by Eric Flint
Maria Anna looked at him. "I think that just knowing that I am up in the air with nothing underneath me except a thin floor will be quite sufficient. Without seeing it with my own eyes while it is happening."
"It's quite fascinating, really," Don Fernando said, "and not at all frightening. Almost like looking down on a map that has been colored to match reality, showing the trees and buildings. Perhaps we can show you another time. Some day, I really must have one of these machines for myself."
* * * *
By then, of course, Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar's spies in Basel had reported the situation to him.
"What should we do?" asked one of his officers. "We might be able to shoot down the airplane, if we used a massed volley. That's said to be the way the Danes brought down Richter's craft at Wismar."
Bernhard glanced around the small circle of officers standing with him on the field outside Basel. His eyes came to rest on the newest addition to the circle.
"What's your opinion, Johan?"
Colonel von Werth took a deep breath. "Ah... I'm really a cavalry officer, Your Grace."
"Your opinion, Johan."
Von Werth was still trying to get accustomed to the young duke's somewhat peculiar ways of being a ruler. He and Bernhard had known each other for some time, and been on good terms, true enough. But this was the first time he'd ever served under him as a commander.
Bernhard was.... difficult. Also brilliant. And often unpredictable. But one thing Johan had concluded was that, beneath the Saxe-Weimar duke's frequently arrogant and sometimes even abusive manner, lay a mind that expected—no, demanded—that his subordinates speak honestly to him. He might snarl at you for contradicting him, but he would not punish you. He would—instantly—dismiss an officer or adviser he decided was not saying what he really thought.
So, von Werth's hesitation didn't last for more than the time it took to exhale the breath.
"I can think of few things more ill-advised, Your Grace—given your delicate political situation—than to be seen by all of Europe as the man who murdered a prince and princess of the Habsburg family. Especially a prince so bold and a princess so captivating."
Bernhard smiled. "My thoughts exactly, Johan." He gave the officer who'd advanced the idea no more than a glance. The fellow avoided his eyes.
"No, gentlemen, we shall simply let them make their escape. If the plane crashes, it will be no fault of ours."
He shrugged, then. "It was just a ploy, after all. As the up-timers say, you win some and you lose some. Never a good idea to become so taken by the charms of a maneuver that you lose sight of the campaign."
* * * *
In the event, when the plane appeared, Bernhard did no more than give the occupants a salute with his drawn sword.
They probably didn't see the gesture, thought von Werth. But if they did, he imagined that the young Habsburg prince—perhaps even the young princess—would understand the sentiment.
"What a marvelous player he'll make in the game," Bernhard commented, after he sheathed his sword.
"A dangerous opponent, though," said Johan.
Bernhard smiled. "True. But who's to say he can't be an ally? And whether he turns out to be friend or foe, he's already done me something of a service."
Von Werth cocked his head, inviting an explanation.
"Oh, come, Johan. I should think it would be obvious. It is entirely to my advantage for Europe to get accustomed to—perhaps even to cherish—bold young princes, is it not?"
* * * *
En route from Rheinfelden to Amsterdam
The space in the back of a Gustav was not precisely roomy. At present, it was occupied by two healthy young adults, one male and one female, both in their twenties, tucked under a large pile of thick furs to fend off the cold, who were eying one another with the normal curiosity of two people who know perfectly well that they will be having sex, if not in a matter of hours, certainly in a matter of days, and that they will probably never again be this close together between now and then.
Maria Anna found his interest rather flattering.
"What," Don Fernando asked, "was that." His exploring hand had just encountered a rather sharp and pointy object."
Maria Anna reached through the slits at each side of her skirt, where her pockets were tied around her waist, and felt for the drawstring. She untied it; then snaked up her skirt and the top petticoat until she could shake the package loose.
"I haven't taken it out since Doña Mencia wrapped it for me the day I left Munich. I hope it is not bent or dented." Carefully, she unrolled the flannel. The golden rose lay on her lap, undamaged. After a few minutes she said, "I suppose that I should wrap it up again. It isn't mine to keep, I am afraid."
Don Fernando picked it up, held it against her nose, and said, "Sniff."
"How strange. It almost seems to have an aroma."
* * * *
"Ah, Herr Colonel Woods," Maria Anna asked. "Is there any way that you can tell when this plane will cross the border into the Netherlands?"
"More or less. It isn't as if the borders are marked on the land. Why?"
"It is protocol, you know. When a bride enters the land of her new husband, she is stripped of the clothing she is wearing and reclothed freshly with garments from her new home."
"I am afraid that we will have to forego it," Don Fernando said rather apologetically. "I did not bring any Netherlandish clothes with me." He leaned back as far as he could in the cramped seat, lifted the pile of furs, and looked at Maria Anna from head to toe. "However, I would be quite willing to conduct the first half of the ceremony, if you think that would help," he offered brightly.
"Will anyone be waiting with another set of clothes when we land?" Maria Anna asked pragmatically.
"Not as far as I know. I forgot all about it, we were in such a rush to leave."
"It is not exactly warm in this airplane. I think that I will keep my clothes on right now, thank you. If I do step out and we find some great noblewoman standing at the foot of the ladder with her arms full of fabric, that will be time enough."
Chapter 69
Monita Paterna
Landvogt's Office, Riehen, outside Basel
"It is Herr Wettstein, finally. It has to be." Susanna had her nose pressed to the window pane. "A man arrived on horseback, and just the way the other men here are gathering around him and talking to him, he has to be the boss."
"Don't get overexcited. We're probably not the first on his list, by any means," Marc said stoically. "It may be a couple of days before he gets around to thinking about us."
It would have been, normally. But Wettstein's clerk happened to mention that he had sold a ream of ledger paper to a young man, Cavriani, and would need to order a replacement from Basel, since they would be running short fairly soon.
At the name, Wettstein raised his head. "Where?" he asked.
"In the reception room. They weren't really prisoners, even though the militia brought them in. We didn't have anyplace else to put them."
"They? Them?"
"Cavriani. And the kid he has with him."
The conversation did not last five minutes. Realizing that Horn had, by placing a substantial portion of his army between the landing field and Bernhard, also placed it between the two members of the Cavriani family, Wettstein issued safe-conducts, assigned a guide, accepted an IOU for food and lodging, and shooed them off. Not that he wouldn't have enjoyed getting to know Leopold's son under other circumstances, but at the moment he had a very full schedule.
"Who's the boy?" he asked idly.
"Don't think I ever heard his name," the clerk answered.
* * * *
General Horn's Camp, outside Rheinfelden
"Papa!"
At the sound of this urgent cry, Cavriani turned quickly away from Frau Dreeson and her incessant grumbles. Two young men, escorted by a couple of members of the Riehen militia and followed, or possibly chased, by two of Horn's soldiers, were running
toward him. He ran toward them.
"Papa, what luck to find you still here. Herr Wettstein was afraid that you might already have left. I'm completely out of money; I spent the last of it on paper to draw up my report on iron ore in the Wiese river valley. Wettstein's clerk didn't charge a lot for it."
Marc handed his father five neat copies of the iron ore report which he compiled while stuck in the Landvogt's office in Riehen, but didn't stop talking. "I was almost out of money before I bought that. We had already figured that between where we were when the Bavarian captain started to chase us—that was before, somehow, the Bavarian captain started to chase us again with part of Duke Bernhard's army helping him—and when we got to your factor's house in Basel and could draw an advance, we wouldn't be eating much that we couldn't find growing along the roadside. If we ever had time to stop and eat, that is."
Marc was tanned, dirty, disheveled—and abundantly alive and healthy, totally unharmed. Leopold embraced him heartily, with a kiss on each cheek.
"And, I see, you have found a companion in your mischief." He gestured toward the other young man—boy, really, at closer range.
Marc squared his shoulders. "Ah, yes. Papa, this is Susanna. Susanna Allegretti."
Leopold Cavriani had spent enough time in Grantville to be fully aware of why "A Boy Named Sue" was considered to be a joke. There weren't any boys named Sue. Or Susanna. He turned.
"Frau Dreeson," he called. "Veronica."
Veronica became somewhat distracted from her catalog of grievances. What she said was, "See, I was right. No need for you to write your wife and make her worry. None at all."
* * * *
Marc was not sure what might be coming next.
"A fascinating tale of adventure. But such a sad absence of chaperones," his father said at dinner, after Marc and Susanna had narrated their way through everything that had happened since Munich, usually in turn, but sometimes in chorus. "Two unrelated young people, boy and girl, scampering every which way through the countryside. Presumably, we should now remedy the situation by marrying you off to each other."
"That's fine," Marc said.
"No," Susanna said at the same time.
Marc looked at her a little reproachfully. In response to Veronica's urgent note, sent back via the Riehen militia and Wettstein, Diane Jackson had checked through her closet for clothes she could spare and sent Tony Adducci across the bridge to Riehen with a package. Wettstein had forwarded it to Horn's camp by courier. Susanna was dressed as a girl again. Sort of. Marc had never seen anything even vaguely like a turquoise satin cheong sam embroidered with red and green dragons before. He had never even imagined that such a garment existed, but he certainly appreciated the effect when Susanna wore it, as she was doing for the evening meal. The cream-colored turtle-neck sweater and the blue jeans embroidered with butterflies on the back pockets were rather nice, too. Diane did not go in for down-time fashions.
"No?" Leopold Cavriani raised an eyebrow.
"No. I like Marc, but I won't be married to him and go to some Calvinist city where everybody wears black broadcloth. Or black gabardine. Maybe with a white linen collar if they are feeling very cheerful. Not even if they would have me! We didn't do anything wrong. We don't have to marry each other. I got this far. Somehow, I can get to the Spanish Netherlands. I will go back to my lady and make beautiful clothing with velvet and satin and brocade and lace..."
"Ah. Professional pride, I see. That is understandable. Certainly, we can see to it that you arrive in the Spanish Netherlands safely. Perhaps Potentiana's cousins in Lyons..."
* * * *
"At least, girl," Veronica said, after they had told the men good night and gone to find the tent that General Horn had assigned to them and go to bed, "you are thinking about the problems. Which is more than Dorothea and her young man were doing last spring. That only means, of course, that they will have to deal with it after they manage to get married."
She scowled ferociously and added with her usual level of cheer, "If, of course, they managed to get to Grantville. If they were not killed by bandits along the way. If neither of them has died from some ordinary disease. If Dorothea does not die in childbirth—it is her first, and that is always the riskiest one. Indeed, if the two of them did not starve to death during the trip. Mary and I were kidnapped before I could arrange a bank draft for them."
"Who is Dorothea?" Susanna asked.
"My late husband Johann Stephan's idiotic niece. After marriage, it is certain to be more awkward. When they look at one another across the baby's cradle, for example, and then start discussions about whether the baptism will take place in a Catholic or Calvinist church, which, if she does not die and the baby is born alive, they will do before Christmas. You are quite right. It is undoubtedly difficult to yoke a Catholic and a Calvinist together in marriage. Though, of course, Dorothea is such a little fool that she may not have strong opinions about the matter. She may just change over if her husband tells her to."
"I," Susanna said firmly, "would never do that. Not ever."
Veronica smiled, even if somewhat sourly. "Precisely what I thought. Although, child, believe me, having a Calvinist and a Catholic united in one marriage cannot possibly be as awkward as playing host to a Calvinist and a Catholic united together in your own mind, soul, and body. Damned Bavarians. Not that Duke Maximilian was responsible for the fact that I host a Lutheran to keep them company, I admit. The Counts Palatine managed that without his help."
Susanna had never thought about that problem. She looked at Veronica a moment and said so.
Abruptly, Veronica asked, "Since you seem to recognize the problems, why are you even thinking about marriage to the boy? Though at least you did have enough sense to refuse his father's suggestion."
Susanna's eyes flew wide. "Because I want to kiss him. I really do. I've been thinking about kissing him since the first time I saw him. Maybe not quite since the first time I saw him, but even when he was just an ironworker repairing the house next to the English Ladies on Paradise Street, I was thinking... Oh, well, at least, definitely, since the first time I really looked at him. And, well, other stuff."
She blushed. "I have dreamed about it. I never really wanted to do that with any other man I've ever seen in my life. I couldn't even imagine really wanting to do those things when the other seamstresses talked about it. It was just something, I thought, that you had to put up with in order to get married. Then I looked at Marc in the baggage park outside of Munich and I started to think about it all. When I was a boy, it was a very peculiar feeling. But he never gave me a boy's name. When we were alone, he always called me Susanna, and when we were with other people, he never called me anything at all. And he did say, once, that he thinks that the way that all my parts are put together is cute. And he doesn't mind that my eyelashes are short and straight and blond. That's a good sign, don't you think?"
Stop it, she told herself. You are chattering to this dried up prune of an old lady who is part Calvinist. She will not approve of you at all if you say such things.
* * * *
"Did you have to agree quite so fast to sending her on to the Spanish Netherlands?" Marc asked after Veronica and Susanna had left the supper table. "I've known you all my life, Papa, so don't try to look innocent. You could have thought of something to keep her here, if you wanted to."
"But you did nothing wrong?" Cavriani's eyebrow was up again.
"We did nothing wrong. We did not even come close to doing anything wrong." Marc smiled rather ruefully. "Papa, I am afraid that all those lessons that I was given by all those tutors whom you hired actually did have an effect. I find, when I examine my conscience, that I disapprove of fornication and adultery and—umm—almost all the other things that the ministers hope that a young man will grow up to disapprove of. Adultery, Apostasy. Arrogance. Flattery, Fornication, Freemasonry. I could compile a whole alphabetical list." Now he grinned. "Which is a shame, honestly, considering that Susanna really
is the loveliest girl I have ever met, and doing something wrong would have been a lot of fun. Especially in the fornication area."
Cavriani laced his fingers across his chest, leaned back, and contemplated his son. He saw that the incorrigible curl had escaped once more and was hanging down right in the middle of Marc's forehead. That rebellious curl would remain—if Marc was, by the grace of God, granted a long life—until a receding hairline took care of the problem.
He contemplated Susanna with his mind. Blondish, but really light brown, straight hair, a little wispy—check. Eyes of no particular color, somewhere between gray and hazel—check. Nose present, but rather narrow in the bridge—check. Teeth present, but if she had been an up-timer, she would have been given 'braces'—check. Mouth quite a bit wide for the rest of the face, smiling readily, but the lips were thin rather than full—check. Clear skin—check, and remind Potentiana's cousin to bring up the topic of seeing a physician in the Spanish Netherlands for one of these new vaccinations with catpox to ward off the smallpox. Tiny in both height and girth. If a Grantviller were to rate her buxomness on a scale of one to ten, possibly a two, if the man doing the rating were in a generous mood.
There were, he thought, a couple of possibilities. The first was that Marc was not fully in the possession of his senses, to categorize this as, "the loveliest girl I have ever met."
Cavriani did not believe for an instant that his son was not in possession of his wits.
The second was that this was the girl whom, Catholic seamstress of luxury clothing or not, Divine Providence had predestined to become his daughter-in-law. God, therefore, had providentially instilled in Marc a due appreciation of God's gracious gift of a good wife, whose worth was above that of pearls and rubies.
Clearly, it would be more prudent to act, for the time being, on the basis of the second hypothesis. Cavriani thought the parents of Romeo and Juliet had behaved in a remarkably stupid manner ever since the first time he saw the play.
"Susanna has explained to us," he began, "why she is not currently enthusiastic about the idea of marrying you. However, if you listened carefully, none of her reasons contained any objection to you, as a person. Merely to the circumstances. Also, you are both still very young to be considering marriage—given, which I will grant as a presupposition, that you have done nothing wrong and there is no urgent cause for you to take precipitous steps."