Ring of Fire III

by Eric Flint

  “You’re still officially in the employ of France,” Caldenbach said. “It may be the result of incredible bureaucratic inertia, but you are. In spite of everything that happened last spring, Richelieu is still sending money to Besançon.”

  “Not much,” Rosen pointed out. “Not very regularly, either.”

  “Insurance,” Bernhard said. “Louis XIII is very short on regiments at the moment. Richelieu will not formally break the contract as long as he can imagine even the most unlikely ‘just in case’ scenario in which he might need to call on me. In case you’re wondering, I have that directly from a plant on Mazarin’s staff. There’s no such scenario on the horizon.”

  “At the moment,” Sydenham Poyntz added.

  “Next.” Bernhard had little patience for meetings.

  Johann Faulhaber, the engineer from Ulm who was supervising the military construction at the new national capitol in Besançon, presented a very satisfactory progress report.

  Johann Ludwig von Erlach, a Swiss from Bern who was moving up very rapidly and showed every sign of becoming Bernhard’s lieutenant in general as well as lieutenant-general, had some things to say about management of the fortress at Breisach. If anyone else felt stirrings of envy when Bernhard named him as governor of the Alsatian territories as well, he didn’t say so. Erlach was a flamboyant man. Silver plate was not good enough for the general. His had to be gilded. He currently maintained three households simultaneously—one in his Swiss castle at Castelen, the second in Breisach itself, and the third in camp whenever he took to the field.

  Johann Michael Moscherosch, poet and public relations man, outlined his latest campaigns with words, designed to lure a public he considered all-too-gullible into believing that their new ruler was also the cherry filling in their torte.

  “I wish, though,” Moscherosch said, “that you would decide for once and all what you want to call yourself. There are only so many circumlocutions, euphemisms, and ways to dance on my tiptoes available.”

  Von Rosen licked his lips. “Besançon is the capital, but the Franche Comté, the old County of Burgundy as distinct from the once-upon-a-time Duchy of Burgundy in the Netherlands, is only a county, after all. You are already a duke (not to mention that your older brothers are also dukes, with the exception of Wilhelm, who was a duke). Certainly, you will not demote yourself to become a a mere count, will you?” he asked a little anxiously.

  Kanoffski laughed. “Does it bother you that there is more prestige in being employed by a duke than in being employed by a count?”

  “Well,” von Rosen began. “No, I suppose not. But still...”

  “When it comes to sitting around tables, conducting diplomatic negotiations,” Poyntz remarked to the ceiling, “dukes are seated well above counts and get to speak first. These things do matter, Kanoffski.”

  “With the new new additions last year, Burgundy, our Burgundy, is powerful,” Caldenbach said. “Bernhard now holds more land than all of the Ernestine-line brothers together, as dukes of Saxe-Weimar, did before the Ring of Fire. He should assume an equally splendid title.”

  Bernhard was feeling the first rumblings of the indigestion that was his constant companion. “I’ll give it some thought,” he said. “Move on.”

  With the one exception of Moscherosch, the men who constituted “Der Kloster” were military officers, hard-bitten, experienced, and tough.

  Still, it was Moscherosch who said, “Heirs.”

  Bernhard raised one bushy black eyebrow.

  “Heirs, Your Grace,” Moscherosch said firmly. “There is no point to all this if you do not produce heirs. Your efforts will amount to spitting into the wind.”

  Kanoffski nodded. “I have a list of suitable Protestant possibilities.”

  Elizabeth of the Palatinate? Maybe, but she was in the Spanish Netherlands.

  “And,” Bernhard said, “she has just turned sixteen. I find that I have little appetite for becoming a father on the same day I become a husband. Rearing a child-bride strikes me as a truly tedious job.”

  “Well,” Caldenbach said, “that lets out Frederik Hendrik’s daughters. They are even younger.”

  “Much too young,” Moscherosch said. “Not even of childbearing age. Keep the purpose in mind. Heirs as soon as possible.”

  “Marguerite de Rohan? She’s a little older. Almost eighteen, I think.”

  “She’s in Brittany, on the goddamned other side of France. Plus, Henri de Rohan, for all the respect I have for the man and what he has done to advance the Huguenot cause over the years, will want to control her husband. He wouldn’t refuse me. In fact, he’s suggested the match already. I turned it down.”

  “Why in heaven?”

  “The duc de Rohan wants to buy a competent general for his daughter and heiress, to fight his wars now that he’s aging. I have no desire to become a puppet hanging on strings that another man is manipulating.”

  “What about Christian IV’s daughters?”

  Der Kloster regretfully dismissed the daughters of the Danish king as not only the products of a morganatic marriage, but apparently extremely self-willed. Poyntz brought up stories about Eddie Cantrell and Anna Cathrine that were making the rounds of European courts, to general hilarity and multiple rude and obscene comments.

  Bernhard gritted his teeth. “That one, the oldest one, is the same age as Elisabeth of the Palatinate. The rest are even younger. Did you hear me? They are too young. The next of the Danish king’s daughters after Anna Cathrine is exactly half as old as I am.”

  “Your Grace,” Kanoffski said politely. “Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel is not likely to die conveniently so that you can marry Amalie Elisabeth.”

  “I would,” Bernhard said. “If she weren’t already married, I would snatch Amalie right up. She’s interesting. She’s intelligent. She’s politically astute. I like her a lot.”

  “She’s too old,” Caldenbach squalled. “She’s older than you are, Your Grace.”

  “Only two years older,” Bernhard said mildly. Then he smiled. The smile was not mild. It was wicked. “She’s a magnificent breeder. They already have six children living in addition to the four who died. Anyone want to bet me on how many more children she will give Wilhelm? I’ll wager ten thousand USE dollars on five more. Two thousand at each birth.”

  Chapter Three

  Magdeburg, late January 1635

  “What do you think, Ed?” Mike Stearns tipped his chair back. “I’m really glad that I caught up with you before you left. All this campaigning has left me getting up in the morning not sure whether I’ll be going north or south or east or west before the day is out.”

  Ed Piazza steepled his fingers. “First, to be honest, I’m just surprised. I can’t say it’s the last thing that expected, because it wasn’t on the list. The possibility that the regent of Tyrol might do this never even crossed my mind.”

  “Do you see any disadvantages?” Francisco Nasi asked.

  “From the perspective of the SoTF? Hell, no. It would be great for us. But, then, again, it’s no skin off our noses to add another mainly Catholic province to the USE. Wettin and the Crown Loyalists may not be so happy, given that one of their themes is ‘narrower citizenship’ and another, slinking along under the ground with the anti-Semitic agitation, is still ‘we’re here to defend Protestantism against the forces of the anti-Christ on Earth.’ How’s Gustav reacting?”

  Mike pantomimed a cat pouncing upon a bird. “I doubt that he’s ever seen a piece of real estate that he didn’t classify as a desirable acquisition. He tends to stop and think about the complications offered by the inhabitants after he’s taken that irreversible first bite. If he can acquire it without expending any of his military resources, it’s ‘Roll over, Beethoven’ or ‘Full speed ahead. Damn the torpedoes.’ ”

  “There will be complications,” Nasi said. “Swabia...”

  * * *

  “Every time somebody shows up to talk to me about Swabia,” Mike grumbled, “I think I un
derstand what Shakespeare said better—that bit about dying a thousand deaths before you die. Not that I would want to call myself a coward, but when it comes to thinking about the geography down in the southwest, I flinch. Clearly, my hopes at the Congress of Copenhagen were premature. To say the least.”

  “My darling,” Rebecca said. “I doubt that you will ever understand how things work in the southern portions of the Germanies. You would love to have one villain—Duke Maximilian. You could fight him. Perhaps, you could even endure his having a limited number of allies. You could fight them. But, truly, outside of Bavaria, which is fairly good sized, mostly in Swabia all you will find is that you are being bitten to death by little, almost invisible, ants.”

  “Up-time, we said, ‘Nibbled to death by ducks.’ Or, sometimes, by fishes. ‘Better to be snapped up by a crocodile than nibbled to death by minnows.’ It depended on the context.”

  * * *

  “What do you think?” Hermann of Hesse-Rotenburg asked. The USE secretary of state fiddled with his pen. “Perhaps we can ask Basel to take this on.”

  Frank Jackson shook his head. “Don’t listen to him, Mike. Diane is swamped with Swiss affairs, with Baden and its problems, and with the possibilities of what Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar might do next even though he doesn’t show any sign of doing it right now. Tony Adducci—young Tony—is a big help to her, but he’s just an assistant. Besides, she’s assigned him to the anti-plague preparation team. Anti-plague prevention team. The team that’s supposed to prepare to prevent the plague. Whatever the hell they’re calling it.”

  Hermann fiddled some more. “Somebody needs to go to Tyrol, or else the regent needs to come to us. Face-to-face discussions. Radio is wonderful, but not for something this complex.”

  “She’s been here before,” Nasi pointed out. “She flies on the Monster. But she says that she can’t, right now. Something has come up.”

  “So pick someone. Send someone,” Mike said. “Have done with it.”

  This time Hermann twirled his pen in a circle on his tablet. “Who?”

  “Philipp Sattler,” Nasi said. “That’s one of the reasons Gustavus picked him as his personal liaison to the USE administration. He’s from Kempten, right down in the middle of that Swabian chaos.”

  “If things come up that are higher than his pay grade?”

  “It’s hard to get much higher than the emperor’s personal liaison, Hermann. Not unless you go yourself.”

  The secretary of state gave one of his rare smiles. “I can always ask my brother Wilhelm if he’s willing for Amalie to undertake an occasional mission for the government. After all, it’s customary for women of high rank used as diplomatic negotiators. She and the regent might like one another.”

  Chapter Four

  Schwarzach, mid-February 1635

  Schwarzach was in the Rhine river bottoms. The “hill” on which the ancient Romanesque cathedral stood might better have been described as a modest hump.

  “Gee whiz,” Matt Trelli commented as he climbed out of the Monster after the more senior members of the delegation had already descended. “If they grew corn as high as an elephant’s eye around here, the top of the corn and the top of the hill would be just about even with each other.”

  Marcie nodded. “It’s about as big a change from the Alps as we could have found.”

  Kanoffski presented the members of Der Kloster to the regent.

  De Melon presented the members of the Tyrolese delegation to the duke.

  Dr. Bienner made a gracious speech and adumbrated the issues that were to be negotiated.

  Bernhard’s chancellor, hauled up from his customary and ordinary duties in Besançon for the occasion, replied. Then he presented the representative from the USE embassy in Basel to the regent and the duke.

  The senior delegates retired to their quarters in the episcopal residence to prepare for a diplomatic reception.

  Even though Tony Adducci was five years younger than Matt, thus separated from him in the up-time by the yawning generation gap described as ‘not in high school when I was,’ they were so delighted to see one another that they started wrestling in the antechamber. Marcie made them stop.

  * * *

  The reception was meant to be quite preliminary to the serious negotiations. It proved to be momentous, although nobody but the principal parties noticed. More precisely, the observers didn’t notice it that same evening. In the minds of those principal parties, however, the looming issue of “the bride” was settled almost at once.

  Duke Bernhard absentmindedly made etiquette-appropriate chitchat with Dr. Bienner and eyed Claudia de Medici. He expected to found a dynasty. Until tonight, his expectations in regard to what that project might involve had been rather vague. His associates of Der Kloster, volubly and vociferously, expected him to found a dynasty. They had hitched their wagons to his star; they expected due rewards, not just now, but for their children and grandchildren.

  He had read the briefing papers; here, right in front of him, was a good looking titian-haired widow who in two marriages had successfully given birth to six children, five of whom were alive and flourishing, two of whom were male. She was three months older than he. Both of them were thirty. If she remarried she could—and very probably would—give birth to children for another dozen years.

  Five or six children would be plenty, especially if Frau Dunn, the widow of the traitor Horton, could do things to prevent smallpox and plague, reduce fevers, rehydrate cases of infantile dysentery by using a mild saline solution...He had received numerous lectures on the reduction of childhood mortality in the last few months. He had been somewhat annoyed, wishing that the woman would pay more attention to training “medics” for his regiments. Suddenly they seemed relevant.

  Why risk his undeniable need for heirs on any of the untried virgins who had been recommended to him as wives when a woman with a truly spectacular track record was standing right in front of him? Not to mention that she clearly understood politics and economics or she would not have proposed the current negotiations. Tyrol held colorable title to significant territories in Swabia, a couple of which he had already annexed. This was—always with the exception of Amalie, of course—the most interesting female that he had ever met.

  Well, with the exception of the terrifying, tiny East Indian who was the USE ambassadress in Basel. “Interesting” was a very inadequate term to describe Diane Jackson. However, she was not only married, but well beyond childbearing age. Regrettable.

  Not that he had met many women. He had gone from home at thirteen, when his mother died, to the university of Jena under the supervision of a strict tutor, to the army at eighteen. His only sister, born a few months after his father’s death, had died at the age of three. He barely remembered her. Aside from Aunt Anna Sofie, the intelligent, strong-willed widow of Count Ludwig Guenther’s older brother in Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, who was childless, committed to educational reform and social welfare, and Amalie, he had almost never sat down and had a conversation with a female. His recent encounters with Frau Jackson in Basel excepted. Mentally, he shrugged. Women had been in short supply in his life. There had been passing encounters, of course, but he had never kept a mistress. He had no bastards that he knew of.

  Everyone told him that the regent of Tyrol was strong-willed and intelligent. Why would a busy man want to bother with any other kind? Bernhard was not averse to strong-willed, intelligent women. Particularly red-haired ones. He squelched that thought firmly and returned his mind to his conversation with Philipp Sattler, who had somehow taken Dr. Bienner’s place while his mind was wandering.

  * * *

  Claudia, standing on the other side of the room and conversing politely with the abbot of Schwarzach and the mayor of the town, eyed Duke Bernhard. He was a man who was not an ex-cardinal. How refreshing. Considering that her father had been an ex-cardinal, her second husband had been an ex-cardinal, and now poor Leopold’s cousin Maria Anna had married another ex-cardina
l, she could only consider a man who was neither an ex-cardinal nor one of her subordinates to be an interesting variation in the category “male human being.” It would be interesting to have a man in her life whose official portrait did not depict him in a cassock. She mentally dismissed all consideration of her first husband, the obnoxious duke of Urbino to whom she had been married off when he was fifteen and she was sixteen. Horrible boy. The nicest thing that Federigo Ubaldo della Rovere had ever done for her was die. Not that she was sufficiently deluded or self-centered to believe that the assassins who murdered him had done it to make her life easier, but, still, she made it a point to remember them in her prayers. Leopold had been much nicer, but he had also been nearly twenty years her senior.

  Duke Bernhard looked fairly healthy. Athletic. Superb horseman. The briefing papers said something about chronic indigestion, but he had enough sense that he had hired an up-time nurse.

  He had already demonstrated that he was one of the best generals of the age. He clearly had ambition. She would not have had any reason to initiate these negotiations if he didn’t. Perhaps, with encouragement, he would help her pry her daughter from her first marriage out of the clutches of her grandparents. Letters from Italy indicated that Vittoria, now almost thirteen, was...not pretty. That, alas, she bore an unfortunate physical resemblance to her late father, the unlamented duke of Urbino. Under the circumstances, she would need her mother’s guidance if she were to achieve a happy future.