1635- the Wars for the Rhine (ARC)

by Anette Pedersen

  Chapter 8

  Fulda

  August, 1634

  The horse Melchior had chosen for Father Johannes in Cologne had plodded on steadily up along the Rhine and Main rivers, across the new bridge at Frankfurt and then north along the Fulda river to Fulda town. The country side had so far been peaceful but active with the harvest under way, but the closer Father Johannes got to Fulda, the more people seemed to be looking back over their shoulders. The guards at the border stations had given him no problems—though he had had to be careful which of his two sets of letters he let them see—and those guards willing to chat had known of no fighting.

  Rumors had come down from Fulda: vague talks about expected rebellions once the harvest was over, but nothing had seemed alarming until the night before. Father Johannes had stopped for the night at the Inn of the Red Bear, and sat talking to a south-bound postman named Martin Wackernagel, who claimed to have seen troops moving in the area between Fulda and Kassel. Father Johannes would have liked to know more, but the entrance of Felix Gruyard surrounded by three soldiers, had made him withdraw from the common room before Gruyard saw him. Gruyard had last been heard of in connection with the disappearance of Duke Wolfgang of Jülich-Berg’s young widow, and finding him now near Fulda was not a good omen.

  Fulda looked like a disturbed anthill in its broad, fertile valley, when Father Johannes approached. As expected the overcast sky made a few farmers hurry around getting the last grain into the barns, but aside from that, all kinds of people seemed to be moving around; not fleeing, not looking frightened and not all carrying weapons. The guard at the gate politely stopped Father Johannes and asked the usual questions: identity, origin, destination and business in town. He also wanted to know if Father Johannes had noticed any people—perhaps soldiers—transporting one or more prisoners. Father Johannes mentioned Gruyard and the three soldiers, and upon hearing that a henchman of the Archbishop of Cologne had been in the area until the night before, an officer was called and Father Johannes had to repeat the entire story plus as much as he knew about Gruyard.

  It was thus late in the evening before Father Johannes made his way to the Church of Saint Severi. The small grey church had been build two centuries ago by the important Wool-Weavers Guild on a small rise between the Council Hall and the Cathedral, and the new, tall, surrounding half-timber houses seemed to hover protectingly around it. The evening service had just ended, and the congregation dispersed along with the priest with softly murmured goodnights. Father Johannes approached the sexton snuffing out the lights by the door, “Blessed evening Goodman, I was wondering if you would be as kind as to help me. My name is Father Johannes Grunwald and I’m a painter. I’ve been told your church has been richly decorated within the last few years, and I would very much like to come see the church properly in daylight tomorrow. For now, could you tell me the whereabouts of the painter? I would enjoy talking to a colleague.”

  “The painter is here in the church, but he keeps to himself, and I doubt he wants company.”

  “Perhaps, you’d be kind enough to ask him. Say Father Johannes Grunwald wishes to see him.” Father Johannes placed a few copper coins on the wooden bench beneath the window, and went to put a few more in the collection box by the door into the nave. The sexton swiped the coins from the bench and disappeared, only to come back followed by a small, thin man in rag-shoes and a worn tunic.

  “Paul! So it is you.” Father Johannes went to embrace his friend, but was stopped by the lack of reaction in the other man’s face.

  Paul blinked his eyes a few times, “Yes, I’m Paul,” he seemed to pull himself together, “please come in. We can talk in the sacristy.”

  * * *

  In the sacristy a half-open closet showed a collection of stoles, albas and other priestly garments, while an oak table with neatly line-up painting paraphernalia, and a pallet and a slop-bucket made it clear that Paul both lived and worked out of the small room.

  Paul waived Father Johannes toward a stool by the table, then kicked off his shoes made of braided rags, before sitting down on the pallet pressing his back against the wall; the skin on his feet and legs were scarred and twisted, and several toes were missing.

  “Paul ...” Father Johannes stopped and hesitated.

  “Please sit down, Father Johannes, you lean so.” Paul pulled his feet up under his tunic and looked away.

  Father Johannes sat down, pulling a bottle from inside his doublet. “I’m staying at the Inn of the Wise Virgin, they had bottles of the plum-wine you used to like. I wasn’t sure you were the painter at Saint Severi, but I brought along a bottle. Just in case. Do you need anything?”

  Paul shook his head and rattled by his friend’s silence Father Johannes went on, “Three years ago I saw the Black Mass pictures by Van Beekx, that you were accused of painting. And read the interrogation protocol and what else the archives contained. I should have come looking for you in Aschaffenburg, but I didn’t. I’m sorry. I should have.”

  Paul remained silent.

  “I was on my way to Magdeburg. To paint propaganda for that campaign. You know I’m very good at closing my eyes to those things I don’t wish to see, but Magdeburg was too much. I rebelled and had to flee. Ended up with the Americans in Grantville. Last winter I accepted a commission from Prince-Bishop Franz von Hatzfeldt of Würzburg and went to Cologne to try if I could find you. I know I should have searched when I first knew that you had been in trouble. I’m sorry. Paul? Is there anything I can do?”

  Paul turned his head back to look at Father Johannes. “No. And it would have made no difference if you had come earlier. By the time Magdeburg burned I had been here for more than a year. And this is where I want to be. Right here. Some of my Aunt Louise’s Baril relatives are here, working for the American administration—and the parish supply me with food and paint in return for me decorating the church. I want nothing but to stay here and paint.”

  Paul looked down on his hands rubbing them against each other before continuing. “I’ve gone to see the American people twice. It was the right thing to do. Felix Gruyard has been doing his dirty work here. I wanted to stop him, but I don’t want to go outside. I want to stay here. This is sanctuary.” Paul looked up again at Father Johannes, his eyes wide open, “Isn’t it funny? A torturer working for a Prince of the Catholic Church hurt me until something inside me broke, and I did what he wanted me to do. Yet once a shot made my horse panic, and I had the chance to escape, it was in that same church I felt safe. I don’t want to go anywhere.”

  Father Johannes rose and went to kneel before Paul, touching first his shoulder then his cheek. “Dear Paul, this will change. After Magdeburg I fled to my childhood home, hiding in a cabin like a wounded animal in its den. Encountering Evil in your fellow man taint you, destroy your innocence, as you will never again be able to delude yourself that such Evil isn’t real. But as pain and evil is real, so is joy and love. The Bible tell us not to put our Faith in princes, nor in the sons of man; I agree on the first but not on the second. We are all sons of man: princes and beggars, soldiers and painters, even Our Lord Jesus Christ came to us as son of man.”

  Father Johannes stopped and swallowed before continuing. “Paul, I’ll come to see your paintings tomorrow, and we can talk again. I’ll stay in town for a while. I’m going to see the American people about the archives from the abbey. If you don’t want to come with me when I leave, I’ll arrange to leave you some money with them, as well as addresses for people who will know where I’ve gone. If you ever want—or are forced—to leave, you can use the money to go to your family or come to me. I’ll most likely be in Magdeburg working with porcelain.” Father Johannes rose and smiled, “And by the way: your Heavenly Madonna is beautiful, and it no longer belongs to the archbishop, but to a most lovely lady called Maxie.

  Chapter 9

  Bonn, The Archbishop’s Palace

  August, 1634

  “Charlotte, I have had enough of your willfulness and lack
of gratitude.” Archbishop Ferdinand pushed open the door to Charlotte’s room with a bang, causing her nursing son, Philipp, to let go of her nipple and scream. The archbishop paid no attention to the baby, just frowned and motioned for Sister Ursula to leave. He calmed his face and smiled, but his hand’s jerky movements showed that he was extremely upset. “You are nothing but a silly girl and in no way capable of handling the affairs of your son and his estates. You will now write letters naming me the sole guardian of my new little godson and entrusting all his affairs—and yours—to me. You will also make it quite clear to your family that it is entirely to your wish that the two of you are staying here as my guests.”

  “No!” Charlotte rose with the screaming baby in her arms. “My son’s guardians will be my brother and my family. You cannot keep us here forever. You and your two jailers have kept me from all information about what is going on outside this room, but I know my family. My aunt, Princess Katharina of Sweden, will have written to her emperor brother, and my mother will have the entire Simmern family alerted. They haven’t heard from me for more than a month, and even those who don’t care for me personally will know the importance of my baby. You risk having not just the Swedes coming at you from the north and east, but also the entire Pfalz rising against you in the south. And judging from the last news I heard before you locked me up, your ducal brother in Bavaria has far too many problems on his own to come to your aid.”

  “You are entirely right, my dear,” the archbishop kept smiling, “and that is just half of my problems. Which is why my faithful Gruyard will have the care of your baby until I get those letters.” He snatched the swaddled baby, and had the door locked behind him before Charlotte could reach him.

  Sister Ursula had stepped back from the door so quickly she fell, and rose stammering an apology, but the archbishop just thrust the screaming baby at her and said: “Get a wet-nurse.”

  * * *

  Charlotte sat staring at her bloody hands in the fading evening light when Sister Ursula opened the door and entered with a covered tray and a burning candle. “You miserable monster! Where is my son?” Charlotte grabbed the empty cradle and aimed it for the nun’s head, but it slipped in her hands, which were weak and torn from battering against the door all day. She stood panting and glaring while Sister Ursula calmly set the tray on the table and placed the cradle right way up in the middle of the floor. Then from the tray she took a sealed clay pot with long piece of thin rope sticking out from the top, and placed this in the cradle.

  “Katharina Charlotte,” said Sister Ursula, looking straight into Charlotte’s eyes. “I have loved and served Archbishop Ferdinand all my life, I was even his mistress briefly in my youth. But he has now gone too far. The end may justify the means—but not all means. And Ferdinand has gone beyond all that is reasonable. He is no longer the person he once was.” She sighed. “Gruyard has left for Fulda and your baby is waiting for you at the home of Irmgard Eigenhaus. There is a man outside waiting to take you there. I’ll go tell the archbishop you were gone when I came with your dinner, and create a mystery with this.” She held the burning candle to the end of the rope, which caught fire and started a sputtering burn. Then she grabbed Charlotte’s arm and pulled her out of the room, leaving the door open behind them.

  * * *

  The late Master Eigenhaus, Councillor of Bonn and Master of the Merchant’s Guild, had sired four daughters on his wife and four more on his mistress. This was not in itself an unusual situation for a prominent man, but insisting that both women with all the children lived together in his house had been regarded as rather eccentric. Not to mention that he dowered all the girls equally. Still, he was wealthy, well-liked and well-connected, and contributed freely to both the church and civic projects, so nobody made that much of an issue of the arrangement.

  The girls had been brought up to consider themselves a family, and to aim at making that family wealthy and powerful. As females they were barred from sitting in Bonn’s ruling council, but six of the eight girls had married prominent guild members, and they were now a major force in town.

  Irmgard, the oldest of the illegitimate daughters, had never married, but instead used her dower to buy the shop from the town’s apothecary, and officially set herself up as a midwife. She first paid the old apothecary to remain the official head of the business, but everybody knew that his shaking hands made it impossible for him to make even the simplest tisane. After he died, Irmgard simply kept on running the business.

  After Sister Ursula had delivered Charlotte to a big, limping man, he had hidden her in his waist-high, fish-smelling basket, and actually carried her on his back to the backdoor of the apothecary shop. Irmgard had been waiting with the baby in her arms, and even before the archbishop had calmed his household after the explosion in Charlotte’s room, Charlotte and the baby had been fast asleep in the attic above the shop.

  The next morning Irmgard set about changing Charlotte’s appearance by bleaching her hair with chamomile and darkening her pale skin with walnut water. So by the time the archbishop had accepted that the baby had unexplainably disappeared from his new cradle at the wet-nurse’s room, the pale and delicate brunette, Countess Palatine Katharina Charlotte von Zweibrücken, had become the buxom, fair-haired and sunburned Lotti, widow of a soldier from Trier. And by the time he had picked up the trail of the young mother travelling into Berg in Charlotte’s clothes, Lotti was just another of the many refugees the Eigenhaus family took in and briefly employed before finding them a position through their many friends and connections.

  The matriarch of the Eigenhause family was the oldest legitimate daughter, Benedicte, who ran the family trading affairs as well as the household. Every major concern of the town from polluted wells and garbage removal to new wall-cannons and the women’s militias went by way of Frau Eigenhaus. Her devoted husband had inherited a series of wineries, and—while no bad merchant himself—was more than satisfied to concentrate on wine-making and leave the general trade to his wife.

  Frau Benedicte’s household was big and busy with all the matriarch’s activities, so no one found it the least bit unusual when Charlotte—as Lotti—was hired to embroider the gowns for the wedding of Frau Benedicte’s youngest daughter. Charlotte—along with baby Philipp—was given a room in the attic and a place at the servant’s end of the family table, and—to protect the expensive fabrics—Frau Benedicte had arranged for Charlotte to do her work in the main parlor. Charlotte had no problems with the delicate needlework, and she could keep her baby beside her while she worked, but the parlour was also where Frau Benedicte spent most of her day, and just thinking about all Frau Benedicte’s projects made Charlotte feel exhausted.

  Still, the abundance of writing material gave Charlotte the opportunity to write new letters to her family, and in the few quiet moments when the two of them were alone, Frau Benedicte talked to Charlotte about the previous visitors and conversations, asking what she had understood and clarifying this and that. Eventually—as Charlotte slowly recovered and started showing an interest in what was going on around her—the older woman also began asking Charlotte for information and opinions. Charlotte might feel woefully ignorant about business matters on more than a household scale, but as a member of the nobility she knew her peers—and their politics and follies—inside out. And as the weeks passed, and the archbishop kept chasing rumors of Charlotte up and down the Rhine, a genuine friendship evolved between the two very different women. Charlotte started making tentative plans for taking control of her son’s heritage once her brother finally managed to disentangle himself from the upsets caused by the crisis in Bavaria.

  Linz, Austria, The Scribe

  August, 1634

  “I am quite certain I told you not to stir up trouble, so what were you doing getting into a duel with a Bavarian nobleman?” Melchior tossed his hat on the table and sat down on the chair by Wolf’s bed.

  “Well, you also told me to keep an eye on Bavaria. So it’s really al
l your own fault.” Wolf leaned back against the pillows stacked high behind him. Despite all the trouble his cousin cost him whenever they were in garrison Melchior was actually pleased to notice that Wolf look fit and healthy—aside from a slight pallor and a bandaged shoulder.

  “But what were you doing in Regensburg? Aside from the obvious, that is,” Melchior added when Wolf started to smirk. “I did hear about you and the nobleman's wife.”

  “The day after you left for Vienna, I had a letter from the lady in question. The dear Duke Maximilian appears to be throwing his weight around pretty badly. I just went to see for myself how bad things were.”

  “And visit the lady.”

  “Of course.” Wolf opened his eyes wide and tried to look innocent—something he wasn’t very good at. “After all she was the one who had made contact with me.”

  “But you are healing now with no sign of a fever?” Melchior decided to drop the topic, Wolf had been in and out of trouble since they were children, and he wasn’t really likely to change now.

  “Yes.” Wolf also stopped playacting. “And how did your errand go?”

  “I’m going back to Cologne. But you’re staying here,” Melchior quickly added when Wolf sat up fast and then grabbed at his bandaged shoulder.

  “If you think you’ll leave me behind just because that fat ninny managed to prick my shoulder, you can just think again.” Wolf had narrowed his eyes and looked ready to jump Melchior for a wrestling match.

  “Calm down, Cos. I cannot take the regiments with me. It’s not that Archduke Ferdinand refuses permission,” Melchior held up a hand to forestall Wolf’s protests, “it’s the situation with Bavaria being too tense. There is no way the Duke would not consider it an attack on top of the insult given by his runaway fiancée. I’ll be taking just Simon and Sergeant Mittlefeldt, plus this bunch of papers.” Melchior tapped to his breast bulging slightly from the document purse he was carrying.