by Eric Flint
“Now what do we do?” asked Eddie, after the maid who had led them to the room departed.
The small, narrow chamber had only two pieces of furniture, a rickety-looking wooden chair and a solidly made if unattractive bed with a straw mattress. Two thick wool blankets were folded on the bed. There were no pillows of any kind.
Noelle sat down on the bed. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “It’s already late afternoon, though. So I think the smartest thing to do is just wait until nightfall, and see if the Ram’s people here approach us. If not… we’ll decide tomorrow.”
Eddie nodded. Then, none too cheerfully, examined the rough-hewn wood floor.
“Oh, relax,” said Noelle. “We can share the bed.”
He got a solemn look on his face and placed his hand over his heart. “I vow that I have no intentions on your virtue.”
Noelle chuckled. “I wasn’t actually worried about it.”
She wasn’t, in fact. In the time since they’d started working together, her relationship with Eddie Junker had settled into something quite comfortable for her. For Eddie too, she thought. Something of a cross between friends and older sister/younger brother.
There was certainly nothing romantic about it. That might seem odd to someone observing them, since she and Eddie were both reasonably attractive, intelligent, and were almost the same age. But, for whatever reasons these things happened-or didn’t-there had simply never been any “chemistry” between them.
True, some of that might be due to Noelle’s still-official I’m thinking about becoming a nun position. But, she didn’t think so. She just wasn’t Eddie’s “type,” whatever type that might be. And he certainly wasn’t hers, insofar as she could figure out if there was any type of man who might appeal to her that way. She hadn’t met one yet, leaving aside a couple of casual boyfriends in high school and junior college. Those relationships hadn’t lasted long, however-and she was the only virgin her age she knew.
“So I feared,” groaned Eddie. Noelle chuckled again.
Franconia, late April, 1634
With Margrave Christian’s declaration of neutrality on behalf of himself and his nephews, the Franconian Protestant knights and lords took arms against the USE/SoTF administration, under the leadership of Freiherr Fuchs von Bimbach.
Which, of course, made the newspapers. Banner headlines, in fact.
Steve Salatto was very unhappy.
* * *
Arnold Bellamy was even unhappier, mainly because he had no additional resources whatsoever with which to assist the SoTF administration in Franconia. Nor was the SoTF congress meeting. He spoke urgently with Ed Piazza about the need for a special session.
Mike Stearns was more than profoundly annoyed. Not with Steve Salatto or the Franconian farmers, however, but with Wilhelm Wettin-who was viewing the situation in Franconia with alarm. Great alarm. Quite frequently. Wilhelm thought that something should be done.
Scott Blackwell was not as unhappy as Steve. The knights and lords, collectively, could not put many men into the field. Few of them had the financial resources to hire more than a couple dozen professionals. Most were dependent upon calling out a levy of their own subjects, who largely refused to cooperate on the grounds that they had already sworn oaths of allegiance to the State of Thuringia-Franconia, against which their lords were rebelling.
“They’ll get hammered,” he said confidently. “You watch. My money’s on the farmers.”
Steve eyed him quizzically. “I take it you don’t propose to intervene militarily?”
Blackwell shrugged. “Oh, at some point, I imagine I will-here and there, anyway. But I think it’s all to the good to let those arrogant knights get the shit beat out of them. Better still, if it’s done by the local farmers instead of us.”
Steve understood the logic. He didn’t even disagree with it, although it rubbed all his well-honed civil servant instincts the wrong way. But, still…
Unhappily, he gazed down at the newspaper on his desk.
“Big headlines, huh?” said Scott cheerfully.
* * *
“You are not joking?” asked Captain Boetinger.
“No,” replied the lieutenant. “The city council invited a peasant delegation to come into the city. The delegation included a couple of the ram movement’s prominent leaders, including two men from the Gemeinde at Frankenwinheim. And then, no sooner were the gates closed, than they arrested the entire delegation.”
“They say they are going to deliver them, as rebellious and insubordinate subjects, each to his own lord, for a fitting and suitable punishment,” added the sergeant who had come into the headquarters with the lieutenant.
The captain of the USE/SoTF garrison at Gerolzhofen shook his head. “Amazing. Some people seem incapable of learning anything. Ah, well, so be it. Order out the garrison, Lt. Neidhart. We shall continue the educational process, as the Americans call it.”
His second-in-command nodded. “Vigorously?”
“Oh, very vigorously.”
The lieutenant hesitated a moment. “We did promise not to intervene in the city’s domestic affairs.”
“Indeed so. And we have kept the promise. But since the city council took it upon themselves to arrest people who were not citizens of Gerolzhofen, it is no longer a domestic matter.”
He bestowed a grin upon the lieutenant that did not bode well for someone. “I was given most explicit instructions by Colonel Blackwell, should such an event come to pass. Summon the garrison, Lieutenant.”
Less than a quarter of an hour later, the garrison marched out of the Zehnthof and headed for the Rathaus. The streets were noticeably deserted. The captain had expected some sort of opposition, given the intransigent nature of the city’s citizens. But, apparently, even the residents of Gerolzhofen had enough sense to realize that their city council had finally crossed a line.
The entire city council emerged from the Rathaus to meet the garrison, once it entered the city square. They looked nervous, but stubborn.
They had good reason to be nervous, the captain thought. And the stubbornness was handy. There would be no need to track them down.
“You are violating our agreement!” shouted once of the councilmen.
Captain Boetinger’s reply came in a tone of voice that was almost conversational.
“Shoot them,” he commanded.
* * *
“No,” said Scott Blackwell, “you can’t leave the bodies on display.”
Sourly, he stared up at the corpses of the city councilmen, suspended by ropes from the windows of the Rathaus. “You shouldn’t have done that in the first place. I don’t mean the shooting. That was okay, if maybe a little on the extreme side. But this…”
He grimaced. “Dammit, Friedrich, it’s uncivilized.”
Captain Boetinger shrugged. “Yes, true. But what part of We mean it did you think was ever going to remain civilized?”
Scott had no ready answer for that. “Still,” he insisted. “It’ll cause bad public relations. Have them taken down and their bodies delivered to their families.”
“As you wish,” said Boetinger. He walked off, mentally shaking his head. He rather liked the Americans, all things considered. If for no other reason, because they met the payroll on time. But there was no denying they were not sane, about many things.
Bad public relations. As if shooting dead the entire city council with no warning was likely to be popular!
And what difference did it make, in any event? Every citizen in Gerolzhofen might hate the USE and the State of Thuringia-Franconia with a passion. So what? Gerolzhofen’s days of being a thorn in everyone’s side had just come to a complete, total…
What was that American expression? Boetinger was charmed by the things.
Ah, yes. Screeching halt. He’d been particularly charmed by that one, after the up-timer Harry Lefferts had demonstrated it to him once, with an American motor vehicle.
Boetinger smiled thinly, thinking of Harry.
He wondered what Harry was up to, these days. Boetinger had spent some time with Lefferts, when he’d visited Grantville. The two of them had gotten along very well.
Now there was an American fellow who’d have had no objection at all to stringing up corpses from windows.
* * *
The knights carried out several reprisals. In one case, on the estates of the von Bimbach family-the Catholic branch, near Bamberg-quite severe reprisals.
Blackwell did not order out the troops, however. First, because he didn’t have all that many. Secondly, because he was quite sure the ram was going to retaliate, and was willing to let the farmers do the dirty work. Finally, because he was compiling a list. At the very top of that list was the name “Fuchs von Bimbach.”
Before too long, he thought the list would come in handy. Especially after Noelle Murphy was able to add her findings, now that she’d gotten into the castle. In his own mind, the title of it was Rope to Hang Themselves By.
* * *
The city council of the imperial city of Nuernberg formally notified everyone it could think of, from Gustavus Adolphus and the Council of Princes down through the chain of command to the district administrators of the Aemter of Franconia, that it was seriously concerned about the situation, viewed it with considerable alarm, and would be compelled to take unspecified measures if the imperial knights and petty lords whose lands lay within Nuernberg’s hinterland became involved in the contention between those in Franconia and the administration there.
In short, the knights were put on notice. By one of the most important cities in the USE, and-the knights were gloomily certain-one of Gustav Adolf’s favorites. His great victory at the Alte Veste had been won within eyesight of Nuernberg, hadn’t it? With a great many of the city’s citizens in the ranks of his army-and none too many of the knights.
* * *
Margrave Christian spoke with representatives of the ram. And started accepting oaths, from market towns as well as from village people. On behalf of his nephews as well. Albrecht, of course, was still very young; Friedrich was in the north with Gustavus Adolphus’ army. So it was his responsibility.
The form of the oath was carefully negotiated between them. Quite carefully.
* * *
Several of the Protestant knights and lords whose lands lay primarily in Ansbach and Bayreuth, led by Freiherr Fuchs von Bimbach, came to the assistance of the branches of their families whose lands lay primarily in Bamberg and Wuerzburg.
* * *
April had arrived. Indeed, it was almost May.
Across Franconia, the ram banners unfurled.
Chapter 12:
“I’m Sick To Death Of These Swaggering Little Lords”
Bamberg, May, 1634
“Looks like you have the current hot spot, Vince,” Steve Salatto remarked. “Or, at least, the hottest one.”
Vince Marcantonio stretched. “Spots.”
“Plural? I rode up because of a report of threats to the lives of priests, nuns, and monks by ravening hordes of perverted and monstrous peasants.”
“Threats,” his chief of staff Georg Rudolf Weckherlin added, “which are being reported in numerous illustrated pamphlets, but which nobody around Wuerzburg has been able to confirm.”
Vince yawned. “I’ve no doubt that there have been threats. Mostly made in taverns by people who are drunk and who don’t have any force to back them up.” He stretched again. “Sometimes I wish that I could just lie down and sleep for a week.
“Anyway, there was one threat that Stew Hawker thought was credible, but it was being made by a merchant in Nuernberg against a little convent with six old nuns in it. He has some kind of reversionary right when the last of them dies. He-the merchant, that is-bought it up about twenty years ago. It’s based on an agreement that was made sixty or more years ago between the convent and some noble who was secularizing church property in his lands after he turned Protestant, that they wouldn’t accept any new novices and he got the land after the last one died. The ones who were already in it have been frustrating the merchant by living on and on and on. I think all six are well over eighty now. Stew thought that he was planning to hire a batch of bullies, burn them out, and blame it on the ram rebellion.”
Vince stretched again. “I’ve brought the little old ladies into Bamberg and parked them with the nuns who patched up Johnnie F. and Willard after the beating last fall. If the rapacious mercantile bandit tries anything, he’ll find the convent occupied by several guys who are willing to shoot back.”
“If that’s under control,” Steve asked, “what are your other hot spots?”
“Well, there’s the city council election here in Bamberg. After their little revolution last fall, the new council threw out all the guys who were convicted of being in on the conspiracy to try Willard Thornton. But they didn’t replace them. It’s just been running short-staffed, so to speak. Now election time has rolled around. We’ve already been through the question of ‘who gets to vote’ and settled on ‘all adult citizens of Bamberg.’ That doesn’t get us very far, though, because a lot of the residents aren’t citizens. They’re citizens of Franconia in general, but not of the city, for purposes of local elections. So we have some candidates running on a platform of broadening out citizenship and others running on keeping the current laws. We have…” He paused.
“The ewe?” Weckherlin asked.
Vince nodded. “Frau Else Kronacher, herself, one embattled printer’s widow amid the embattled farmers of the ram rebellion, running for the Bamberg city council. If nothing else, the guilds are so focused on fighting her that, I suspect, two or three other candidates they might otherwise be opposing will get elected. Which, if I read that daughter of hers right, may actually be the reason that Frau Kronacher is running.”
“How old is she? The Kronacher girl, I mean?” Steve asked.
“Not a girl, quite,” Vince answered. “There were two or three kids who died between her and the older boy. In her mid-twenties, I would guess. Maybe a little more.”
“Well, then,” Steve said, “back to the ‘ravening hordes of peasants.’ If they aren’t threatening the defenseless clergy, what are they actually doing? From your perspective.”
“Cliff Priest, the military administrator in Bamberg, has ridden up to Lauenstein to talk to Margrave Christian of Bayreuth’s Amtmann there. We’ve got to decide what to do about a castle at Mitwitz. Big old thing, with a moat. Belongs to a Freiherr-one of the ones who has taken up arms against the SoTF.”
“Just what,” Steve asked, “is the question?”
“Do we and the margrave want to try to bring it down, between us? Or do we let the ram’s people do it?”
“Are there advantages, either way?” Weckherlin asked.
“If we take it, it should be a kinder, gentler, sort of conquest. For one thing, Margrave Christian has some cannon, which the ram rebellion doesn’t. So he could set up a siege and tell everyone to come out. If he wanted to ally with us publicly. Which he doesn’t, yet, no matter what his Amtmann at Lauenstein is trying to talk him into doing.
“Otherwise. The ram’s people at Teuschnitz have some kind of major difference of opinion with the Freiherr at Mitwitz, who has a Halsgericht-the right to impose capital punishment. He seems to have used it rather freely and not always against people who fit the ordinary definition of ‘criminal.’ If we, the SoTF or Margrave Christian, don’t occupy the castle at Mitwitz, the ram will level it. Some way.”
“Would it be a great loss to society if the ram did?” Steve asked.
“Not that I can tell,” Vince answered. “But burning to death isn’t a nice way to die. Not that there are many.”
Steve sighed. “Scott thinks we ought to let the farmers do the dirty work.”
“Scott would. He thinks like a military man. My deputy Wade Jackson thinks the same way. He’s UMWA, and they’ve always been a hard-fisted bunch. You and I, on the other hand, are proper civil servants. Bureaucrats, when you
come right down to it. Honest and capable ones, sure, but we’re still pencil-pushers.”
He looked out the window onto the streets of Bamberg. “The truth, Steve? At least in the here and now, I agree with them. I’m sick to death of these swaggering little lords. Let the farmers make a weenie roast of that knightly prick at Mitwitz. Maybe it’ll encourage the others to learn some manners.”
* * *
Melchior Kronacher was watching his sister, instead of listening to the sermon. Mutti wouldn’t come to church any more. They had become Catholic under the bishop’s pressure in the late 1620s. Mutti said that enough was enough. She said that she had been to church enough to last any reasonable person a lifetime and she wasn’t going back again. Ever. To any church. Of any kind. Now that the up-timers said she didn’t have to.
Martha, though, shortly after Pastor Meyfarth had brought things in to be printed last spring, started going to the Lutheran services. Mutti said that either Melchior or Otto had to go with her because the streets were not as safe as they should be. Mutti blamed that on the guilds.
This week was Melchior’s turn to go to church with Martha. He wiggled.
Martha was paying close attention to the sermon. Or, more likely, to the sermonizer. Melchior couldn’t think of anything in a learned disquisition on John 3:16 that would bring such a calculating expression to Martha’s face. Sort of like she was bargaining with God.
Melchior shuddered. He thought that bargaining with God was probably a bad idea. He was pretty sure of it, in fact. Especially when Martha was doing the bargaining. God might end up with the short end of the stick.
* * *
“So,” Eddie asked, “how’s it going?” He looked out of the small room they were sitting in-just a very big pantry, really, with two stools-into the large kitchen beyond, to make sure that no-one could overhear them.
Seeing his somewhat shifty-eyed glance, Noelle sniffed. “Stop acting like a B-movie spy, Eddie. There’s nobody here, won’t be for at least a half an hour-and even if there was, it wouldn’t matter anyway.” A bit smugly: “The whole kitchen staff is with the ram. By now, I’m sure of that.”
