Grantville Gazette, Volume 66

by Bjorn Hasseler

  "Every minute you don't move is a minute of breakfast you'll miss, because we don't intend to cut your drill short," Ruvigny said.

  "And I, for one, get very cranky when I'm hungry," Bismarck added. "You don't want to fence with me when I'm cranky."

  ****

  The two young officers in Dutch uniform leaned against the wall of the room, watching the grand duke's men and their assorted guests practice swordsmanship.

  "It's so nice to have friends," one said to the other in their adopted language, after he had glanced around to make sure that no one was paying any attention to them at all.

  "True. Good intelligence, confirmed two ways, entirely independently. From young Cavriani in Paris to General Turenne's brother, to the Stadhouder, to us, giving us several weeks' warning that he was coming here. Enough time for us to get leave. From the archbishop's housekeeper, to the archbishop, to our uncle, to the Stadhouder to us, that he had arrived and exactly where he would be staying for several weeks. I do love radio. As soon as I get a little money ahead, I'm getting a better receiver."

  "You spend all your money, ahead or not, on that ‘techie stuff.' "

  They watched a little longer.

  "He certainly is a fatty pudding," the first one commented.

  "For his age. He wouldn't be in bad condition for someone 30 years older."

  "What next?"

  "Being brought up in England as wards in chancery wasn't a total loss." The second man reached for his cape. "There are occasions when it's handy to be certified young Protestants in Fredrik Hendrik's service. Let's figure out how to get ourselves introduced to some up-timers. I understand they tend to be very happy to meet other people who speak English and there can't be many in Besançon."

  ****

  Dinner, or, at least, the largest meal of the day, occurred about two o'clock in the afternoon.

  "I hate French food," Hamilton said, glowering at his plate. "I didn't like Italian food, either. I want to go home."

  "Nobody's stopping you except you," Shae muttered to Ruvigny.

  "And Traill," he answered.

  This entire exchange was, luckily, mostly buried under the rest of the conversation, which today centered around The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. This, according to Rohan, indicated that the up-timers taught the value of tradition to their children, the hat in question having belonged to Bartholomew's father and grandfather before him. "It is also visually fascinating because of the mirror view of the same landscape from the king's palace on the hill down to the humble peasant's cottage, and from the humble peasant's cottage up to the palace on the hill."

  "Wait! Wait just a minute," Ruvigny said, looking up from his plate and waving his fork. He turned toward Bismarck. "Remember what Gerry Stone said to us, back in Paris last summer, about why up-timers have the stereotypes they do about the nobility? Some book with a picture of a castle on a hill containing a lord who was oppressing the peasants in a village at the bottom?"

  Bismarck nodded. "Wait until after we eat. Gerry sent me a copy of that fourth-grade social studies textbook he was talking about then." He asked one of the footmen to go down to the Quartier Battant and get the book from his storage and returned to the important task of eating enough mutton to see him through the rest of the day.

  Rohan returned to the deeper meaning of the five hundred hats—the impossibility of the boy's taking the hat off when the king demanded it, even though Bartholomew did his best to comply; then the several varieties of arbitrary punishment demanded by the boy named Grand Duke Wilfred, up to execution, for the self-replicating hat. What was the meaning of the friendly executioner in the dungeon—was it a veiled critique of the concept that certain occupations were inherently dishonorable? Was it common in up-time books to depict a weak king taking bad advice?

  By the time he finished, nearly a half-hour later, the footman was back with Gerry Stone's book. Carey, Dominique, and Shae agreed that, yeah, all of them had used a textbook with a picture sort of like that when they were in grade school.

  "How old were you?" Rohan wanted to know.

  "Umm. Nine or ten, probably."

  And now, Rohan said, "we find the set of beliefs reinforced by Dr. Seuss." He started a verbal dissection of literary tropes and memes. The rest of the group focused on dissecting apple tarts.

  ****

  "Delighted to meet you," Lisa Lund said, shaking hands firmly. The Christmas market on the town side of the Roman bridge was crammed with people. She nodded toward a man standing next to a table on which toys were displayed, a few feet away. "My husband, Tom. He's from the Palatinate. The bunch trailing him are my two kids and his younger brother and two younger sisters. This one here," she pointed to the denim carrier on her back, "is ours. We met in Grantville. He has another brother who's working in Grantville as a butcher and another sister who stayed there, too. She's running the sales counter in Burckhard's shop."

  The first of the two officers in Dutch uniform blinked, a bit startled by this torrent of information and pulled his hand back just a little bit too quickly for what he had been told was appropriate if one was being courteous to an up-timer.

  The other stepped up quickly, offering his own hand. "Constantine here. You can call me Con. That excessively earnest, serious, and overly-conscientious young man next to me is my older brother Dan. Your husband works for Grand Duke Bernhard?"

  The woman shook her head. "Nope. He's a butcher, too, just like his brother. The grand duke made the guild let him open a shop because if he couldn't, I wouldn't come to Besançon. I'm the one who works for the grand duke. Mechanical support. I'm one of the bunch who put in the intercom system up on the Citadelle and stuff like that. You're in uniform, so I'll take a guess that you've already been up to see it."

  Con grinned and then grinned more broadly. "You know about radios?"

  "I'm no specialist, though I can put the pieces together. You'll want to talk to my first husband's sister and her husband—they're working here in town, too. And her husband's brother; his wife's local. They do phones more than radio, but they all love to talk shop."

  "I have died and gone to heaven. You are all of the up-timers who work for the grand duke? One extended family?"

  "Oh, no. There are Kamala and Carey and their kids. Are you guys here on vacation? If so, just hang around with us for a few days and you'll meet them. Tom's a Calvinist and there's a Scots preacher staying at the duke of Rohan's house where Carey's working now, so we've been going there to hear sermons because he preaches in English that we can understand. I was only starting to learn German when we moved over here and my French is still pretty much at the level of ‘how much does that head of cabbage cost?' Your English is great, by the way. I'm in awe. Let me give you our address. Send us a note and let us know when you have some free time." She handed him a slip of paper, gave a glance, noticed that her husband was moving on, and darted after him.

  "My goodness," Dan said.

  "If we were Presbyterian," Con answered, "we might be forgiven for suspecting that the success of our enterprise is foreordained. Predestined even."

  "Don't mock the will of God. The best laid plans…"

  ****

  "It's sort of a pity," Ruvigny said as they hiked their way across the Roman bridge to the Quartier Battant, "that the duke got to read this before we did. Gerry sent it to us, not to him."

  "He was here, Henri. The book arrived here. We were in Lorraine."

  "August, do you have to be so constantly phlegmatic?"

  "Maybe it's just my temperament. I've never had my humors analyzed. Why get excited about things you can't do anything about?"

  "All right, then, August, what does Yertle the Turtle tell us about the up-timers? The duke is bound to ask what we think."

  "I'm not sure about that. I do think it's delightful, given the USE's recent problems with Bavaria, that the discontented little turtle at the bottom of the stack is named Mack. Surely that should be Max? It must derive from Maximili
an."

  "It certainly seems intended to ingrain revolutionary ideas in them from their earliest years."

  "They're a bloodthirsty bunch. Their President Jefferson, the one who wrote the ‘Declaration of Independence,' wrote in a letter that, ‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.' "

  "Have you been reading about revolutions? Is that what you've had your head in? All that reading you were doing while we were in Lorraine this fall?"

  "It was something that my family's possible descendant, the Prussian chancellor in their nineteenthth-century, wrote. I came across it by accident. It was something to the effect that if change is inevitable, it is better to make a revolution yourself than suffer through one that others make. So I wrote to the researcher I used before and asked him to send me some things about revolutions. Trust me—the French Revolution is enough to make a man's blood freeze in his body, and not just in the middle of winter."

  ****

  On the day before Christmas, Hamilton made a formal offer for Marguerite's hand, detailing to the duke, at considerable length, the many advantages of the match as he saw them.

  Rohan, as politely as possible, reminded the young Ulsterman that he was not yet of age according to either French or English law, and thus was not authorized to make contracts. Certainly, Rohan pointed out, in a matter of such significance as marriage, he needed to consult his father and obtain his consent.

  Hamilton expressed his belief that his father did not entirely grasp the immense dimension of the changes that were impending in Europe.

  Rohan stated his conviction that the possibility of disruptions to the established state of things made it even more imperative for a young man to take into account the wise advice of his elders. He offered that if, after Hamilton had returned home, he should receive a renewed overture from the proper source, namely from the hand of Vicomte Clanboye, he would give it due consideration.

  "Papa," Marguerite said when he relayed the information to her. "You wouldn't!"

  "I said that I would give it due consideration. If I should receive any such proffer, I will give it precisely the amount of consideration that I consider it to be worth."

  "Well, that's a relief." She stood there a moment. "Maybe they'll leave now." She batted her eyelashes at him. "May I go to a party with Madame Calagna and Dominique and Shae this evening. It is at Madame Dunn's apartment. Henri and August are going, and Susanna. The children will be there. It seems like ever since I got here, all I've done is study the lessons you give me. I haven't gone anywhere except to formal receptions that involve politics, one way or the other. No balls, or dances, or plays, or theater, or…"

  Rohan raised his eyebrows. "Is it remotely possible that this gathering might be interpreted as a ‘heathen practice' in connection with Christmas?"

  "It's, well, I guess a person could say, more than remotely possible that that's the way Mr. Traill would interpret it."

  "So it is safe to assume that Hamilton will not be among the guests."

  "As Shae would say, ‘real safe,' Papa."

  He put a meditative expression on his face.

  The corners of Marguerite's mouth drooped.

  "It might be that your absence from the house this evening would reduce the level of tension."

  The corners lifted a fraction of an inch.

  "Yes, you may go."

  Marguerite loved the Christmas tree and the party was over in time for everyone to go home and get a good night's sleep.

  The next morning—well. The years during which France's Huguenots had lived in a state of persecution had resulted in quite a few compromises with the Calvinist principle that church services should be public and take place in a properly dedicated house of worship. It had become, if not common, at least tolerated, for noble households to maintain chapels and chaplains if they so desired. Rohan had never so desired. The little Scots Presbyterian church in the Quartier Battant wasn't a properly dedicated house of worship yet. It had once been a hat shop and shared its walls with two still-operating retail stores. Nor did it have a regular minister. Nor did the majority of its members believe in celebrating Christmas. Its door would be locked today.

  Still, Rohan bowed to the theory of public worship. As long as he had an ordained minister as his guest, he placed notices of the times of the sermons to be delivered by Mr. Traill on his front door and opened that door to all who wished to hear them. At six o'clock in the morning, Thomas Wedekind and Lisa Lund, family and two guests in tow, appeared at the door of the Hôtel de Buyer to hear Mr. Traill's Christmas sermon, along with a couple of dozen other resident and visiting Huguenots. Given the size of the foyer, it was standing room only. Given that the foyer was unheated, it was standing on cold feet. That was, however, quite normal in Calvinist churches in the winter, so no one complained (a few whining children excepted).

  Introductions and socializing were minimal. As soon as the sermon ended, the duke thanked everyone for coming and left for work, taking Ruvigny and Bismarck with him.

  He didn't really have to. The grand duke, being Lutheran, had given the day off to everyone who was not absolutely needed for garrison duty and maintaining his residence. It was more a sop to Mr. Traill's feelings. He even intended to eat in the general officers' mess, just to demonstrate that he was not sponsoring anything that might superficially resemble a holiday meal.

  "Ugh," Shae said. "Oatmeal, and not even brown sugar to go on it."

  "Marvellous," Hamilton said. "Oatmeal." He was serious. His head still ached and his stomach really wasn't ready for anything more demanding than porridge in the way of sustenance. After evening prayers with Traill the previous night, he had slipped out for more than a few beers.

  As soon as breakfast was over, the girls stormed Carey with a wish to go out for a walk on the grounds that there was absolutely nothing to do. She couldn't think of any real reason why they shouldn't. It was cold, though, and she had no intention of going out if she didn't absolutely have to. After standing through Traill's sermon, she had every intention of retreating upstairs to the duke's study with its nice little Franklin stove and putting her feet on a couple of hot bricks.

  Still… three girls, four if Susanna got back from mass in time, and two footmen. People in the streets.

  "Sure," she said.

  They got their coats.

  Traill and Hamilton went upstairs.

  About an hour later, Susanna ran into the study, her hands full of chips and scraps. "They smashed it," she wailed. "My nativity scene from Marc. They smashed it."

  Upon investigation, Mr. Traill proved to be in the room he shared with Hamilton, reading. He protested that he had not in any way damaged the girl's blasphemous idols, popish though they were.

  Carey was inclined to believe him.

  Hamilton was nowhere in the house.

  "I'm going to look for him." Susanna put on her cloak and was out of the house before Carey could say, "Take one of the footmen with you." In any case, Susanna usually wasn't accompanied by a footman when she ran errands in town by herself.

  After about fifteen minutes, Susanna saw Shae and Dominique, with one of the footmen, headed toward the upper town. "We thought we'd watch a mass at St. John the Baptist," Shae explained. "Just to see if they're as naughty as Mr. Traill says. They weren't up-time. We had joint Girl Scouts meetings at St. Mary's in Grantville every now and then and nothing interesting ever happened at them. Except that the church had stained glass windows, which he thinks are abominations before the Lord."

  "Good grief," Susanna said. "You could come to mass with me any time you're interested."

  "It's not exactly the same if we're allowed to," Dominique said.

  Susanna looked around. "Where's Marguerite?"

  "She didn't think she should come with us. Sneaking to a mass—if she did that and somebody found out, it could get the duke into real political trouble with his supporters. She stayed down
by the Latin School. We'll pick her up again on the way back."

  "But she's not there," Susanna said. "I just came by. She wasn't there, nor her footman either."

  "She can't have gone very far."

  Susanna threw up her hands and shrieked. "Ducos. Do you remember? Guys with knives! Look at your arm, Shae! It's still in a cast! Do you mean to tell me that you let the little duchess wander off by herself? Are you insane? Are you fools? You're ladies-in-waiting! That means that you're supposed to stay with her absolutely all the time! Now where in this godforsaken pit of vipers is she?"

  This tirade aroused the footman from his contemplation of the sky. "We'd better go look," he said. "Now, young ladies, there's no need to panic, but we'd better go look." They started back down toward the main part of town.

  They found her in front of the Convent of the Poor Clares, waving her hands at the footman who had stayed with her. Not a single assassin was in sight. Hamilton was sitting on the bottom step, holding his head in his hands, with one of the young men who had come to the morning sermon with Lisa Lund's family standing over him. The other young man was standing further out in the street, obviously keeping an eye out for them. He waved them down.

  Susanna pulled away from the rest of the group and ran for the Quartier Battant, to bring Ruvigny and Bismarck to contribute what they could to the general confusion.

  Everybody started to talk at once, which didn't help much.

  "He was pressing unwanted attentions upon her," the footman said tersely.

  "He was actually trying to persuade me to marry him now rather than waiting for his father to write to Papa," Marguerite screeched.

  "Good grief!" Shae exclaimed. "As if! Whatever gave him the idea that you would even think about marrying him?"

  "Marriage without consent of the parents is an old Scottish tradition, I've heard," the man who had been standing in the street said. "Elope, have a blacksmith marry you over his anvil, and leave the families to deal with it, whether they want to or not."