guess what he was thinking. Healthy. He would have heard that often enough, but it would be something else for him to see it for himself.
* * * *
Don Fernando was indeed thinking. Not only healthy but also and with all her component parts in the right slots. And laughing at himself—here I am, already thinking to myself in terms of that horridly tedious treatise on interchangeable parts that I have commanded myself to master before I command my subordinates to master it. And that is—um—a really magnificent bosom. Nearly of Richter-like proportions.
He took her hand as she rose. "Most honored cousin," he said. "I very much regret to tell you that just before we left Amsterdam, we received news of the death of the Holy Roman Emperor."
"I was afraid," she said. "The newspapers said that Papa was very ill." Automatically, her other hand felt for her rosary.
He reached out and embraced her.
* * * *
"I will not go." The expression on Diane Jackson's face was a triumph of stubbornness. "I will not abandon this embassy. My job is not over. Margrave Friedrich has just started to talk to me. I need to finish."
Jack Whitney and Burt Threlkeld just looked at her.
"Duke Hermann, the one with the complicated name, from Hesse. He has not told me to go. Ed Piazza has not told me to go. Tell Frank they are my boss."
Neither Jack nor Burt really wanted to be the man who told Frank Jackson that. Frank had made it very plain that he wanted them to yank Diane out of Basel.
"I'm staying with her, then," Tony Adducci said. "She'll need the radio. Besides, . . ."
"Besides, what?" Whitney asked.
"He is my mouthpiece," Diane said.
"Mouthpiece?"
"Like the lawyer, in gangster movies. He talks for me. He speaks English. He speaks French, which is even better. He can take notes when I speak French with the margrave. He says that he took two years of French because he did not want to take Spanish. Then he took two more years because he was sorry for Mrs. Hawkins. He thought she might lose her job if not enough students took French. Then, after the Ring of Fire, he learned German. Also, he learned Latin from Father von Spee. And from his grandparents, he remembers a little Italian. So he is my mouthpiece."
"'Spokesman' might be better," Whitney suggested.
"Mouthpiece, spokesman, all the same. I am the ambassadress. I need him. He stays."
"I really sort of think," Tony said, "that we ought to try to do some fence-mending with the Basel city council after the way you all came barreling over the bridge and through the gates. Figure out some way to help them save face. The margrave will probably help, and Freinsheim. Plus anything we can do to keep them from firing Wettstein would be all to the good."
"Maybe 'aide-de-camp' would be a better description," Whitney said, looking at Tony. The Grantville kids, the ones who had been in high school or younger when the Ring of Fire happened, were adapting to this world with a speed that sometimes made their parents and grandparents dizzy. It even made him dizzy and he was more "older brother" age. Especially in regard to the traditional American reluctance to learn foreign languages, which they simply seemed to have weighted down and dropped into a pond somewhere.
"Anyway," Tony said, "I'm not going unless Diane does."
Swiger, Gordon, and the rest of the embassy staff turned out to be of the same opinion.
"This Duke Bernhard is still out there," Diane said. "Tony will send radio to Ed Piazza. They will tell me what to do about him."
"Ah, Diane," Burt Threlkeld said. "I don't think that Mike and them really expected you to try to handle anything that high-level when they sent you down here."
"No," Diane admitted. "It was just that the rude margrave wanted to look at an up-timer. But I am here and they are not. So I handle. You want him to go away, don't you?"
Burt Threlkeld emitted a slightly gurgling sound from the back of his throat. "I am sure," he said, "that General Horn would be delighted to have him go away."
"Fine," Diane said. "I stay. You go no
w. He goes later."
* * * *
There did not seem to be much more to say. There was certainly no point in spending more time in Basel than they had to.
Their march through the streets of Basel was rather tense, with everybody thinking that something was going to go wrong at the last minute, but they made it across the bridge and into Riehen district, followed by Cavriani, Wettstein, Professor Buxtorf, and a sizable contingent of university students, all of whom were having prudent thoughts to the effect that the Basel city fathers were going to be really, really, annoyed about this, might possibly try to vent their feelings on anybody handy, and should be allowed to simmer down for a while before life went on.
Chapter 68
General Horn's Headquarters, Rheinfelden
"It looks like they pulled it off," Jesse Wood said.
"I don't see them bringing any wounded."
"We didn't hear any shots, either."
"Swords are always an option. Arrows. Clubs. Rocks."
"Get back to work, guys," Jesse said. "Since they are here this afternoon, we'll have to get the Gustav ready to climb off the ground in the morning."
"If the fuel comes."
"Sure, if the fuel comes. One or the other of the convoys is bound to make it."
* * * *
"Tell the infantry to take position," Horn said, "between here and where we know Bernhard to be. Don't go into Riehen. I don't want to cause unnecessary controversy with the Basel city council. Between Rheinfelden and the Riehen boundary markers. Knut has the diagrams for all the emplacements we worked out."
* * * *
"How much baggage?" Jesse Wood asked. He was trying to calculate whether he could possibly get back to Mainz the next day even if neither of the fuel convoys appeared. "I hope you warned them that there's not a lot of room. Mary Simpson should know that, anyway."
"They don't have any," Jack Whitney said.
"Two women with no baggage is beyond belief."
"They walked into Basel with the clothes they were wearing, Diane said. Plus, each of them had some extra underwear, socks, and towels in a little satchel. They rode out the same way. She spent some embassy money to get them better clothes. The ones they were wearing when they got there had sort of bit the dust while they were riding and walking from Ulm to Basel. Those outfits are what they are wearing now, but they rode out of the town without much more than they walked in with. And tomorrow morning they plan to leave everything they aren't actually wearing with Ronnie Dreeson. Mrs. Simpson says she can give it away. Or whatever."
Jesse eyed the sky. "Lord," he said, "I do most sincerely ask your pardon for having ever doubted that miracles still do happen."
* * * *
Landvogt's Office, Riehen, outside Basel
"Do you suppose that this Herr Wettstein is ever going to show up?" Susanna asked, for the eighth time that morning.
That was a record, since they had not yet finished their breakfast. The first repetition had been before she even ran her hands through her hair.
"I have no idea at all," Marc answered, also for the eighth time. "All we can do is wait. We're warm, we're dry. You have a bench to sleep on. I have a nice wood floor to sleep on. It is not a damp, dank dungeon. They're feeding us. No one is chasing us. Once things calm down, we can go into Basel and get some more money from Papa's banker."
"But we don't have anything to do," Susanna wailed.
Marc had been waiting for that. "Oh, yes, we do," he said cheerfully. "I spent what money I did still have to buy a ream of paper, two pens, and some ink from one of the Landvogt's clerks last evening. Clean paper. Last night, after you settled down on your bench, I started writing up a report on iron ore in the Wiese valley. I kept at it until it got dark. Now that it's light again, I'll go back to that and you can start making five clean copies. A ledger a day keeps boredom away."
Susanna looked at him, poised between objecting that she didn't want to make five copies of a report on iron ore and really wanting something to do other than look out the window and whine.
"Be nice and do it," Marc said winningly. "Sit on the floor and use the bench as a desk. Think of it as a birthday present. I'm fairly sure that this is the thirtieth day of September. If so, I am nineteen."
"Why do you get presents on your birthday?"
"Well, because I do. At least, we do in my family. And something good to eat. Something special."
"What do you do on your saint's day, then?
"Saint's day?" Marc asked.
"The festival of your patron, in whose honor you have your baptismal name. Mine, Susanna, is from the Apocrypha. Susanna and the Elders. Your name, I suppose, is for the apostle."
"No. Mine is for Mama's uncle, Marco Turettini. Calvinists don't have saints."
She looked at him, scandalized. "Surely you must have a patron saint. Who watches over you? Who protects you from harm?"
"God," Marc said. "And my parents. It's enough."
* * * *
General Horn's Headquarters, Rheinfelden
"Not everyone reads Cervantes, then, Mrs. Simpson, if I understand you correctly. But he was still well known as an author in your world." Gustav Horn looked down the table, to make sure that he was not ignoring his other guests. He was having an unexpectedly good time at the supper he was hosting. His profession did not often bring him into association with people who were truly interesting conversationalists with a wide knowledge of literature. His acquaintance with the admiral's wife was an unexpected pleasure.
"That is quite correct, General," Mary Simpson said. "Although I think that it is safe to say that probably more people in our country became familiar with Don Quixote through..." She suddenly stopped, caught her breath, and clapped her hands.
Everyone else interrupted their conversations, turned, and looked at her.
"I have it," she said. "Your Majesty," she said to Don Fernando. "Your Highness."
"Maria Anna," the archduchess said. "For you, Mary, I am still and will always be Maria Anna. What do you have?"
"The perfect wedding present from the United States of Europe. I know how much you enjoyed The Sound of Music, and I am sure that you will arrange to have it produced in your new home. But there is something else. It will take a little time, but I know we can do it. From Magdeburg, I will arrange, rehearse, costume, and send you the world premiere production of Man of la Mancha for the Brussels theater."
She turned back to Horn. "Thank you so much, General. Without your literary interests, it would never have occurred to me."
* * * *
"All I really want," Veronica said, "is to go back home. To Grantville, not to Grafenwöhr."
Leopold Cavriani nodded his head solemnly.
"Henry's hip was bothering him before we left and not one single person who has sent a radio message has said anything about Henry's hip. That certainly means that it is much worse and they simply are not telling me."
"Perhaps it is perfectly all right, so there is nothing they need to tell you."
Veronica snorted. "What did I tell you about writing to your wife about Marc?"
"Not to worry her unnecessarily."
"Did that mean that the news was not bad?"
"Ah, no."
"So. There is certainly something wrong with Henry's hip, which they are not telling me. Also, they have sent nothing about the schools. I have wasted a whole summer, spent a lot of money traveling, and gained nothing. I still have no money for tuition to send Annalise to college at Quedlinburg. There are still no books to train my teachers at St. Veronica's academy. The Jesuits in Amberg are still eating dinner on top of Johann Stephan's print shop. Undoubtedly they will appeal any judgment in the family's favor all the way to the Reichskammergericht. Which is sitting where, now, the cameral court? In Wetzlar, I think. So if the case is heard there, there will be more travel expense. I shall have either to start with another lawyer, who knows nothing about it, or pay Rastetter his expenses to go there and file our
briefs. Not to mention food and lodgings while he waits."
"Just a little ray of sunshine this morning, aren't we?"
"And Jack Whitney found me ready to shoot a gun out of the kitchen window of the embassy. Which means that when I get home, everybody will start nattering at me again to carry that shotgun they gave me. There were almost three years from when they gave it to me and when Mary and I were kidnapped. I never needed a gun in those three years. I went to Magdeburg and back twice without needing that shotgun. I have been to Badenburg many times; to Rudolstadt; to Jena. I never needed a gun. But they will start again. They will expect me, every step I take, to carry one of the things. Or, if I will not carry it, they will try to stop me from going places. It is too dangerous, they will say, as if I am an idiot child."
"In general, I perceive, the world is not your oyster."
She looked at him. "Do you carry a gun everywhere you go?"
Cavriani shook his head. "I carry a pistol, sometimes, when I think that I may need one. Also a sword, but it isn't quite the same for a woman. You aren't expected to wear one on dress occasions. How about a nice dirk?"
He pulled one out from under his doublet. "Efficient, inconspicuous, but above all lightweight and easy to conceal. Overall, I have always felt, there is really nothing like a dirk when it comes to personal weapons."
* * * *
Rheinfelden Air Field
"I want Mary in front with me," Jesse Wood said. "She's not a trained pilot, but she'll still be of more help to me than either of you, if we run into any kind of trouble. I know that you sat in front on the way down, Your Majesty, but that was simply because you wanted to and neither of your aides would have been any more use than you could be. At least, as it turned out, you don't get air sick."
"I have no objection to the arrangement," Don Fernando said.
"I'm sorry, Your Highness," Jesse said to the archduchess. "Perhaps if there is a really calm stretch of air, you and Mary can change places so you can enjoy the view for a few minutes."