Ring of Fire IV

by Eric Flint

  “It’s just a little garrison up there right now, Sir,” the hostler said. “I’m plenty sorry for them, too, because their teeth must be frozen, not to mention their balls, the way the wind whips across that hilltop.”

  Cavriani sent Marc off to look for their mail, conferred with Rohan, and then with the assent of Grand Duke Bernhard annexed Colonel Raudegen temporarily. The contents of the mail packet proved to be very unsatisfactory—either a great deal of correspondence had gone astray or some malefactor had been purloining bags from the postal system. He borrowed the use of Bernhard’s radio to check with Potentiana in Geneva, by way of multiple short resendings, only to get the dismaying news that none of the missing mail had arrived there, either.

  So on the basis of the most recent information he had, which was far from recent enough, he sent Raudegen, with Marc as assistant, off to stage some interventions in England and the Netherlands.

  “England first,” he counseled, when it became clear that whatever Marc’s mind might be advising him, his heart was of the opinion that Susanna Allegretti had priority over anyone or anything else. “You should find her at the Hague, or wherever Fredrik Hendrik’s court is right now. Keep an eye on the newspapers to see where he is and if his wife is with him or spending the winter more comfortably in a town house in Amsterdam. I sent the request for Susanna’s transfer to the head dressmaker in Brussels back in November.”

  London, February 1636

  Travel conditions being what they always were in the middle of winter, especially when it came to crossing the English Channel…

  “I hope I never see this place again,” Marc said as they disembarked in London. “We’ve been here five minutes and that’s five minutes too long. How Huygens endures it more or less permanently, I simply can’t imagine. It may be preferable to being burned at the stake by the duke of Alba during the Eighty Years War…” He paused and took a second look at the London docks. “But not by much.”

  “Early March is said not to be the most salubrious season in England,” Raudegen remarked mildly.

  “What is?”

  “Someone told me once that it was August 23, if I recall correctly. But it may have been July 26.”

  * * *

  “I wouldn’t precisely call it internment,” Soubise said. “I’ve not been in the Tower the way the king kept the envoys from the USE. Then, of course, he’s on considerably firmer ground in having precedent on handling an errant French nobleman who is temporarily unwelcome in his homeland rather than when handling unnerving strangers from the future. It’s a perfectly nice house here on the Strand, if somewhat small for my needs, and luckily I brought my valet and cook with me. Thanks be to God the Almighty, for otherwise I’d have been wearing English tailoring and eating English food for more than half a year.”

  “Your brother thinks that you have accomplished all that you can in the matter of Ducos and his fanatics.”

  “Not as much as I hoped I would. I wanted to chase them all the way to Scotland. But…”

  His secretary spoke up.

  “Since my master was not, in fact, under house arrest, as the English authorities kept assuring us, though they also would not let him leave London, he has proven to be an excellent envoy. He has hosted at least three formal dinners each week, this house being inadequate for dancing parties. He has established a salon which the most elite literati of London…” He cleared his throat. “…the most elite literati of London, such as they are, have attended. Thus, everyone of importance in London is aware that the House of Rohan does not in any way condone these regrettable assassinations.”

  “The Dreeson Incident was very regrettable,” Soubise interjected, “but I would not have been heartbroken if he had succeeded with the pope.”

  The secretary cleared his throat. “My lord de Soubise has not only regularly attended divine services at the French Protestant Church on Threadneedle Street, founded by the good offices of and under the charter issued by the late King Edward VI, but has also heard sermons here in his own house from the pastors of the other Huguenot churches in and near London. Additionally…”

  “You would not believe how many sermons I have heard in these past months,” Soubise exclaimed. “Certainly enough to be a lifetime supply for any normal man. Biblically sound and well delivered, but sermons nevertheless. Forgive an old sailor for saying it if either of you are of a pious bent, but there ought to be some kind of limit, some entire statute of limitations, on theological pontificating.”

  “What my master is attempting to convey,” the secretary said, “is that by dint of his efforts, every French pastor in the British Isles is now aware of Ducos’ perfidy. Engravings of him and of his men, made from the best descriptions that M. le duc de Rohan could obtain in Grantville, with their names printed beneath so far as the Grantville authorities identified them, are now in wide circulation. Every pastor who came here received several copies, and each week at the church in Threadneedle Street, all visitors from other parts of England and Scotland are invited to take copies. Additionally, the pastor in the City has been so cooperative as to arrange a series of mid-week guest sermons, which have been delivered by the pastors from other cities, such as Bristol and…”

  “What he means,” Soubise said, “is that we’ve papered the whole country with wanted posters and that’s all I’ve managed to do, because aside from the three men I brought with me and a few Huguenots I’ve managed to hire, the rest of my staff, I’m sure, are English spies. And I’m still stuck in London, because I can’t get leave to return to the Continent. Richelieu apparently takes a certain glee in having me ‘stranded’ here and the English are more than happy to oblige him.”

  After considering the situation, Raudegen concluded that since Soubise did have a limited ability to move about in the streets, at least on Sundays, removing him to France would not be a major challenge. Removing him along with the valet, secretary, and cook would complicate the process to the point that in his opinion, since their specific charge was only to retrieve the duke, the three should be left behind to fend for themselves, which meant enduring whatever punitive consequences the English government might choose to visit upon them as retribution for their employer’s transgressions.

  Marc objected for humanitarian reasons.

  Raudegen discussed the traditional relationship between omelettes and eggs.

  “If you won’t extricate them, then I’ll do it myself. That’s what I’ll call it. An extrication, and as such, it should be made with all due delicacy. The only servants we should leave behind are the ones the English themselves planted in his household. There’s no reason for us to pay to import more English spies onto the Continent. There are enough there already.”

  * * *

  On Thursday, Milord’s cook complained about the quality of the vegetables delivered. The footman who had done the ordering countered that vegetables were always shriveled at this time of year. The cook sent him back to the market and complained again about the produce to any staff member who would listen. The footman came back, bringing no satisfaction.

  Cooks did not usually lower themselves to go to the market in person, but with a dramatic screech, the temperamental Frenchman left the house this day, taking the unsatisfactory footman with him. He did not return when expected, but then neither did the footman, so no one raised an alarm, given that he had prepared in advance sufficient cold meats and aspics for the household’s supper.

  On Friday morning, the housekeeper (English) told the butler (also English) that the cook and footman had not returned the night before. As both were missing, the butler saw no reason to inform the intelligence service in any panicked manner, since they had probably just fallen victim to ordinary thieves or cutthroats. The housekeeper instructed the under-cook to proceed as well as might be, while the butler sent another footman to try to pick up their trail from the market.

  On Friday afternoon, the valet told the butler that there were problems with milord’s tailor. Si
nce this was a frequent occurrence, given the pickiness of the irritating little Frenchman, the butler just nodded as the valet left by the back door. Since the valet did not ordinarily join the other servants for meals, the under-cook just sent up trays to his room as usual for Friday supper and Saturday breakfast. The maid who carried and retrieved the trays happened to be a Huguenot. For two mealtimes, she got to eat a lot more than she was usually allotted and was happy to do it.

  On Saturday, the secretary gave instructions to the housekeeper that all the servants were to attend the earliest service the following day, because milord expected a dozen guests for Sunday dinner. The under-cook had hysterics, but the housekeeper managed to calm him down.

  Hearing of the instructions, the butler knocked on the door of the room where milord’s secretary worked and asked rather stiffly, “Surely not the coachman, sir? For early services?”

  “No, of course not,” the secretary answered. “Use your common sense, man. He will be needed to drive milord to church and will attend services at the same hour we do, as usual.”

  The Huguenot staff members attended the church on Threadneedle Street, of course, just like their heathen Calvinist master. The English servants, in a procession headed by the butler and rearguarded by the housekeeper, attended a proper divine service at the nearest Church of England parish.

  It was unusual for all the servants to be gone from the house at once, leaving only milord and his secretary there. It was not, however, unprecedented. It had occurred on a few other occasions when milord hosted Sunday guests.

  There was no precise precedent for Marc’s arrival in the house and Raudegen’s arrival in the rear garden.

  The English servants returned before the Huguenots did. They had a much shorter walk, after all. They entered through the back door. They did not leave through the back door, or any other door, at least not for quite a while. They found all the interior exits from the back hallway, a dingy and windowless narrow passageway, barricaded, and the rear door mysteriously barred behind them.

  The Huguenot servants did not return at all, having taken the words of God to heart and, per instructions, departed hence unto another place as soon as the preacher delivered the charge and the Aaronic blessing.

  Milord and his secretary left the house on the Strand by the front door, of course. The coachman arrived from the stables with punctilious promptness. Milord kept a generously-sized four-person carriage, which was just as well, since it already contained four people before milord and his secretary entered it this lovely Sabbath morning.

  The coachman drove decorously toward the church on Threadneedle street.

  Then he passed it.

  The coach was later found on the docks, with the missing footman who had accompanied the cook to market gagged and bound up in it. He had some explaining to do.

  The next morning, a party of Dutch and Flemish businessmen took ship for the Hague with their various servants and attendants. Two had letters of passage from Constantijn Huygens who was, of course, well known, at least by name, to all English customs officials. The other four were identified by their passports as middle-level employees of the Courteen and Crommelin mercantile firms.

  The papers were all perfectly authentic. They simply didn’t happen to belong to the men who were using them at the moment.

  The Hague, March 1636

  The newspapers were still celebrating the February birth of Ernst Wilhelm, infant grand duke of the County of Burgundy, first child of Bernhard and Claudia. While it might seem premature to a rational man that the columnists were discussing the possibility that someday this babe might marry the Netherlands’ own Baby Archduchess (a cutie if ever there was one!), that didn’t stop the reporters.

  Soubise heaved a sigh of relief at being on solid ground again after the unpleasant Channel crossing. Marc gathered up the various passports and letters of passage. He would find someone his father knew in the Dutch diplomatic service to have them returned to Huygens in England by way of a diplomatic pouch.

  Soubise inquired where the Stadthouder was to be found, made a courtesy call, and grumbled, though he admitted that there had been no point in his staying longer when he’d done all that he could.

  Fredrik Hendrik, who of course knew the elder Cavriani, fingered the wispy blond moustache that matched his wispy blond hair and wispy blond goatee and asked Marc about his Wanderjahr.

  Marc answered that he really did not have many entertaining tales to tell of his travels, because, “I am a prudent man. It’s difficult to make much of the thugs who did not beat me up in Marseilles because I didn’t stay around long enough for them to locate me. I did mention to that bargemaster on the Rhône that there was a place in the hull that looked perilously thin, but when he ignored me, I left the boat at the last stopping point before they would have needed to pull it out to do the portage over the rapids. That particular pool was very deep and tended to swirl, I had heard. It was too bad they lost the wine, though, for it was a good vintage and would have made a nice profit for the seller. I only hope the shipment was insured. In the matter of those people in Lyon who might or might not have been Spanish spies…all I can say is that the aggressive pseudo-barmaid did not seduce me, because I went up to bed early and put a bar across my door.” He pushed back the curl that constantly fell down into the middle of his forehead and shrugged, both palms pointing upwards. “Some of us were born to have exciting adventures and some were not. Odysseus will never need to envy me.”

  He paused. “If I may inquire…”

  “Permission granted.”

  “I need to contact Froken Susanna Allegretti. Per my father’s arrangement, she was to be transferred from Brussels to your wife’s staff some months ago. She is a highly skilled dressmaker. She would be with your lady wife.”

  But she wasn’t. Not to the best of the Stadthouder’s knowledge. Nor, for that matter to that of his wife Amelia, her ladies-in-waiting, the steward, or anyone else. Nobody had even heard of her, much less of any proposed assumption of her into the household. There were no letters in the files. There was no notation in regard to compensation in the ledgers. The Hague had no knowledge of her existence.

  “Which means,” Marc said firmly, “that I am going to Brussels. Raudegen, you can escort Soubise directly to Paris if you wish, but I’m going to Brussels. Anything could have happened to Susanna since the last time Papa heard from her. Anything!”

  Raudegen was more inclined to the view that one should never attribute to malice those things that could be adequately explained by stupidity and suggested that M. Cavriani’s request for her transfer had most likely just been lost in the mail or misplaced on someone’s desk, so the girl was still snug and comfortable where she had been the preceding autumn. Nevertheless, having developed a sneaking fondness for the little dressmaker when he escorted her from Basel to the Netherlands eighteen months or so earlier, he agreed to the Brussels option, which meant that Soubise had to endure it with what little good grace he could manage.

  Soubise’s valet, secretary, coachman, and cook took the news about the proposed detour with even less grace.

  Section III

  Paris, June 1636

  “I’m glad Uncle Soubise is here,” the little duchess said over a folder of fabric samples. “I hadn’t seen him for ages, but I like him even though he blusters most of the time and mutters the rest of it. He doesn’t really mean any of his complaints. He’s nice.”

  Susanna looked up. “Should I be sitting in your presence, Your Grace? I have been concerned about this. After all, your status and mine…”

  “You’re not here as a dressmaker for me. You are here as the fiancée of M. Cavriani, whose father, if not noble, is most certainly very rich and knows everyone. Consequently, you are here as Maman’s guest. You will stand in my presence in the public rooms, of course, should you be called to be present. In the private rooms, you are my own guest because I invited you in. Here, I say that you may sit. Maybe you are even som
eone who might become my friend, if we know one another long enough. Friends can sit to look over a book of fabric swatches, can’t they?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Then that’s settled. Now, about Uncle Soubise, what I wanted to say is…”

  Susanna meditated for a moment on whether or not she was now on such terms with Marc that she ought to start practicing how to acquire intelligence data.

  Yes, she was.

  “Marc says that your uncle is much shrewder than he pretends to be.”

  “Papa thinks so, too, that Uncle Soubise is undervalued.” Marguerite hesitated, as if she were about to reveal a secret sin. “I have read some of the drafts of Papa’s mémoires. Grand-père Sully’s also. I started just because I miss them, but parts are terribly interesting. Don’t tell mama. She loathes the femmes savantes, so I wouldn’t want her to think that I am in danger of becoming intellectual. I don’t think it’s likely that I will become a savante, do you, even though Grand-mère Rohan was almost one? I don’t think they had a word for it, way back then. But Papa thinks that if the English commanders and the authorities in La Rochelle had listened to Uncle’s advice during the last revolt, then things might not have gone so badly for us. I don’t remember much about that time, though.”

  “How old were you?”

  Marguerite calculated. “Ten, when it started. Eleven when it finished. I don’t remember the revolt before that at all, because I was only six. I only know what people tell me.” She closed the sample book. “They don’t usually tell me very much. Where has Colonel Raudegen gone?”