Ring of Fire II

by Eric Flint

  "I'm sure."

  "It is the gold that is important. Remember that. It is the gold. If indeed they can draw brass fine enough to make these hypodermic needles for drawing blood to make this 'serum-based antitoxin' and one of the main problems is that blood corrodes the needles so quickly, it is the gold that is important. They must coat these brass needles with gold."

  "Yeah," Joe Matewski said. "I've got it. Really I do. I figure that this is really important to you. The medical types in Grantville and Jena will get the short version over the radio tonight and this"—he held up several hundred pages of closely written paper—"just as soon as I can get it there. A couple of weeks, at most."

  Gatterer expressed profuse gratitude.

  "I'll radio the short version to Venice for Stoner, too. Express-courier the second copy to him."

  Gatterer grasped his head and kissed him on both cheeks.

  Matewski thought that a friendly handshake would have been just plenty, but he managed to keep from backing off.

  He didn't enjoy going to those Hearts and Minds lectures, but maybe they did some good, after all.

  Bamberg, Franconia

  October 1634

  "What do you think, Vince?" Janie Kacere turned a couple of pieces of paper over and then turned them back again. "Were they a Trojan horse that we sent into Kronach? Successfully, I have to admit, the way Matt"—she waved toward him down at the end of the table—"pulled things off. Or . . ."

  ". . . were they a Trojan horse that the Duchess Claudia de Medici planted on us?" Cliff Priest finished her sentence. "And if she did, why?"

  Vince Marcantonio shook his head. "I don't know which one. Not yet. Maybe we won't know for years." He grinned suddenly. "But she's damned determined that they're going to see Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar next, whether they want to or not, so I've gotten the better of Guarinoni's complaints that their 'old bones' wouldn't stand a trip over to Swabia at his age."

  "Vince." Stewart Hawker looked apprehensive. "What have you done? They are over sixty, after all. Guarinoni and Weinhart both. And Gatterer's no spring chicken, either. He got his M.D. more than thirty years ago. They were pretty wiped out when they came in from Innsbruck last March, even though the duchess paid for a carriage so they didn't have to ride out in the weather. The trip from here up to Kronach wasn't easy for them, either. And the summer didn't exactly count as a vacation, either."

  "I asked him if he was open to new experiences. Of course he's so full of himself that he had to say 'yes.' And what with the fact that there's a landing field at Rheinfelden now . . ."

  "You got hold of a plane?" Stew spilled his coffee on the flagstone floor.

  "Yep. A Gustav is coming to drop a couple of high-ranking diplomats off in Bayreuth. The pilot will transport the good doctors and deposit them right on Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar's doorstep. Bernhard isn't going to let our medical people from Fulda into his territory, I don't think. We have to live with that. But he seems to be willing to take these men from the Duchess Claudia. Don't know why. Maybe parts of the Catholic and Austrian territories that he's scooped up aren't as docile as he had hoped."

  "Nobody's ever as docile as a person hopes." Bennett Norris spoke in the world-weary voice of anyone who has ever parented a teenager. Vince ignored him. Bennett was starting to succumb to short-timer-itis. As soon as the national election was over and done with, in February, Ed Piazza was transferring him and Marian to Mainz.

  "They're the best that this time and place has to offer, and they can take some of our tricks with them. Maybe they can contain the plague that's scheduled to sweep up through Swabia and Wuerttemberg into the USE in the next couple of years. Maybe Bernhard's just self-interested enough not to want half the population of his new sandbox dead. God, I hope so. And even if they can't pull it off . . ."

  It didn't look like Vince was going to finish the sentence.

  Janie looked up at the cherubs on the ceiling. ". . . there's always the possibility that we've sent a secret weapon."

  "What?"

  "Guarinoni may bore Duke Bernhard to death with extended lectures on a healthful lifestyle. Replete with mnemonic tricks and pompous admonitions."

  Together, most of the SoTF administrative staff in Bamberg chanted, "Let's all be gesondt."

  Bozen, Tirol

  October 1634

  "God rest his soul," Duchess Claudia said. She was referring to her late brother-in-law Ferdinand, the Holy Roman Emperor.

  Dr. Bienner crossed himself.

  "Ferdinand was never seriously interested in the Austrian holdings in Swabia."

  Bienner nodded cautiously.

  "Our nephew Ferdinand is not likely to make them his primary concern, either. He worries about Hungary. And the Turks."

  "As well he should."

  "The Austro-Hungarian Empire?"

  "Premature, perhaps. But not unreasonable, given the situation in the Germanies."

  "Which leaves Tyrol to worry about Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar. If, of course, the Swede does not manage to smash him." The duchess-regent smashed her hand down on the table. "I like that English word. It has such a satisfying sound."

  "General Horn is not given to smashing."

  "So I have heard. Duke Bernhard accepted Our physicians?"

  "And, apparently, their advice. There is the whole winter to prepare for what we may, according to the up-timers' encyclopedias, expect next spring. They will work with the up-time 'nurse.' "

  "Perhaps our agents in the Vorarlberg should initiate diplomatic relations with him?"

  Dr. Bienner stroked his beard without replying.

  Duchess Claudia walked to the window. "We are well matched in age. I am only thirty and proven fertile."

  Dr. Bienner nodded. Her first marriage, little over a year in duration, had produced a child who still lived. Female, unfortunately. The second, five children in eight years, four of them still alive and healthy and two of them boys. Claudia de Medici was a woman to gladden any ambitious dynast's heart.

  While his mind wandered, she had continued talking. "Perhaps it was prescient that Leopold and I chose to name our first daughter Isabella Clara. Two years before this 'Ring of Fire.' If the king in the Low Countries and Maria Anna have a son right away, the age gap will not be too great. A boy is old enough to beget years before a woman has matured enough to give birth with maximum safety. And the symbolism should appeal to them."

  Dr. Bienner nodded silently.

  "Duke Bernhard is a heretic, but that is no insuperable obstacle. After all, the pope granted a dispensation for the French king's sister to marry that stupid Englishman. Lutherans are no more heretical than Anglicans."

  She tapped her fingernails, one by one, on the window pane. "I am scarcely in Vienna's confidence, of course. But if it should happen that Our cousins are too preoccupied to think seriously about the, um, 'challenges and opportunities' presented by the situation in Vorderoesterreich and the Breisgau . . . ah, not to mention Alsace and the Franche Comte . . ."

  She turned around from the window, leaning forward.

  "Tyrol is not."

  Dr. Bienner nodded again. "May your generosity be rewarded, Your Grace."

  Lucky at Cards

  Andrew Dennis

  "So, how do we play this game?" Richelieu's manner was open, inquiring, almost naive.

  Smirks passed around the table. The business of state had finished hours ago and the guests who had remained in the Louvre to drink and gamble the night away were somewhat relaxed from the formality of occasions of state.

  "Armand, you are impossible." Abel Servien, marquis de Sable, was a little more relaxed than most, laughing out loud as he spoke. Louder than most, too. It was all Mazarin could do not to wince at the way the man boomed. He actually liked the fellow, but it was a lot easier to picture him riding to hounds or spearing a boar than haggling the fine provisions of a treaty or partaking of a detailed academic correspondence. He did both of the latter, to the mild puzzlement of many, who
looked at the big, hearty, beefy fellow with the loud voice and the bombastic manner and assumed he was, at best, an uncomplicated soul. The missing eye, lost in a hunting accident in his youth, did nothing to detract from the image of a simple brawler from the rural nobility.

  Which he was. Simply a highly intelligent, supremely educated one whose achievements off the hunting field had just won him election to the newly-formed Academie Francaise, an accolade that paled somewhat beside being regarded by Richelieu as a smart man. Mazarin also had a high opinion of his talents: he had thrashed out the Peace of Cherasco with Servien, what seemed now like a lifetime ago, and both of them had done well as a result. Mazarin had made a name that now saw him in good odor in Paris and Rome both, and Servien had ended up minister of war and able to place any number of his relatives in the cardinal's service. His fourth cousin, Etienne, was one of the more notorious of the special intendants who did the cardinal's more surreptitious work.

  "Impossible, Abel?" Richelieu smiled back.

  "Impossible." Servien gestured for the cardinal to be included in the deal. "If Etienne hasn't already furnished you with a complete set of rules, some other of your army of sneaks has done so, and I can't imagine it took you more than, oh, an hour or so to learn them fully and devise seventeen winning stratagems."

  Richelieu quirked an eyebrow. "Why would you think I might do such a thing? A churchman, studying so disreputable an activity as cards?"

  "Hah!" Servien barked. "It would be an improvement from all those grubby actors and playwrights you throw money at. And it's not as if we don't already have a cardinal taking us for every ecu in our pockets. Clearly it is an entirely reputable activity if we now have two princes of the church at table, although it will not be long before we have a beggar in my chair."

  "Come, Abel," Mazarin said, "you can afford it. Can I help it if you're not as good at cards as you are at diplomacy?"

  "I remain to be convinced that this 'Texas hold 'em' is quite the game of skill you claim it is." Servien grumped. "I have been dealt nothing but excrement since the evening began, and nothing seems to answer for making good the execrable luck I'm having."

  At that he was doing better than Leon Bouthillier, who was to Mazarin's left; the fortunes of the comte de Chavigny were being heavily depleted and much of it had ended up in Mazarin's gratifyingly large stack of ecus. Alas, the poor fellow had learned to play poker from Harry Lefferts, and both men did not have a tell so much as consist entirely of one; one simply had to judge how excited the fellow was. Neither was much concerned to consider the odds, and had a basic instinct for unrestrained aggression. Harry did it a good deal better than Leon, but the principle was the same in either case—audacity, audacity and more audacity. Unfortunately, Bouthillier couldn't quite manage the same level of sheer single-minded sanguinity and would occasionally back down from a truly insane bluff; against Harry one played the probabilities and over time, wore him down. Against Leon, a show of force on a moderately strong hand would occasionally see him off.

  The cards were going around again and this time Richelieu was being dealt in. "Could we have the door closed for some few moments?" he asked as he briefly examined his hole cards and arranged them neatly before him.

  "Certainly," de Sable said, and waved at a servant to attend to the matter.

  "And a moment of privacy?" Richelieu asked, prompting another wave for the assorted servants—including the fellow who was serving up the cards, at another nod and quirk of the eyebrow from the cardinal—to withdraw for the moment.

  Mazarin noted the company. Himself, de Sable, Bouthillier, and Richelieu. And, now that the last of the servants had left, Etienne Servien pulling the door closed and standing by it to ensure their privacy, he raised an eyebrow.

  "Yes, Your Eminence," Richelieu said, noting the gesture, "I am afraid I must interrupt you at cards with business. Tiresome, but necessary, and I do apologize."

  "There is no need for Your Eminence to apologize," Mazarin said, "Since I am now fully employed here, my time is Your Eminence's."

  "Can we drop the formality, please?" de Sable said. "Things were pleasantly relaxed, Jules, before you started Eminencing all over the place."

  "Please excuse me, Abel," Mazarin said, realizing that he was actually at fault and grateful to the irascible war minister for the correction, "I still have a little trouble thinking of myself as a cardinal. A habit I am working on, I assure you."

  "Work swiftly, if you would," Bouthillier said, speaking for the first time since Richelieu had entered. "The sense I have among Gaston's circle is that they would as soon not give you any time at all for that."

  "Really?" It was Richelieu's turn to raise an eyebrow. "And how do they propose to arrange the dismissal of a cardinal who has His Holiness' favor so firmly in hand?"

  Mazarin wondered too. He had successfully smoothed over the ripples that the Galileo Affair had caused, tidied up the loose ends from what had been, potentially, one of the most major upsets arising from the Ring of Fire. It hadn't been easy—the Venetian Committee of Correspondence had managed to set a record for bad luck and bad management that looked unlikely to be beaten—but it had just about been possible to maneuver the thing so that everyone got something and no one was left empty-handed. Spain was unhappy about it, but they were perennially unhappy about everything, so that wasn't much of a loss. It had taken all of Mazarin's skill as a lawyer and diplomat and, there at the end when he had to sell the thing to a sceptical curia, outright bare-faced cheek. What Harry Lefferts would call 'bafflin' 'em with bullshit.' The bluff had carried the day, and with Rome's political factions baffled into immobility and the damage to France—D'Avaux, the French ambassador to Venice, had managed to outdo himself for sheer fatheaded incompetence—was neatly contained.

  Leon shrugged. "I don't think anyone has got quite so far as actual planning, although perhaps Giulio, or Jules rather—" he turned to Mazarin "—I do apologize, I've known you as Giulio for so long I keep forgetting—"

  Mazarin waved it aside. If truth be told, he'd only had the new name for a couple of months and wasn't quite used to his new signature himself. Still, it did not do to take one's naturalization by half-measures.

  "As I was saying before I put my foot so firmly in my mouth," Leon continued, "Jules will likely be seeing himself slandered in pamphlets before long."

  Richelieu's grin was disarming. "The mazarinades are starting early, then," he said.

  Mazarin couldn't help but be sarcastic. "I had so been looking forward to that," he said, "perhaps I should write a few memoirs of my time as a student in Madrid, so they can have some of the more noteworthy items to print."

  "Really?" Abel asked, grinning broadly, "not quite the serious fellow I thought, are you?"

  "Of course he is," Richelieu said, deadpan. "Would a prince of the church have spent his student years raising absolute hell in Madrid?"

  "I didn't know I was entering the church then," Mazarin said, blushing slightly. He had, in fact, taken full advantage of his time as an undergraduate to make a perfect beast of himself and honed the skills of fast talking and persuasion he had later parlayed into a career in diplomacy. Watching Harry Lefferts in action in Rome had brought back some very pleasant memories indeed. And, although wild horses would not drag the admission out of him in this company, made him wish rubber had been invented back then. Those things were a marvellous invention.

  "Be that as it may," Richelieu said, before Mazarin could wander off into pleasant remembrances, "if Gaston is minded to make trouble I think we should take him seriously. We have nothing specific as yet, but there is suggestion that he has been meeting with more Spaniards lately."

  "And His Majesty still won't have his brother executed?" Abel Servien's tone was arch and sneering in a way that would have surprised anyone who didn't know him well.

  "Please, Abel," Richelieu said, "until His Majesty is blessed with an heir, Monsieur Gaston has to remain alive."

  "I am very ca
refully not commenting on His Majesty's practice in that regard," Servien said, suddenly absolutely without tone or affect in his voice.

  "Her Majesty has been pregnant several times, as you know, Abel," Richelieu said, his tone chiding.

  Servien simply harrumphed.

  Richelieu waved the issue of royal issue aside. "Perhaps something might be done to warn off Monsieur Gaston?" He opened the question to general debate with his tone and a glance around the table. "While we consider it, may I ask to whom falls the honor of opening the betting?"

  The business of betting occupied everyone for a few moments; by ironclad convention there was no gossip while a hand was in play, a rule that held as well for primero and baccarat as it did for Texas hold 'em. Unfortunately, Mazarin was holding a rather nice pair of fours that turned in to three of a kind on the flop, so the preoccupation of the other three men at the table made for disappointing betting. The river gave him a full house, nines over fours, but Leon had had the other two nines, so perhaps the rather light betting had been a mercy. He would cheerfully have called Leon's bluff all the way to the hilt, and probably reversed their relative positions. As it was, Leon made a dent in the stack of ecus he'd lost to Mazarin.