Grantville Gazette, Volume 64

by Bjorn Hasseler

  "I know you must leave Bremen," she said. "If you don't, my father will have you killed. And you need to go to Magdeburg to study."

  "Yes, I am leaving day after tomorrow. I just came to tell you I love you, and to say goodbye."

  There was more silence, and then shortly before dawn, Hans slipped out of her bed, out of her house, and back to the Freedom Arches.

  ****

  "And so, Frau Schultz, I will be leaving in the morning," Hans said to the old woman in the kitchen of the Freedom Arches.

  "Yes, of course, you must go quickly. I will pack you some things to take with you, my boy," the old woman wiped her hands on her apron, and put her hands on his shoulders. "You will do well as an engineer," she said. "Do not give up. Never give up."

  "I will not," he said.

  "I will also give you a letter to the other Committees of Correspondence," Frau Schultz said. "There will always be a place found for you."

  Hans nodded his head, but could say nothing.

  "Now, go, pack. You should be gone by daybreak."

  ****

  The blows came slowly, measured, to his midsection, and each one accompanied by a single word. A blinding light obscured the room and whoever was throwing the punches.

  Thwap! "You…"

  Bap! "will…"

  Thwap! "stay…"

  Bap! "away…"

  Thwap! "from…"

  Thwap! "her!"

  Thwap! "Shit-boy!"

  He felt himself picked up and shaken hard. Whoever this was, he was huge and strong. Strong enough to really hurt, but the blows had been pulled, at least a little. He was hurt, yes, but no broken ribs, nothing really messed up inside. So far.

  "Do you understand me?" There was an educated overlay on top of the Frisian accent. "Leave her alone!"

  He nodded and turned his head to the side, squinting, trying to avoid the bright light. It must be one of those flashlight things that the up-timers had.

  A huge open hand slapped him on the side of his face. "Do you understand me? Leave my sister alone. She is not for the likes of you, Shit-boy! Do you understand? She will never be for a night soil collector like you!"

  "Ja, verstehe Ich."

  "Good." The man picked him up and flopped him on the floor near the chamber pot. Hans tried to move, but only groaned.

  The light was turned off, and in the sudden darkness, the huge man turned and left the room without another word or a backward look. Taking deep breaths, Hans smelled the shit in the chamberpot and moaned softly, but as he lay on his back, his arms curled protectively over his belly, he refused to let the tears come. It was ironic, he thought, that he was already going to leave in the morning anyway.

  ****

  Hans, aching and still holding his gut, headed out of the city of Bremen and headed south toward Magdeburg. He couldn't afford to take a stage, and there was still no railroad from Magdeburg to Bremen. In his backpack was the book. He hadn't seen it there until after he'd left the city. He stopped, unsure what to do. He hadn't intended to steal the book. He noticed that there was a note in it. "This is for you, Hans. We have been watching you with great hope for your future. Use it well. Frau Schultz, chair, Bremen Committee of Correspondence."

  Hans put the book back in his pack, and pulled the pack on. He straightened and headed south.

  "I may be a night soil collector," he said out loud, "but if I can make a future as a sanitary engineer, I will be, by the grace of God, the Night Soil King!"

  ****

  The first night, he stopped at a camping ground outside of Achim. It was a kind of weed-filled field with just a few trees down by the banks of the Weser River. Hans arrived a little before sunset, and made a sort of camp with his few possessions. The others in the camp acknowledged him with everything from a few grunts to hellos. Most of the men in the camp appeared to be workers of some kind.

  One of the men invited him to share their campfire. Hans donated a turnip and the heel of a loaf of bread to the meal being prepared in a large kettle on the fire. He peeled the turnip, and cut it into pieces, and added it into the pot.

  "Where are you coming from, and where bound?" one of the men asked Hans. "My name is Albrecht, and my friends here are Georg, Hans, Willi, and Freddi."

  "Hans," he said, gesturing to his chest, and abandoning the diminutive he'd been called all his life. "Ich komme aus Bremen. I am on the way to Magdeburg to learn to be a sanitary engineer."

  "A sanitary engineer? What's that?" the other Hans asked.

  "Somebody who can build the works needed to treat water and sewage and make them clean again." Hans was proud of what he wanted to be his new career.

  "And you think you have to go to Magdeburg to learn this?"

  "It is the new capital, so I suppose it would be where I should go," Hans said.

  "Everybody wants to go to Magdeburg," Willi said, slapping his thigh. "But we don't."

  "Why not?"

  Freddi and Hans spoke at once jumbling their words together. They stopped, and then Freddi started up again. "Because we are going to Denmark!"

  "And why is that?"

  "Because we are going to work on the rebuilding of the dikes after the big storm. The king and his engineer are hiring everyone who can work," Albrecht said.

  "His engineer, you say?" Hans's attention sharpened.

  "Ja. The man's name is Leeghwasser. He is a Dutchie. They say he and his son were the only survivors of a whole town after the Great Flood. The king has put him in charge of rebuilding the dikes, and at least some of the towns where there are still people," Albrecht said.

  "I wonder if he knows any sanitary engineering," Hans mused.

  "I dunno," Willi said, "but he is said to be paying well for good workers." He opened his arms wide, indicating his four friends. "That's us! We are good workers, and we will make lots of money working on the dikes."

  Hans spent the evening talking with his new acquaintances. As the stars came out, the yawning began. One by one, the men bedded down by the fire. Hansel did as well, and fell asleep thinking of Marieke, and wondering what her family had done to her.

  ****

  Shortly after sunrise, the men woke, and after going down to the river to wash, finished off the turnip stew from the last evening.

  "You are welcome to come with us, Hans," Albrecht said, as he shook hands with the young man.

  Hans sat on his pack as he watched his four new friends head north.

  "Wait!" he called. "I think I will come with you. I want to meet Leeghwasser and see what I can learn."

  Now numbering five, the small company began to walk north, toward Denmark.

  ****

  When she thought nobody was looking, Marieke would get a faraway look in her eyes, and tears would trickle down her cheeks. Outwardly, she decided, she'd be a model daughter. But inside, she raged against the injustice that had forced Hans to flee, and that had gotten him a beating from her brother. Oh, how he had gloated to her the next day, until her father had heard and made him stop.

  She sat in her late mother's sewing room, reading and thinking. The room had been designed for working, so the windows were large, and of the clearest glass her father could afford. Her chair was a wooden rocker, and she rocked back and forth, back and forth, as if she could rock her way back to Hans.

  Even though she wasn't supposed to go to the Freedom Arches, Frau Schultz kept her supplied with translations of up-time works on politics and economics. She even started reading a book by an up-time German named Karl Marx, called Das Kapital. His explanation of how business and culture worked fascinated her. Frau Schultz had written her that the CoC study group was nearly finished with the up-timer Thomas Paine's pamphlet, Common Sense. She said they'd be starting on Marx next.

  Marieke dreamed of a time when people such as she and Hans could simply marry for love. But it was obvious that there would need to be a revolution to make that time happen. Fine. Then there would be a revolution.

  Ein Feste
Burg, Episode 23

  by Rainer Prem

  Chapter 32: Shots in the Dark

  Poland, West of Poznań

  October 1635

  "Moritz," the mortally wounded Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel wheezed.

  "Yes, brother, I'm here."

  Moritz took a hesitant step closer. The overwhelming smells of death and up-time disinfectant in the medical tent made him want to gag. His brother—half-brother to be exact—wouldn't live much longer. Wilhelm's wounds were so serious, even up-timer magic couldn't save him.

  "Take …" Wilhelm whispered, and Moritz knelt down to hear him better. "Take my body to Kassel." He coughed weakly, and blood dribbled out of his mouth. "Don't let me rot in this foreign ground."

  Moritz looked around with tear-filled eyes. One of the other men in the tent offered him an embroidered handkerchief. He nodded his thanks and used it to wipe his brother's mouth. "Yes, brother, I'll do it."

  A cold hand gripped his wrist. "Take the rest of my troops with you," Wilhelm whispered. "Amalie will need them more than the Swede. And—" He breathed heavily. "And tell her that … I … love …" His hand went limp, and his eyes stared lifelessly at the ceiling.

  After a few moments, Moritz, Landgrave of Hesse-Rotenburg, took his brother's dead hands and crossed them over his chest. Then he pushed the dead landgrave's eyes closed.

  He rose and straightened. Then he took off his hat and turned around to face the other men in the tent. Taking a deep breath, he firmly said, "A great man has gone. We need to honor his last wishes."

  The men nodded in agreement.

  ****

  It hadn't been easy to find a Calvinist pastor in the Lutheran army, but at last, the dead Landgrave's organs had been removed and buried, and his corpse sewn into a waterproof bag.

  In the meantime, Moritz tried to answer the difficult question of how many still lived of those his dying brother had called "his troops."

  Hesse had joined the Swedish army with a force of ten thousand men, in accordance with his five-year-old contract with the Swedish king. However, only a small number of those had been Hessian troops; the rest were volunteers hired by Hessian recruiters all over central Germany.

  Eight thousand had been lost in the catastrophe: dead, wounded, missing, and scattered. The able-bodied remnants consisted of small fragments of companies.

  Ensign Moritz von Hessen always had expected to be in command of a regiment one day—after five more years of war perhaps. Now, all of a sudden, he was, if not in command, at least responsible for that number of soldiers.

  Of course, even a younger son of a ruler's second wife had an education preparing him to lead other people. Papa had even created a new school in Marburg to give all his sons and other nobles a thorough training in knightly virtues.

  And fortunately some of the older officers, whom he could trust to handle the real tasks, had survived.

  ****

  "What does the Swede intend with that behavior?" Moritz looked around and was greeted by similarly clueless faces. The surviving officers and a handful of senior noncoms sat together in a tent dubbed the "Hessian Regiment Headquarters." At least it was dry and warm here.

  "He could have contacted the landgravine by radio," Johann Geyso said, former quartermaster in Wilhelm's staff. As the most senior surviving officer he had been appointed colonel of the regiment, although his last active fighting experience occurred a decade ago. "But he didn't. He told me he wanted to 'come to terms' with his councilors before publishing the bad news."

  "We could be out of Poland and west of Berlin by now,” Moritz said thoughtfully, “but instead we're still sitting here biting our nails."

  "Perhaps he's waiting for a Polish counterattack and will order us to fight again."

  "We could fight," Moritz said. "Couldn't we?"

  "Of course," Geyso said firmly. "We have reorganized the men and formed new companies. We have at least a lieutenant in command of each of them. Perhaps he fears the landgravine would call us back to Hesse."

  "Why should she do that? Do you think the French will stab us in the back? Would our troops even make any difference in that case?"

  Geyso shrugged. "I'm not in the Swede's shoes and not in hers. He might be a little panicky. Before now he hadn't lost a battle in the last decade. And the news of his wife's murder didn't help with his mood."

  Moritz frowned. "Do you think he needs an assertion? I know I actually don't have the formal right to decide in my brother's place, but I could promise the emperor to talk to my sister-in-law and convince her to leave you at the front for now." He grinned. "You are certainly better off here when winter comes than somewhere on the march back to Hesse."

  ****

  Moritz, at twenty-one barely of age, and as an ensign not really mentally equipped to just talk to his supreme commander, nearly stumbled over his feet when he entered the Emperor's tent.

  Gustavus Adolphus, the great idol of his youth, sat in a wooden chair behind a table reading sheets of paper, which looked like official reports, and frowning all the way.

  Moritz thought he could well imagine the kind of mood the Emperor might be in. On top of all that had happened recently the weather was still too bad to continue the campaign, and a third of his army had been lost or was cut off. Moritz didn't dare guess which of all this bad news was the worst for the Swedish King.

  Moritz stopped. He had discussed with the older officers how to address the Swede. The man was his superior in the chain of command, so a military greeting would be appropriate, too, but he was here in dynastic duty for the House of Hesse, and so he bowed before his liege lord.

  The emperor looked up from his papers, his face worried with deep furrows on his forehead. Nevertheless, he looked down his enormous nose, smiling jovially. "So you're the younger brother of Wilhelm? Moritz of Hesse, right?"

  "Half-brother, Your Majesty. I'm the younger brother of Hermann, who serves as your prime minister's secretary of state." I'm not totally unconnected to the new government.

  "Ah, yes, I understand." The jovial smile disappeared. "And you come to deprive me of a full thousand seasoned veterans." Now the Lion of the North looked fierce, like his namesake.

  Moritz hesitated. Then he straightened. "In accord with the last wishes of the deceased landgrave of Hesse I should do that, but I decided otherwise."

  The emperor looked puzzled. Moritz had discussed with Geyso if he should present the decision as what it was, a kind of consensual vote of the surviving officers with a small margin in favor, but then that would perhaps show them in the wrong light. Bartering was a thing for market women and politicians. Noble rulers and military leaders decided for themselves.

  "And …" the emperor said slowly.

  "And I will leave in two days with a hundred cavalry and a hundred infantry of the landgrave's own troops to fulfill my brother's last wishes. Colonel Geyso will take over the Hessian troops until the landgravine sends a 'real general.'

  "His words, not mine," Moritz added hastily, when he saw how the frown on Gustav Adolph's face deepened. "He has spent the last years in my brother's staff caring for the logistics.

  "I will talk to my sister-in-law and try to convince her to send new troops before the winter. If that fails for whatever cause, I will talk to my mother, and we will fulfill the Hessian duties."

  The fierce expression deepened, as did the furrows in the Emperor's forehead, but Moritz did not cower away under this gaze. That Wilhelm hadn't abdicated in 1630 but had instead become the Swede's first open supporter among the German princes had been an achievement of his branch of the family.

  When Landgravine Juliane—Moritz's mother—had received a depressing letter from her stepson she had sent her confidant Hermann Wolff first to the Netherlands for secret consultations and then to Stralsund, where the Swedes had settled for the winter. Officially, Wolff had been sent to deliver a letter asking if it would be possible to have her children educated at the Swedish court, but while he was there he
also secretly negotiated a mutual contract of support.

  Little Moritz had been present when Wolff told the anecdote of how he spent the whole journey back seated on a velvet cushion he had bought in Bremen and filled with the top-secret papers. The same papers, which finally brought the Calvinist Hesse-Kassel on the Lutheran Swede's side, the ten thousand men paid half by Wilhelm and half by Hesse-Rotenburg—or better from Juliane's private coffers.

  Moritz had been only a boy when the secret meetings took place in Rotenburg, but his mother had thought that would be a better education than spending time with his father, who, after his forced abdication, had become more and more unpredictable.

  After such an upbringing, Moritz had no problem enduring the Swede's fierce expression. Hesse had done its duty at the front since 1631. Hesse had the right to take a leave now that their sovereign had passed away. And Hesse did all this as a Calvinist principality, while the man they were allied to was a militant Lutheran. Other German principalities—Lutheran principalities—had shown a much worse image of supporting their own goals and still did.

  Suddenly the emperor started to laugh. "You're not easily impressed, young man."

  Moritz shrugged. What should he answer?

  "Your wish is granted." Gustavus Adolphus continued smiling.

  Moritz shrugged inside. That hadn't been a wish, but if the emperor needed that to save face …

  "Take the landgrave back home. Give him his deserved rest. Fulfill his last wish. I'll write you a corresponding order."

  "Thank you, Your Majesty," Moritz saluted.

  "But I can't let a mere ensign command two companies."

  Moritz frowned. "Umm, I understand, Your Majesty." So a senior officer would have to lead the troops. No problem for Moritz.

  "So, you'd better get yourself an officer's uniform, Colonel von Hessen."

  Moritz felt his eyes widen. "I …" Then he closed his mouth again.

  ****

  Rauschenberg Coaching Inn, near Marburg

  A Few Weeks Later, Two days after the events in Episode 22

  "We won't catch him," Oberförster Otto Clott said thoughtfully. "He's too quick."