Mary looked down.
"No, you have no reason to be embarrassed. I don't bear you any grudge, for it. It is just the reality of political power. If I put myself within Gustav Adolf's control, he would be a fool not to grasp the chance to use my presence as leverage against my father. Against... never mind. And the king of Sweden has demonstrated, quite consistently, that he is no fool. I will go into the USE only if I am taken captive here in Neuburg and carried there. Tied as tightly as you and Frau Dreeson were tied when the Leuchtenberger dumped you out of the barrels before me."
"Then," Mary said, "you will not go there. Wherever you go when you leave here, I will go with you. Not on to Grantville with the English Ladies. As—as a kind of guarantee of our good faith."
"As, I will," Veronica added. "We cannot leave you alone. I will stay too." She cast around for a reason that would not make her seem a sentimental fool. "Henry would certainly not approve if I left you here alone." Then, more slowly, "If Annalise were here, I would not want everyone else to go away and leave her by herself." She shook herself. "And, of course, I can't leave Mary by herself, either. I'm sure that both Mike and Admiral Simpson would be quite irritated with me if I did such a thing."
"Ronnie," Mary said, "I hate to tell you this, but you do not have the 'dutiful and compliant down-time woman deferring to the menfolk' act down anywhere near as pat as you have the Abbess of Quedlinburg when you need her."
"Abbess of Quedlinburg?" Maria Anna asked.
Since Mary Ward still had the rest of the English ladies upstairs, they started reminiscing about Magdeburg. The Hesse-Kassel soiree. Princess Kristina. The Abbess of Quedlinburg. And, somehow, the women's college that would be opening there.
Mary Simpson had serious doubts that Maria Anna, if and when she returned to some variety of being an archduchess, would be inclined to fund a college located in a Lutheran Damenstift, but the general principle of serious fundraising was that one just never knew. And, after all, there were also Catholic convents within the borders of the USE. She managed to get in a few words about the proposed normal school, as well.
* * * *
Cavriani came back with a packet of safe conducts. For Mary Ward and the remainder of the English Ladies, only.
That was fine, of course, since they were the only occupants of Egli's house who would be crossing the bridge today. But a little surprising. How did he know it?
Mary Ward did not want to leave the archduchess behind. She did not want to leave Frau Simpson and Frau Dreeson behind.
As formidable as she was, in the ensuing test of wills, Maria Anna prevailed. Hitting below the belt, possibly, by reminding the mother superior that one of the things that the Jesuitesses would have to take, if they were to be true Jesuitesses, was that additional vow of obedience to the pope, so they had better start practicing. But, then, it would be a pity to waste her own Jesuit education. She was aided, of course, by the deadline for crossing contained in the safe conducts.
* * * *
Mary Ward had simply expected to cross the bridge carrying their papers and start walking toward Nürnberg. With all the attendant hazards that might involve, if the Swede was sending still more troops south to reinforce Banér. Which she did not know. If he was, it had not been reported in any of the out-of-date newspapers they had been able to find.
Of all things, she had not expected to see Father Rader and Father Drexel waiting for her. Father Rader looked exhausted; he was not a young man. "We have come," Father Drexel said, "somewhat the long way around. By way of Regensburg and Amberg." He handed her a piece of paper. A radio message, he said. From Grantville.
"You are expected. Kircher."
That was all. It was enough.
Father Drexel smiled. "He sent the wagon and team, as well. Prepaid. With a sufficiently large number of certifications signed by people in sufficiently high places that not even General Banér has dared to requisition them. So. Shall we be on our way? He backed the team and wagon from where it had been halted, rather skillfully. As he did so, he handed a newspaper to Leopold Cavriani. "The most recent I have been able to purchase on this side of the bridge. I thought that you might appreciate it."
Father Drexel looked at his left hand with surprise. He was still holding something. A small packet. Carefully, he placed it inside his robe
* * * *
Cavriani obtained a copy of a newspaper from Frankfurt am Main. Frankfurt was much more cosmopolitan than Nürnberg, so the paper had a lot of international news. The lead article was on the Spanish Netherlands. The cease-fire was holding. The emperor was negotiating.
Cavriani took a closer look at the article. Somewhere behind this reporter, there was a fairly sophisticated military analyst. The level of Gustav Adolf's weaponry—more advanced than anyone else's to be sure, but still not enough, in terms of his main forces, to end any siege quickly without the ironclads and their guns. Evaluation of the flashy weapons that he did have, such as airplanes, being not enough to make a decisive difference. Someone had been reading about the American Civil War and knew that sieges took a long time then, also.
Then some discussion of whether Gustav Adolf would have anything to gain by such a series of sieges. The reporter, or the man behind him, concluded that Gustav Adolf had already, in regard to Denmark and France, gained his major objectives. Denmark had been forced into a new Union of Kalmar. There would be, in time, a marriage between Princess Kristina and Prince Ulrik.
Ah, Cavriani thought. That would, what did Ed Piazza say, oh, yes, frost Axel Oxenstierna. Frost him but good.
The French had been decisively defeated at a place called Ahrensbök, near Luebeck. As soon as the news arrived, Gustavus' administrator in Mainz had struck west, largely on his own initiative. The emperor said that he considered Nils Brahe second only to Torstensson as a strategist among the Swedish officers. Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar had pulled his regiments back into Alsace and the Breisgau. Brahe had gone all the way to the border of Lorraine. The USE had a new Province of the Upper Rhine. West of the Rhine. There was little question that Gustav Adolf would force a punitive treaty on the French, with huge reparations.
The reporter asked whether, in view of the above, the Swedish king really had any desire to let Don Fernando drag him into a long, slow, bloody and protracted campaign in the Netherlands. Particularly in view of the big problems looming for the USE to the east. The article ended with a rhetorical question. Was it not likely that the king/emperor would like to settle the conflict in the Netherlands as soon as possible?
Yes, Cavriani thought, it seemed likely. He wondered who had planted the article. Nasi? Stearns? If so, Mike or Rebecca? Don Fernando himself? Fredrik Hendrik?
Leopold re-read the article. What had Ed Piazza called him once? A "foreign policy junkie."
* * * *
"To the Spanish Netherlands," Maria Anna said, as they waited for Cavriani to come back. She looked down at her bandaged hands. Sore, so sore. She was sitting in Neuburg. Hundreds of miles to go. Not much of her money left. On the strength of a note that Don Fernando had written months ago. How much of a fool was she making of herself?
Mary and Veronica just looked at her. That was—um, a long way to walk. Farther, somehow, than either of them had expected when they promised to stay with her.
How did she intend to get there, anyway?
And why was she going?
* * * *
Leopold put his foot down. He was not leaving Neuburg right away. They were not leaving Neuburg right away. Any of them. Maria Anna's hands had to heal. One of them was slightly infected and inflamed, and required regular cleaning with boiled water. Plus, he thought, considerable prayer, if the infection were not to spread into the arm. If it did...
He watched it very carefully; so did Mary Simpson. They both wished that they had some sulfa, chloramphenicol, anything. Frau Simpson's feet also had to heal again.
And, he declared, they would ride, not walk; ride if he had to bring horses from
fifty miles away. Veronica accepted this dictum with minimum good grace.
They would, he said, wait at least a week before trying to move out of Neuburg. In spite of all the risks of the war around them. In spite of Maria Anna's anxiety that General Banér might find out that she was there.
Which, since he had been forced to used Banér's radio, he shared to some extent. The very private and personal message his runner should have transmitted to Piazza and Stearns by way of Banér's radio had been so vague, though, that he wondered if Ed Piazza himself could make any sense of it at all once he deciphered it, much less anyone else.
"The other three are with the rest. I am with them. L." That had been, of course, the message that he had sent from Reichertshofen. It had been the only way he had of letting them know that Mary and Veronica, the archduchess, and the English ladies had escaped together and that he was traveling with them.
He was sure that the packet he had sent with Drexel would make them less happy. The news that although the English Ladies were en route to Grantville, the other three were at present remaining in Neuburg for some time. Even ciphered, he would not risk that going through Banér's radio.
Not, Leopold was sure, that the general was not a fine man. But he fought to win. The archduchess would be a tempting prize.
Mary Simpson had cleaned Maria Anna's left hand again. For the last two days, she had been feverish, the red streaks starting to expand from her hand up her lower arm.
Cavriani risked one more radio message. The runner took it to Banér's camp again.
"Packet of sulfa powder needed ASAP. Will wait. L."
The runner brought it back; Ed Piazza's radioed reply had instructed the young medic from Grantville who was with Banér's army to make it available to him at once; some of the precious chloramphenicol as well. No questions asked.
* * * *
Meanwhile, Leopold and Egli continued their patrols of the gates; their conversations with sentries; their casual questioning of refugees from different villages along the route from Schleissheim to Neuburg. No one had see him. There was no sign of Marc.
* * * *
Cavriani sent the runner north again; three days into the week, the runner came back. He had been called to Nürnberg, he said. The response to Herr Cavriani's message, through General Banér's operator, had been only: "Go to Nürnberg and wait." He assumed this meant that there were additional messages for Herr Cavriani there that the senders did not want transmitted through General Banér. He had traveled both ways à diligence. He had not needed to wait long. Cavriani paid him accordingly. The packet was unusually thick. The runner brought the current Nürnberg newspaper, too.
Something for everyone. An envelope for each of them. Ed Piazza had understood him. Both times. And more sulfa powder, a few more doses of chloramphenicol.
* * * *
Mary Simpson cleaned Maria Anna's hand, sprinkled it with the powder, rebandaged it, made her take one of the pills. Cavriani didn't give her the envelope until that was done.
Maria Anna looked at her two messages. Who would be radioing her from Grantville? Who, there, knew that she was here? As to how? She eyed Cavriani with considerable suspicion. Open them, open them.
"The hills are alive."
She gasped. Doña Mencia! The identifier they had agreed upon between them, one evening when her attendant had been wrapping the lumps on her swollen, bumpy, knees.
"In Grantville." Was she a prisoner, a hostage?
"Going to my brother." So, no. Maria Anna sighed with relief.
Now, the other message.
"Go to Basel. Spanish Road. F."
She looked at it, a little confused. How was Don Fernando able to use the USE radio? Well, he was negotiating with Gustav Adolf through Fredrik Hendrik in Amsterdam. Everybody knew that. It had been in the last newspaper, the one that Father Drexel brought, a long report. But the negotiations had been stalled.
Nonetheless, she felt better. She was not a fool, after all, to have relied on that months-old note. He expected her to come; if she got to Basel, he would somehow arrange safe travel to the Spanish Netherlands via the Spanish Road. That made sense.
She looked at the others. "When we leave, we will go to Basel."
* * * *
The news in the Nürnberg paper did not make her feel better, though.
Serious Illness of the Holy Roman Emperor. Inflammation of Choleric Humors Feared.
Maria Anna excused herself. While the others discussed their messages and the news, she prayed. With tears, clutching her prayer book. "Papa, Papa."
Finally, she found some comfort. "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord." O, Papa. Mama, why can't I be there with you? Papa.
* * * *
"Leopold," Mary Simpson said the day before they were planning to leave, "you are worrying. What is bothering you?'
Cavriani smiled. Not cherubically, as was his custom. Rather sheepishly.
"I appear to have misplaced Marc. My only son. In a duchy in which the duke is running amok, a war has broken out around the appointed rendezvous points, and, in general, there is chaos." He drew his brows together. "I really don't know what my wife Potentiana is going to say about this. She is very fond of Marc."
For the first time since Mary had met him, Cavriani seemed less than fully sure of himself. "For that matter," he added, "so am I."
Chapter 53
Lux Veritatis
Magdeburg
"I am very glad to see you." Mike Stearns meant it.
"I hopped a ride in the truck bringing Doña Mencia," said Ed Piazza, "since it was coming by way of Magdeburg in any case. We haven't built any improved roads that make it easy to get from Grantville to the Netherlands on a diagonal; it pretty much has to follow two sides of a rectangle. We dropped her off at John Simpson's house."
"Simpson? Not the palace?"
"She seemed a little queasy about the palace, even if Gustav Adolf isn't in residence at the moment. Bedmar is her brother, but I get the sense that she hasn't had any way of knowing just how close we are to getting a settlement of the situation in the northwest. There's no one there to entertain her, in any case."
"What's your sense of her?"
"Shrewd." Ed paused for a minute. "Very much tending to keep her mouth shut, at least with us. Not at all forthcoming about the extent to which she was, or maybe was not, involved in the archduchess' decision to abandon the Bavarian match. Even less forthcoming about future plans."
"Of course," Francisco Nasi commented, "as you say, she is not aware of how far the negotiations have come."
"What does she know?" Mike asked.
"Since she crossed the Bavarian border at Passau, no more than any other member of the public who buys a newspaper now and then," Ed answered. "It has been several weeks since she has seen the archduchess. Except, of course, she knows perfectly well that Vervaux brought the young dukes of Bavaria to Amberg and that, as of last week, they were still in the collegium."
"I am honestly very surprised," Don Francisco commented, "that Duke Ernst has been able to hold that information quiet. I myself do not know exactly who is aware of it. But few people, very few people."
"Until you just said that," Ed said, "I did not know it myself. Surmised it, true. But I did not know."
Nasi looked at him. He hated being trumped.
Duke Hermann of Hesse-Rothenburg smiled at Sattler. Who now owed him a bet.
* * * *
Mike waited them out. It was Ed who changed the subject. "Well, catch me up to date, will you. Grantville is a bit off the beaten track, these days. How are things coming with the Prince Formerly Known as the Cardinal-Infante? Whatever he is calling himself these days?"
Mike leaned back, stretched his arms, hunched his back. He had been sitting at this desk too long. "We're getting there, I think. A re-united Netherlands should come out of it, if they ever bring the negotiations to a conclusion. Rebecca and Fredrik Hendrik go back and forth
, back and forth. Consisting basically of what in our world was the Netherlands, what you call the United Provinces, as well as Belgium. Meaning that Don Fernando's going to swallow the prince-bishoprics up there, Liege for a certainty. He can't afford not to have its industry. With maybe some territories in the immediate proximity added as well. What we knew as Luxemburg very likely."
"What does that leave for Fredrik Hendrik?" Ed asked. "Anything?"
"Oh, hell yes," Mike said. "Particularly since East Frisia and Bentheim have petitioned to join the United Provinces rather than be absorbed into the USE. Gustav Adolf is in an impossible military situation facing Don Fernando, who has his army positioned on the defense in excellent fortifications. But Don Fernando is in just as impossible a one facing Fredrik Hendrik, who has his army holed up in Overijssel in fortified positions that are every bit as good. With the USE controlling those three northernmost provinces, the Stadtholder has a friendly rear area. Even with help from Spain, which isn't likely to be arriving given the current situation along the Spanish Road, Don Fernando could never manage to dig him out. There's simply no way, even if the USE never gets involved directly in the fighting, that he could overrun the Dutch up there. And with an ongoing USE naval presence in the Zuider Zee, he has no hope of winning the siege of Amsterdam either."
"But," Don Francisco interrupted, "consider the other side. Fredrik Hendrik faces an equally impossible situation. He has no hope of driving the Spanish out, either. And if they settle for a division of the Netherlands based on who controls what, then he winds up being the ruler of a dinky little country with no major cities or ports except Amsterdam, which is isolated from the rest. Unless the emperor agrees to let East Frisia go peacefully—Emden isn't a major port, but it's not a bad small port. Don Fernando winds up with almost everything in the Netherlands that counts. Fredrik Hendrik will have good agriculture, but no industry and not much industrial potential."