Ring of Fire IV

by Eric Flint

  “I too am alone but it sounds as if there are no others like him. That is too bad.” Cantalupo looked out from under long, black lashes at Henry. “Maybe I can ask that you share him with me another day. I would welcome his company.” Unspoken was that he would welcome Henry’s company as well.

  At that moment, Henry reached across to pet Prince. Cantalupo reached across at exactly the same moment. Their fingers touched. It felt like Henry had touched an up-timer’s electrical outlet. The two men looked at each other as if seeing the other for the first time. Cantalupo smiled shyly, like a young girl at her first dance. “We both love dogs, do we not?”

  Henry gulped. He had not felt like this since he first met François. He felt his heart beat just a little faster as he returned the Italian’s smile.

  The two men, both alone and lonely, sat for a few minutes petting Prince.

  “Maybe there are other things we both like, Doktor Cooper? Please call me Antonio. May I call you Henry?”

  “Yes, Antonio, please do. I cannot stay too long today but I will be back. I will bring Prince with me.”

  “That would be marvelous, Henry. I will look forward to seeing both of you.”

  Henry had to once again catch his breath. Maybe there was hope for him. Maybe the up-timers were changing things so he could hope to live a life in love like other people. Maybe there was love for him after François. Maybe, just maybe, he could be truly happy again, openly happy. Time would tell.

  On his way back home, Henry held Prince and even kissed him on his pink, slightly moist nose. “Well Prince, you seem to be my Cupid, so I guess Love has a wet nose.”

  The Red-Headed League

  Virginia DeMarce

  Section I

  Besançon, September 1635

  “I can read an encyclopedia as well as anyone else.” Henri, duc de Rohan, continued to pace around the room. “In less than three years, I will be dead.”

  “Not necessarily,” Grand Duke Bernhard countered. “You were killed in a battle we fought at Rheinfelden, which is an encounter I see no need to fight in this world. How old are you? Fifty-five or so? You could live another thirty years.”

  “Or I could be dead next month. So, yes, I have read the encyclopedias and I am utterly determined to see my daughter married to a Protestant while I am still alive.”

  “To just about any Protestant in your more frantic moments. To a suitable French noble Protestant in your more rational ones. If not to a foreign Protestant prince, preferably Calvinist. Or…” Bernhard rotated his shoulders restlessly. “Are there Protestant space aliens in this up-time ‘science fiction’ you have been reading these past few months? One of them might be the best choice.”

  “I am not in a mood for raillery,” Rohan grumped. “Even if my friend Ron Stone claims that I am ‘fixated.’ I died and the French crown controlled her. For years, they did not let her marry at all. Then they gave her a list of Catholic nonentities acceptable to them and she picked one because ‘at least he’s handsome and a good dancer.’ Frivolous women! That is not a potential son-in-law acceptable to me. Neither are grandchildren who will be reared Catholic as a condition of the king’s permitting my daughter to marry at all. So…”

  “So what do you plan to do about it?”

  “With your permission, O sovereign lord of the County of Burgundy, I will bring my wife and daughter to join me here in Besançon. Or, if you prefer, I can return to Berne and have them join me there.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” the grand duke answered, clasping his hands behind his back as he paced. “Berne does not need you. You have accepted duties to Burgundy. Think of the piles of paper on your desk. Think of the hordes of petitioners who will be devastated if you do not hold personal meetings with them.” His smile turned feral. “Think of the committee meetings that you are scheduled to chair, which will spare me from doing it. In any case, it will take a while to get your ladies here. This kind of thing isn’t urgent enough to justify the cost of one of those aircraft.” His shudder was not staged. His wife’s all-too-frequent jaunts on the Monster unsettled his stomach. “You can borrow a couple of my better officers for such a mission and they can ride horses like normal people.”

  Rohan stopped pacing and steepled his fingers. “Ruvigny, then.”

  “What?” Bernhard raised his eyebrows at this apparent non sequitur.

  “Ruvigny. He’s an officer in your service and we know him well.”

  “The redhead? The one with the truly remarkable nose?”

  Rohan nodded. “And freckles. Don’t forget the freckles. Yes, that’s Henri de Massué de Ruvigny.”

  “Why him?”

  “His family are clients of my father-in-law. They have been since long before Sully even became my father-in-law. Thus, they are in a way clients of my wife, so it’s mostly a matter of entré. She will receive him at least, possibly as a welcome rather than unwelcome guest, and perhaps if I am fortunate, even pay some attention to the message he presents on my behalf. Maybe.”

  Bernhard unclasped his hands and fingered the little goatee he was currently wearing. “Not a bad choice. He’s a good officer, but he’ll make a better diplomat someday, if he ever has the money to support an ambassadorial career. Someone ought to find him a wife with a dowry. Who else do you want?”

  “Ask him. He knows the younger officers better than either of us do. He’ll make a good choice.”

  Bernhard’s private secretary stuck his head around the doorpost as a signal for the meeting to break up.

  * * *

  Ruvigny chose August von Bismarck. Bismarck, he told the duke, was reliable and solid. Unflappable. The kind of officer a commander could depend on.

  They also happened to be good friends, on first name terms, and so far said friend hadn’t had any luck at all when it came to promotions. This kind of expedition could give August a chance to bring himself to the favorable attention of more powerful people. But there was no point in mentioning that to the duke and grand duke just yet.

  Whereupon Rohan wrote letters and they begged the best horses that the regiment would let them take.

  Bismarck’s horse turned out to be reliable and solid. The kind of horse a man could depend on. Ruvigny’s horse went lame four days out, so he had to hire a far less satisfactory one.

  “So,” August said the next afternoon. “Did you find out anything about yourself from the famous up-time encyclopedias?”

  Henri dropped his reins onto the gelding’s neck and stared out toward the peasants who were still harvesting in the fields, weeks after the end of this very unsatisfactory summer. “Britannica 1911. On what I’m paid, I just asked the researcher I hired in Grantville to look up the main article for my family name, if there was one. It’s not as if I can afford to hire someone for a thorough search. There was an article about my oldest son. King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in 1685, crushing everything I did after I retired from the army. I served as deputy general of the Huguenot Synods to the royal court from 1653 onwards, trying to maintain our rights. Ultimately I failed, so I went into exile and died in England. My oldest son received an Irish title, earl of Galway. He never married. Neither did my other two sons. No descendants, male or female. The French crown confiscated our estates. The teacher had it right, I guess. ‘Useless, useless; everything is useless.’ Or, maybe, ‘Futile, futile, everything is futile.’” He picked up the reins again. “But for some reason, I keep working.” He raised his eyebrows. “You?”

  August grinned. “Same encyclopedia; same procedure; same reason, since I’m always broke. I got less detail but more optimism. About two hundred fifty years from now, somebody named von Bismarck, Otto to be specific, had worked his way up in rank from country gentleman to Fürst, Herzog, und Graf. He guided the multitude of small German states into becoming a united country. He wasn’t very nice about the nation building, either. Gustav Adolf and Stearns have proceeded with considerably more tact. Whether or not he was related to me di
rectly, I have no idea, but since we were both born at Schönhausen in Brandenburg’s Altmark, there’s likely to be some connection. I’m going to assume that one of my brothers or cousins managed to hang onto the land, such as it is, paid off the mortgages our father loaded on it in pursuit of such luxuries as family portraits and comfortable beds, and kept begetting heirs.” August sighed. “My lord father wasn’t very frugal. He kept trying to press additional new fees out of the peasants, the peasants kept suing him, and the courts kept deciding in their favor. He left a huge mess for my mother to deal with after he died.”

  Henri shifted restlessly in the hired saddle. It didn’t fit him right. “There are millions of people, I suppose, who wouldn’t find anything at all in those books. My son received an article because he became a general.”

  The sun was shifting steadily into the west. August pulled his hat down to protect the pale forehead that his persistently receding auburn hair seemed to be enlarging with every day that passed. “Rise high in the army and qualify for the small immortality of an encyclopedia entry. At the rate I’m receiving promotions, which is not at all, it’s no wonder the up-timers never heard of me. I’ll die still a captain, whether it’s next summer or twenty summers from now.”

  They plodded onwards toward Paris.

  Brussels, October 1635

  From: Susanna Allegretti, Brussels

  To: M. Leopold Cavriani, Geneva

  Most honored patron and friend,

  I regret that I must request a favor from you. Because of certain difficulties that have arisen here in the household of the king and queen in the Netherlands, I feel that it will not be wise for me to remain in my current situation any longer than absolutely necessary. If it would be possible for you to arrange for me to transfer to the household of the Stadthouder in the northern provinces, I would be sincerely grateful.

  Your devoted friend and servant,

  Susanna Allegretti

  From: Susanna, in Brussels

  To: Marc, wherever you may be (c/o M. Leopold Cavriani, Geneva)

  My dearest heart,

  I’m getting so mad about all of this that if I weren’t a seamstress who can’t afford snags in the lace and satin that earn me my daily bread, I’d be biting my fingernails right to the quick. Or, more usefully, kicking the non-gentleman colonel from Lorraine where it would hurt him the most. Which I can’t, because he has “important connections.” Of course, with all the excitement about the expected baby, nobody could expect the queen to have time to worry about the trials and tribulations of one of her dressmakers. Not even if she is an outstanding dressmaker, which I have become if I may be so bold as to say so.

  No matter how impeccable the personal conduct of the king and queen in the Netherlands is, its impact on the court as a whole is not strong. Of course, one could say the same about decades of impeccable conduct on the part of the marvelous archduchess, who is, alas, still old and still ill.

  So. This obnoxious exile, even after the truly entertaining demise of his duke last spring, simply will not take no for an answer, and what’s worse, most of my colleagues in haute couture don’t see why I’m not willing to say yes to his demands (which truly are more demands in the English usage than requests in the French usage). He’s offered generous terms, they say, and it’s not as if I’m some petite bourgeoise subject to the rules of German guilds. When he ended an arrangement with a generous settlement (they say, they say, they all say, or at least most of them say), not that I think that he has enough money to do that, apart from any considerations of morality, then I would have a bigger dowry than I do now and could make an even better match than expected with some other upper servant in the court than I can now aspire to.

  But I don’t want to do this, so I have written your father asking him to get me sent to the court of Fredrik Hendrik and his wife in the Hague.

  I miss you so much.

  Where are you?

  Susanna

  Paris, October 1635

  Bismarck didn’t have any idea how they would be received at the ducal residence and he hadn’t wanted to ask. He certainly hadn’t expected that within minutes after they presented their credentials, the duc de Rohan’s daughter would dash into the entryway and throw herself into Ruvigny’s arms with a squeal of “Henri! I haven’t seen you for ages!”

  “Well, if it isn’t the itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny, seed pearl, all grown up.” Ruvigny responded to her enthusiasm with a brotherly hug, looking her over. “Our daisy has grown petals.”

  In spite of the double entendre, it was definitely a brotherly hug. Bismarck knew a brotherly hug when he saw one. After all, he had four sisters to go along with his three brothers. Before he decided that he would rather embrace a military career than continue dragging around in the genteel poverty that had been their mother’s lot since the wars devastated the Altmark shortly after his father’s death, he had lived in an affectionate household. Even though she, all of her offspring in tow, had made nightmarish treks that took them to Magdeburg, Hamburg, Salzwedel, and Braunschweig in search of semi-permanent refuge from the marauding armies, in sorrow and in joy the eight of them had hugged each other all the time. Their mother, even though she prided herself on exercising firm and serious discipline in their upbringing, had hugged them. For that matter, they had hugged their father, before he died. He shook his head, throwing off the memories as unsuited to his present duties.

  As for itsy-bitsy, Ruvigny was not teasing. The young duchess was really very short. Pretty enough, he supposed, in the way that it’s hard for a girl to be ugly when she’s seventeen and healthy, with a clear complexion, but certainly short.

  Introductions followed, with the accompanying protocol, etiquette, and general necessary politesse, with the the little duchess excusing her mother’s nonappearance as hostess on the vague grounds of “she’s busy.”

  As they migrated from the entryway toward a side salon, Bismarck whispered, “Is there something you haven’t been telling me?”

  Ruvigny shrugged. “Oh. Well. About five years ago, during the Savoy campaign, La Valette sent me to Venice to recruit a regiment of light cavalry. The duke was there, then. I stayed with the Rohans.”

  “And he paid attention to me,” the little duchess said. “I was twelve. He talked to me and teased me and told me stories about the campaigns and…and nobody else there ever paid any attention to me at all. Henri is my best friend ever.”

  Bismarck added “has very sharp ears” to his mental list of what he knew about the duc de Rohan’s daughter.

  * * *

  They woke up the next morning to still no senior hostess to welcome them and what seemed like a mass invasion of the Rohan palais by the staff of every theater in Paris.

  An expected invasion, apparently.

  “Oh, Henri, you have to stay in Paris just a little bit longer,” Marguerite proclaimed. “I won’t let you go. What need does that upstart Bernhard have for you right at the moment? Winter’s coming on. Nobody’s going to fight anybody, probably. We’re putting on a ballet for the court. I’m dancing the lead role and everyone will be there—utterly everyone. You have to dance, too, Henri. Remember how we used to dance on the balcony of the house in Venice?”

  “What I am is utterly out of practice, little daisy,” Ruvigny protested. “I’ve been doing other things these last few years, remember?”

  “Oh, poof. You can do it. Mama got Isaac de Benserade to script it. He’s the very newest literary sensation this year.” She grabbed his arm and towed him in the direction of the ballroom, Bismarck trailing along behind.

  The little duchess turned around. “You dance, of course…don’t you?”

  “I would say that I’m modestly competent in a ballroom. I’ve never even seen a ballet.”

  “Well, that’s disappointing. Autres temps, autres mœurs. I suppose that applies to other places as well as other eras. You can watch.”

  Three hours of strenuous rehearsal later, the little duchess, not even
mildly winded, plopped herself down next to Bismarck while Benserade and the choreographer put the male chorus, once more, through the final routine.

  “Benserade is a slave driver. Even before the cast rehearsals started, he had me in here for five straight days, just learning my own part.”

  “If you are as careful of your reputation and virtue as all say that you are, mademoiselle, I am surprised that you spend all these hours in the company of a young man in his twenties, quite unaccompanied.” He looked around. “Well, unaccompanied except for a company of costumers, not to say several set designers, a half dozen carpenters, and ten or so miscellaneous servants.”

  Marguerite sniffed. “Benserade is no threat to my reputation. I could take him to bed and he wouldn’t be a threat to my virtue. Everyone knows he’s tilted. Everyone who matters, at least.”

  Bismarck blinked.

  “A bit out of plumb, like the king. But Louis only tilts this far”—she placed her elbow on the chair arm and moved it about ten degrees to the left—“and he, Louis, tilts both ways.” She moved it an equal number of degrees to the right. “Isaac’s all the way to the left…” Her arm went down to a right angle, parallel to the floor. “…but that doesn’t keep him from being very entertaining.”

  “Out of plumb?”

  The little duchess viewed Henri’s German friend with exasperation. “Are you so naïve? I am telling you that he is out of kilter. As our Provençals would say, gai. Slanted. The man is not straight. He might be a threat to the reputation of my cousins, Maximilien or François, but not to mine. Don’t you have a word for it in German?”

  Bismarck almost strangled, but swallowed very hard. “None that we use in the presence of respectable young ladies of seventeen years, Your Grace.”