* * * *
Ulm
To think that he had been considering settling down; becoming staid and middle aged. It was all a matter of predestination, of course, Leopold Cavriani realized. Clearly, God did not want him to become a respectable Genevan homebody yet.
He gave the ladies a summary of what he had heard. Ulm, he reminded them, was a really beautiful city. Yes, they could go sight-seeing and shopping for lightweight items for which they felt an impelling need. Not, however, until he arranged for them to have a couple of husky escorts, which he could and would arrange. The city was packed with refugees, which meant that there would also be a good supply of criminals hoping to prey upon shoppers. Tourists were, under the circumstances, in very short supply.
He was going to take a few days to plan. That had been the whole problem with the escape from Munich: no one had given him a chance to plan it. He had had no opportunity to coordinate anything, which had resulted in blisters and the absurd possibility that an archduchess might contract blood poisoning and die from pushing a wheelbarrow without gloves on her hands. He was still indignant about that, when he stopped to think. What was a facilitator for, if not to facilitate the projects of others? No, they had all made their own plans, leaving him to chase after them, without Marc.
He worried briefly about Marc. Then, reminded himself firmly that these things were in the hands of a just and merciful God.
This time, though....
The old pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the Jakobsweg, would be a possibility. Going south from Ulm; Oberdischingen, Biberach, Bad Waldsee, Weingarten, to Constance; seventy-five miles, more or less. They could cross the lake by boat and then continue on the pilgrimage route to Basel. It had certain advantages, the main one being that it was forty or so miles further east of Bernhard and Horn's current theaters of operation than either of the others. The disadvantage, of course, was that it was also that many miles closer to Bavaria. Although Duke Maximilian was probably focused on Ingolstadt at the moment, he was undoubtedly capable of thinking about more than one thing at the same time.
Hmm.
Leopold started with the thought that Ulm was packed with refugees and travelers, many of whom undoubtedly, like himself, would rather be somewhere else because they had relatives, or business, or.... Many of whom, undoubtedly, the Ulm city government would rather have go somewhere else, so that the city's granaries would not have to feed them during a siege, to reduce the risks of disease that came with overcrowding.
Surely, it should be possible to bring these common interests together. Not himself, of course. One did not wish to be conspicuous. But if one just mentioned something, here and there. He set out on another set of visits to his business colleagues. There were a few lunches and suppers at which possibilities were mentioned. Common interests emerged. Occasionally, he would insert a concrete suggestion.
Sunday, of course, was a day of rest. A day for attending church; for family dinners to which, of course, men might invite their friends. If their friends were also business associates, why, that was only natural. If some of those business associates held positions on the city council, that was how city government worked.
By noon on Monday, Cavriani was feeling much better.
* * * *
The convoy left on Tuesday morning, with an ultimate goal of Strassburg. It included approximately three hundred civilians who had found themselves in Ulm but who really wanted to be in various locations to the west and south of Ulm. Civilians, many of them well-armed, who could afford to pay to get there. There were approximately two hundred more refugees who could not afford to pay, but whose departure was aided by a generous grant from the city council, which also gave each of them three days' worth of rations. Not generous or luxurious rations, but adequate, and certainly far less than those people would have eaten if they had remained in the city all winter. About fifty commercial freight wagons with their drivers, some with private guards. Safe-conducts from the imperial city for everyone concerned. Three full, reliable, companies of professional guards—those had been the largest expense, the reason why the fee for each paying civilian was comparatively high. They were not all trained to work with one another, but the men were experienced. Overall, it was a sufficiently large group that occasional small military companies moving through Swabia to forage would not be inclined to attack it.
* * * *
Raudegen was now the captain of one of these guard companies. He still believed that he recognized the archduchess. He still did not understand why he had received no replies to his urgent messages. His military experience, however, more than qualified him for this simple job when he outlined it to the caravan organizer. He merely omitted his latest employment under Duke Maximilian from the resumé he supplied.
Cavriani was not the organizer of the convoy. All that he had done, as far as the public was concerned, was pay the necessary fee for himself and his relatives to travel with it. This, he thought to himself with great satisfaction, was precisely as it should be.
He paid their way to Donaueschingen. They might need to continue on to Strasbourg, if it turned out not to be feasible to reach Basel; but, if so, he could pay the extra later. He could always ascribe a change in plan to news received in Donaueschingen.
He intended to spend those travel days thinking about the next stage of the trip. The time spent in Ulm had delayed them, certainly, but in the long run, planning was almost always a good investment. Improvisation could sometimes bring quite flashy results. His cousin Giuseppi was good at improvisation. Leopold preferred advance planning, given the chance. It was a matter of temperament, perhaps.
* * * *
Cavriani was feeling reasonably pleased with himself when the convoy moved out of Ulm. Five miles down the road, less than half way to Ehingen, he was less so. Maria Anna, drawing her horse near to his, spoke softly. And in Italian.
"Herr Cavriani. I am concerned about the captain of one of the guard companies. The one riding foremost now. He looks very much like a Bavarian military officer I saw several times during the wedding procession, between Passau and Freising. I cannot guarantee that it is the same man. I am by no means certain. But I believe that I have seen him before, since we left Neuburg. Once in Rennertshofen. Once since then. It may be coincidence. He may just be traveling in the same direction that we are. But I thought that I would at least mention it."
Cavriani had no way of knowing. At Ehingen, however, shortly before noon, he advised Maria Anna, Mary, and Veronica to drop back towards the rear. Then, in the midst of the town, they turned into a side street. By that time, the front of the procession, with the captain of whom Maria Anna was suspicious, was well out of sight in the turns and twists of the streets. Circling a few blocks within the walls of the town to let the remainder of the convoy clear out, they left by the southern rather than the western gate, cut down to Biberach, and stayed there for the night.
From Biberach, they followed the valley of the Riss, the old pilgrim route, to Constance. Passing through Weingarten, they spent the second night in Ravensburg. Cavriani was developing a positive affection for well-fortified imperial cities. Although a sincere Genevan patriot himself, he had often tended to regard other city-states as nuisances, impeding trade as much as they advanced it with their stubborn guildsmen and obstreperous city councils. For travelers, though, a conveniently located series of cities was certainly a blessing in these troubled times.
The third day, in the afternoon, they sold the horses and caught a fishing boat. The fishermen agreed to take them across Lake Constance, not directly, but to Kreuzlingen. Fischers Fritz fischt frische Fische, the man who bargained with them joked: "fisher's Fritz fishes fresh fishes," a classic tongue twister of the Bodensee. From Kreuzlingen, they walked along the south shore of the lake via Ermatingen, then cut over toward Schaffhausen, where Mary and Maria Anna greatly admired the waterfalls of the Rhine.
They were not hurrying, since they had to take Mary's feet
into consideration. It was, basically, just a matter of walking the rest of the way to Basel, along the Rhine, through the cantons of the Swiss Confederacy. The route was not strenuous; the remaining distance was only sixty miles. Cavriani heaved a sigh of relief.
* * * *
In Donaueschingen, Raudegen was swearing mightily to himself. The woman whom he thought to be the archduchess had disappeared from sight the first day out. He did not know precisely when or where she and her companions had turned away, or which direction they had taken.
And the news, brought by courier from Ulm, was that Ingolstadt had fallen. His only choice was to go on with the convoy. It was, at least, a paying job, and it might eventually lead him to another, more lucrative, one.
Chapter 59
Augusta Vindelicum
Kloster Lechfeld near Untermeitingen
Marc was thinking about Augsburg. In 1629, the Bavarians and imperials had forced most of the city's Lutherans into exile; their churches had first been closed and then pulled down. In 1632, the city had been held for Ferdinand II by a Colonel Bredau, with four thousand five hundred men. Gustav Adolf had taken it in April. Chancellor Oxenstierna's cousin Bengt, backed by Count Georg Friedrich von Hohenlohe as the Swedish regent of the Swabian Imperial Circle, did the same to the Catholic citizens before the USE constitution instituted a policy of separation of church and state in the fall of 1633.
Neither set of overlords had tolerated Calvinists or smaller religious groups, of course, and Swabia was not yet a province of the USE. It wouldn't be until it had been, as Chancellor Oxenstierna had phrased it at the Congress of Copenhagen, "pacified." Augsburg was still under Gustav's direct administration. Marc wasn't precisely sure what the religious situation might be. According to the newspaper he had bought the night they spent there, the Augsburg city council was now floating suggestions that the two confessions should be granted parity—that the council's right of cuius regio should include the legalization of both at once. That would mean that both Catholics and Lutherans would have same rights in every aspect of life. Neither group was talking about the rights of Calvinists, even now. He made a little face.
Susanna looked at him. "Stop it. You have been muttering and grumbling and making faces ever since we left Neuburg."
"I don't like the fact that by going south to Untermeitingen, we are only forty miles west of Munich. Too close for comfort. Pilgrimage or no pilgrimage."
"We're almost there. The complex of buildings down the road ought to be the Franciscan monastery. It has a hostel where the pilgrims stay."
Susanna stood on tiptoe, looking down the road, trying to see a little farther. It was all very flat. This was the Lechfeld, of course, where so many battles had been fought over the centuries; where Charles Martel had turned back the Hungarians. A nice open space where men could fight.
"Isn't it exciting to visit Mariahilf—a place where the Virgin Mary helped someone so recently? There could still be people alive who remember it. It was just over thirty years ago. Maybe the coachman. Do you suppose that if there is, he would be here to tell the pilgrims about it?"
She looked up at Marc, who was raising one of his eyebrows rather doubtfully. "Why," he asked, "would a coachman be likely to remember it? Whatever it was."
Susanna was scandalized. "Don't you even know?" she asked. She reached into her doublet and brought out a pamphlet.
"I bought this in Neuburg, to study, so that I could get the most benefit from the pilgrimage. The lady of the castle at Untermeitingen was the widow of the mayor of Augsburg. His name was Raimund Imhof. Her name was Regina Bämlin, from a family at Reinhartshausen. She was traveling at night and lost her way on the Lechfeld. That was in 1602. Naturally, in the dark, off the road, she was afraid that they might accidentally come into a bog or slue, or even into the river itself. So she made a prayer to the Virgin. She vowed that wherever she first saw the lights of her home, there she would build a chapel." Susanna nodded her head firmly. "She was very pious, of course. And just then, she saw the lights and ordered her coachman to stick his whip into the ground, to mark the exact place."
Susanna turned a page. "So she set out to build her chapel. There were all sorts of permits and things that she had to get, of course. There always are. But the bishop of Augsburg, Heinrich von Knoeringen, did give permission to build a chapel in honor of Our Dear Lady, and they laid the foundation stone on April 7, 1603."
Marc heaved a sigh. "Why don't we sit down on the bank?" he suggested. It looked to him like Susanna was prepared to read the whole pamphlet.
She was. She had thrown herself heart and soul into her pilgrimage. "Then the son of the foundress, his name was Leonhard Imhof and he was a knight of the Order of St. Stephen, had shortly before come back from a trip to Rome. He suggested that the chapel could be built like Santa Maria Rotonda, the Pantheon it is also called, in Rome. A round building, not the ordinary rectangular or cross shape. So the foundress hired an architect in Augsburg, named Elias Holl."
Marc did frown now. "Elias Holl is a Lutheran. Always has been. I know that, for sure. He's famous. He was one of the Augsburg Protestants driven into exile by the emperor in 1629."
"I don't know about that," Susanna answered. "Anyway, this was a long time before we were born, when the Catholics and Protestants got along better, maybe. And the man had to make a living, I guess, so he took the job and designed the chapel, even if it was Catholic. He designed it, they built it, and it was dedicated on June 3, 1604. That was Trinity Sunday. The high altar is designed in accordance with three visions that the foundress had in dreams, at night. And now we get to the good part."
"What do you call the 'good part'?"
"The miracles, of course," Susanna answered. "The first one happened already while the chapel was being built. There was a peasant named Veit Müller from Großkitzigkoven. He had a little daughter named Agatha, not even a year old, who had suffered in agonizing pain for six weeks and nobody had been able to relieve her, even though they had asked for advice from the doctors. Finally he made a vow to go to the new chapel and promised to make an offering as soon as it was finished. And from that very hour, the child got better."
Susanna smiled brilliantly. "Isn't that wonderful?"
Marc said, "Ummmn."
"Then so many pilgrims came that the priest in Untermeitingen could not take care of them all and asked for help. So in 1606, Observant Franciscans from the Province of Strassburg came to establish a hospice. Those are the buildings we were looking at, where we will stay while I do my penance."
"I would much rather," Marc said, "camp outside."
"That," Susanna countered, "is where we will stay." She turned a page. "Soon, the little round chapel was not big enough to accommodate all of the pilgrims. So in 1610 they added an outside pulpit, so more people could hear the homilies at once. They also added a tower with a cupola, which has a lantern burning in it always. Frau Regina Imhof paid for that also, so it would be a permanent beacon for people traveling on the Lechfeld."
Marc observed, with considerable thankfulness, that Susanna was coming to the last page of the pamphlet. It was the standard, cheap, eight-page popular type.
"There have been lots and lots of miracles; the monks keep records of them all. The most important ones are listed here. I'll lend you the pamphlet, so you can read about them while I'm doing my penance. And now, even during the war, so many people come that they will have to enlarge the church again, as soon as they can," she finished triumphantly. "Donations are welcome."
Marc was not at all sure that he wanted to read the pamphlet while Susanna was inside. Of course, it was good to be reminded regularly that Susanna, however adorable, was an unquestioning adherent of papist superstitions. It was one of those things that assisted him in restraining his impulses. That was a project on which he needed all the help he could get.
* * * *
"I think," Marc said, "that the sensible thing to do is to go back to Augsburg and take the trade ro
ute to Ulm. Actually, I think that the sensible thing to do is go back to Neuburg and then to Nürnberg."
"Not that again." Susanna stuck out her tongue. She was feeling greatly relieved in spirit since completing her penance, which tended to show itself in a certain argumentativeness. "We already agreed that we were not going to Nürnberg. And why can't we go on south? From Landsberg am Lech, we could go to Memmingen, and then follow the Iller to Ulm. If we're going anyhow, we might as well see some new things."
* * * *
Ulm
"We're too late, again. Papa's friends say that he and his 'relatives' left with a convoy a couple of weeks ago. They had paid their way to Donaueschingen. Then it, the rest of the convoy, was going on to Strassburg. He told them that he had business in Basel."
"When is the next convoy going out?" Susanna asked.
"Not this week. Or next, as far as anyone here in Ulm knows. The last one got to Donaueschingen safely—they do know that much. But beyond, about half way between there and Freiburg, things were pretty desolate. One of the mercenary companies hired to guard the convoy that Papa went out with tried to loot its own clients. The other two companies rallied to the defense of their employers and put the attempt down, but not without considerable loss of property and several deaths, both of guards and of civilians. The noise, the shooting and other racket, attracted the attention of a detachment of Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar's troops. The news is that Bernhard has detained the entire convoy, so nobody is in the mood to try it again."
"So what do we do now?"
"Head for Donaueschingen, I suppose. Without a convoy. I wouldn't put it past Papa to have intended to go on to Strassburg and just paid the fare part way to throw people off his trail. So that's the only place we're likely to be able to find out whether he really did turn off for Basel. Or to find out which way he went from there. I don't like it, though. It's ninety miles to Donaueschingen and it will be tricky."
* * * *
Swabia, Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar's Camp