by Eric Flint
The next thing I knew, it was dark outside and I was hungry.
"Geoffrey? I would like to speak to His Lordship."
"He's out, sir."
"Out? Out where?"
"A gondola came to pick him up."
"Whose gondola?"
"Some lady or another. Very finely dressed. Lots of pearls."
"My God—you let him go without telling me? You didn't find out her name?"
"There was fancy writing on her gondola, sir. Ask our gondolier. He was up and about at the time."
I rushed down to our townhouse's little dock. Our gondolier was napping, inside his boat. I shook him awake.
"His Lordship, where is he?"
"He is in the best of hands, sir. He went off with Lucrezia Cognati."
"Who might that be? Some contessa? A cittadina?"
"Oh no. A cortigiana honesta. Of the first rank."
A courtesan. "We must rescue him at once." The gondolier rolled his eyes but said nothing. "Where does she live?"
"Near the Campo San Cassiano. On the Ponte delle Tette."
* * *
I stormed into the courtesan's house, followed closely by Samuel and Geoffrey. The lady's bodyguard, a muscular Moor, appeared and asked our business. When he refused to let us interrupt Lucrezia and William, I rushed past him and the estimable Samuel clipped the bodyguard when he turned to follow. What a team we were.
The second line of defense was the lady's maid, who was screaming at us like a harpy out of the myths. Even though she was the servant to a bawd, she could not be treated so forcefully.
"Calm yourself, woman. We are here to claim what is ours."
She stopped screaming, and suddenly looked sly. "Oh, what might that be?"
"A young gentleman, entrusted to my care."
"How young? An infant?"
"Certainly not."
"A pity, for every woman yearns to hold an infant in her arms."
"I don't want to strike you, but if you continue—"
"Wait. Does he have blond curls, lovely enough to make a lady's fingers itch?"
"Don't be impertinent. Where is he?"
"Receiving an education yonder." She pointed, languidly, at a closed door. "That is the purpose of his travels, isn't it?" She smiled at Samuel, who smiled right back, damn him.
"Enough!" I burst into the boudoir, surprising Lucrezia and William in the very act of—
Playing a game of chess.
Northern Italy
May, 1633
"I can't eat anymore," said William. "I just can't."
We had taken the canal boat back to Padua and then followed the main caravan route from Venice to the Germanies: west through Padua and Vicenza to Verona, then north up the Adige, to Trento and Bolzano. There, we left the river valley, and headed northeast toward the Brenner Pass.
We took lodging in Bressanone, at the famous Inn at the Sign of the Elephant. The food at the inn was tasty, and the portions were, well, elephantine. In fact, one of the traditions was to bring you a huge platter of meat, and, if you could finish by yourself, it was on the house. No one, not even a fifteen-and-a-half year old boy who had been riding all day, was equal to the task. With a sigh, William pushed his plate away.
On the outside of the inn was a gigantic fresco, with a life-sized rendition of an Indian elephant, complete with a turbaned mahout on its back. I told William the story behind it.
"In 1550, King John III of Portugal gave an Indian elephant to Archduke Maximilian the Second of Austria. Maximilian, at that time, was living in Spain. Maximilian was summoned home, and he took the elephant with him. We are following in its footsteps."
"Watching where we walk," William quipped.
It would have been beneath my dignity to respond. "By the time the beast reached Bressanone its strength had ebbed, and its handlers allowed it to rest at the High Field Inn for two weeks. That's the old name of this inn. Then they rode it across the Brenner Pass, and ultimately made a triumphal entrance into Vienna."
"Well, if an elephant can cross the Alps, we shouldn't have any difficulty," William said. Thereby tempting Fate, I think.
* * *
The next day, we were in Vipiteno, our final stop before the Brenner Pass itself. Knowing that a rough day was ahead of us, I urged William and the servants to retire early that evening.
The following morning, the innkeeper motioned me over. "Plague," he whispered. "Word came in last night."
"Here, in Vipiteno?"
"No, thank God, not here." He crossed himself. "Still, it isn't far away. It is in Innsbruck. Many cases, I hear."
It would not be easy, coming from the Brenner Pass, to swing wide of Innsbruck, and thus avoid the plague carriers.
"What about the Reschen Pass?" I asked. The Reschen Pass lay northwest of Merano, a town further up the Adige than Bolzano.
"Bandits are a big problem right now. One of Tilly's mercenary companies decided that charging tolls was more profitable than soldiering. Then they got tired of that and just used the pass as a base for raiding the villages nearby. The Jaegers will deal with them eventually, but with the plague in Innsbruck, they probably won't clear out the Reschen until June or even July."
"That's too late for me. Any other choices?"
"It depends."
"On what?"
"On how crazy you are."
"Never mind, then. Can I get something to drink?"
My resolution to do nothing didn't last long. Samuel approached me. He had a gift for languages, which no doubt had come in handy in the past.
"You heard about the plague in Innsbruck?"
"Yes."
"Well, there's a rumor going around that the first case was someone who had an argument with an English visitor. So now some folk are saying that the Englishman laid a curse on Innsbruck, and that's what brought the plague."
"Enough." I turned to the innkeeper. "I changed my mind. I am crazy enough to hear about option three."
"It is the high pass, the Passo del Rombo. The Timmelsjoch. Or, as we called it in the village I was born in, the Secret Passage."
"Secret sounds good. Leaving immediately sounds even better."
"I will give you a letter of introduction to your guide. He lives in the village of San Leonardo de Passiria. You head west from here in the direction of Merano, you go over the Jauffen Pass, and then San Leonardo lies below you, where the Veltina meets the Passiria."
"Thank you."
"Mention me in your prayers." The innkeeper checked something in the ledger, then looked up. "I must warn you, the guide is not quite right in the head."
"Why do you say that?"
"He climbs. For the fun of it."
Crossing the Alps
May, 1633
Our guide was Joseph Hofer, a chamois hunter, and the younger son of the innkeeper of San Leonardo.
"So, you wish to cross the Timmelsjoch. You have come to the right man. It is still a bit early in the season, but have no fear.
"There are five of you, yes? With mules?"
I corrected him. "With three mules, and two horses."
"Horses, you say? Unless they be mountain-bred, exchange them for mules. Speak to the innkeeper, while I gather the equipment for five new mountaineers."
"Equipment?" Joseph had already disappeared into a storeroom. I shrugged, and went off to search for the innkeeper.
While I was away, Joseph decided to have some fun with William. I didn't learn the particulars until after we had crossed the Timmelsjoch, but I set the incident down now in its proper place.
Joseph commandeered them to carry out goods suitable for mountain travel. Bearskin coats. Beaver gloves. Backpacks. Alpenstocks.
"What's that for?" William asked. "If it is a walking stick, why is it so long?" The alpenstock was a thick ash staff, perhaps eight feet long, ringed with iron at both ends. It also bore a metal point.
"It is essential in the Alps, young man. It is the only thing that can save you from a drag
on."
"A dragon?"
"Indeed. If you shoot a dragon, you will merely annoy it and it will devour you. If you run, the result will be much the same. You must wait bravely until it opens its mouth, and then thrust the alpenstock between its jaws, jamming them open. The dragon will then starve to death." Joseph waited, deadpan, for William's reaction.
"Are dragons common in the mountains? I mean, if they are, wouldn't you need to carry more than one alpenstock?"
"Don't worry. They're rare, so one's enough."
It was then that I returned, as yet ignorant of Joseph's little joke. But I was quite conscious of the ominous pile of gear. "I hope we are going to keep the climbing to a minimum."
"No climbing, sir," Joseph said. "But we also want to keep the slipping to a minimum, so we need these crampoons." He held out devices which looked vaguely like horseshoes, but matched the size and shape of human feet. They were studded with nails, and each was equipped with a leather strap.
"You fasten them under your feet, like so"—he demonstrated—"and now you can walk on ice, if need be."
William tried them on. "Ouch, the bars dig into my feet."
"They take getting used to."
I intervened. "Let's stow them in the saddlebags until we really need them."
* * *
We managed to get off to a mid-morning start. We had eight mules, five for our party to ride, and three to carry supplies. Two of these would ultimately be given to Joseph, so he could take back the loaned mountaineering gear after we crossed the Timmelsjoch.
The path, at first, was fairly easy, as we walked along a mountain stream, the Veltina. After perhaps a dozen miles, Joseph motioned us up the left side of the river valley. It was steep and rocky, and the mules became a little balky.
Then we heard a shriek. We Englishmen halted abruptly, and reached for our weapons. "God's blood, what was that?" I cried.
Joseph had continued up the slope, unperturbed. "The marmot, the mountain squirrel. That was its alarm whistle."
"Can you eat them?" asked Samuel.
Joseph nodded. "They are best caught in April or May, when they have just come out of their winter sleep and are still befuddled." He smacked his lips. "Bop 'em on the head, and then it's dinner time."
The trail now swished back and forth as it climbed further into the mountains. Now and then, we found ourselves in light fog and had to slow down even more.
It was after one such patch that we had our first clear indication of how high we were. No trees.
"Where are the trees?" William asked.
"From here on up there are no trees, until we are over the pass and descend into the Tyrol," said Joseph. He pointed to the relatively flat section ahead, limestone carpeted with white wild flowers, the edelweiss. "These are the Alps."
"I thought the Alps were the mountain peaks."
"No, no. They're the high pastures. Although the shepherds don't usually come this way."
I thought that strange. "If the shepherds don't use this path, who does?"
"Folks who like to move goods from one country to another with a minimum of fuss."
Smugglers, in other words. "How much further up do we have to go to reach the pass?" I asked.
Joseph leaned on his alpenstock. "Let me think. Oh, we are perhaps three-quarters of the way to the top."
Samuel whistled. "And I thought the Kinder Scout back home was high."
"What's the Kinder Scout?" asked Joseph.
"The highest point in the Peak District, back in Derbyshire. But it's just a hillock compared to these Alps."
Before we left this resting place, William collected some of the edelweiss, to be dried and pressed, and pasted into his journal as souvenirs. They didn't grow in the lowland.
We trudged on, weaving higher and deeper into the mountain range. A golden eagle soared overhead. At last the trail opened up a bit, and leveled out somewhat. Ahead of us was a valley of sorts. Not a river valley, merely a saddle point between two great peaks. Patches of snow lay helter-skelter on either side of the trail ahead.
"We are at the top of the pass," said Joseph. "There is the Jochkopfl, behind us, on the right, and there the Wurmkogl, ahead on the left." Their tops were lost in the clouds.
We set up camp under an overhang. Snow started to fall, and we all crowded closer to the fire.
"Good thing we brought firewood with us," William said. "There is not a branch, or even a twig, up here."
The next morning, the valley floor was completely white. We put on our crampoons, and continued our journey. The snow sparkled in the sun and crunched under our feet as we walked.
As the oldest, I was the first to tire and I decided to ride my mule, not lead it. It was a mistake. Off to one side, a small slab of snow slid down with a whoomp. It came nowhere near us, but my misbegotten mule bolted. I held on for dear life, and my companions pursued us.
The mule halted abruptly at a small declivity; I sailed off the cursed beast and into the hollow.
The next thing I knew, I was staring up at William and Joseph. I hurt everywhere and I was lying on a bed of snow, quite bemused.
"What are you doing down here, William? For that matter, how did I get down here?"
"The mule threw you," he said. "Joseph slid down, and I followed. It was harder than I expected, but I made it to the bottom. Joseph said that he thought you were knocked silly for a moment, but there was deep-ish snow at the bottom and that cushioned you. I was so relieved when you finally stirred. How are you feeling?"
Samuel yelled "watch out below," and hurled down an alpenstock, the rope tied firmly to it. Joseph picked it up and brought it to me. I looked at it in puzzlement. You take a fall like that and see how quickly you come to your senses.
"All right, Mister Hobbes. Take hold of this staff with both hands. Your lordship, you put one arm under his and the other on your own alpenstock. Take it nice and slow." He looked up, and raised his voice. "Start pulling now."
After some pushing and pulling, we made it out of the hole.
"I think I would like to call it a day," I said.
Joseph nodded. "Just a little further on is a good place for a camp." When we got there, Samuel stripped the packs off one of the extra mules and transferred them to my erstwhile mount. "I think you would do better with this one, Mister Hobbes. Less temperamental."
"Thank you, Samuel. Right now I would rather feed my last mule to a pack of wolves."
William was too keyed up to rest. He found a gentle slope, and practiced the glissade, which is what Joseph called the slide. William held his alpenstock by his side so that it trailed behind him. Then he bent his knees and pushed off. He slid rapidly down, moving the stick back and forth like a rudder, and was at the bottom within seconds.
"Yahoo!" He ran back to the top.
I was too tired to protest.
"He is a true bergler, a mountain man, in the making," Joseph said.
* * *
"It is here that I must leave you," said our guide. You follow this stream, it is called the Otztaler Ach, down to Solden, Langenfeld and Otz. Shortly after Otz, it joins the Inn."
"We don't want to go anywhere near Innsbruck," I said.
"No problem. You turn left, and go up the Inn valley. Soon you come to the turn off for Imst. It is on your right. It is a market town, so you should have no trouble finding it."
My plan, as I told William, was to cross the Fern Pass, and descended to Lermoos and Reutte. From there we would follow the Lech downstream to the city of Augsburg. We could rest there a few days and find out what the Swedish and Habsburg armies were up to, and how best to pass the lines. I assumed that we could just join a merchant caravan; trade continued even in time of war, at least when the armies weren't on the move.
William was still under the impression that we would remain on the great road to Hamburg. It passed north through Nürnberg in Franconia and Erfurt in Saxony, and finally curved northwest to end on the North Sea coast. In fact, after
we crossed the Thüringerwald north of Nürnberg, we would swing east to Grantville.
We said our goodbyes and Joseph, leading two mules, began his return journey. He left behind one alpenstock; William had insisted on buying it. "We might encounter dragons in the Fern Pass," he said. And that's when I learned of Joseph's little tall tale.
In Imst, we came to a roadblock. Obviously the authorities didn't want the plague carried from Innsbruck to other parts of the Tyrol. They were suspicious of us even though we came from the south; they thought we might have tried to circle around the town. That's when William's alpenstock and pressed edelweiss flowers came in handy, as they were proof that we had come across the Timmelsjoch, avoiding Innsbruck. The Brenner Pass is too low to find edelweiss and not steep or snowy enough to need an alpenstock.
Nürnberg
June, 1633
I watched William as he happily munched on his lebkuchen. He was lucky to find this spiced honey cake for sale, even though it was one of Nürnberg's famous specialties. While the honey was still readily available in the woods surrounding the city, the Thirty Years' War intermittently interrupted the flow of spices into the bakeries.
Why, Nürnberg itself had been threatened by Wallenstein's army the previous year, until Gustavus Adolphus won the battle of Alte Veste. With American aid.
This was not, of course, the first time William had heard about the Americans. But Nürnberg was a part of the new Confederated Principalities of Europe, ruled by Gustavus Adolphus and supported by Grantville. We were repeatedly reminded of the influence of the people from the future. For example, William had seen several strange gadgets in the shops, which, said the merchants, had come from Grantville. Others were local copies of "up-time" designs. William showed great interest in these devices.
One afternoon we decided to visit Nürnberg's tennis court. We were both avid fans. After a hard-fought set, we retired to the gallery. There, William confronted me, this time intellectually rather than physically.
"Mister Hobbes, I have been thinking. About this Grantville we keep hearing about. It's a city from the future!"
