by Eric Flint
"It's a letter from Count Thorsten," Kristina piped. The princess having decreed Thorsten Engler a count, she was not about to relinquish the claim. Here as in so many instances, the daughter could teach the royal father lessons in stubbornness.
Kristina pointed to the offending letter in question. "The censors blocked out so much of what he said that she can't make much sense of it."
The seven-year-old's ensuing shrug was a gesture far beyond her years. "I don't really see what she's so upset about, myself. Practically everything they left is an endearment of one sort or another. So it's not as if she's wondering if he still wants to be betrothed."
As she'd been talking, the older dowager countess of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt had come into the room also. Anna Sophia took a chair; then, with a loud and disdainful sniff:
"As if he could anyway! The offer of betrothal was made in front of witnesses. Well, more or less. But her acceptance of the offer certainly was. Scandalous, that business. The whole town's still talking about it."
Taking her own seat, Emelie almost laughed. There were times she found her middle-aged sister-in-law's definition of "the whole town" quite amusing. What Anna Sophia really meant was proper society-and solely the Lutheran portion of it, at that.
Emelie didn't doubt at all that the regiments of the army had been talking about the betrothal, also. But the dowager countess wouldn't know about that, and wouldn't care if she did. Her concern, and that of her intimate circles, was that Caroline Platzer had made a most unsuitable match for a husband-and, alas, there was now very little that could be done about it. Seeing as how the impetuous and foolish young woman had made such an incredible public display of the business.
"I have no idea what's happening to him!" Caroline wailed, slamming the letter onto the desk under her hands.
Thankfully, Anna Sophia said nothing-and Caroline wasn't looking at her. Thankfully, because it was clear from the expression on the dowager countess' face that her thoughts were running along the lines of: Well, you know he's still alive. More's the pity.
The problem wasn't even so much a clash of cultural attitudes as it was a clash of expectations that were shaped and colored by those very different attitudes. Perhaps because of her youth, or perhaps simply because she'd spent so much time with Caroline and Maureen Grady and other Americans, Emelie could see both sides of the issue where neither Caroline nor Anna Sophia could see any but theirs.
For Caroline, as for all the up-timers, the issue was simply and solely one of a prospective marriage. And since issues of class didn't matter to them, Thorsten Engler made a perfectly suitable match for Caroline. End of discussion.
There were subtleties there, of course. As she'd gotten to know them better, Emelie had come to realize that the American indifference to class was not so much indifference as it was a very different assessment of how class was defined in the first place. Unless issues of race complicated the matter-and she'd found up-timer attitudes on that subject both varied and often contradictory-then the "blood" of the prospective marital partners was simply irrelevant, especially in this instance. The Americans were a hybrid stock, whose second-largest national component after the Anglo-Saxons was German to begin with. That was certainly true of Caroline Platzer, as her surname alone indicated.
What did matter was, first, a person's economic status; and second and still more important, a person's prospects for economic advancement.
And there was an enormous cultural weight thrown onto the latter, reinforced over and over again in every aspect of American society. It was one of the standard themes of their popular literature, whether in the form of books or those moving visual depictions that Emelie found so fascinating. Show any American a story where a lively young woman's "hand in marriage," as they put it, was being sought by two rivals, one poor but industrious and the other wealthy and indolent, and the audience automatically knew which rival they favored.
From the standpoint of down-timer nobility, exactly the wrong one.
Everything about Thorsten Engler fit that model image. Poor, yes-but his poverty was no fault of his own. Born a farmer, an occupation which American popular culture romanticized, and then stripped of his farm by soldiers employed by that same class of idle rich whom up-timers were predisposed to detest in the first place.
A virgin birth, you might say, untainted and unsoiled in any particular. Then, he went forward "from his bootstraps," to use the up-timer expression. Something else which they found admirable. And advanced himself quite well, not letting his patriotic duty slide in the process. Two more plus marks to add to his column, as they would think of it.
Finally-no one argued this, not even the sourest Elle-he was a very nice man. There was nothing about his personality that anyone could point an accusing finger at.
From Caroline's standpoint-and Maureen Grady's, and her husband Dennis', and that of every up-timer Emelie knew-what more could you ask for?
Throughout, and this was perhaps where the cultural divergence was greatest, there was not a trace of consideration given to the blindingly obvious political aspects of the problem. Indeed, Emelie was quite sure that the political side of it had never even occurred to them.
"Caroline, you've glared at the letter long enough!" proclaimed the princess. "You promised you'd let me take you riding!"
Emelie glanced at her sister-in-law and saw that the dowager countess was restraining a quite visible grimace.
That political problem. So obvious that Emelie was still amazed the up-timers didn't even seem to recognize it at all. But also understanding that it was that very blindness on their part that made the issue so explosive.
Kristina Vasa, only child and heir of Gustav II Adolf, king of Sweden and emperor of the United States of Europe. Arguably already-they'd know in just a few more months-the most powerful ruler in Europe. Seven years old or not, she was herself one of the most politically important figures in the continent.
And the headstrong child had chosen for her principal lady-in-waiting one Caroline Platzer. The fact that neither the princess nor the lady-in-waiting herself used the term-didn't even occur to them, in fact-made the situation all the worse. There were none of the usual accepted limitations of the post to contain the potential damage being done.
Or the potential benefits, for that matter, which Emelie herself thought far outweighed the drawbacks. But she was almost alone among the Elles-or their spouses, or their relatives, or their advisers-in her view of the matter.
To say that proper Lutheran noble society was appalled by the situation-nay, aghast and flabbergasted-would be to put it mildly.
All the worse, that the situation had snuck upon them like the proverbial thief in the night. The German nobility and their Swedish counterparts had been so concerned with the potential damage that might be done by the rambunctious princess' regular outings into the disreputable Freedom Arches and her associations with the detestable Committees of Correspondence that they'd been quite oblivious, in the beginning, to Kristina's growing attachment to the Platzer woman. Indeed, they'd even seen it as a useful counterbalance. While Caroline shared all of the usual attitudes of up-timers, she was not particularly inclined toward political radicalism. Indeed, she seemed generally not very interested in politics at all, being preoccupied entirely by social matters.
Such is the folly of mankind. Watch for the wolves, and let the weasel slide in the door. That most bloodthirsty of all predators, size be damned.
"Yes, I promised. Fine." The weasel rose and headed for the door, taking by the hand the future ruler of central Europe. The innocent chicklet, to the slaughter.
Seeing the sour look on Anna Sophia's face, it was all Emelie could do to keep from laughing.
"But no galloping, this time!" she heard Caroline's voice coming from the hall outside.
"We didn't gallop last time. That was just a canter. Well. A fast canter."
"I was scared to death."
"You didn't fall off, did you?"
"What are we going to do?" Emelie heard her sister-in-law mutter.
The words had been spoken loudly enough that Emelie decided a response was called for.
"Live with it, that's all."
"And now she's to be married to a peasant! I had hoped-we'd found any of several suitable matches-that a proper husband might ameliorate the situation."
As if Caroline would have been impressed by a string of young counts trotted before her. But Emelie left that unspoken. She also left unspoken the fact that her own marriage to a much older nobleman-her husband Ludwig Guenther, count of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, would be celebrating his fifty-third birthday in less than two months-had not particularly "ameliorated" her own attitudes, had they?
Fortunately, there had been no clashes between her and her husband, over the subject of Emelie's growing attachment to the up-timers and her subtly-expressed but growing political radicalization. It might be better to say, cultural radicalization. Like Caroline Platzer herself, Emelie was not particularly interested in politics, in the narrow sense of the term. But she too, like the princess, had found herself powerfully influenced by the attitudes toward people and social relations that, in many ways, were more deeply rooted in Caroline and-especially-Maureen Grady than they were in the most flamboyant CoC agitator.
Emelie and Ludwig Guenther might have clashed, had circumstances been different. But her husband, much to his surprise, had found himself at the center of the growing storm in Lutheran theological circles, ever since he'd sponsored the now-famous Rudolstadt Colloquy, the year before. The continuing controversies over that colloquy and the decisions the count had made at it had become so contentious for the continent's Lutheran clergy that an exasperated emperor Gustav Adolf had ordered another colloquy be held to adjudicate all the issues under dispute-and had appointed Emelie's husband to oversee it. That, because whatever their other quarrels, all theologians involved had expressed no animosity toward Ludwig Guenther as a person. Indeed, they'd all agreed that he'd been quite even-handed and judicious-even if, to many of them, astonishingly wrong-headed.
So, Emelie and Ludwig Guenther had come to Magdeburg a few months earlier. Since her husband spent practically every waking hour attending to the Lutheran dispute, she'd found herself with a great deal of time on her hands. At her sister-in-law's invitation, she'd spent those many free hours at the settlement house. And, as the months passed, felt a subtle but sweeping transformation come over her, in terms of attitudes that she'd inherited unthinkingly from her background and upbringing.
Maureen Grady had been more influential in that respect-at least, for Emelie if not a seven-year-old princess-than Caroline Platzer. Maureen was in her late forties, in the prime of her life, with both an extensive education and an administrative practice "under her belt," as the Americans put it. The fact that she was married to an up-time policeman, with the usual conservative views of such men-conservative, at least, by American standards-gave Maureen's own attitudes that much more impact. This was no flighty girl whose opinions could be easily dismissed. This was an extremely capable and very level-headed woman, able to retain the affections of a tough-minded cop, whose views on most important social questions placed her in opposition to the standards of seventeenth-century society. Noble society, certainly.
You could start with Maureen's feminism, so deeply ingrained that she didn't even consider it "feminism" to begin with. Just… self-evident.
It would be interesting to see where it all wound up, in the end. And since Emelie was still only nineteen years old-and given the impact that the up-timers were starting to have on medicine and life expectancy-she had good reason to believe she'd see a great deal of whatever transformations happened to Europe, in her lifetime.
She was looking forward to it, even if-
"And now the princess seems to be developing an attachment to the peasant. What are we going to do?" demanded Anna Sophia, almost wailing the words.
– some others were not.
Fortunately, Kristina did not put up a fuss about attending the concert that night. She might have, except that the concert was supposed to include ballads from the Brillo saga, for which she'd become a devoted enthusiast and afficionado.
"Praise be," the princess' governess and official lady-in-waiting, Lady Ulrike, murmured to Caroline as they set off for the royal palace.
Unlike most of the German establishment-and most of the Swedish, for that matter-Lady Ulrike had few if any reservations about Caroline's relationship with Kristina. It might be better to say that whatever reservations the Swedish noblewoman had were simply overwhelmed by her relief at having someone who was far better suited than she was to keeping the princess under control. And if the young American's methods of "control" upset the established order, so much the worse for the establishment. They could cluck their tongues all they wanted. They didn't have the responsibility of keeping a girl who might be the world's smartest seven-year-old and was certainly its most self-confident and willful one-not to mention a truly superb horse rider-from running wild at every turn.
To make the situation still better for Lady Ulrike, Mary Simpson was at the concert also. She was surprised, since she'd thought Mary had left already on her trip to the Upper Palatinate.
"No, I'm not leaving for two more days," Mary explained. "Ronnie had some last minute things she needed to attend to."
That was a reference to Veronica Richter-or Veronica Dreeson, now, if you went by American custom, since she'd married Grantville's mayor. To just about everyone's surprise, including theirs, she and Mary Simpson had become quite good friends since the Ring of Fire. Veronica was determined to return to the Upper Palatinate and see what she could recover of the family's property that had been left behind when she and the survivors of her family had been forced to become camp followers of Tilly's army.
Lady Ulrike smiled. "Two more days for the rumors to keep mounting."
Mary rolled her eyes. "Tell me about it. Why are so many people convinced that there's some Machiavellian political scheme involved in this? It's a purely personal matter for Veronica, and I agreed to accompany her simply because she's a friend of mine, she asked me to come-and I won't be seeing my husband until the war's over, anyway."
If I ever see him again at all, she could have added, but didn't. The ironclads had passed through Hamburg, according to the radio reports, with not much in the way of casualties. The admiral hadn't been one of them, or that would certainly have been reported also. Still, there were months of fighting ahead, and Mary's husband would be in the thick of it. She might very well not hear from him again until the summer, even if he survived.
Lady Ulrike was sure that was the underlying reason behind Mary's willingness to go to the Upper Palatinate with Veronica Dreeson. It was either that or spend the next few weeks in Magdeburg, fretting with worry.
She shrugged. "Don't be naive, Mary. You are John Simpson's wife and Veronica is Gretchen Richter's grandmother. No competent spymaster in Europe would presume that a joint trip you take-now of all times-would simply be an innocent personal matter. Especially not going to the Oberpfalz, where General Baner is locking horns with the Bavarians."
She used the German term for the Upper Palatinate, slipping it effortlessly into the English they'd been speaking. Lady Ulrike used every possible opportunity to improve her English-or her American, as she thought of it. Regardless of what happened, she was likely to continue being Princess Kristina's official lady-in-waiting. That meant she'd be dealing with the girl's new American friends and mentors for a long time to come. Understanding their language would be a help in the task. Lady Ulrike had started with a good grasp of the English of her day, but she'd soon come to appreciate the quip someone had once made about the relationship between Americans and Britons: Divided by a common language.
The princess came up that very moment. "Barreled up," to use American
idiom. With her usual heedlessness, she flung herself into an embrace with Mary Simpson.
"Aunt Mary! I want the Brillo stuff first!"
Lady Ulrike sidled off. Let Mary deal with that.
It was the general opinion of the Lutheran establishment that dominated both Sweden and, to a lesser degree, the USE, that it was most fortunate that the royal child had taken a liking to Mary Simpson as well as to Caroline Platzer, the dame of Magdeburg being who and what she was.
Personally, Lady Ulrike thought that general opinion was shortsighted, as the commonly accepted wisdom so often was. True, Mary Simpson had her own version of an upper-crust view of the world. But, beneath the surface, it was really not so much different from the attitudes of someone like Caroline Platzer. In the long run, she was pretty sure, the reinforcing aspects of their mutual influence on the child would greatly outweigh whatever conservative opinions Mary Simpson might bring to the mix.
But she really didn't care. It was so much easier, these days, to deal with Kristina.
The concert went well, in everyone's opinion. Whatever dubious attitudes anyone in the audience might have had over the content of the Brillo ballads were more than offset by their satisfaction that the formidable dame of Magdeburg had quite successfully squelched the rambunctious princess' demand to rearrange the program. Thank God, somebody could discipline the child.
They were less pleased the next day, those of them who attended-not many, but all of them heard about it afterward-when the regiments of the army marched through Magdeburg on their way to the front. The war, quiescent during the winter except for the sieges of Luebeck and Amsterdam, was erupting again.
Alas, General Torstensson had sent orders to march the entire army right through the middle of the capital before sending them into battle. To boost the morale of the soldiers, was his public explanation.
And… it was true enough, so far as it went. The main streets of the city were lined with civilians, wildly cheering on their army as it passed.
