by Eric Flint
He came.
****
Cavriani wanted to go through Reichertshofen. He was quite insistent on it.
No way was Mary Ward going to take the time to go to Reichertshofen. Not even if the detour would be only five miles. Through Pornbach to Pobenhausen, to Weichering, to Zell, to Neuburg. Straight through.
Mary Simpson's feet were not as well-healed as Mary Ward had hoped. At Pornbach, scarcely six miles out of Pfaffenhofen, they started to slow down. Leopold said that he would detour to Reichertshofen, talk to his agent there, and catch up with them at Pobenhausen. By then, certainly, Mrs. Simpson would have to rest.
Mary Ward did not like it, but neither did she have any authority over the man. "If you do not catch up with us by tomorrow morning," she said firmly, "we will go on without you."
"I wish," Veronica said, looking at Mary Simpson rather anxiously, "that we had kept the sedan chair. Four women could have carried you, easily enough."
She was on her knees, unwrapping the bandages.
"Look here, Miss Ward. None of the new skin has broken yet. But it will, if she walks any farther, for all of your bandages and salves. And for all of your rosaries. Damned Bavarians. Take your Ladies and go on. I'll stay here with her. When Herr Cavriani meets you at Pobenhausen, tell him where we are. The whole village is empty. We can find a barn or a shed, somewhere to stay."
"Impossible," was Mary Ward's response.
"Believe me," Veronica answered, "it will be better accommodations than an ore barrel. Just come and look at her feet and then try to tell me 'impossible' again."
"I cannot permit…"
"You cannot permit?" Veronica stood up, swelling to her full, if not very impressive, height. " You cannot permit. Who are you to tell me what I may and may not do, Madam Lady, so Superior?
Startled, Mary Ward backed up a couple of steps.
Mary Simpson looked up at the two of them, then around. Someone was missing.
"Maria Anna," she called. "Maria Anna, where are you?"
Everyone had been paying attention to the argument.
"Maria Anna!" Veronica's voice, schooled by the handling of Gretchen's collection of orphans, managed double the volume of Mary's.
"Just calm down." The answer came from behind a cattle stall.
Oh, well, then. Not an emergency. Just, presumably, a call of nature.
The archduchess reappeared around a corner, trundling an empty wheelbarrow in front of her.
"I thought of it when you said 'sedan chair,'" she explained. "That there might be one in the stall."
"Since when," Veronica asked, "do high-born gracious ladies have occasion to think that there might be wheelbarrows in cow byres?"
Maria Anna looked at her mildly. "Since they, or at least this one, last accompanied her Mama when they inspected the dairy barns back home in Graz. Which was only, though it seems much longer, last summer. I didn't spend all my growing-up time in Vienna, you know. Now, if you're done with those bandages?"
Mary in the wheelbarrow, Maria Anna pushing it, they proceeded on their way.
****
After two miles, Maria Anna began to wish that someone else would offer to take a turn. The wooden handles were rubbing her hands raw; she had no gloves. Soon her palms would be as badly blistered as Mrs. Simpson's feet. The right handle kept causing the golden rose underneath her skirt to bang against her thigh. Impatiently, she twitched the drawstring from which it was suspended a little to the side.
It would help if she could wrap her hands in some of Miss Ward's bandages.
Miss Ward did not offer. She was profoundly offended.
Nobody else offered to push, either. Except, for short stints, Veronica, who was determined, but not strong enough to manage the heavy, awkwardly balanced barrow for very long.
****
The English Ladies were, after all, Englishwomen of good family. Gentlewomen by birth. Far more conscious of what they owed to their status in society than people who weren't, well, English. Miss Ward had heard that the wife of Duke Hermann of Hesse-Rothenfels, now the USE Secretary of State, made cheese in the barns at their country residence, right along with her milkmaids, and claimed to be proud of it.
Germans! Disorderly, the lot of them, and Austrians were worse.
Austrians being farther from England, that was only natural, of course. That was probably why Ferdinand II had welcomed the school they established in Vienna so heartily. He realized, presumably, that his nation needed English schoolteachers if it was ever to become properly organized.
****
"You are sure?" Leopold Cavriani said anxiously to Egli's agent in Reichertshofen.
"Yes, Herr Cavriani," Lothar Mengersdorf said. "I have remained here because I was expecting you. And him. He certainly has not come. And, I do not mind saying, I am very anxious to leave. I sent my family into Neuburg two days ago, already. This is not a good place to be. There is no one here at all except me and the runner I retained.
Leopold looked at him. "You have a runner? Here?"
"Yes," Mengersdorf said. "He is very good, accustomed to taking messages a diligence, whether by foot or by horse."
"I need to use him," Cavriani said abruptly.
"Of course. Naturally he is at your disposal. You pay him, or Egli does so on your behalf. He is the man who takes your messages across to General Baner's radio."
Cavriani was not aware of any specific messages that he had sent to General Baner's radio, but he did not question divine providence. The runner was shortly on his way. Two messages. No, three. One to Egli, asking him to arrange safe-conducts across the Neuburg bridge for the English Ladies. An additional, very private, message, to be taken to Baner's radio, for Ed Piazza, to be forwarded to Prime Minister Stearns. One for the man to leave in some obvious spot asking the English Ladies to wait for him.
Mengersdorf looked anxious. "Herr Cavriani, I really do believe that we, too, should leave now. There is nothing to be gained by staying. Nothing at all."
"A couple more hours cannot hurt," Cavriani answered. "Just in case Marc comes."
They were interrupted by a "Halloo!" from outside. Mengersdorf ran to the door. A young man stood there.
"Zobel!" he exclaimed. "What?"
"The Bavarians will march from Manching before dawn, to invest Neuburg from the south and west. From Ernsgaden, they will try to force through the 'secured supply line,' breaking it. They have a company of engineers with them there, sappers. And this run has earned me what you promised to pay me for warning you."
"If you keep running," Cavriani said, "to warn Neuburg and the Swedes, you will earn far more. Whatever General Baner gives you, I will double. And if Baner should give you nothing, I promise you triple what Mengersdorf paid you for the run from Manching to here."
He reached into his doublet. "Take this letter. At Neuburg it will get you through the gate to Egli. Egli can get you the commander of the city militia and to Baner's staff."
****
Pobenhausen, finally. Thankfully. A light rain had started an hour before. Not a good kind of rain; enough that they left footprints on the dirt of the ruts, but not enough to wash them away. They had moved to the side of the road, walking on the grass, so as not to leave tracks marking their passage. Any group of Bavarian soldiers passing this way would necessarily be curious about a group of people moving north.
Pobenhausen was totally deserted. One set of tracks in the ruts. Recent; a runner headed toward Neuburg. No Cavriani.
Why stay in a barn if you could find some better shelter? Mary Ward sent Winifred Wigmore to investigate just how tightly the inn was locked up.
Very tightly. The landlord clearly believed in locks, bars, and sturdy shutters fastened from the inside.
Tacked to the door, a short note. "C. is behind you; wait." No signature. Sister Winifred brought it back to her superior. So it would be the barn shed by which they were standing. The boards on the door were so shrunken that they could reach betw
een them and slowly slide the bar back. A roof. If they were lucky, straw.
"Somebody," Maria Anna said, "has to stay outside to watch the road. Otherwise, he won't know where we are. And I'm not inclined to tack another note onto the inn door describing our location to any group of passing strangers. This is just…"
She looked around. It was the silence that bothered her. Villages were never silent. There were always chickens clucking, children crying, women calling to one another, cattle lowing in the pastures outside. Here, there was nothing. A few wild birds in the trees, a few insects. "Eerie."
"It's not raining all that hard," Veronica said. "If I stand under that tree, I'll be dry enough. So I'll watch. The rest of you go in and get some rest."
****
She watched. She was dry enough. The rain slacked off. In any case, she was an old hag of a camp follower. She had been out in worse rains, and she had found a protruding root to sit on, so her feet were resting. Surely, he would come pretty soon.
The sun was setting. It wasn't high summer any more, but the dusk would still be a long one. If he came pretty soon, they could still try to make Weichering this evening.
Mary Simpson came out of the shed. They sat next to one another. It got a little darker.
Maria Anna joined them. "The Ladies are about to start the vespers liturgy," she said. "I will watch for a while, if you wish to join them."
Veronica was feeling a little guilty for having been rude earlier in the day. Old hag of a camp follower she had been. Not proper Abbess of Quedlinburg style at all. The Englishwoman meant well. She couldn't help what she was. She nodded and slipped inside the shed, her fingers groping at her waist for the twig-and-grapevine rosary that Miss Ward had so patiently made for her.
****
"Don't you want to go, too?" Maria Anna asked.
Mary Simpson shook her head, smiling, "I am not Catholic."
Maria Anna nodded. "True. I understand that many of the people in Grantville are not. Lutheran? Calvinist?"
"No. I am Unitarian."
A new word. "What is that?"
Mary explained.
Maria Anna stood transfixed, looking down at her. A Socinian. Common enough in Poland, where the sect had been tolerated for decades in the past century. She knew what the Socinians were. They.. they denied the divinity of Christ. They, since they denied His divinity, did not honor His mother. Nor Anna, the mother of the Virgin. Neither of her patron saints. Although, oddly, the woman's name was Mary. It had never occurred to her that a Socinian might carry the name of the Virgin Mother.
"Oh," she said.
"I will not hide what I am," Mary said. "If you tell them"-she gestured toward the shed-"I will understand. I won't try to predict what they might do about it. Herr Cavriani knows, perhaps. But I am not sure. It is no secret, but there is no Unitarian church in Grantville. My husband does not share my beliefs, nor my son. They are Episcopalians, Anglicans, Church of England. English Protestants, of the same faith as the current king, as Archbishop Laud." She smiled a little. "Rather high church Episcopalians, by ordinary up-time American standards, especially my son Tom. Very like Archbishop Laud, oddly enough."
She shrugged.
The archduchess looked at her. "I will…" she said. Then she stopped. She stood quietly.
****
Processing her reaction to this heresy, Mary presumed.
What would the girl do? Mary could think of several things, starting with finding a representative of the inquisition and turning her over to it. The archduchess was, after all, a product of Counter Reformation Catholicism. Daughter of Ferdinand II, the Holy Roman Emperor, who was one of the most unrelenting persecutors of Protestantism in all of Europe. Clearly, from her participation in the prayers that the English Ladies recited on such a regular basis, a pious and devout young woman, completely sincere in her beliefs.
Maria Anna stood under the tree. Silently. Mary estimated that at least fifteen minutes had passed since that, "I will." She thanked her lucky stars that no man was there. No man who would leap into the middle of it, lobbying, arguing, attempting to persuade. Men tended to do that. Even the best of them.
She blinked. When John proposed, she had not said, "This is such a surprise." They had, after all, been dating seriously for almost a year. She had said, "please give me time to think. Not about whether I love you, because I do. But about whether I have what it takes, or can learn what it takes, to be the wife of a man who has chosen the Navy for a career. It's not what I ever, before I met you, thought that I might do."
He'd answered, "As long as it takes." Which had almost caused her to accept then and there. Instead, she had walked around like a zombie for a week, thinking about it. Death, injury, captivity, all part of your husband's job. By the time she said "yes," she had accepted what she was doing.
This way, at least, whatever conclusion the archduchess might reach, she would "own" it. Whether she called off the whole project of the escape and went running to the nearest Catholic church for sanctuary rather than travel in the company of a Socinian, or worse. Worse from Mary's perspective, at least. Or if she decided to continue traveling with them. Whatever she did, if she decided for herself, she would not feel that she was pushed into it, would not be resentful later.
It was a long quarter-hour.
"I will…" Maria Anna said again, "I will get up a half hour earlier than is my custom every day for the remainder of my life, to say a rosary for your salvation. I will also dedicate two novenas per year for that purpose, as well as performing the Stations of the Cross for this purpose during Lent."
Whatever Mary had expected, it was not that. Her shoulders sagged a little; she put one hand against the tree trunk for support.
A little tremulously, she answered, "That is a big commitment of time for a prominent political figure to make. I do know who you are, you know. Not Miss Ward's niece who was told by her mama to come along with us. Knowing that you are doing that, going to so much trouble over me, will give me a very bad conscience, every time I think about it.
Maria Anna smiled triumphantly, "That's what it's supposed to do."
****
Maria Anna was far from sure that her decision was the correct one. She knew that Papa would not think so, certainly. Nor Father Lamormaini. Conscientia triumphata. Not conscience triumphant, but conscience being paraded, like booty in an ancient Roman triumphal procession, by her conquering affections. It was all too likely that she had allowed her growing liking for this up-time woman to take her conscience captive, against the requirements of strict duty and clear obligation. If that was the case, nonetheless, she had made the decision. She could discuss the matter with her confessor later, if she ever again got to a place where she could confess. Which seemed by no means certain at the moment. She let her right hand drop, feeling the flannel-wrapped golden rose that she wore beneath her skirt.
She looked down the darkening street. "There is Herr Cavriani," she said.
He was running toward them smoothly, followed by another man who was not running with anything like the same ease.
"We have to go," he said. "There is no more time. A messenger came to Reichertshofen just as I was about to leave; that delayed us, a little. The Bavarians will be marching out at first light, before full dawn. If we aren't in Neuburg by then, they will overtake us. We sent him on, cross-country, to notify the Swedes. The USE. General Baner's forces, in any case. With a request that as a quid pro quo, he is to beg that Neuburg opens its gates to us if we manage to arrive ahead of the Bavarians. Which means, essentially, if we arrive before sunrise. If, of course, they let him in to deliver the message. Or if he can find a patrol outside the walls that will believe him.
Mary Ward, reluctantly, cut the vespers liturgy short. After Cavriani had said several things that were just what she would expect of a man who did not appear to be at all devout. He carried a rosary case, but she had never seen him open it.
Neither Mary Simpson nor Veronica had
seen fit to enlighten the mother superior about Cavriani's background. Some things just were not necessary.
The pudgy little man with Cavriani was still panting when they started down the road towards Weichering. Mengersdorf, he said his name was.
****
They had been on the road for four hours when Mengersdorf fell. They had not even reached Weichering.
He was just lying on the ground. Floppy.
Maria Anna let loose the handles of the wheelbarrow, noticing that some of her skin stuck to them. Mary Simpson climbed out. Looked at him. Felt of him.
No fever-if anything, he was chilly. He didn't speak any English, nor did he appear to understand her German. Painstakingly, through Cavriani, she asked questions. No chest pain. No headache. But his limbs were like jelly, his whole body floppy.
She stood looking at him, frowning. Thinking. Trying to remember. Tom, when he was about seven or eight. Always such an energetic boy. A day when he had been running and climbing, nonstop. They had been in the country, a creek with a swimming hole. Jump from the bank, splash, wade to the shore, run up the bank again, jump, repeat.
Just before supper, he had fallen like this. What had the pediatrician said? "He has just used up all of his blood sugar. Give him something to eat; a couple of teaspoons of sugar, if you have it. Put him in a warm tub, keep the arms and legs moving so he doesn't stiffen up. He should be all right in a couple of hours."
It had seemed such an unfeeling thing to say to a mother whose only child had collapsed. But she did it, and in a couple of hours, Tom had been ready to run again.
"Ask him," she said to Cavriani, "when was the last time that he ate."
"Ate?" Mengersdorf looked bewildered. "Ah. I sent the food that was in the house with my family. When I sent them to Neuburg. I expected to follow them much sooner. Ate? Two days ago, I guess. Three days, counting this one."
