Ring of Fire - 1635_ The Legions of Pestilence

by Virginia DeMarce

  “Okay.” Sophia could recognize a lost cause. Plus, Vittoria had a point. “Like my own mama. She’s not dead, of course, but once she began to get tired of being pregnant all the time and locked Papa out of her bedroom, things were not the same. No woman, no matter how much care she gives to her body, is going to look precisely the same after she has given birth to several children as she did at the beginning. So flirting, an accusation of adultery–maybe she did and maybe she didn’t, but all Papa had to do was deny that he had still been sleeping with her.... Maybe you’re right.”

  “It’s not quite the same for you, Sophia,” Vittoria said gently. “For your parents, there was no balance of power, really. The same was true of Henry VIII in England and Anne Boleyn; also one of those Catherines. The thing to learn about marriage from that man is that he did not behead his royal wives. Divorced them against the teachings of Mother Church, yes. But the ones he had beheaded were, like your mother, from wealthy and powerful noble families within the kingdom, but still his subjects and therefore subject to royal whims. They were not from families that could give a woman backing to stand her ground.”

  Sophia nodded. “Like the ballad: The King and the Beggar-Maid with the African king, Cophetua, falling in love instantly with Zenelophon and proposing marriage right away. Shakespeare mentioned it in his plays several times, I’m pretty sure. Though they lived happily ever after, but that was imaginary. I have my doubts about it.”

  “I’m somewhere in between,” Vittoria continued. “Born into an equivalent family as my husband, but with no backing, because the dukes of Urbino are gone. The only relatives I have are also, equally, Ferdinando’s relatives. But I do have my own fortune, so if I should decide to set up my own household, separate from Ferdinando’s court, I can afford to buy a suitable estate and staff it. It would be preferable if things don’t come to that. I hope I’ll get pregnant quickly. That’s crucial. Ferdinando has been very considerate in delaying the public marriage until he thought me old enough to bear children. I haven’t had to endure three years of everyone looking at my stomach and whispering, ‘Is she barren? Perhaps an annulment...’ while he delayed the consummation.

  “Grandmama was always just full of good advice about pregnancy. After all, she was very successful. Nine children and eight of them survived. Even if I don’t get pregnant fast, Ferdinando has plenty of heirs in his brothers, so it won’t be a total crisis. All four of the younger boys are still alive. The up-time encyclopedias say that Francesco died of the plague in 1634 in Regensburg, but that didn’t happen because he at wasn’t even at Regensburg in 1634. He’s still in the Austrian army, though, fighting the Ottomans, so he’ll have plenty of other opportunities to get himself killed. I’m not counting on Francesco for anything useful in the long term. I just don’t want to find myself in the kind of position where Louis XIII put Anne of Austria for so many years, but as Grandmama said, as long as Ferdinando doesn’t humiliate me in public and does his duty whether he wants to or not, I should do fine.”

  “Your mother does fine,” Marcie said. “I’ve been working for her for three years. She is very competent. Very shrewd.”

  “I’ll need to do fine,” Vittoria said with sudden fierceness. “I have to do fine. They’ll say that I’m interfering, but I have to become interfering. Aside from his page boys, the only things that interest Ferdinando are science and art. The family put Gian Carlo into the church when he was ten. He does music, theater, art, and scheming. It’s too soon to tell if any pope will make him a cardinal in this world, but most likely one of them will, unless Tuscany completely sinks into the Spanish mire. Or the family needs him for something else and has him resign his sinecures, like Nicholas-François did. It’s not as if he’s taken holy orders. Leopoldo does science even more than Ferdinando, and Mattias does both military and science. None of them do much in the way of political science or public administration

  “So, as Grandmama said, if we’re to maintain the Medici interests in Italy against all the outside pressures, I’m going to have to take charge. And manage to do that in a way that doesn’t alienate Ferdinando. With, all the time, the courtiers and foreign ambassadors complaining that I am interfering, because I thwart their plans to take advantage of his inattention to government. I will be an interfering woman all my life. Then, at the end of it, if Christ, His Holy Mother, and His saints grant me the mercy of time, Tuscany will still be there for my sons!”

  Chapter 48

  For the next two weeks, they attended various court functions, circulated, chatted, and were polite. The functions were not numerous, and were very sedate. Duke Victor Amadeus was not well and retired early. Duchess Christine Marie was still recovering from her latest childbirth two months earlier, although she had been churched and therefore could appear in public again. She was anxious about her husband’s health and retired when he did. The duke, like his father before him, insisted on elaborate observation of protocol, strict use of titles, and careful etiquette. Conversation became notably livelier when they were no longer present.

  Bismarck and Ruvigny held focused discussions with Nicholas-François and Claude. The rest of the Burgundy delegation didn’t sit in on those.

  Matt had casual conversations with various techies, all down-timers. He talked about down-time tech, too, as well as newly adopted up-time tech. He was pretty strongly of the opinion that too many people in the USE were oblivious to the likelihood that some down-timer, somewhere, was going to come up with something that would be a game-changer, for good or for ill. He thought that Turin and Milan were pretty likely “somewhere” candidates and got permission to go over to Milan for a couple of weeks.

  Claude and Nicholas-François, except for mandatory public appearances, were too busy with Ruvigny and Bismarck the first couple of weeks after they got to Turin to spend many hours on the “family visit” with their cousin Vittoria. Marcie told Vittoria more about her mother. It was odd to think that she knew more about the grand duchess than her own daughter did. They talked about the coup that had successfully brought Tyrol into the USE with Vittoria’s half-brothers, whom she had never met, designated as hereditary governors of the province. Marcie had never met them either, so she couldn’t add much there. She hadn’t even met anyone who had met them. None of her assignments had taken her to Tyrol. She could talk about mining in the region of Metz, which wasn’t the same thing.

  Once the first two weeks were over, the envoys and the Lorrainers sent dispatches here, there, and yonder. While they waited for replies, they had more time to spend with the ladies.

  Vittoria turned out to hold strong opinions in regard to Italian local politics. Once she had gained confidence in their discretion, she expressed a few. Prominently, she admitted that she would like very much to get her duchy of Urbino back from the Papal States, to which it had been returned in 1626 after her grandfather, Francesco Maria della Rovere, realized that, because of her father’s assassination, he had no hope of male heirs.

  “He lived for another five years, didn’t die until 1631, but considered that I was worthless to him, just because I’m a female. Oh, I was good enough to inherit the family’s private fortune and art collection, which is what made me so desirable as a bride for Ferdinando. The Medicis needed the money and wanted the art. But not good enough to rule under the agreement by which my family held the duchy from the pope. This ‘male heirs only’ thing is going to have to stop.” Vittoria’s voice rose. “Look at England! Look at Princess Kristina! If heretics have enough sense to let their daughters inherit and rule, why don’t Catholics? And it’s not just heretics. Mary Tudor reigned in England. Mary of Scots took the throne. They were both Catholic monarchs. There’s nothing in the teachings of the Church that prohibits a woman from ruling; not just being a regent, but ruling in her own right and name.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The map of Italy being what it was, local politics inevitably led to ecclesiastical politics.

  Vittoria being who she was
, she usually did not address that topic when the men were present. Marcie being Marcie, they did not address any topic of a serious nature when servants were anywhere in the vicinity. She thought that she had managed to get that through all of their heads: Vittoria, Claude, and Sophia.

  This afternoon, the ladies were strolling through the gardens. At least, it had been announced as a stroll. With a brisk wind blowing and Sophia setting the pace, it was more along the lines of a stride.

  “Now I have to decide for myself. There’s no one at all in the court I trust enough to rely upon to guide me.” Vittoria glanced around, doublechecking that none of the guards who provided for their security or the maids assigned to cater to their needs, should they develop any unexpected needs in the course of the next hour or so, were where they could overhear her.

  Sophia produced a sympathetic murmur. “I know how you feel. It was pretty much like that for us after Papa exiled our mother from the court.”

  “I can’t trust anybody.” Vittoria frowned. “I am a faithful member of the Holy Roman Catholic Church and will remain so all my life. Even if things change so that we in Italy must come to tolerate you Lutherans, I will not like it. No, not at all.” She pursed her lips. “I won’t like it any more than the USE emperor likes having to tolerate Catholics, I’m sure.”

  Sophia laughed rather loudly, attracting a few glances from the guards and servants. “That’s no secret. Everybody’s sure he doesn’t like it. It’s not as if he’s extended the idea of religous toleration to Sweden. Except for foreigners, of course. Merchants, miners, diplomats. But they’ve been exempt for a long time. It’s not something the up-timers introduced.”

  “Just because I will always be Catholic and will do everything in my power to advance the interests of the Church, that doesn’t mean that every Catholic is to be trusted.”

  “Well, Gustavus can’t trust every Lutheran, either,” Sophia pointed out. “Look what Oxenstierna did. I’m not exactly sure that religion makes people any better than they would be without it.”

  Vittoria looked a little startled. “Especially not to be trusted in the current circumstances. Not even my confessor. I am not certain of his allegiance, whether to Bedmar or Borja; whether to Tuscany or Spain. I am not really certain of the present allegiance of most of the Tuscan clergy, whether they are secular priests or members of the religious orders, many of which have themselves developed internal schisms. Aside from God and the Holy Mother, there is no one I can rely on at all.” She stopped suddenly, bringing the entire procession of walkers to a slightly stumbling halt.

  She snorted. “I hate Borja. If Spain prevails in Italy, it’s entirely possible that Ferdinando will not be able to keep Tuscany from being subsumed into a Spanish-controlled Papal States, just as Urbino was escheated to the Papal States ten years ago. What would prevent the Papal States, for all intents and purposes, from being absorbed into the Kingdom of Naples if there is a Spanish pope? Then where will we be?”

  The question might have been rhetorical, but nobody else had a good answer. Where would they be?

  “Perhaps..,” …” Claude suggested. “Perhaps it is time for us to share some of these concerns with the gentlemen.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The most convenient place to gather after the duke and duchess of Savoy had retired for the evening was the suite of rooms assigned to M. and Mme. de Ruvigny.

  “If Spain does not prevail in Italy....”

  “If Spain is not to prevail in Italy,” Ruvigny said, “if it is to be prevented, then it will inevitably require Grand Duke Ferdinando to forge better ties with both the Venetian Republic and the United States of Europe, even though I understand that he must be very discreet about it right now.”

  The conversation meandered on for some time. Finally, Vittoria bit her lower lip. “There is another question. I know that none of you except for M. Trelli and Mme. Abruzzo are Catholic, so you may not be familiar.... Still, it cannot hurt to ask. Do you happen to be familiar with the views of Cardinal-Protector Mazzare on the subject of female inheritance? Would his attitude potentially influence that of...um...Cardinal Bedmar?”

  “I can’t say that I’ve had a serious conversation with Mazzare in the last five years,” Matt said. “I’m not sure that I ever had a really serious conversation with him even before the Ring of Fire, when he was just our parish priest. Generally, though. Up-time, inheritance, that is unless the person who died made a will to the contrary, but intestate inheritance, was boys and girls alike. There wasn’t any primogeniture for the oldest. No preference for sons over daughters. I expect that would be his default position, when he wasn’t deliberately thinking about some down-time situation.”

  “You could ask Carey Calagna,” Marcie said. “She used to be the deputy clerk of the probate court. You could ask her if Father Mazzare ever mediated with families who were fighting over someone’s estate. Not that anyone in Grantville had much in the way of an estate since the recession in the 1980s. For West Virginia, that was more of a real depression.”

  “People can fight just as hard over a little as over a lot,” Matt said. “Especially when there’s not a lot to go around and a little can really help someone over a hard spot.”

  “That is preaching to the converted,” Sophia added. “Children will fight harder over a music box or an ivory miniature, sometimes, as over the division of all of the rest of a family’s property. It depends on how much something matters to them.”

  “Urbino isn’t a music box,” Vittoria exclaimed, which required some explanation to the gentlemen about prior conversations among the ladies. “Moreover, it’s absurd that the laws are such a patchwork. I hold Rovere and Montefeltro in my own right, because they are allodial properties. I’m planning to pass them on to one of my younger sons. That will depend on how many children I have, of course. So it’s ridiculous that Urbino escheated.”

  “The principle’s the same,” Matt said. “You’re attached to Urbino, Your Grace. “Sentimentally. It was sort of the same up-time. We had a proverb, sort of, that went ‘all politics is local.’ Things might go this way or that way on the national level, but what most voters cared about was the way it hit them at home.”

  Ruvigny nodded. “You can think about Spain and on papal politics with a focus on how they affect Urbino. It goes the other way, too, though. I don’t thing think you can separate them. Anything you do because you’re interested in a possible inheritance in Urbino will affect Tuscany, which will affect anything that Spain might be planning to do in Italy. Since you’re Claudia’s daughter, the things you do impact Claudia’s business, and since she’s brought Tyrol into the USE, they’ll impact the USE’s business. Since Claudia has married into Burgundy, the things you do impact Bernhard’s business, too.”

  “I thought that kind of politics was called dynastic,” Matt said, “not local. Like the Habsburgs, ‘Let others wage war; you, happy Austria, wage matrimony.’ In other words, it all depends on who you hook your family up with.”

  “It’s families,” Marcie said, “but it’s still local. Or the other way around. Good Lord, Matt. Think of how much of everything that happened in Grantville before the Ring of Fire, from electing a homecoming queen to granting a construction permit, depended a lot on who was whose cousin!”

  The concept of “homecoming queen” required some explication that ended the evening in general hilarity.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Sunday evening, the conversation drifted in a more serious direction. “To a considerable extent,” Bismarck said, “how we (and ‘we’ could be Tuscany or the Low Countries, France or the USE) handle the Spanish threat will depend upon whether or not the people in charge accept the ‘just war’ theory. It’s complicated. That’s probably a big reason that soldiers who have heard of it, which probably isn’t very many of them to start with, try to avoid thinking about it.”

  “Don’t give up on it, though,” Ruvigny added. “I’ve spent all of my adult life fighting. So has A
ugust. But if all we do is fight wars, we’re going to end up with nothing left to fight for. Or fight over. What’s a just war? Philosphers and theologians have been arguing about that from antiquity until today. From Plato and Cicero to Professor Grotius at the University of Jena right now. If you’re fighting for something that needs to be kept safe, that’s one thing. If you’re defending yourself because someone attacked you, unprovoked, that’s another thing. Neither of them is the same thing as fighting just to show that you’re stronger. Fighting because someone in charge is too proud to back down off an unreasonable claim. Fighting because someone, somewhere, wants more, more, more.”

  “How so?” That was Sophia.

  Bismarck held up his fingers. “A soldier has to reconcile three things. First, there is the commandment that we shall not murder. This presupposes that the taking of human life is seriously wrong, on the model of Cain and Abel, even though that deals with individual rather than collective action. Well, many also presuppose that the commandment applies only to individual actions.

  “Second, and almost contradictory, is the doctrine that rulers have a duty to defend their subjects and to defend justice, both of which often require the use of force. Sometimes, to protect innocents or to defend important moral or religious values, it seems as if we must be willing to utilize violence, even going so far as to kill.

  “Then, third, there is the issue of whether or not, or when, self-defense is a legitimate use of force. In the matter of war, this is not just the defense of yourself as an individual, or of your family or friends against bandits or pirates, but the defense of your country against an invader.”

  “Or of your warlord,” Ruvigny interjected sardonically. “The occasions when a mercenary is called upon to defend his own country are remarkably rare. Given that we are in the employ of Grand Duke Bernhard....”

  “I’m not certain that your three points are quite accurate,” Nicholas-François interrupted, rubbing this thumb on his chin. There is the jus ad bellum, certainly. That addresses the conditions under which it is justifiable to use military force. But there is also the question of jus in bello. If one goes to war, how does one conduct that war in an ethical manner?