Ring of Fire IV

by Eric Flint

  * * *

  Bismarck wandered into the mews loft that Gerry had taken to calling the chop shop. “The moon will be full on the sixteenth.”

  Raudegen looked up.

  “They’ve gotten to the point of setting a date for this extravaganza. That’s what they’ve decided to call it. An extravaganza. As far as I’m concerned, they can call it anything they please, but do we want moonlight for this project, or don’t we?”

  “It would give decent illumination for several days before and after. Unless it’s cloudy, of course. We could see better to drive by night if the moon was out. If we had bad luck and someone followed us, though, they could also see better. It’s a toss-up.”

  “The fireworks will make a better show without moonlight,” Ruvigny said.

  “Understood. Let me go tell them to pick one of the dark of the moon weeks, either before or after the middle of the month.”

  * * *

  One could not of course very well give a gala in honor of the king and queen unless they agreed to come. The duchess sent out feelers in advance. Their Majesties agreed, but Gaston’s people insisted on insinuating Tristan l’Hermite, a hanger-on with literary ambitions (thus far not realized, in the sense that none of his plays had actually been performed) into the planning. His presence had a stultifying effect on conversation.

  Except for Benserade and Cinq-Mars, who flirted madly backstage during the rehearsals.

  “Oh,” Cinq-Mars said. “I just adore skirts; they’re so wonderfully swishy, don’t you know, with all those petticoats. I hated it when I was taken out of my baby skirts and made to put on ‘little man’ breeches. They’re so tight and uncomfortable. At home, I’ve always snitched my sister’s clothes to lounge around in, whenever she would let me.”

  * * *

  Tancrède adored the harmonica.

  Gerry was quite willing to share. “Just don’t lose it,” he warned.

  “I won’t. Thank you so much, sir.”

  Tancrède’s future did not involve a career as a musical prodigy.

  He did lose the harmonica.

  “Keep looking, kid,” Gerry said, “but don’t worry Susanna too much if you can’t find it. I have a spare.”

  On his way out, he threw a different admonition at Susanna. “If you’re the one who hid it, I don’t blame you, but I do want it back.”

  * * *

  “I am so incredibly thankful,” Bismarck said, “for my two left feet.”

  “My inability to carry a tune,” Gerry added.

  They had found a comfortable refuge in the chop shop.

  Within certain parameters of comfortable, of course. The hay was softer than any chair in the most luxurious rooms in any château in France, but it did tend to prickle.

  “Would you mind if I asked something?”

  “Nah.”

  “Why don’t you object to addressing the duchesses as ‘Your Grace’? I’ve heard that the up-timers believe that all men, well, ladies too, are created equal.”

  “I just make myself not think of it as giving a title to a person. I’m giving the title to an office. Say, the spring we got transferred here, if our class had taken a field trip to Washington, DC, which we didn’t, and I had gotten to meet President Clinton, which I never did…but if I had, I wouldn’t have called him ‘Bill.’ I’d have called him ‘Mr. President’ and I should have. That’s only polite. It was a matter of the office he held. In spite of Monica Lewinsky and all.”

  Bismarck enjoyed what Gerry could dredge up from his recollections—“Hey, I was only eleven”—about Monica Lewinsky. A lot.

  * * *

  So did both of the duchesses when Bismarck had him repeat it after supper that evening as they all stood around in the back rooms, free, for once, from the busy ears of l’Hermite.

  While Gerry played the raconteur, Susanna was walking around and around Marguerite, looking at her sharply. When he had finished, she turned toward Ruvigny. “There’s no way on earth to disguise her as anything other as a noblewoman.” She sighed and curtsied to the duchess. “Much less you, Your Grace!”

  “Why not?” Marguerite snipped, in full objection and protest mode.

  “Because…”

  “Because,” Gerry interrupted. “When people say that up-timers act like nobles, they aren’t really thinking. They mean that we act different from them, and we pretty much don’t kowtow to anybody just because he thinks he’s better than we are. Or she. We don’t really act like nobles, though. We don’t have the mannerisms. We don’t act subordinate, but we don’t act entitled, either. Because we—make that most of us—don’t think we’re better than they are, either.” He cocked his head. “I’ve got to be fair. Some up-timers do, of course—think they’re better than someone else, that is. They did even back in West Virginia. There was a sizable bunch who thought they were a lot better than the hippie Stones.”

  “But,” Marguerite persisted. “How can you tell?” She glared at Susanna, who gave an exasperated sigh.

  “I’ve been dressing ladies of the high nobility for eight years now. Gerry’s perfectly right. I can tell, and so could anyone else who took a close look.”

  “Disguise the duchesses as lesser noblewomen,” August suggested. “Someone like my mother or sisters. The lady of a country manor, somewhere out in wherever France’s equivalent of rural Brandenburg is.” He grinned. “A lady like that will think of herself as just as much automatically entitled, in her own bit of the world, as a duchesse de Rohan is in France as a whole. But a country lady traveling with her daughter and a small entourage won’t attract much attention.”

  Susanna eyed Marguerite critically. “Yes,” she said slowly, nodding her head. “Yes, that might work.”

  “I will be her bodyguard,” Raudegen said. “You”—he pointed at Marc—“are the assistant to the steward at her manor. The rest of you”—he pointed to the four redheads—“are her staff. Upper servants—household servants. There’s enough difference in your ages. Three brothers and a sister. This family is not wealthy—Susanna will be doubling as maid for the ladies and nanny for the child. Susanna and Gerry won’t have any problems in the role; you other two are their brothers in the local militia. I’ve brought you along for extra muscle because of all the unrest. You’ve have been in the armies long enough to know how ordinary soldiers act. Now, what is your name?”

  Gerry grinned. “Lapierre,” of course. “Or Stein, since three of us are more at home in German than in French. Henri’s accent in German is execrable, but maybe he can keep his mouth shut.”

  “Why would a French country lady have servants named Stein?”

  “Alsace. She’s heading home.”

  Raudegen nodded. “That will do. She and her daughter are French-speaking upper class. The four of us are German-speaking peasants. Cavriani? Any preference?”

  Marc shook his head. “Either one is fine.”

  * * *

  “It’s getting out of the theater that will be the trick. We’re lucky that Cinq-Mars has that curly red hair and wears it au naturel. In that last scene, Gerry can substitute for him and get Marguerite away when they promenade out. We’ll need to use plenty of spotlights, multi-colored and strobing around the stage, to distract people’s eyes from noticing that the lead actor has changed.”

  “Who will distract Cinq-Mars from realizing that he’s not onstage at the high point?”

  “Benserade, of course.”

  * * *

  “What if you end up needing more than fireworks?” Gerry asked Raudegen.

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing myself.”

  “Well, I don’t have the famous Stone Boys’ Box of Tricks with me, but I might be able to cobble some primitive stuff together. Down-time kitchens don’t offer the chemical options that up-time kitchens did, and we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves by buying any gunpowder, or stuff like that. If you can get them to order a few extra fireworks, though, and a couple of dozen of those little earthen
ware storage containers.”

  * * *

  July turned inexorably into August. The letters from Rohan turned just as inexorably from demanding and requiring to threatening the most dire of consequences if Something Wasn’t Done and Soon.

  “We can’t hurry this,” Raudegen wrote back patiently. “Trust my professional judgment, please. This is an instance in which haste would make waste.”

  * * *

  “They’re smoke bombs that put out unbelievably nauseating smells, basically, but they aren’t working as well as I hoped they would.” Gerry eyed the sputtering firepot with dissatisfaction.

  “At least they seem to be reliable,” Raudegen answered. “Finish up the rest of the supply.” He walked away.

  Gerry kept standing there. He wrinkled up his forehead. They need more zip. The fuses are way too slow, for one thing, he thought. Before I finish them up, I’m going to talk to Susanna and see if there’s something up in the dressmakers’ stash that would burn faster if I unraveled the fabric and twisted it into fuses.

  * * *

  On performance night, as if to spite everyone’s nerves, things went well. Rotrou had indeed written the script in such a way that in the last scene, the “king and queen” did not dance, but had the remainder of the cast dance around them. Nymphs floated around in billowing, if salaciously knee-length, chiffon skirts. Muses in classical draperies struck attitudes. The Scion’s crown was so immense that it shadowed his face nicely. God sang and the leads processed off the stage with great dignity.

  The dignity held until they were well in the wings. Then Gerry took a firm grip on Marguerite’s wrist and scampered as fast as he could move in order to get her safely outside in the course of the after-performance confusion.

  Marc and Susanna were already on their way out of town with the first carriage. It also transported Tancrède and most of the supplies for the trip. They planned to wait at a predetermined location for the second carriage to catch up.

  Bismarck, reins in his hands, waited at the stage door at the back of the theater until the older duchess came out.

  Raudegen and Ruvigny would follow on horseback as soon as they were reasonably certain that there had been no slip ’twixt the cup and the lip.

  The fireworks were a success.

  The royal party exited from their boxes, there being too many to fit in a single box.

  There was a lot going on outside the Théâtre de Marais. The crowd went oooh! and the crowd went ah! at every detail of the dresses and hair styles.

  * * *

  Cinq-Mars saw the Rohan ladies leaving, the only person to notice, but why should he care? Once the choreographer told him he wouldn’t be needed in the last scene, he had made his own plans to take advantage of the after-performance confusion. He slipped into a dressing room and formally accepted an offer of employment at the Théâtre des Marais. He would act under a pseudonym like all the others of course, but he had a vision. Someday he would become a tremendous success, adored by all of the literati of France, a power to be reckoned with. He would become the pet of all the salons. He would make and break careers. Until then, he and Isaac were going out for a late supper.

  Some days later, upon receiving notification from the authorities that they could only assume that some really unfortunate event had happened at the gala, his older brother heaved a private sigh of relief behind his public display of grief. The boy’s tendencies were embarrassing and probably could not have been disguised forever. It’s one thing to have your brother beheaded for conspiring against the monarch, as happened according to the up-time encyclopedias. That could be considered one of the normal hazards of belonging to the French nobility. To have him survive and perhaps eventually be burned at the stake for sodomy would have caused excessively unpleasant difficulties for his surviving relatives. There was no guarantee that even rank and wealth could have protected him if he became flamboyant enough. He did not push the authorities to pursue the matter energetically.

  * * *

  “We have a problem,” Ruvigny said.

  Raudegen grunted.

  Four Royal Guards had apparently been paying attention to what they were supposed to instead of the distractions that had been laid out for them. They were trotting down the street, positioned to keep the carriage Bismarck was driving in sight.

  “Good men,” Raudegen said. “They have enough sense not to try to stop it until they’ve figured out the size of the opposition. I hope they get commendations. But for right now, let’s spook their horses.”

  Ruvigny had been more in demand by the the Rohan ladies, which meant that Raudegen had the experience with the little smoke-and-sparks-spitting firepots. Gerry called them oversized sparklers.

  “A half dozen should be enough.” He hefted down one of the saddlebags and reached inside his buffcoat for a flint—the new kind with the little fuel reservoir and small roller.

  Ruvigny led their own mounts around a corner, since a man’s own horse was usually just as subject to spooking as someone else’s.

  Raudegen lit the first fuse and went to toss the ersatz Molotov cocktail down the street toward the riders.

  “What? Oh the hell! Goddamn this fucking fuse!”

  The first firepot went off while he still held it, throwing sparks in all directions before the clay cracked, split, and spilled the spitting gunpowder out on his hand. He had lined up the other five quite neatly on the ground next to him. The closest caught a spark from the first. That fuse also ran much too fast and hot. The pot exploded, throwing potsherds rather than just cracking, and ignited the rest. He fell to the ground, nauseated with pain.

  “They didn’t work as reliably as I had hoped,” he groaned, once Ruvigny had pulled him up, shouldered him around the corner, and boosted him onto his horse.

  Ruvigny walked around the horse’s head to the other side. “How’s the bleeding?”

  Raudegen glanced down. “It’s actually mostly cauterized, I think.”

  “You’re just lucky you throw overhand. If that first pot had been on a level with your head, you might have lost your eyes instead of just your hair. Use this hand to hold the cloth against the cuts on your scalp above your ear unless the burns are so bad that you can’t stand the touch. Otherwise, just try to balance in the stirrups. I’ll put him on a lead rein.”

  Raudegen grimaced. “They worked, though. Those guards are riding some thoroughly spooked horses, if they’ve even managed to keep their seats. City slicker horses with no battle experience.”

  They couldn’t move rapidly, but the carriage Bismarck drove was moving even more slowly through the moonless gloom. When they caught up, Ruvigny transferred Raudegen into it. Gerry winced, straightened the mangled fingers as well as he could, and improvised a splint.

  “That’s all I can do here. My med kit’s in the duffel. Marc and Susanna have it.”

  It was still dark when they caught up with the other carriage. The new splint reached from beyond the tip of Raudegen’s middle finger to above his wrist. Gerry sprinkled the mess with sulfa powder from his duffel bag, and wrapped it in a clean bandage. “That’s the best I can manage until we get some daylight and I can actually see what I’m doing. Even these new-model lanterns with the mantles flicker.”

  Ruvigny looked at the splint and bandages critically. “That will never grasp a sword, or anything else, again, despite the best care that our angel of mercy can provide you.”

  Raudegen also looked at the splint and bandages. “There goes my career.”

  “Nah,” Gerry said, tying the final knot. “Don’t go all ‘if it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all’ on me. You’re already too high up the totem pole. The grand duke will just kick you up higher—probably assign you to Erlach for planning and logistics, with your very own private secretary to write down what you think for you.”

  He lifted a beaker to Raudegen’s lips. “Now drink this. It’s not like you’re some ordinary person, like a tailor, who actually needs to use h
is hands to earn a living. It’s not like you’re a clockmaker or a lens grinder. Or a blacksmith, for that matter. No matter now well it heals, though, that hand will ache in bad weather and be a constant nuisance. You’ll remember tonight every day for the rest of your life.”

  Section IV

  “I can’t help it,” Gerry said. He had his arms clutched across his chest, shuddering and shivering as if it were February rather than August. “Ever since Rome, when I shot Marius after he shot at the pope, I can’t help it. I did fix Raudegen’s hand before I lost it, but I can’t help it. My gun was at his throat and it went off. The blood just sprayed out of him, all over everyone. It almost took his head off. I’m sorry guys, but it was my fault, too. I changed the fuses, after Raudegen tested them the last time, trying to get more bang for my buck. I know you’re soldiers; you’ve probably seen worse, but I can’t help it. Marius’ head just sort of exploded and now Raudegen’s hand blew off and it’s my fault again because I didn’t tell him that I changed the fuses. Nurses and doctors probably see worse all the time, I know. I’m probably a disgrace to Lothlorien Pharmaceuticals. I’m okay with vaccinations, like I did back at the palais, but when I have to look at the insides of someone’s body, I just can’t help it and it’s all my fault again. He’s just lying there on the carriage bench because I gave him some opium; he’s just lying there.”

  It was not the most opportune moment for someone else to join the party. Candale was really very fortunate that neither Ruvigny nor Bismarck shot him when they were alerted by Marc’s sudden Pssst!

  “The duchess invited me,” didn’t go very far as a rationale with anyone other than the duchess.

  “See, I am already dressed in the guise of her husband, an Alsatian country gentleman,” didn’t go much farther.

  “With all due respect, monsieur le comte,” Ruvigny said, “You are just what we don’t need.”