1635-The Tangled Web

by Virginia DeMarce

  Between Steinau and Frankfurt, he thought long and hard. Maria had been very excited. So had Rufina. And Edeltraud. Each one of them insisted that he must bring his honorable charge, the mayor of Grantville, to stay overnight with the family in Bindersleben. And in Vacha. And in Steinau.

  His heart was sinking. He could feel it dropping. By now it was somewhere in the region of his bowels, likely to be expelled on his next visit to a latrine. He was experiencing a feeling that he identified as "terrible dread." There wasn't a Good Omen that he could discern anywhere. Whereas there were a lot of distinctly Bad Omens.

  Maria. His first and, therefore, legal wife. They'd been married nearly ten years now. She was a true orphan—parents dead, no aunts and uncles. A hired girl in a dairy. Mutti would have been furious that he chose such a wife. But she'd been so cute, and she smelled intriguingly like cheese. Where he got the idea of telling the pastor in Bindersleben that he was an orphan from Breslau himself, he couldn't even recall any more.

  He'd already been making good money on the road. With no one to spend it on but himself, he had quite a bit saved, which impressed the Bindersleben pastor. He bought the lease of a little cottage with a garden and set her up in her own little cheesemaking business. Fancy cheeses, soft cheeses, for the weekly Erfurt market. When the Swedish army came through in 1631, she'd had a setback, because the foragers confiscated every cow in the village of Bindersleben, but they left the people unharmed. Cows could be replaced. They rejoiced at the births of four children; mourned the death of one of them. Little Margaretha, their Gretel, in 1631, had not been old enough or strong enough to survive the famine time.

  Maria was a darling girl.

  But, then, so was Rufina. They married in Vacha. A month after Maria's first child was born. Maria had been a bit ill-tempered during that first pregnancy and Rufina was, so, um, available every time he traveled through Vacha. Which meant that even though she was a Catholic, from the Fulda side of the town, the priest had approved her marriage to a Lutheran orphan from Breslau in September. Late September. Followed by the birth of their first child in February. Early February.

  It had worked out well, though. He was able to buy the lease on a little cottage with a garden, right on the outskirts of the town, a block from the Reichsstrasse. She provided rooms to travelers and also was a spinner. They had rejoiced at the births of three children; mourned the death of one of them.

  Rufina was a darling girl, too.

  With Edeltraud, things had been a little more complicated. But also, in a way, easier. Old Caspar Kress at the Blue Goose in Steinau had only the two daughters and didn't really want to give either of them up. But only one son-in-law could take over the inn.

  Caspar had married off Anna, the younger girl, to Thomas Diebolt, the younger son of a prosperous Gelnhausen innkeeper, the year before. Thomas had moved in and would take over the inn. His father had bought out a half-share; that money went to the dowries for the two daughters—which meant, of course, that Diebolt got half of his expenditure returned to the family for investment right away. The other half of the inn would be divided between the daughters, with Thomas having the right to buy Edeltraud out when the time came.

  So far, so good. But Caspar would still have lost his second daughter when she married and moved away. Which would have been a small tragedy. Edeltraud was an excellent cook and waitress. So he had seen possibilities in his older daughter's interest in a courier. A man who traveled the Reichsstrasse and would leave her at home. Even though Caspar was a Calvinist, he made things right with the minister when it turned out that the courier, an orphan from Breslau, was a Lutheran. Thomas and Anna were happy too, since she was content to continue working at the inn after her marriage and they wouldn't have to find the capital to buy out her quarter-share when old Caspar died.

  They married in July of 1629. Late July. Little Caspar was born early the next January, but he was sickly from the start and soon died. Since then, though, Edeltraud had given him three healthy, lively sons. Since old Caspar's death, she continued to live and work at the inn, her children penned up in a little room behind the kitchen along with Anna's two. Her quarter-share of the profits, above and beyond what he could contribute, made a decent income, with no rent or food to pay for out of pocket.

  Edeltraud was a darling girl.

  But none of them knew about the others. Of course. He was not some kind of Turk, to have a harem. He was a respectable married man.

  Three times, but these things happened. None of them could ever learn about the others. O Lord above, what a disaster that would be.

  And he couldn't have told Mutti about either Rufina or Edeltraud, even if he had been single when he married them. They weren't Lutheran. And Rufina, in particular, expended a great deal of effort trying to convert him to her own faith. It was her least attractive characteristic. But tolerable, entirely tolerable, given that all the rest of her characteristics were most attractive. Especially her . . . His mind temporarily wandered off into the realms of remembrance.

  Maria and Rufina and Edeltraud really, really, wanted to see a horseless carriage up close. They were extremely excited about it. And so did all the children. Well, not Maria's Otto and Edeltraud's Conrad, because they were too young. But all the rest of them.

  There was no point in not telling them. The trip was going to be in the newspapers. The Grantvillers intended to get a lot of publicity out of Mayor Dreeson's tour. They would certainly find out that he was going to leave his horse in Grantville, ride to Frankfurt and back in an "ATV." With cushioned seats. And a driver. Who might even teach him to drive it.

  So he probably wouldn't be able to get out of stopping to show them all the ATV and introduce them to the mayor. Strike the word "probably." There would be no way to get out of stopping at all three of his households.

  He was the guide, Mayor Dreeson said. Because he knew the route.

  What to do?

  Publicity. Have the vehicle go slowly, with frequent stops at many villages. Mayor Dreeson had a bad hip. He was an old man, with the physical needs of old men. Stop at almost every village on the route. Get out. Have the drivers explain the vehicle to the children.

  He could suggest it, at least.

  Maybe he could arrange the schedule so the stops in Bindersleben and Vacha and Steinau were short ones. Midday. With everybody's attention on the vehicle. Not overnight, with a chance for conversation.

  Please, O Lord, not overnight with a chance for conversation. Thank you, O Lord, that women in the Germanies do not share the idiotic up-time custom of adopting the family name of their husbands. Please, O Lord of Hosts, make the children so interested in the ATV that they do not call me Papa. Or, if they do, please make it happen at only one of the stops.

  Grantville

  On his next return from Frankfurt, Wackernagel stopped in Fulda to pick up paperwork from Wes Jenkins, for Ed Piazza, to set up Dreeson's trip to the Fulda area. Dreeson had agreed to go, contingent upon getting his wife Veronica and Mary Simpson successfully retrieved from Basel, so planning was in full spate. That wasn't the only thing Wackernagel carried on the trip, of course: a courier would go broke if he only took one commission at a time. But the paperwork was urgent, so his pleasant interlude spent chatting with Helena Hamm in Badenburg was brief. Unfortunately.

  He also pitched his inspiration to Ed Piazza. "It's a political trip, I understand. You should have the driver to make stops in a lot of towns and villages. The mayor can get out, move around. He won't get so tired, that way. The cars will attract crowds of fascinated kids, whose parents will follow them. From here to Badenburg, not so much. It's close to Grantville, so the people are used to seeing cars and trucks. Not just driving on the road, but parked. Beyond Badenburg, though, even through Arnstadt, and up to Erfurt, people mostly see up-time vehicles going back and forth. Driving on the road. They've seen that plenty of times. They haven't, most of them, seen one stopped, where they could take a closer look, with a driver who w
as willing to explain how things worked."

  Ed nodded.

  Wackernagel clinched the deal. "You want to get votes for the Fourth of July Party all along the route, don't you? Not just over in Buchenland."

  "I have the record here somewhere," Henry Dreeson said. "Somewhere in this pile." He started sorting through a batch of old 33 rpm LPs. "It was real popular, back in its day, and it was German, too, so maybe the down-timers would like it. Margie—that was my daughter, you know, Margie—sang it when she was in the Girl Scouts. And my granddaughter sang it in Girl Scouts, too. It's a kind of perennial. The kind they call a 'golden oldie.' Ah, here it is." He pulled a disk out of its cover. "It should suit you very well, Wackernagel. You're a 'happy wanderer' yourself, back and forth on your route all the time."

  Wackernagel didn't like it as well as he liked Hank Williams.

  On the other hand, it was Henry Dreeson's "Your Local Government in Action" tour through Buchenland: not his. If the mayor thought that this would be a good theme song, then maybe it would.

  Then the singer came on with a verse in German. Oddly accented German, but definitely German. Cunz Kastenmayer, one of the numerous sons of Pastor Ludwig Kastenmayer, who had been recruited to serve as Dreeson's translator on the tour because of his linguistic talents, asked, "When was this sung, and where?"

  The other half of the audience was a professional courier. "Where's this 'Rennsteig,' " Wackernagel asked.

  "Right here in Thuringia," Cunz answered. "Or, rather, it runs down the ridges of the Thüringerwald and generally marks the border between Thuringia and Franconia. It goes right through Suhl, almost. It's been there as long as anyone can remember, back into the media aeva between classical times and the modern. A messenger route, about a hundred of your up-time miles long, Mayor Dreeson."

  "Nowhere near as long as the Imperial Road, the Reichsstrasse," Wackernagel remarked with satisfaction.

  "Needs a lot of repairs, too. The encylopedia says that in the other history, it was Duke Ernst—Wettin's brother, the one who's regent in the Upper Palatinate now—who fixed it up, a few years from now in their future, as a fast way to move German troops into Austria in case of attacks by the Turks."

  "Is it as old as the Reichsstrasse?" Wackernagel asked with some interest.

  Cunz shook his head. "I don't know."

  "Did either of you ever hear of Al Smith?" Dreeson asked.

  Neither one had.

  "Ran for President against Hoover in 1928. On the Democratic ticket. They called him the 'happy warrior.' Way back. Well, not as far back as Wordsworth. If you look in that book over there, Cunz, next to the bay window, you'll find the Collected Works of William Wordsworth. My grandfather died when I was just five years old, but he left that book to me in his will. The poem's in there, if you want to read it.

  "Then later, in my day, that's what they called Hubert Humphrey, too. I listened to his speech on the radio—the one at the Democratic national convention in 1948. I was about fifteen, I guess. Old enough to pay attention. 'To those who say that this civil rights program is an infringement on states' rights, I say this, that the time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadows of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.'

  "Hell, even Reagan used it. 'So, let us go forth with good cheer and stout hearts—happy warriors out to seize back a country and a world to freedom.' No point in tossing out a good slogan just because you didn't agree with the guy who said it. What else are we trying to do—the Fourth of July Party, I mean?"

  Dreeson started the record playing again.

  "I think we need a theme song for this tour we're taking over to Fulda and Frankfurt. Happy Wanderer should do it. It's close enough to 'happy warrior.' Even if it is about the wrong road."

  Neither of them was in a position to argue. Not even when Mayor Dreeson decided that, in the absence of a sound system, the two of them would have the privilege of singing it at every single stop. Once Cunz had remodeled the German words a bit, to turn it into a political theme song.

  "At least," Cunz said, "you can carry a tune. And I play the lute, which is a lot better than playing the bagpipes, for example, if he expects me to be singing, too."

  October 1634

  Wackernagel breathed a sigh of relief when the motorcade left Vacha, escorted by a portion of the soldiers from the Fulda Barracks Regiment. Utt's arrival had certainly been timely. In the short period Mayor Dreeson was at Rufina's house, it hadn't dawned on him that those fascinated kids belonged to his friend Wackernagel. Whereas the insistence of the military commander on increased security had moved the mayor to a different location without raising Rufina's suspicions. Which would certainly have risen up if her husband had suggested that they shouldn't provide hospitality for such an honored guest.

  Scot free.

  Except.

  "You do realize," Cunz Kastenmayer said, "that you're damned lucky they chose me to be the interpreter on this trip. Not my brother the junior minister. Not my brother the bureaucrat who has sworn an oath to uphold the laws. Just a law student."

  Wackernagel started to answer when the bushes at the edge of the road parted and a girl jumped in front of the lead car.

  Which wasn't that dangerous. Because of the condition of the road between Vacha and Fulda, along with having to accommodate the mounted escort, the ATVs weren't moving over five miles per hour.

  A couple of the soldiers rode ahead.

  The girl waved both hands in the air to show she was unarmed.

  Wackernagel jumped out and yelled, "Liesel, what are you doing?"

  "Running away," Liesel Bodamer answered cheerfully. "I hate my guardians. They're mean and make me learn to embroider. Papa might not have been much of a father in a lot of ways, but at least he didn't keep me inside the house all the time. So I'm going to Fulda. Mrs. Hill didn't want them to send me to my mother's relatives in Schlitz, to start with. So I'm going to her and I thought I'd hitch a ride."

  "Tell her to hop in," Dreeson said. "We can sort it out in Fulda better then we can out here in the middle of the road."

  Liesel hopped.

  "How's Emrich?" was her first question.

  The rest of her questions were so numerous that Kastenmayer had to give up on making any more comments until they got into Fulda itself and turned her over to Andrea Hill.

  Just Outside of Steinau

  "Martin?" Cunz Kastenmayer said.

  "Yes?" They were mounting their horses, having given up their seats in Henry Dreeson's ATV to Sergeant Hartke's wife Dagmar and her stepdaughter Gertrud.

  "There's a familiar-looking female coming down the road. On foot."

  Wackernagel looked back and emitted a hearty "Hell and damnation." Followed by, "Utt!"

  Derek Utt turned around. "You want to take her with us?"

  "Over my dead body," Wackernagel said.

  Utt detailed a couple of his soldiers to return Liesel Bodamer to Fulda and the custody of Andrea Hill.

  The motorcade moved on.

  Frankfurt am Main

  "At least we don't have to do it all over again on the way back," Cunz said.

  Wackernagel smiled. "Would it be appropriate for us to pause and give thanks for life's small blessings?"

  "Have you given further thought to the blessing I pointed out to you a few weeks ago? In regard to your luck in not having the company of either of my older brothers?"

  "The junior pastor and the city clerk?"

  "Precisely. We'll be at the inn in Steinau within a couple of hours. The Blue Goose, where we stopped coming down to Frankfurt."

  Wackernagel nodded.

  "Will you be spending the night in the family quarters again?"

  "Do you care?"

  "Oddly enough, yes." Cunz paused. "Also about the women in Vacha and Bindersleben. And the children."

  Wackernagel winced.

  "As will Herr Dreeson's wife. Although the mayor does very well, he s
till has learned German recently. He fails to grasp many of the nuances of how people address one another. The redoubtable Veronica does not share this handicap."

  "Edeltraud would be very disappointed if I seemed to treat her coldly in the presence of influential associates."

  Cunz shrugged. "It's your choice. Possibly your grave."

  Fulda

  "Well, of course you'll come with us, Wes. You and Clara. With me. After what you went through with Gruyard and von Schlitz and their thugs, it's the least I can offer."

  Wackernagel, listening, saw a light. "Well, then. You don't need a guide going back. The driver knows the road now, and you have Utt's soldiers as an escort. I'll just rent a horse in Fulda, pick up some commissions, and go back to riding my regular route, rather than accompanying the motorcade all the way back to Grantville."

  Cunz Kastenmayer smothered a smile.

  Especially when Mayor Dreeson's reply was a firm, "Oh, no, Wackernagel. I couldn't see my way to letting you do that, after all the help you've been. We'll leave the soldiers who were riding in the rear ATV to ride back to Grantville. You and Cunz come right along with us, in the other car." He paused. "But how are we going to split up the couples? Ronnie and I can take the back seat of the front car, but that means that Wes will have to be in one and Clara in the other. No, wait. Cunz can ride in front, in our car. You can be in front with the driver of the rear car, and Wes and Clara in back. Unless Wes and I have business to talk. Then he can ride with me and Ronnie back with Clara . . ." Henry limped away.

  Badenburg

  Although Henry remained happily oblivious to nuances and Wes equaled his inability to perceive them . . . Veronica and Clara did not. Not at Vacha. Not at Bindersleben.

  Not in Badenburg. Where it became fairly clear that not only did the courier have three wives, but also a girlfriend. While waiting for a problem with the engine of the rear ATV to be repaired, which involved bringing a part from Grantville, they observed Wackernagel making a delivery to the Sign of the Platter.