Grantville Gazette, Volume 66

by Bjorn Hasseler

  "Kamala Dunn has made some decisions also. She is going to petition in the courts here to change the surname of Shae and Shaun from Horton to Dunn. That won't change any facts, of course, but it will be far less in-your-face upon first meeting. Shae's going to the University of Prague—she finished her Grantville high school equivalence by correspondence this year, even with her duties for Marguerite. Really, with the tutors the girls have had here, she's way beyond Grantville high school equivalence in some areas, even if Kamala's home schooling has barely kept her up to scratch in some other fields. She'll be boarding with the Fodors. It will work out. Kamala's sending Shaun to her parents in Grantville. He's—well, let's say that he's never going to make a great academic success, and he has a temper like Johnny Horton's. Growing up running in and out of the Clarence's Pump Corporation will set him up for a decent job later on. All that means that she won't need the nanny at all, any more, and it would be a real imposition if I asked her to keep supervising my kids.

  "I'm keeping Ashlyn here—I'm just not ready to send her off to a boarding school, though I'll have to eventually, I guess, in two or three years. For now, she's doing fine in the day school for girls. So I'm going to have to find another apartment. Dominique's going to Magdeburg, so she won't be here to help babysit Kylie and Joe, or Ashlyn, for that matter. Between the Imperial College of Science, Engineering, and Technology and the American-built hospital there, she can get her medical degree without having to run the gauntlet in Grantville. It won't be as prestigious as Grantville/Jena, but the stress reduction will be worth it."

  "Bring your children here," Rohan suggested. "I'm going to have to rent the other half of this house in any case, with more people coming. My brother Soubise has managed to run down and collect a lot of the back rents and dues owing to us and forwarded a bank draft, so I can manage the expansion—just barely, but I can manage it."

  "Won't Madame de Rochefaton resent that?"

  "You aren't here as my household's chatelaine. You work for the grand duke. Your chaperonage of Marguerite was described as a temporary measure from the beginning. We will simply make that very clear to her. And I will locate your family's apartments in such a way that she cannot imagine that you are in any way her subordinate. What is your term? ‘Gover?' "

  "Gofer," Carey corrected absentmindedly. "To go for something or someone. A runner of miscellaneous errands."

  He patted her hand. "See how impossible it would be for me to remain au courant in regard to the modern, post-Ring of Fire, world without my resident expert on all things up-time.

  "Anne has been less successful in finding a prospective bride for my brother Soubise, however. She complains that there is a real shortage of marriageable daughters among Huguenot families of ducal and princely rank. She is almost hoping, I believe, that some suitable lady will soon be widowed in an untimely fashion."

  "Maybe she should cast her net wider. Too much inbreeding isn't a good thing. You could tell her to look in the Netherlands, or look at some young women of less than ‘ducal and princely rank.' Up-time we used to tell each other, ‘get your priorities straight.' Do you want him to get married for prestige or do you want him to get married to have kids and have a lot of little Rohan toddlers to bounce on his knees?"

  "Soubise toddlers," the duke said. "Marguerite is the heiress of Rohan."

  ****

  "This last book is very different from the others," Rohan said.

  "It's the same illustration style, but it wasn't aimed at kids."

  The duke smiled, a little ruefully. "Cicero also wrote on old age. De Senectute. Since the beginning of time, I suppose, men have given thought to becoming ‘the creature that walks on three legs.' But I would not have thought of You're Only Old Once as a title."

  "It's a joke," Carey said. "It's a lot more common for people to say that ‘you're only young once.' The idea is that you should make the most of it, whatever it is, while you have the chance."

  "That may be a commendable idea," Rohan said. "Related to carpe diem, I presume. I am afraid, though, that after all this effort I am more inclined to embrace another of Seuss' maxims: ‘They say I'm old-fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast!' What do you say?"

  "He wasn't the first person to say that. And you're not that old, either."

  ****

  Shae and Dominique finished reading the Futuriens treatise. "What do you think?" Kamala asked. "Since both of you are both veterans of ‘Dr. Seuss childhoods'?"

  "Honestly?" Shae answered. "Well, basically, none of this would have occurred to me."

  "Often," Carey commented, "an outside perspective is very useful. "Maybe it should have occurred to us what we were really teaching you when we read these books out loud."

  "I think," Dominique said, "that you should keep on reading Dr. Seuss to the little guys."

  ****

  Rohan leaned his arms on the balcony, watching the young people in the courtyard.

  "Aren't they a bit old to be playing with beanbags?" Carey asked.

  "There's no tennis court—the grand duke really ought to build one. If it was just the boys, it would be swords—or in Gerry's case, perhaps a firecracker or some other pyrotechnical device. They prefer the ‘frisbees' that he brought, but they sail too far, and the leather is too firm for them to be safe to use in a small courtyard surrounded by windows. Still, there is nothing wrong with keeping a bit of childhood in one's later life, I suppose, as Dr. Seuss reminds us. Since the girls are taking part in the fracas, beanbags are at least, for the most part, harmless."

  Marguerite, too short to have much hope of intercepting a beanbag thrown overhand from one person to another in mid-flight, ducked under Bismarck's arm and snatched one just as it was about to arrive in his hand, tossing it into Ruvigny's face.

  "I—often thought," Rohan said musingly, "until these last few years, I often thought, no matter what other marriage projects arose, that eventually, unless the crown interfered and prohibited it, I would marry her to one of her distant Rohan cousins from a cadet line of the family and continue Rohan in that manner. The Guéméné line would have been best. It is a pity that Pierre had no sons, for they would have been of approximately the right age. Hercule's son Louis, from his first marriage, married when Marguerite was barely two years old, but his surviving sons are about fifteen years younger than my daughter. Hercule's sons from his second marriage are also much too young."

  He sighed. "I had seen very little of her since she was a small child, and even then I was rarely in the same household. The military life is not conducive to what Madame Dunn refers to as ‘involved fatherhood.' Yet, now that I have come to know her, I have grown to like her. Perhaps the members of their ‘Red-Headed League' are correct. Perhaps she can become Rohan for herself." He sighed even more deeply.

  Carey pursed her lips and then said, with caution, "Your sister Anne is a most interesting correspondent."

  "True," Rohan said. "Also a most loquacious one."

  "In one of the letters I received from her this spring, she mentioned in passing that the date of M. de Candale's conversion to Calvinism was not shortly prior to your family's sojourn in Venice in 1630, as Marguerite told us, but rather in 1616. She does not, by the way, believe that the gossip about his return to Catholicism is true."

  "As far as I know, she is correct in regard to those dates. Also in regard to his religious stance."

  "She wrote, also very casually, that in those years of 1616 and 1617, M. de Candale was a frequent visitor to your household."

  Rohan continued watching the beanbag game.

  "However that may be," he finally commented, "it is possible that it is not the worst of fates if I do indeed have a small elephant bird, which no one can ever know definitely, whatever Anne may hint. I will continue to teach Marguerite to be Rohan for herself."

  "And Tancrède?"

  "He is most certainly not my son."

  After a few minutes, he con
tinued. "With the troubles in France, which will certainly bring renewed unrest to Lorraine, I anticipate that my service to Grand Duke Bernhard will involve me in battles this summer and very probably next year, even if none of them will be precisely the same battle in which I was killed in your universe." He grimaced. "Every battle or skirmish carries its own risks. I may well die ‘on schedule,' and Marguerite still needs a husband—a Protestant husband."

  ****

  Sources:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_etranger

  http://www.heraldica.org/topics/france/frprince.htm

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Seuss_bibliography

  http://www.hamiltonmontgomery1606.com/Summary.asp

  James Hamilton & Hugh Montgomery

  The Founding Fathers Of The Ulster-Scots

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hamilton,_1st_Viscount_Claneboye

  http://artuk.org/discover/artworks/james-hamilton-161716181659-1st-earl-of-clanbrassil-and-2nd-viscount-clandeboye-132184

  http://www.electricscotland.com/webclans/stoz/traills3.htm

  The Covenanting Traills

  About the Faces on the Cutting Room Floor, Number Four: Books Within the Book by Charles E. Gannon

  In many ways, 1635: The Papal Stakes is a book dominated by other books and documents—by the Bible, by Vatican II, by learned commentaries, and even by The Lord of the Rings.

  One of the major writings that remained largely unremarked were the lost accounts of the life and teachings of Duns Scotus, a major theological influence upon the Franciscan Order. The compositor of these works, one of the leading Franciscan theologians of his age, Father Luke Wadding, is exfiltrated from Rome by the Wrecking Crew, but once safe in Venice, he puts the challenge of preserving the complete works of Duns Scotus before the up-timers and their allies:

  Father Wadding looked like he was about to squirm out of his own finely wrinkled skin in eagerness to be off. “I will leave Father Hickey here to attend to the unresolved matters we left behind us in Rome.”

  Miro felt one eyebrow rise. “Unresolved matters?”

  “Yes, of course: the books.”

  “The books?”

  Wadding folded his hands, regained his patience and composure. “At St. Isidore’s we were in the process of compiling what we hope to be an authoritative collection and commentary upon the writings and life work of Duns Scotus, one of the most important—”

  “Oh, yeah,” Tom Stone interrupted with a cheery wave, “Larry—uh, Cardinal Mazzare—asked me to tell you that he’s having your work on Duns Scotus sent down from Grantville. What we have of it, that is. By looking at it, you should be able to determine what pieces of the complete collection we don’t have. So maybe you only need to work on those missing sections.” Tom evidently missed the utterly dumbfounded, even horrified, look on Wadding’s face. “Of course, Larry tells me that Father Heinzerling hadn’t finished combing through the boxes in his basement. A lot of his collection is still down there, I guess.” Then he saw Wadding’s face. “What’s wrong, Father?”

  “It was completed? The Duns Scotus collection? And you have it—or much of it?” Wadding blinked. “So: my life’s work was a success in your world. Which makes it now mostly unnecessary in this one.” Wadding rested his head upon his hand. “This—this will take some getting used to. But never mind. It is good to learn that, no matter what now transpires in Rome, much of Duns Scotus’ work is preserved. But it is still imperative to remove the original manuscripts to a safer location. Maybe for safekeeping here, on the island—”

  Miro leaned forward. “Father Wadding, just how many volumes are we talking about? Approximately?”

  Wadding considered. “Well, they are not volumes, per se. Most of the documents are folders and collections of original manuscripts. But if I were to estimate their equivalent bulk as books, I would say not more than eight thousand. Or so.”

  Miro’s were the only eyes in the room that did not widen. “I see. Father, I must tell you that I do not see any immediate way to secure their removal from Rome. However, we have some local resources there”—he glanced at Lefferts—“that may be able to keep watch over them from a distance, and ensure that they are not subject to acts of random vandalism. However, if the Spanish decide to—”

  Wadding held up a hand. “I understand. And I will trust that between your help and God’s will, they will remain safe long enough for us to reclaim them.”

  Harry was pointedly keeping a straight face. Obviously, the notion of taking any risks to reclaim a pile of dusty old documents was something only a bookworm would conceive of or understand. And Harry was no bibliophile.

  The Gospel According to Tolkien

  Another crucial element of the narrative is how Frank Stone resorts to an allegorical re-rendering of The Lord of the Rings to explore and expose the inequities of the aristocratic monopolies that characterized both the Papal and royal authorities of the 1630s. His wife Giovanna, seeing the potential for a revolutionary manifesto in these writings, was an eager if infrequent auditor of Frank’s tale. In the final manuscript, the completed version of the story was referred to in synoptic form, only. But here is Giovanna’s reaction to Frank’s finished magnus opus:

  Giovanna folded her hands eagerly. “Now, as I recall, the orcs had taken Gondor and are enslaving its people. What happens next?”

  “Well, while the people of Gondor are suffering, the hobbits sneak around and learn more about the orcs.”

  “Ah, so is this also where we finally learn about what has made them the beasts that they are. Do we discover what makes them so evil? Are they born wicked? Violent? Cruel? Uncaring?”

  “No,” Frank said slowly. “They’re just raised to be greedy. To grasp for themselves before thinking of what is fair to other people, both individually and collectively.”

  “Ah! So it is a revolutionary tract, after all! You spit in the eye of capitalists and autocrats!”

  “Uh, yeah, sure,” agreed Frank, who hadn’t really thought of that at all. “But people don’t like reading theory and preaching; they want a good story, ya know? So it’s really more of a plot twist, I guess. Like a lot of humans, the orcs don’t realize that greed will not make them powerful. What we learn is that greed was just a way to corrupt them, to make them believe that the only alternative to being alone and scared is to become a creature of pure selfishness.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “See, there’s a line—a philosophy, really—in an up-time movie which claimed that, in order for people to really succeed, they need to realize that ‘greed is good.’ Which is like saying that because we want things, we are driven to achieve. And so we do more and better work that way.”

  “It is the taskmaster’s whip transformed into self-flagellation! It is a trick whereby the elites ensorcel the bourgeoisie to their own acquisitiveness, carried out by subverting the work ethic of the middle class.”

  Yup, Giovanna Stone nee Marcoli sure was her father’s daughter, right down to the penchant for radical activism and muckraking. “Right. But I just let that remain implied. No use banging people over the head with moral preaching or economic theory, right?”

  “Not as if they couldn’t use it,” Giovanna grumbled.

  “Maybe, but writing a novel—a popular novel—isn’t about writing what people need to read, but what they want to read, right? So towards the end of the book, we start discovering that the creatures of Mordor started as normal men and women, but their greed has corrupted them.”

  “They have become obese, their greed expressing itself as gluttony?”

  Frank nodded. “Yeah, some do get pretty porky. But almost an equal number are as thin as rakes.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You know the saying ‘you can’t have your cake and eat it too’?”

  “No. But it sounds contradictory.”

  “Yeah, at first, it does. But think about it this way: there are misers who, no matter how much money they hav
e, still insist on living like rats in a hole.”

  Gia’s eyes lit up. “Ah, yes! Now I see. The paradox of wanting to keep everything we accumulate keeps us from spending and enjoying what we have. And so, the physical signs of the orcs’ corruption take on shapes particular to the specific kind of greed, of vice, that dominates each one of them?”

  “Yeah, now you’ve got it.”

  “And so, the greedy orcs of Mordor are vanquished by the noble men of Gondor, operating with the information acquired by the wily hobbits?”

  “Well, sort of.”

  She rose up on her forearms; her now-alarming cleavage swayed dramatically. “What? ‘Sort of?’ What kind of victory is ‘sort of?’ Are the orcs not slaughtered by a triumphant union of allied armies and rebel fighters?”

  “No.”

  “Do they drown in the filth of their own excesses?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “So they fall upon each other in a murderous frenzy to possess the last meager scrap of wealth?”

  “No at all.”

  “Then how are they vanquished?”

  “By their own need for love.”

  She was silent for a long time. “You are joking.”

  “No, Gia, I’m not. Think about it: the hardest, least kind humans you’ve ever met will claim that they can live without love, but they really can’t. Everyone wants to be cared for, everyone wants to matter to someone else. We can’t get away from it: it’s part of our nature as social creatures. It’s coded deep down in our genetics.”

  She sat up very slowly. “Tell me more.”

  “So the orcs start learning that they can’t get away from love. Almost all of them want it, and lots of them start showing it. Towards each other, even towards the humans—particularly the old and the very young. They can’t really help it, because whenever they show any mercy to the humans, they begin to realize that the impulse behind it isn’t—can’t be—just guilt. Because you don’t feel guilt if you don’t also feel a sense of responsibility, and that, in turn, means that, deep down, there’s some tiny sprout of love for others. A sprout that just won’t die.”