by Eric Flint
"One of my companions knows some Latin, and so does our landlord's wife." Yossie hesitated. Paulette Adducci had explained that the reason she knew some Latin was because she was Catholic. The explanation didn't make much sense to Yossie, but he suspected that Thomas might be as bothered by the Adducci's Catholicism as by his own Judaism. "She has been trying to teach English to my sister and the other women who are with us."
Someone in the crowd interrupted them. "Someone's coming!"
There was a murmur of voices as they tried to make out who was there. Thomas complained that his eyesight wasn't what it had been, while Yossie couldn't see over the crowd. Two or three men on horseback became three and then two Scots mercenaries and an American as they got closer.
As the horsemen rode up to the crowd, Ron Koch came out of the office. "Men," he began. "You know that we have something of value. Here at the mine, we have tons of iron, and in town we have other things. You also know about the war, about the armies that are loose in the land. We need to worry about how to defend ourselves against anyone who might try to take what we have."
"The man is right," Thomas muttered. "If the Imperials find this place, they will strip it bare."
Yossie nodded, mildly annoyed that he had missed some of what Ron was saying. " . . . so I will let him speak." Ron finished, turning to one of the Scots.
"Who of you has before fired a gun?" the man asked.
Thomas raised his hand, as did several others. Yossie had never held a gun, but neither had most of the others.
"These Americans guns, they are strange, but they are wonderful," the Scot continued. "We have here one you can try. We can use it for practice so we waste not powder nor shot.
"This last week, we saw a few small attacks on the north and east of Grantville. They were stragglers and foragers and we beat them. So long as small bands are all we see, Grantville is safe.
"The trouble is, some of them get away. If they speak to their officers about Grantville, we may face a tercio. That would be two or three thousand men, half with guns. These Americans, they think they can win against such a force. Perhaps they can. It seems that every American man has at least one gun."
Yossie nodded. His elderly landlord Randolph Adducci had at least two guns that he was aware of.
"To be sure we win, we need to prepare. If the raiders come here to the mine, you will have to defend. If a tercio comes, every man must be ready to help. So try this toy gun. Learn how it works."
The American stopped the Scotsman and said something to him. While he waited, Yossie recalled the text he had studied the night before with Rabbi Yakov. Yossie had complained that the opening chapters of the Torah portion for the week were some of the dullest in the whole Bible. The old rabbi's response was to point out the passage giving instructions for blowing the signal trumpets.
"When an enemy comes into your land and you rise to war against him, sound a stuttering call on the trumpets," Yakov had translated. "You say that Parshas Behaaloscha begins with dull commandments to the Levites, but think. From this one dull mitzvah, we can infer that we are obliged to organize for self defense." Now, it seemed that they were doing exactly that.
For the remainder of the afternoon, they took turns trying to shoot holes in a paper target. When it was his turn, Thomas insisted on learning how the toy gun worked. It didn't use powder, so there was no smoke or flame when a shot was fired. "Ah!" Thomas exclaimed, after the Scotsman had explained that the gun used air. "It is like shooting a cork out of a bellows!"
"Aye," the Scotsman said. "But the balls, they are tiny."
Yossie held back while Germans took their turns with the American gun. He understood his obligation to aid in defending the community, but he had no desire to violate the Christian law that Jews were forbidden to bear arms.
The American eventually noticed that Yossie was hanging back and pointed at him. "You, come," he said, gesturing with one hand while he held the gun in the other. "Shoot."
As Yossie nervously stepped forward to take the gun, one of the Scots looked at him sharply, and then turned to the American as if he was about to say something. Yossie was certain that the man had recognized that he was a Jew, but at the last moment, a baffled expression came over the Scotsman's face and he said nothing.
Yossie's attempts to use the gun were no more successful than those of the Germans, but having never touched a gun before, his failure didn't bother him
Twenty-seventh of Sivan, 5391 (June 27, 1631)
Yossie's second full week at the mine went quickly, but it was filled with anxiety. His traveling companions Yitzach ben Zvi and Moische ben Avram had left town nearly two weeks ago. Every day of the past week, he had come home hoping for their return.
Yossie's anxiety had been increased by the rumors he heard. Stories of troop movements to the north seemed to grow more urgent with each passing day. A week ago, there had been a few families a day arriving at the refugee center at the Grantville Fairground. Now, Yossie had heard that there were tens of families a day. Now, there were stories of an army approaching from the north.
Friday afternoon, the bus passed two groups of refugees in town. It was easy to see that they were new arrivals. Each group had an American guide, and they looked as disoriented as Yossie had been only a few weeks earlier.
When the bus left the center of town to follow Buffalo Creek toward Deborah, Yossie saw what he took to be another refugee group ahead. As refugees went, they looked well off. One man was on horseback and they had a two-horse wagon and some livestock. After a moment, Yossie recognized Yitzach and Moische.
"Stop the bus!" he yelled, grabbing his lunch pail. He leapt out as soon as the driver opened the door.
"Yossie!" Yitzach called, as Yossie ran back toward his friends.
"I expected you on Tuesday, what took you so long?"
"It's partly my fault," Yitzach said. "I wanted to visit Kissingen."
"We were worried. There are rumors of an army coming."
"I know," Yitzach said. "Herr Gutkind of Hildburghausen told us of force coming south in the Ilm valley. Do you think Grantville can stand against a tercio?"
"The Americans seem confident." Yossie turned to walk beside the wagon. "To be sure they will win they want everyone to learn to shoot a gun. We do some shooting practice at the mine every day."
"So now you are becoming a soldier?" Moische arched his eyebrows.
Yossie laughed. "Hardly. Most of our practice shooting is with toy guns, they call them bee-bee guns, and they shoot a ball the size of a grain of wheat. Tell me about your trip!"
"Taking glassware from Grantville was a wonderful idea," Yitzach said. "But wait until my wife can hear as well. Right now, I'd better round up our cattle."
"Only four?" Yossie asked as Yitzach rode away.
"We sold the others to Herr Mobley," Moische said. "Now that there are only two cows, Yitzach can be a lazy herdsman. Climb up, the wagon is light."
"I see four animals."
"The calves will follow their mothers," Moische said. "We had three more cows with calves, but we lost a calf on the road." He paused. "Reb Yitz is right, though. I want my wife to hear our tales. Tell me about Grantville."
"I am working at the mine, apprenticed to a Saxon smith."
"Apprenticed?" Moische said. "Since when is a Jew an apprentice, and to a Saxon, no less? And aren't you a little old for an apprenticeship?"
"He doesn't know I'm a Jew, and I don't think the miner's guild cares."
"The miners guild? Since when have guilds permitted Jews?"
"The UMWA is a very strange guild, but yes, I am a member now."
For the next few minutes, Yossie talked about his work at the mine smithy. After they had turned off the main road onto Deborah, Moische changed the subject.
"Reb Guildsman Yosef," he said, only half mockingly, "please tell me how my wife is doing."
"She is well," Yossie said. "Frau Adducci is working hard to teach the women English, and she s
eems eager to learn German."
"How is Herr Adducci?"
Yossie frowned. It had been obvious that Randolph Adducci and his wife were not in full agreement about taking in a refugee group. She seemed convinced that she was doing God's will, and that the three empty bedrooms that her children had once occupied were there for the needs of the homeless. Her husband, on the other hand, had acted quite unhappy about the strangers who had moved into his house.
"Randolph Adducci is still cross much of the time," Yossie said. "but things are better. I think he was unhappy before the Ring of Fire. He is old, and it seems that he is ill. He complains that his feet hurt."
"He is sick?" Moische asked.
"It was only when we started eating with the Adduccis that we found out. Frau Adducci can eat anything, but Herr Adducci must avoid all honey and sweet fruits, and he must have a set amount of bread or flour in every meal."
"You are eating with the Adduccis?"
"Yes. Frau Adducci liked the smell of Chava's cooking, and so they began to work together in the big kitchen. Chava is happy not to be confined to the small kitchen that the Adduccis call the bar."
"But how does she manage to keep things kosher?"
"She's very strict about kashrus, so she boiled all of the Adducci cooking pots and silverware, and she only uses your crockery at the table. Chava says that Frau Adducci keeps a very clean kitchen. She doesn't know that we keep kosher. I think she sees the care Chava takes as just a foreign kind of cleanliness. To her, it is just one more strange difference between the American world and our world.
"I think it was eating together that helped Herr Adducci. I don't think he'll ever learn German, but he gave me this lunch pail."
"What is it?" Moische asked.
"It is for carrying my noon meal to the mine. Herr Adducci was a miner back when the mine here in Deborah was still open."
When they reached the Adducci house, they had time for only the briefest of greetings. Their first priority was to take the horses and cattle to pasture. They'd gotten permission to use a fenced field above the upper village for their goats before they moved to Deborah. The sloping field had once been an open mine pit, or so they'd been told, but nothing visible to Yossie and his friends hinted at that history.
Moische's wife Frumah was outside looking over the wagon when they got back from the pasture. "What are the barrels?" she asked.
"Wine from Kissingen," Moische said, pointing to one barrel, "and grain," he added, pointing to the others. "We came east with a full load, but we sold the rest in town, along with three cows and two calves."
"You went all the way to Kissingen?" Frumah asked. "Was that prudent?"
"We thought so at the time," Moische said. "On the way home, we thought we might have made a mistake. The rumors of war seem to be chasing us. Where are the others?"
"In the kitchen. Shabbos is coming and you men had best get ready."
"And what of Rav Yakov?"
"He is teaching at the Grantville cheder, what they call the elementary school. He teaches German to some of the Americans. He is only supposed to work there for two hours after the noon meal every day, but they have a library. He should be here soon." Frumah paused. "Enough talk. You men put things away and get ready."
By sunset, the wagon had been unloaded and parked in the vacant half of the Adducci garage. Everyone had bathed and changed into their good clothes, and the men had convened for their prayers.
Worship was difficult in the Adducci household. They didn't want the Adduccis to know that they were Jews, so they said their prayers in the bedroom that Moische and Frumah were using.
The crucifixes in every room of the Adducci household posed a second problem. Plain Christian crosses were bad enough, but these had statues of the Christian God on them, and it was impossible to see them as anything less than a blatant violation of the commandment forbidding graven images. They covered the crucifixes when they could, but they were careful to leave them exposed whenever the Adduccis might see them.
There were ten people around the dinner table that night, Paulette and Randolph Adducci, Rabbi Yakov, Yitzach Kissinger, his wife Chava and daughter Gitele, Moische Frankfurter and his wife Frumah, and Yossie and his sister Basiya.
Eating with the Adduccis was awkward, and the fact that it was a Sabbath dinner made it doubly so. They couldn't chant Kiddush properly over the wine to start their Sabbath dinner. That would reveal who they were. At every meal, the Adduccis added to their discomfort by saying a prayer in the name of the the Christian God before they ate.
Language at the table was another problem. When Randolph Adducci had difficulty understanding what they said, he would complain that he couldn't follow their jabber.
"How was your trip?" Paulette asked.
"Wir, we go," Yitzach started. "Montag, to Schleüsingen we go by Schwarza way. Zweitag to Meiningen."
"Speak English," Randolph insisted.
Paulette sighed. "Dear, if you would just try. Isaac said they went on the Schwarza road to Schleüsingen a week ago Monday, and then to Meiningen on Tuesday."
"Where is this Slushing place?" Randolph asked.
"Dear," Paulette said. "it is a town west of here. Am I right, Moses?"
"Ya, und Meiningen is more west."
It took several more rounds to learn that the travelers had reached Neustadt on Wednesday. On Thursday, Yitzach had taken the wagon onward to Kissingen. Meanwhile Moische stayed in Neustadt finding a good price for the glassware they'd brought from Grantville.
"In Neustadt, I hear of Soldaten," Moische said. "So, wir, we go here on south way, Königshofen und Hildburghausen. In Hildburghausen, I hear Soldaten make one tercio. They coming south."
"What's a terci?" Randolph asked.
"A tercio. Three Tausend Soldaten," Yakov answered. "One Tausend with guns. Two Tausend with Speissen."
"With what?" Paulette asked?
"A Speisse. A Pfahl mit a spitze," Yakov answered, pantomiming a two handed thrust with a pike.
"Spears," Randolph said. "They'd protect the muskets while they reload. Where is this tercio thing?"
"In north, coming south," Moische answered. "Zwei Tage, a Woche."
"Two days or a week!" Paulette said, looking worried. "Can Grantville handle that many?"
"Probably," Randolph said. "Our guns are a damn sight better than anything these krauts have, and the emergency committee is on the ball."
As the Adduccis began speaking to each other, their English was too fast for Yossie to follow.
"People are going to get hurt," Paulette said. "You heard what happened to Dan Frost and Harry Lefferts."
"Damn, I wish I could do something." Randolph said. "If my damned feet didn't hurt so."
Paulette frowned. "Calm down, Randolph."
"Calm down?" he said, turning red. "There's a God damned army coming this way!" He paused, frowning. "Paulette, you phone Tony and Bernadette after dinner, see what they know about this."
Yitzach leaned toward Yossie. "What are they saying?" he asked, in a low tone.
Yossie had no answer, and as the Adduccis' discussion continued, he understood less and less of what they said.
After he'd eaten, Yossie and Moische went out to say the grace after meals under the porch light. Bentsching privately to himself drove questions of the approaching army from his mind, but it intensified another burden. Chanting the Birkas quietly after the noon meal at the mine had not bothered him, but the Sabbath Grace was different. From the opening words of Psalm 126 to the closing prayer for peace, Yossie ached to chant the long prayer with his companions around the table.
"So," Moische said, after they had pocketed their bentschers. "We will soon see what these Americans can do. You seem less worried about our news than our hosts. Why?"
"I told you about the shooting practice at the mine. I have seen the Americans shoot. Bang, bang, bang, with no pause to reload, and every shot hits the center of the target. That was with a gun that the Ameri
cans said was a toy. How did you lose a calf?"
"We gave it to a refugee family."
"You just gave it away?"
"I was young, now I am old," Moische said, quoting part of the prayer they had just said.
Nothing more needed to be said. Yossie knew the Hebrew by heart. " . . . and I have never looked on one who is just and forsaken and let his children go begging for bread."
After a pause, Moische continued in a wry tone. "Besides, they might have robbed us if we hadn't given them the calf."
"Moses!" Paulette called, from inside. "Telephone."
Yossie followed his companion inside, curious. He'd seen a telephone used several times, but he'd never used one himself. Moische looked awkward as he took the strange instrument from Paulette, and for the next several minutes he listened and then spoke, telling again the stories he'd heard on the road.
After he handed the telephone back to Paulette, he looked dazed. "That was odd."
"Who did you talk to?" Frumah asked.
"That woman Bernadette, Paulette's daughter. And someone else, an American. They wanted to hear what we had heard about the soldiers."
"Did they tell you anything?"
"Yes. They already know they will face a tercio. They think it will attack Badenburg soon. That is on the road from the Ilm valley to Grantville. She said that we should not worry. They have been expecting something like this to happen, and they have been preparing for it."
Seventh of Tamuz, 5391 (July 7, 1631)
Most of the week following the battle at Badenburg was uneventful. Yossie's work at the mine continued uninterrupted. Yitzach and Moische did set off on another mercantile trip west. After the success of their first trip, Moische had decided to send a letter to his cousin Shlomo in Frankfurt, inviting him to join them.
The news of the victory and of the huge number of prisoners was certainly interesting. Every evening, Yossie and Yakov shared what they had learned at the mine and at the elementary school, but the news had little direct effect on their lives.
Monday, a week after the battle, Yossie got on the bus expecting things to continue as they had. Thomas was happy to see him and began talking about the celebration the town had after the battle.
