1635:The Dreeson Incident (assiti shards)

by Eric Flint

  His sons were learning the business. Barendt and Jan Willem, the only survivors of the nine children born to his late wife. Barendt was twenty-two already. Time flew. He'd need to start looking for a wife pretty soon. Jan Willem at eighteen could afford to wait a few more years before worrying about such weighty matters.

  Neither was home. Barendt was observing wine-making in the Moselle Valley. Jan Willem had accompanied his cousin Pierre Guillaume de Grasse to Italy on a buying trip.

  Which brought Laurent to those who had finished learning the business and now helped him run it. Pierre Guillaume was his chief buyer. He was the younger son of his widowed half-sister, Marie, who ran his household here in town. Her older son, Laurent, called Lolo by the family, was his chief accountant. Her daughters, both unmarried, lived at home.

  A slight shadow passed over his face. The girls should be married by now, but their brothers were reluctant to let the dowry money bequeathed by Marie's late husband out of their own hands.

  Then there were the sons of his deceased half-sister Louise. Jan Dircksen Pieterz was, unfortunately, as improvident as his late father had been. Mauger kept looking for some avenue by which Jan might display his talents. Thus far, none had appeared, and the boy was.. . um… thirty-six years old now, it must be. Still, he was family, so he must be fed-and luckily, he hadn't married. For the time being, he was in charge of arranging shipping contracts. Somebody else always double-checked the arrangements he made, of course. Usually his younger brother, who was cautious and careful, if not particularly resourceful.

  They couldn't have dowered their sisters if they wanted to. Dirck had died bankrupt. So both Alida and Madeleine were, to put it plainly, upper servants. Ladies-in-waiting to the wives of wealthy merchants. Not chambermaids, but not far above that status, either. They fetched, carried, read out loud, made lace.

  He had offered to dower them, but they were both too proud. Or ashamed that he had needed to make the offer. Alida had been in her teens when Dirck went bankrupt and killed himself. Madeleine was old enough to remember that time.

  All six of those boys, his own sons and the sons of his half-sisters, had a remarkable sense of entitlement where the business was concerned. They thought of it as already theirs, although he was far from dead yet.

  Nowhere close to dead. How surprised they would be if they knew that his sedate business trips also involved secret work for the Huguenot cause!

  His greatest affection was reserved for his younger sister Aeltje. She wasn't here. Widowed like Marie, she had chosen not to depend on him when Louis died. Rather, she had remained in Leiden, where she had turned her large house into a residence for a dozen or so students. Both of her sons were attending the university. Mauger liked the boys, too. Jean-Louis was studying science and engineering. He said that the chemistry, at least, would be of use in the wine business if he some day joined the firm. The younger boy had started classes this semester. Aeltje was no longer young, but now she had the help of her daughter Marte, who had a quite respectable dowry.

  With any luck, Marte would soon find a husband in the form of one of her brothers' friends. University towns were useful, that way. They provided a pool of promising young men, pre-selected for a certain minimum level of intelligence and ambition.

  Aeltje was not stupid. That might be why she was his favorite sister.

  Mauger spent three days reviewing the business developments that had occurred while he was gone. Then he couldn't put it off any longer. He would be made to regret it if he postponed it any farther.

  It was time to face the villa.

  He had bought the villa after Adriaantje had died. His late wife. A saint. Not in the idolatrous Catholic sense of the word, of course. Rather, a saint as in "a woman of noble character."

  The "girls" had lived with them throughout their marriage. Not one of them had been willing to assume responsibility for the household after Adriaantje died. They said that, never having married, they had no experience in the matter.

  So he had asked Marie. Who came and, a scant three months later, proclaimed: "Either they go or I go."

  He needed Marie in his Haarlem townhouse. So he bought the villa. Hired a steward and a housekeeper. It was a truly lovely country home.

  The door opened. They emerged like a flock of crows. His oldest half-sister, Catherine. She was seventy-two now. Followed by his three older sisters.

  Not an Arminian among them. Surely that consistency of theological opinion in his family was something of which a man could be proud.

  But he would prefer to be away on a business trip.

  Grantville

  "Perhaps he is interested in you." Veda Mae pursed her lips. "Personally, I mean."

  Velma Hardesty shook her head. She might not be a brain, but one thing was always perfectly clear to her. "Look, Veda Mae. I can tell when a man's interested in me."

  "You've certainly had enough chances to practice that skill."

  "Thanks for the compliment. But, what I mean is-Jacques-Pierre isn't. Interested in me, I mean. Except for teaching me to Meditate. Which must have been Meant. By the Stars, you know. It's sort of too bad. He's in great condition."

  Veda Mae cocked her head to the side. "Spending every day trotting alongside a wagon and heaving the contents of garbage cans into it will do that for the old biceps and triceps and abs, I suppose. Several of the orderlies at the assisted living center-why don't they tell the plain truth and call it an old folks home or a nursing home, the way people used to?-are in really good shape, too."

  Velma raised her eyebrows. "Window shopping?"

  "I'm a widow," Veda Mae said righteously. "It's perfectly proper, as long as all I do is look."

  Chapter 15

  Frankfurt am Main

  " Solch eine Schlamperei! " Johann Wilhelm Dilich was screaming at the top of his lungs.

  Nathan Prickett wasn't quite certain that there was one word that could translate all the nuances into English. It was carelessness combined with messiness combined with filthiness. Filthiness like dirt, not filthiness like porn. Maybe even a little recklessness, combined with quite a bit of fecklessness.

  The militia captain was looking horrified.

  The people who prepared bodies for burial had already come and gone.

  The demo was supposed to have been a showpiece. Showing off all the nice new gun-shaped toys the militia had been practicing with.

  It had been quite a bang. Amideutsch had coined a word. Boomenstoff. Stuff that went boom. Or bang. Or bam-bam-bam. Or blam. Most of the words that used to come with exclamation points after them in comic books.

  They'd been storing a lot of Boomenstoff in the bunker.

  That was a really big hole in the redoubt now.

  The bright spot was that they were south of the river, in Sachsenhausen. At least it hadn't happened right downtown.

  Who in hell had taken a candle down into the bunker where the guys were loading? They weren't even supposed to go down there wearing any iron, for fear of striking a spark. Dusty air was dangerous, even if the dust wasn't gunpowder. Once, once when he was a kid, he'd managed a pretty good boom just by throwing a canister of his mom's flour up into the air. Everybody knew about grain elevators. Well, the down-timers didn't have grain elevators.

  But it was all spelled out in the manual. Line by line, word for word.

  Fat lot of good that had done.

  Seven men dead. For a couple of them, they wouldn't find enough to bury. That included the guy with the candle, whoever he'd been. They could probably identify him by a process of elimination. Figure out who everyone else was, alive and dead. He'd be the one they couldn't account for. Forty-three injured, including two officers from patrician families.

  The muttering in taverns throughout Frankfurt had started the evening after the catastrophe at the Sachsenhausen redoubt.

  There was always some level of resentment of the ghetto in the city, because of its size. Except for possibly Nurnburg, Frankfurt had the
largest Jewish population of any city in the Germanies. The last time it really boiled over had been twenty years before, during the so-called Fettmilch revolt.

  The Jews. It must have been the Jews.

  It didn't make any sense. Nathan ran his hand through his hair. There had not been a single Jew involved.

  They must have contaminated the powder.

  How in hell could they have done that? It was kept in the magazine in Sachsenhausen.

  They changed the instructions in the manual on how to handle it somehow. Left out a step. Or added one, maybe, so the next one didn't work right. Just enough that our sons and brothers would have to suffer.

  The manual was perfectly good. What's more, the militia captain had promised to have all the men read it. That he would drill them in the procedures.

  And he had kept his promise.

  It had been plain, ordinary, contrary, human stupidity. Pilot error, as people said.

  The up-timer. He is called Nathan. His name is Jewish.

  Nathan had a suspicion that they wouldn't be a bit more pleased when they found out that he was Methodist. He picked up his pen.

  Dear Don Francisco.

  You wouldn't believe what is going on here. Or, maybe you would.

  This was going to be a long letter.

  On the Reichsstrasse between Fulda and Steinau

  The two drivers and three mechanics were patching a tire on the rear ATV. Again. This time, it had taken a sharp rock.

  About fifty or sixty men from the Fulda Barracks Regiment were watching with great interest. It was taking a while. The patch kit had been sitting on a shelf in someone's garage ever since inner tubes went out of style, up-time. The patches weren't for this kind of tire. The goop wasn't what it had once been.

  Henry Dreeson was sitting on a different rock, waiting for them to finish. Margie and her husband had taken a trip to Europe once, back up-time. A package tour. Afterwards, the next time she came home to Grantville for a visit, she'd brought a video for her parents to watch. If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium. That was the title, or something like it.

  He was beginning to understand what his daughter's excursion must have been like.

  "Where are we?" he asked Martin Wackernagel.

  "About five miles northeast of Steinau an der Strasse. On the Reichsstrasse, that is. That's where we'll be spending the night.

  "Wackernagel, I hate to tell you this, but if by the word Reichsstrasse you folks mean something like 'superhighway,' the follow-through on construction leaves something to be desired."

  Cunz Kastenmayer, always the peacemaker, said, "You have to admit that it is much better than some of the rural roads we have traveled during the past two weeks in Buchenland county."

  Dreeson nodded a little reluctantly. "Yep. Some of them were worse than anything I'd seen since about, oh, 1950 or 1960 in up-time West Virginia. Before the War on Poverty. Thank God for four wheel drive."

  A couple of horses came in sight around the bend behind them. The riders stopped suddenly. They had planned to lag back far enough that the motorcade never spotted them.

  Derek Utt was looking back. "Jeffie," he yelled. "Jeffie, what in hell?"

  Jeffie Garand-Sergeant Garand now, Henry reminded himself-was moving up to face his commander.

  "Ah. Um. Well, Gertrud and her stepmother wanted to come along to see the sights in Frankfurt, since the rest of us are going. I know you always say 'no camp followers,' but that's not exactly it. They're going to find a different inn to stay at, everywhere we stop, and they're paying their own way."

  Utt looked around again. "Sergeant Hartke, did you know about this?"

  Helmuth Hartke, father of Gertrud and husband of Dagmar, came forward. Dragging his feet a bit. "No, Sir." He cleared his throat. "I understand the problem, Sir. Dagmar really shouldn't be riding right now. In her condition."

  Utt groaned and looked at Henry Dreeson.

  He didn't have to ask. "Sure," Henry said. "We'll be glad to give her a place in the car. I'm sure Martin won't mind riding her horse the rest of the way into Frankfurt. He rides the Reichsstrasse all the time. It's his job."

  Jeffie looked at Gertrud. Then at Wackernagel. He'd picked up a couple of rumors about the courier, when it came to girls. That's all they were, rumors, but…

  Gertrud was his girl. He looked at Derek Utt.

  "Maybe Gertrud oughta ride in the car with Dagmar? In case that she has, you know, female troubles, or something. Cunz can ride the other horse."

  Derek sighed, waved one hand, and proclaimed, "So be it."

  Frankfurt am Main

  "Michel has gone mad," Mathurin Brillard said, almost snarling the words. "Stark, raving mad. Assassinate Stearns?"

  Guillaume Locquifier glared at him. But not even Locquifier, with his near-adulation of Ducos, was prepared to argue the matter straight out. Instead, all he said was: "We will have to give Michel's orders some thought. Hard thought."

  Those thoughts came to a consensus without much difficulty. It didn't take long, either. Two bottles of wine, at most.

  Nobody said out loud that Michel Ducos really must have already heard about the group of Yeoman Warders whom the now-fabled Captain Lefferts had brought with him out of England-and who now served the USE's Prime Minister as a bodyguard. Or that, if not, he really should have. Ducos should have realized that Stearns would be almost impossible to assassinate, at least with the resources at their disposal.

  True, the Pope's guards had been as ferocious-but there, they'd had the advantage of surprise. Nobody had really expected anyone to make a serious assassination attempt on the Pope. Whereas no one in Europe, down to village idiots, had any difficulty imagining the multitude of enemies who might wish to assassinate Michael Stearns.

  No, it was simply out of the question to assassinate the USE's prime minister and his wife. Or his wife, for that matter. The protection of the Yeomen Warders extended to her also.

  Robert Ouvrard shook his head. "Security is too tight around Gustavus Adolphus and Princess Kristina, too. The Swedes and Finns who guard them really mean business. If it comes to dying for them, those men will do so."

  Locquifier chewed his upper lip. "Who does that leave, then? Wettin?"

  Ouvrard shook his head. "Wettin doesn't have Yeoman Warders, but he does have bodyguards who take their jobs really seriously. Almost the only place we could reach him would be when he attends church. I am afraid that we all still have unfortunate memories of the last time Michel tried an assassination in a church."

  "And what would be the point, even if we could kill him?" asked Brillard. "There is at least a logic to Michel's proposal to assassinate Wettin along with the USE's emperor and prime minister. But without them, simply killing Wettin will accomplish nothing. Let us not forget that the purpose of all this is to prevent the signing of a peace treaty-on any terms-between France and the USE. How does killing Wettin by himself advance that goal by so much as one step?"

  Carefully, he did not refer openly to the significance of what was actually the single most important word in his statement. The term proposal, as applied to Ducos' instructions.

  Not to his surprise, no one in the room chose to challenge the term. Not one of them, not even Locquifier, was as enthusiastic about martyrdom for the cause as Michel and Antoine were. Michel in practice; Antoine in theory.

  "Do we inform Michel that we can't do it, then?" Ouvrard asked.

  Locquifier shook his head. "Ah, no. Not a good idea."

  They looked at one another. It was always a possibility that some member of the group held secret instructions to exert a very final sort of discipline against any others who appeared to be wavering.

  It was even possible, theoretically, that the one of them who held such instructions might also act as a provocateur, expressing dissenting opinions to see if anyone else was prepared to agree with them. Even Jesus Christ had his Judas.

  Locquifier leaned back. "Instead, let suggest some softer targets.
Chose someone for whom the security level is not so high."

  Ouvrard nodded. "Ableidinger? That would certainly sow confusion in Franconia. And he's a Lutheran, so it would be plausible to blame it on Richelieu."

  Locquifier was still chewing his lip. "No 'lackeys,' remember? Michel is adamant about that. The Richter woman? The one they call Gretchen?"

  Ouvrard shook his head. "She's hardly a 'softer target.' She has Committee of Correspondence security coming out of her big tits."

  "The up-time admiral and his wife?"

  "Possibly," Brillard said, "if we could get close to them while they are in the Netherlands. In Magdeburg, Achterhof and his men have them, also, under a very tight watch."

  Locquifier frowned. "But Michel's instructions say that the assassinations must occur in Magdeburg. Just as the death of the pope had to occur in Rome. A country villa somewhere, when Urban VIII was on vacation, would not have done at all. Because of the symbolism. Antoine also emphasizes that it must be Magdeburg. Because it is the new imperial capital. All on the same day. To demonstrate how weak these 'leaders' really are."

  "And does Antoine suggest how we should persuade these several people to gather together for us in a convenient group?" Brillard's tone was sarcastic. "Just as one would scarcely expect Stearns' Jewish wife to attend church with William Wettin, I truly do not expect to see all of our possible 'soft targets' in one place at one time, either. Not to mention another small problem."

  Locquifier raised his eyebrows.

  "Of all of us whom he left behind in Frankfurt," said Mathurin, "I am the only one with enough skill with a rifle to carry out an actual assassination. From any distance, at least. I suppose that either of you, or Gui or Fortunat once they are back with us, might have the same luck with a knife as the man who killed Henri IV. I don't see how we could get that close. Certainly not to the whole group at a public event, which is the only time they are all likely to appear together. Not that I have any qualms about the action itself. I served as a sniper long enough. As a practical matter, having only one competent shot places limits on the grandiosity of our ambitions. Something which Michel and Antoine seem to have forgotten about."