"But Marguerite doesn't want to elope with him," Dominique said. "And anyway, even if it's a Scottish tradition, you can't do that in Burgundy. Or in France. Or in the USE. Scotland is a long way away from here and, anyway, he's Irish."
"I am not Irish." Hamilton recovered enough to lift his head and make that point. "I'm a Scottish Ulsterman. I will never be Irish."
"That's one thing you certainly have right." The man who had been in the street looked down at Hamilton. He turned. "I'm Con, by the way. That's my brother Dan over there, the one who isn't talking. He's a little shy about meeting new people. As for what you say, Mistress…" He nodded at Dominique, who hastily said, "Bell. Dominique Bell."
"Neither are such marriages fully legal in the Low Countries, Austria, the Italian states, or the Spanish Empire, to the best of my knowledge. Nor, more practically, under the English law that governs Ulster, although the validity of clandestine marriages is still a matter of some controversy, particularly when one or both of the contracting parties is under the legal age of consent. The young duchess was expressing her opposition to the entire concept quite loudly. We heard the argument and came to the rescue, but were scarcely needed, as you can see from the condition of the young man's head."
"How did she do that?"
The question was reasonable, since Hamilton was probably double Marguerite's weight.
"Jumped off the fourth step up and knocked him over by landing hard against his shoulders," Con said cheerfully. "We saw the whole thing. He wasn't expecting it and gave his skull a pretty good knock against that stone lion. Her footman kicked him to keep him down, but he dragged himself part-way up anyhow. He must have a pretty hard head."
"Not for beer," Shae commented. "He's a sloppy drunk."
"Not a drunk," Hamilton grumped. "I stick to beer. I don't like wine, nasty stuff, and Traill says that I can't have whisky."
Susanna came dashing back, Ruvigny and Bismarck in tow.
"Hi, Henri," Shae said. "Hamilton insulted Marguerite. Don't you have to have a duel with him now?"
"Don't be stupid," Marguerite said. "Henri has outgrown dueling."
Ruvigny frowned at Shae. "I don't have any intention of fighting a duel with him. I've fenced with him quite a lot in practice and he isn't good enough to go through with a formal French duel to first blood. He has no finesse but he does have a lot of brute strength; no speed, but a pretty long reach. If we fought seriously, it would be altogether too likely that one of us might kill the other just because of his sheer incompetence."
"But he insulted her."
"I did not insult her," Hamilton said to Shae. "She is the Rohan heiress. Thus I respect her and I want to marry her. Even if I had to carry her all the way to Scotland to find someone willing to perform the wedding, I would not so much have touched her on the way. After all," he concluded, pleased with his own logic, "my future wife must be a virgin on her wedding night, and for me to violate her person before our marriage would make that impossible. I just wanted to make sure that there would be a wedding night."
The rest of them stared at him, each in his or her own way enraptured by this feat of logic.
"Maybe he didn't insult the duchess," Susanna said in a low, menacing, voice, "but he did smash the nativity scene that Marc gave me. I found it when I got back to the house after mass. I left the scraps with Madame Calagna. Mr. Traill says that he didn't do it, so there's no one else who might have."
"I don't just admit that," Hamilton said. "I take pride in my action, which follows in the footsteps of the great Presbyterian iconoclasts of the last century who were inspired by the sermons of John Knox."
Everyone just stood there silently for a minute.
"You know," Con said to Hamilton. "What you really need is a few whiskeys." He looked at Ruvigny and Bismarck. "Things will obviously be unpleasant in the duke's household if you return there with him right now."
"Oh, yes," Marguerite said. "Please, don't anybody say a word about all of this to Papa or Madame Calagna. Papa will never let me set foot out of the house again."
"Also," Dominique added, "Shae and I will get in a lot of trouble for not being proper ladies-in-waiting and leaving you alone, and that will make trouble for Mom because she's in charge of us, and she's the one who said we could take a walk, and the duke might complain to the grand duke, and then he might decide that it's just too much trouble to have up-timers on his payroll and Lisa and everyone could lose their jobs."
One of the footmen started to open his mouth.
"Don't," Dominique said. "Whatever you're thinking, just don't. You would be in trouble, too."
"Did anyone see you knock Hamilton over?" Bismarck asked Marguerite.
"Nobody was close. There haven't been very many people out and about this morning. Not close enough to hear that we were arguing. All the Catholics and Lutherans are probably at church or at home having Christmas dinner or something."
Ruvigny frowned. "All right," he said. "Those of you who were out for a walk, just walk home like nothing unusual happened. August and I go back to work, giving a most virtuous impression of two men who are completely unaware that anything unusual has happened. These two"—he nodded at the other men—"will take Hamilton down to the Quartier Battant and give him a few shots of whisky. Tomorrow will be another day and we can figure out what to tell Rohan about all of this then."
By first dark, after his fourth shot of whisky, Hamilton was snoring, his head on the table.
"I can see why his tutor doesn't let him have it," Con commented. "Shall we load him up and be on our way?"
Dan nodded. They shouldered him between them, just two friends walking another who had imbibed a bit too much in the way of holiday spirits to his bed. They were shortly joined by a half-dozen other County Down men who had come on this little expedition with them, flopped Hamilton over a saddled horse, and left town. They wouldn't get far that evening, but the day after Christmas would be a great day for traveling, since most of the rest of that part of the world that might come after them would also be recovering from more than a bit too much in the way of holiday spirits.
The next morning, Traill reported that Hamilton's bed was empty.
Rohan sent footmen out to find him. They returned, their hands also empty.
Ruvigny and Bismarck went to find Con and Dan, who somehow had never, they now realized, given their surname or the location of their lodgings. They also returned empty.
"The lying rascals," Ruvigny said.
"They agreed to take him for a couple of whiskies," Bismarck said philosophically. "I don't recall that there was a single word to the effect that they would bring him back. So perhaps ‘lying' is not the correct term."
They eventually located the lodgings. The bill was paid up, so the landlord hadn't taken any particular interest in his renters' departure.
When the grand duke sent soldiers out on the hunt, they looked for a party of three, two of them Dutch officers who spoke English well and one a Scotsman; not a party of nine wild geese making their way back toward winter quarters, all the while chatting merrily in Gaelic.
James Traill's reaction was deep concern about Clanboye's reaction to the fact that he had misplaced his very valuable charge. Bismarck advised him to just write a letter to Ulster and then, given that he was probably correct in feeling deeply apprehensive about the consequences that would ensue if he returned to Ireland, inquire whether or not the church the Scots soldiers had founded in the Quartier Battant would be interested in having a full-time minister.
****
"It's too late to be having second thoughts," Con Oge O'Neill—Constantine, or Con the Younger—said.
His older brother Daniel frowned. "How long will he stay tractable? The boys did sort of put the fear of God in him, but still…"
"Just make sure he doesn't get his hands on any money. Traill took care of all the practicalities for all of the grand tour, if I understand what he said. He has no idea how to survive on his own."<
br />
"What will Uncle Owen think of this? For that matter, what will the Stadhouder think of this?"
"You might as well ask what the king and queen will think of it? Or Archduchess Clara Isabella Eugenia? We knew from the start that this little enterprise would be one of those situations where it's a lot better to ask forgiveness than permission."
"Well, what are we going to do with him once we get him back to the Low Countries? We could send a really flowery letter to Clanboye. I suppose."
Con shook his head. "I've come to admire the terseness of radio style. Forget the flowers and flourishes. How about: ‘You have our lands. We have your heir. Shall we talk?' "
Part IV
Spring 1637
The repercussions of Hamilton's disappearance seriously ate into the time Rohan had available to focus on the deeper meaning of the works of Dr. Seuss. It didn't stop him, however. The Butter Battle Book necessitated a considerable amount of additional correspondence with his researcher in Grantville, given that it turned out to be an allegory of the up-time episode called the Cold War, but clearly had applications to the increasing size of armies during the first fifteen years of the current wars and the growing competition, arms races, for improved up-time weaponry. This competition, since it all involved metals and manufacturing, led naturally into the next chapter on The Lorax, with its discussion on the possible environmental impact of the industrial changes as brought by the up-timers on the European world. It turned out that Grantville harbored one woman who was, his researcher informed him, "green." During the past five years, she had encountered very few people who were willing to listen to her convictions.
"No," Kamala wailed to Carey. "Not Linda Jane Colburn. Surely the duke hasn't sicced Linda Jane onto you. She's the most boring person in Grantville. She's obsessed."
"The duke is fascinated by every pamphlet she sends." Carey sighed.
Rohan pointed out that in this book, once more, Seuss echoed his constantly resounding theme of individual personal responsibility: unless the reader, or someone like the reader, cared about solving a problem, then it was unlikely that the problem would ever be solved, and the situation would not improve.
The weather stayed horrible. The girls mostly stayed indoors, Marguerite busy with lessons from her father, Shae busy with the final materials she needed to prepare for her correspondence course final exams to get a degree from Calvert High School in Grantville in June, and Dominique because her mother told her so.
In early March, Marc Cavriani wandered unheralded back into Besançon from wherever he had been. He refused to either confirm or deny that it was France, but spent quite a bit of time meeting with the grand duke. For Susanna, he brought the information that his father had found a perfect placement for her in the USE, in the household of Amalie Elisabeth, regent of Hesse-Kassel, Calvinist.
"She is politically influential and has many friends," he said with enthusiasm. "Her surviving girls are a bit young yet, the two oldest being only 11 and 10, but within a few years, when you should be at the height of your abilities as a designer, they will be coming into society. In Magdeburg, you will have access to all the latest up-time fashion influences. And the landgravine is willing for me to use her household as a place to stay when I have errands in the USE, so we'll see each other more. Part of the time you will have to follow her to Kassel, of course, but much of the year she is in Magdeburg, and Papa will try to persuade her to make you a permanent part of the establishment she maintains in the national capital."
He kissed her several times and went back to wherever he had been.
"It would have been nice," Susanna said dolefully, "if he had asked me if I wanted to go. He treats me like a package that needs to be delivered: pick it up here and drop it off there. I guess I should go, though, since his father has taken so much trouble over it."
The follow-up letter from Leopold Cavriani was more polite, contained detailed information, and indicated that someone would be in Besançon in early May to act as Susanna's escort.
The girls debated quite a bit as to whether the coming escort might be Colonel Raudegen, but as they had no data whatsoever on which to base their discussions, even that topic of conversation petered out and they went back to enduring a spring that promised to be just as dreary as the winter.
****
"I do sort of wonder who those young men were, and what they've done with Hamilton," Carey said, as she worked her way through the latest completed section of Les Futuriens. The duke's reflections on Green Eggs and Ham included notes on xenophobia when it came to foodstuffs, tied to reflections on the experiences of young gentlemen on the Grand Tour.
"I doubt he's come to any harm," Rohan answered. "As we continued to investigate, we found that one of them introduced himself to Madame Lund with his full given name as Constantine. And they were Dutch. We know that the Cavrianis are closely allied with the Huygens family, so the name may indicate that these two young men are in some way related to Constantijn Huygens. The grand duke's intelligence analysts have therefore concluded that the whole matter had something to do with English politics, since Hamilton's abductors also spoke English well and the Huygens have not only mercantile but also diplomatic ties in London."
Thoughts of the Grand Tour led into a chapter on Oh the Places You'll Go. Carey had done her best to explain backpacking and youth hostels, but had insisted that the book wasn't just about going places and seeing them, or climbing mountains, but about making your own decisions, taking charge of your own life, and making what you want out of it.
The duke re-read the book several times before he concurred. Then he tackled the parallel treatise, Oh, the Thinks You Can Think. Thinking left, right, low, high—but the child had to make the attempt, to try, before he could succeed at it. He finished the chapter by returning to the book on places and its admonition that if a child stepped carefully, he was almost, if not entirely, guaranteed success.
"Any child?" he asked Carey cautiously.
"Sure. Boys and girls, rich and poor, really smart and maybe a little dumb. None of them will ever get anywhere unless they try it. Think of the Ring of Fire. When we got to the seventeenth-century, we could have just all put our heads in our hands and gone boo-hoo-hoo, and I'm not saying that a lot of us, including me, didn't feel like doing exactly that, every now and then. But that kind of thinking won't get you anywhere in the long run, so now I'm advising a duke. Hey, we even have a Latin motto for it, since down-timers are so fond of them. Illegitimi non carborundum. I'm so proud of myself for remembering that."
Rohan blinked.
"Don't let the bastards grind you down."
"That makes no sense. None at all."
"I'll write the researcher in Grantville. He'll likely be able to come up with some information about it."
****
Gerry Stone, who for once had managed to get in two fairly uninterrupted semesters of study at Jena, wandered into town in late April to once more try doing his familial duty by representing the "face of Lothlorien" during Grand Duke Bernhard's deeply desired smallpox vaccination campaign. He also brought frisbees—or, more precisely, one up-time plastic frisbee imprinted with an advertising slogan for the grand duke's museum and numerous new down-time made frisbees, shaped of boiled leather and then covered with lacquer to keep damp from seeping in and changing the shape, for his friends to play with. His popularity soared.
****
The query in regard to illegitimi non carborundum brought Grantville reference materials about industrial abrasives, British intelligence services in World War II, Harvard University, and Senator Barry Goldwater in response. Rohan shuddered and took it all to the Latin School, where the teachers happily set their students the task of figuring out how a motto that said, literally translated, that outlaws are not silicon carbide could possibly have assumed the meaning that Madame Calagna had attributed to it. Latin gerundives and "false friends" when it came to translation problems had never before been so much fun.
****
The single longest portion of Les Futuriens focused on Dr. Seuss' two most serious philosophical works. Horton Hatches the Egg obviously ("at least it's obvious according to the duke," Carey said to Kamala over lunch one day) required considerable consideration, not only of the importance of keeping one's word faithfully, as spoken by the elephant, and irresponsible parenthood as demonstrated by Mayzie, but also of the sequence of Roman "good emperors" from Nerva through Marcus Aurelius and the concept of adoption as a means for monarchical systems to ensure competent successors. Rohan deliberated for some time about the tactfulness of bringing it up, but did finally add a paragraph in regard to the selection by Gustavus Adolphus of Prince Ulrik of Denmark as, for all practical purposes, his adoptive successor as well as son-in-law.
The second, Horton Hears a Who, brought, at least from Rohan's perspective, a much matured and more sophisticated expression of the thoughts that Seuss had first presented in the much earlier treatise titled The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, emphasizing the premise that everyone in a nation, no matter what his or her legal and social status, was not only of political but also of moral significance and thus needed to be taken into account in the formulation of government policy.
****
The beginning of May brought a huge sack of mail with all sorts of news.
"So," Carey said. "Your sister believes that she has found a suitable chaperone for Marguerite."
"Yes. A Madame de la Rochefaton. The family is from Poitou, very old Protestant nobility. That makes her a good choice, in the sense that no other family will take too much offense at the appointment. She is a childless widow; her husband, who was from a cadet branch, served under my command in the 1622 campaign. Anne has also chosen three girls as ladies-in-waiting: de Brémond, d'Albin, and des Brisay—all very suitable and not of sufficient importance to threaten the status of anyone else. They should arrive within a month."
Grantville Gazette, Volume 66 Page 16
