by Eric Flint
The platters of tacos were rolled out and set on the tables. David's eyes lit up like two roman candles at a fireworks show.
"Tacos! Tacos!" he said. "Look, Maria"
She did. Hugely layered, with beef, spring greens, baby tomatoes, shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream and hot sauce on tortillas the size of dinner plates.
"Pico de gallo!" David exclaimed. "I sure miss guacamole, though. But you can't ship in avocados yet."
David looked like he'd died and gone to heaven. The beer steins, enormous things, were all loaded with a local pilsner. Maria felt aghast at the mound of food and could not for the life of her figure out why David liked the tacos so much. They smelled funny. There was a burning sensation in the air, but no flames. David was sweating profusely and appeared to be in pain but washed it away with more pilsner.
Maria picked at her taco, rolled her eyes and shuddered at the thought of eating anything strange looking. It was not lady-like, nor particularly practical. "We had tacos for dinner and I couldn't eat them," she thought.
The music was another element; it was so different. The mariachi band was really not Mexican but they played the music, fast and sweet and romantic, or so David whispered into her ear. The band was even dressed authentically, in Jalisco costumes David called them. They wore huge sombreros, and silver embroidered velvet suits and the band even had a viheula and a guitarron. Maria could see that David recognized all of the men who played so fast and furiously.
David was grinning ear to ear at her like the silly ass he was.
Then he was poking Maria in her side a tad, encouraging her to try the stupid taco. Well, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. No sour cream, she'd stick with that. A little of the beef, perhaps some greens and some cheese. Pico de gallo . . . Maria hesitated. It had tomatoes in it. She was still not sure exactly how she felt about those, either.
Hesitant, Maria lifted the taco to her lips. There were waves and waves of fire emanating from it or seeming to . . . she took one small bite. At first there was not any sensation other than maybe it was really warm in the Gardens. Then the fire hit and Maria gasped, grasped her stein of pilsner and swallowed. She thought that half of the stein's contents had gone down her throat. She was coughing a bit and sputtering . . . but found herself reaching for more taco.
David was laughing and singing and clapping in time with the mariachi band. Then when the song was over, David, on bended knee, grasped her hand and slid a sparkling diamond ring on her left hand ring finger . . . "White gold—" she heard him say "—so as not to compete with your beauty."
David smiled. He got up and slid back into his seat, then picked up his fork and started eating more taco. Another band was playing a song, "The Cherry Tree" with a hard rhythm, a line of thirty pairs of men and women were on the dance floor dancing the Seguidilla. . .
Maria thought, "Oh my God. I'm going to get married!
There was so much going on at the same moment. Stein after stein was filled with beer. One group of men was trying to sing "Eine Prosit" to the mariachi band's tunes. Two down-timer men in their group still didn't want more than a bite of taco; their faces said "no way ever again." It was one thing to bite your food; it was another to have it bite back.
Arthur Esslies had actually spat it out and had stomped out of the Gardens and was chased after by another down-timer, Felix Brandt, who yelled, "Coward! It is good food! You dolt!"
The whole building was almost vibrating with music and dancing and singing.
A whole bunch of construction folk wandered in wanting the usual meal. They were rapidly converted to the idea that tacos were king. Then it was time for the piñatas to be beaten open and for the karaoke contest to begin. So the DJ set up and a contest got going. There was more beer and flan for dessert.
Maria thought, "I have a fiancé." She looked at David intently: handsome, smart and silly and up-timer. "Do you want to dance, darling?"
He smiled. "Why not, babe?"
Conversion to American ways and food was an interesting process, Maria decided. She looked at her ring again. Maybe it was a step in the right direction.
* * *
Joseph Hanauer, Part Three: All Creatures Stand in Judgment
Written by Douglas W. Jones
10th of Tamuz, 5391 ( July 10, 1631 )
The trip by cart from Grantville to a wooded hillside above Magdala had only taken a day. Seen from the hillside, the village looked large. Yossie had expected Magdala to be a tiny place, but if it had been walled, he would have called it a small town without hesitation.
After a month's rest, the old horse had recovered from the trip east from Hanau. They had followed the good road north up the broad Saale valley almost to Jena. From there, they had turned west to climb up a side valley to the broad plains around Magdala. Where the slopes of the valley had been dominated by vineyards and orchards, the plains around Magdala were cropland, with hedgerows dividing fields. Aside from the trees along the stream north of Magdala, the only trees were on the low forested hills rising above the croplands.
Yossie had hoped that they would spend Wednesday night in Magdala, but Thomas had insisted that they stay in the woods to the east. Yossie had eaten cold meals and slept under the same cart often enough on the road from Hanau, but the night had been uncomfortable. After a month living with the Adduccis, he'd grown a bit spoiled.
"Tell me again," Yossie asked, as he and Thomas ate a breakfast of cold sausage and bread. "Why couldn't we spend the night in Magdala? Yesterday, that man in Bucha said that half the Imperials in Weimar had gone north to chase the Swedes."
"Right," Thomas replied. "But I don't believe him. He also said things were so bad that honest townsmen would rob a stranger for the shirt on his back. Foragers have stripped the land, and I'll bet that we're not far behind the stragglers who burned that village we passed. Best we not tempt anyone."
As they pulled out of the woods Thursday morning, Yossie remembered how the trip had started. "Those Papist scum murdered my Maria," Thomas had said, glaring at the two Bavarians who'd been assigned to the Murphy's Run forge.
"Where is she buried?" Yossie had asked, trying to be sympathetic.
"Buried!" Thomas had barked. "Do wolves bury their prey? I saw those beasts throw my poor Maria into a ditch." His voice had faded to a whisper. "I could do nothing, I tell you."
When Thomas had asked Yossie to help bury his daughter, Yossie hadn't said yes immediately. As they drove across the flat cropland toward Magdala, Yossie thought over the advice he'd received from his companions.
A passage from the Talmud had come to mind after Thomas had asked for Yossie's help. It was reprinted in the prayer-book at the start of the morning prayers.
"Of these things a man may eat the fruit in this world while the principal remains in the world to come: Honoring father and mother, acts of kindness, timely attendance at morning and evening prayers in the house of study, providing for guests, visiting the sick, providing for a bride, escorting the dead, deep prayer, and bringing peace between a man and his fellow, but the study of Torah is equivalent to all."
Escorting the dead to the grave, of course, was the subject that dominated Yossie's thoughts. He knew that it would also be an act of kindness to help Thomas, and that it could help make peace between Thomas and the two Bavarians.
When he'd asked his sister Basiya's advice, she'd shocked him. "Thomas' daughter was killed for kiddush ha-Shem," she'd said, flatly. The term referred to martyrs who'd died for the sanctification of God's holy name.
"But she was Lutheran," Yossie had objected.
"If soldiers had come to our home because we lived in the Jewish quarter, and if they'd murdered me, you'd say I died for kiddush Ha-Shem. Soldiers did come to his house because he lived in a Lutheran town and they did kill his daughter. How is it different?"
"So you want me to go?"
"No," she'd replied. "I'm afraid you'll be hurt. But I think I'd find it hard to say no if I was a man. Please be careful."
Y
akov's advice had been no surprise. "These things have no fixed measure," the rabbi had quoted, and then changed the subject. That Talmud quotation was from the same section of the prayer-book that Yossie had thought of when Thomas first asked his help. The meaning was clear enough. Helping Thomas would be good, but Yossie was under no obligation.
When Randolph Adducci heard what Yossie was planning, he'd gone over to the locked cabinet where he kept his guns and returned with an American pistol, a revolver, he'd called it. Randolph had spent that evening and the next teaching Yossie to shoot the pistol and to care for the mechanism.
Randolph's wife Paulette had said nothing, but just before they left, she'd pressed a book into his hands. It was black, with a red ribbon bookmark and a gold cross on the cover. Yossie had felt uncomfortable taking such an obviously Christian book, but he couldn't embarrass her by refusing it.
* * *
As they drove between the hedgerows toward Magdala, the village seemed to grow in size. The inward-facing houses around the village perimeter were packed so closely that they almost formed a wall. Many houses had outbuildings behind them, and low walls joined those, forming an outer defense perimeter.
"Who are you and what do you want?" a militiaman demanded as they followed the road between two houses.
"Until a month ago, I lived here," Thomas replied, looking closely at the man. "Heinrich, don't you remember me?"
The militiaman peered. "Thomas? The new smith? I thought they killed you." He paused, looking wary. "There's nothing left here for you. After the fire, there were thieves. They sifted the ashes for anything of value." He glanced at Yossie. "Who's your friend?"
Yossie's attention was on the village as much as it was on the conversation. The houses on the near side of Magdala were mostly intact, but on the far side of the village square, all he could see was ruin.
"Joseph Hanauer," Thomas said, in answer to the guard's question. "He's come with me from beyond Rudolstadt to help. I don't want anything from Magdala but to see that my daughter is buried properly."
"We buried most of the dead. Some were burned, though, and all we could do is guess who they were. Where did your daughter die?"
"Maria was washing clothes in the stream when they came," Thomas said, pointing northwest, toward Weimar. "I saw, well, my wife saw it all. Maria ran south, but the Imperials got between her and the village."
Yossie could sense the tension in Thomas' voice. "As God is in heaven, I tried . . . They would have killed us," he said, sputtering to a stop.
"Where did she die?" the guard asked, almost gently.
"To the west, in the low pasture."
"Then she may still be there," the guard said. "The Imperials took the cattle, so nobody goes there anymore. Go, and God be with you."
They passed the ruin of the smithy on their way out of Magdala. The fire had been so intense that the chimney over the forge had fallen. "That's where I was when they came," Thomas said, and then fell silent.
They followed a grassy lane to the west. "Maria tried to run, but the open fields offered no shelter." Thomas said. "My wife saw them first, we ran to try to help, and then . . ." He fell silent for a moment. "See the willows ahead? She tried to take cover there."
The willows grew along a shallow ditch through idle pasture land beyond the village fields. Even if Thomas had not been there, the body would not have been hard to find. The buzz of flies attracted Yossie's attention to one clump of willows, and the smell of decay hung in the air as they approached the ditch.
"Maria," Thomas whispered, and then stopped, frozen, staring.
Her body was half submerged in the ditch. She was lying face down, and her clothing covered everything that was above the water. That didn't stop the flies.
"I've never," Thomas started to say, and then fell silent again.
Yossie had no experience in such matters, but Rabbi Yakov had served for years in Hanau's Jewish burial society. "We should wash her body," he said. "Let's lift her onto the back of the cart first."
They used a bucket to pour clean water over the body, washing away many of the maggots, and then set to work dressing it in a robe Thomas had bought at Grantville's Value Market. That was the hardest part of the job, at least from a physical perspective. The body was on the verge of falling apart. If it hadn't been for the clothing, the corpse might well have come apart when they lifted it from the water. They ended up simply rolling the body onto the robe and then wrapping it up, without even trying to fit the arms into the sleeves.
By rights, Yossie knew that women ought to prepare a woman for the grave. By rights, she ought not have been left to decay, of course, and by rights the burial should have been immediate, not weeks later. Logic told him that it was better for men to do the job than nobody, but still, the work made him very uncomfortable.
"We ought to say something," Thomas said, after they washed their hands in clean water taken from upstream.
Yossie hesitated. The only prayer that came to mind was in Hebrew, a prayer for martyred congregations from the Sabbath liturgy. There was something appropriate from the funeral liturgy, but he hadn't attended enough funerals to memorize it.
"Merciful Father who sits in heaven," he began his halting translation. "Remember with mercy the saintly and the righteous and the innocent and the holy woman who died as a martyr for your holy name." Yossie paused, trying to think through the next sentence. "With love and friendship she lived and died. Faster than eagles and stronger than lions she did the Lord's will.
"Remember her, Lord, among the righteous of this world. Avenge the blood of Your servant." He fell silent at that point. The next part of the prayer was too complex to translate without pen and paper.
As Yossie came to a stop, Thomas spoke. "In Jesus name, Amen. Thank you, Joseph. Let's go."
Yossie was shocked to hear what he considered an idolatrous ending added to a Jewish prayer. Turning back toward Magdala to hide his reaction, he faced a new shock. Where the sky to the east had been clear, there was a distant pillar of smoke rising over the hedgerows.
As they rode up out of the marshy pasture into the cropland, they could see that the smoke came from beyond Magdala somewhere to the southeast. The smoke clearly rose before the more distant hills, though, so it was not more than a few miles beyond the village.
The burnt-out block where the smithy had been faced them. As they drove toward the ruins, a boy stepped out.
"Thomas the Smith?" the boy asked, and then went on without waiting for an answer. "I remember you. My father said to tell you—to tell you that there are raiders in Gottern, to tell you that they will be here next. Get away. Go south on the Blankenhain road."
"And I remember you, Martin," Thomas said. "How do we get to Rudolstadt if we go that way?"
"I don't know," the boy said. "But the raiders are coming up from the east, and we have to empty the village fast to avoid trouble. You should go quickly."
Once they made their way out of Magdala, the road south was no worse than the road up from the Saale valley to the east. There were small villages every mile or two along the road. Some were empty ruins, and none were free of signs of war.
Their view of the column of smoke to the east was obstructed only by hedgerows as they rode through the fields. At times, the hedges along the road were high enough to block the view, but there were few trees to block the distant view when their perch on the cart allowed them to see over the hedges.
After half an hour, the road began to veer west, with low wooded hills to the south. In another half hour, they reached the large village of Blankenhain. The place was as battered as Magdala, and again, they were met by a member of the local militia.
The man approached warily, brandishing a pike.
"Which road to Rudolstadt," Thomas called out, before the man came close enough to challenge them.
"That way," the man said, pointing south. He stopped and sniffed distastefully. "What's in your wagon?"
"My daughter," Thomas sa
id, "dead a month. We're taking her to her grave. Is the way south safe?"
The man backed away a pace. "No roads are safe, but we've heard no bad news in the last few days."
"We just fled raiders coming at Magdala from the east," Thomas said. "They must have been close behind us on the road up from the Saale."
"They're probably going to Weimar," the man said. "You'd best be going on south."
The road onward from Blankenhain was better than the road from Magdala, but not as good as the road they'd followed north up the Saale valley. They were still in a land of wide fields and hedgerows, with few trees. The forested hills to the east and west were higher than the hills around Magdala, but not enough to create a well defined valley.
As they drove on, Yossie's attention slowly turned from the raiders somewhere behind to the angel of death hovering over the cart. It was not right to ignore the body of Thomas' daughter Maria. The right thing to do when watching over the dead is to chant psalms. Yossie's prayer-book held many psalms, and he knew a good number of those by heart. They were all in Hebrew, though, and he didn't dare let Thomas see text in that language or hear him chant them in their traditional form.
