He transferred the same look to the third man in the room. “I also appreciate the amenities that you and your wife Judith provide me with, Mr. Roth. If you might someday include a key that would let me out of here at will, I’d appreciate it even more.”
Morris Roth, seated on a chair not far from Nasi’s, smiled but said nothing. Since there was really nothing to say in response to that remark.
Albrecht sighed and turned back to the window. With his hands clasped behind his back, he looked down at the very impressive gardens that formed the centerpiece of the palace Wallenstein had had built in the previous decade. “What am I more concerned about, however, is the fate of my two sons. Who are also being held in captivity—and in their case, Mr. Roth, by your people, not the Bohemians.”
Roth cleared his throat. “Ah… Actually, Your Grace, my wife and I are now both citizens of the Kingdom of Bohemia. That’s been true for some time, in fact.”
“Please. I’m not taken in by that any more than Wallenstein himself is. He knows and I know and you know—Don Francisco certainly knows!—and probably every butcher and brewer in the city knows that you did that as matter of diplomatic courtesy. In the name of all that’s holy, Morris”—for a moment, he lapsed into the friendly informality that usually characterized their exchanges when Roth visited—“you were born in the future. In what you yourself believe to have been a different universe altogether. You were, are still, and always will be an American, regardless of what nationality you adopt for official purposes.”
Morris said nothing in response to that, either. Instead, he tried to shift the discussion back to the duke’s children.
“I assure you, Albrecht, that the commitment of the United States of Europe to religious freedom is unwavering.”
“Really?” The younger brother of Bavaria’s ruler turned his head and gave Roth a skeptical glance. “Then perhaps you can explain why Michael Stearns—with the agreement of that party he established, the Fourth of July group—has conceded to Gustavus Adolphus’ demand that every province of the USE be allowed to create an established church.”
It was Morris’ turn to look exasperated. “Mike did that for practical reasons—and it’s irrelevant to your two boys anyway. They’re being held—ah, are guests—in Bamberg. Which, I remind you, is the capital of the State of Thuringia-Franconia, a province which does not have an established church.”
“Until the next election.”
Roth made an impatient gesture. “Your Grace, please stop playing the naïf! You’re an astute observer of political affairs and you know perfectly well the Fourth of July Party will be returned to office in the SoTF—probably with an even bigger majority than they enjoy right now. If you want to call your sons prisoners—or hostages, whatever term you prefer—so be it. But they are still in the care of their tutor, Johannes Vervaux—who is a Jesuit, as you well know. No one is or will be interfering in their education. No one is or will be making any attempt to coerce them into abandoning Catholicism. For Pete’s sake, Albrecht! The president of the SoTF—and the likely next prime minister of the USE—is Ed Piazza. Who is a Catholic himself.”
Without looking away from the window, Albrecht raised his hand in a placating gesture. “Yes, yes, I know. I am not trying to be offensive, Morris. I am simply concerned.”
“Sure. They’re your kids and you miss them. Frankly, if it was up to me I’d have them sent here, along with their tutor. But…”
There wasn’t anything further he could really say, other than: But Gustav Adolf is calling the shots here and he was born in this century and this universe and he doesn’t have any qualms about using two kids as hostages.
Which… wouldn’t help the situation. And which was something the Bavarian nobleman knew perfectly well already.
Nasi now cleared his throat. “Albrecht, we came here today for a reason.”
The duke turned away from the window again, hesitated for a moment, and then moved over to take a seat in a chair facing Nasi directly and Roth at something of an angle.
“Let me guess,” he said. “You want to begin a discussion—completely tentative, with no formal or official sanction whatsoever from anyone in position of authority—on the question of whether I might be willing to agree to supplant my brother on the throne of Bavaria. Assuming you can remove him from that throne, either by force or by his agreement to abdicate.”
The man who’d once been Mike Stearns’ spymaster and now ran a private espionage service that was probably the best in Europe shook his head. “That assumption is a given, Albrecht. One way or another, Maximilian is going to go. If it has to be done by force…”
Nasi shrugged. Morris Roth picked up the train of thought. “If your brother’s forced off the throne—whether he lives or dies, and under those circumstances I wouldn’t place great odds on his survival—then Bavaria will come under the direct administration of either the USE or Sweden. That’ll be something of an argument, I think. From Gustav Adolf’s point of view, Bavaria is almost as much of a problem as a conquered territory as a still-independent one.”
Albrecht smiled, without much humor. “Yes. Even as greedy as he is for absorbing new territory, does he really want to ingest that big a population of Catholics?”
Nasi and Roth both nodded. “Exactly,” said Nasi. He nodded toward Morris. “The situation is a bit the same as always exists with us Jews. For an enlightened ruler, having some of us around is an asset. Having too many…”
“Can be a problem,” his fellow Jew completed. “I think you’re probably right that Gustav Adolf feels the same way about Catholics. He already has a lot of Catholics in the USE, but they’re still a distinct minority—even in Thuringia-Franconia. Add in Bavaria…”
He shrugged. “Catholics would still be a minority in the nation as a whole, but they’d now have a province that was almost entirely Catholic. That wouldn’t bother me or any up-timer, but the emperor’s Lutheran tolerance only stretches so far.”
There was silence in the room, for a few seconds. Then Albrecht said, in a voice as cold as the expression on his face: “My brother murdered my wife with his own hand and caused the murder of my oldest son. You can boil him in oil for all I care. Let us begin from there.”
Chapter 8
Magdeburg, capital of the United States of Europe
This time, the plane landed with only a couple of slight bumps and came to a halt where and when and in the manner it was supposed to. Gretchen was still relieved when the plane finally came to a stop. Even the short period when it was driving across the tarmac on wheels under its own power made her nervous. For some reason, Eddie called it “taxiing” even though the exercise had no relationship Gretchen could determine with the famous postal service of Thurn and Taxis.
She hadn’t like flying the first time she did it, she hadn’t liked it this time, and she didn’t imagine she ever would.
That said, they had gotten from Dresden to Magdeburg in about an hour. It would have taken her several days on horseback and longer if she’d walked.
“Thank you,” she said politely, after Junker helped her to the ground. “The trip was very… uneventful.”
Eddie grinned. “Not pleasant, though, I take it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think I will ever…” She broke off, seeing what looked like a small mob headed in their direction.
“What’s this?” she wondered.
“Your greeting, I imagine.”
Gretchen frowned. “Why are this many people coming to meet me?”
Eddie studied her for a moment, with a quizzical expression on his face. Then he grinned again. “I will say this, Gretchen Richter. It is perhaps the most reassuring thing about you that you really don’t know the answer to that question.”
Her frown deepened. “That makes no sense at all.”
Eddie left off any reply. By then, the lead elements in the procession had come within greeting distance and they’d sorted themselves out as a separate group from
the rest. Tentatively, Gretchen classified the four coming forward as the actual delegation, while the others were simply servants or assistants of some sort.
“Frau Richter,” said the worthy at the head of the column. “Welcome to Magdeburg. I am General Lars Kagg. The emperor asked me to provide you with an escort to the royal palace.”
The general was wearing the sort of apparel you’d expect from a court official, not anything that resembled a military uniform. But that was no cause for surprise. The Swedes—this was true of most German rulers as well—made no sharp distinction between military and civilian posts. Officials of either sort were expected to be at the disposal of the state and prepared to assume whatever responsibilities were given them, in whatever location they were instructed to place themselves.
Kagg had a booming way of speaking, but he seemed courteous enough. Gretchen tentatively ascribed the loudness of his voice to nature rather than to any attempt on the general’s part at intimidation.
Kagg turned partway around and gestured to the men just behind him. “If you would allow me to make some introductions…”
The first man he brought forward was, like Kagg himself, somewhere in early middle age.
“This is Colonel Johan Botvidsson. He’s serving me at the moment as my aide-de-camp.”
The name was familiar. Tata had mentioned the man to Gretchen a few times. He’d been one of the Swedish general Nils Brahe’s aides when Brahe had been administering the Province of the Main. As Gretchen recalled, Tata’s impression of him had been favorable.
“And this is his aide, Captain Erik Stenbock.” As had the colonel before him, Captain Stenbock acknowledged her with a stiff little bow. The stiffness was simply the Swedish court style, not an indication of any particular attitude.
Stenbock was quite a bit younger than either Kagg or Botvidsson. He seemed to be in his early twenties.
General Kagg now gestured at the fourth man in the group. “And this is Erik Gabrielsson Emporagrius.”
Kagg assigned Emporagrius no specific post, rank, title or position, which Gretchen found interesting in itself. From subtleties in the general’s demeanor that she would have found it impossible to specify, she got the sense that—unlike the two military figures he’d introduced, to whom he seemed quite favorably inclined—he had no great liking for this fourth fellow.
At first glance, Gretchen had assumed Emporagrius to be close in age to Kagg and Botvidsson. But looking at him more closely she realized that was due to the severe expression on his face, a sort of facial acidity that made him seem older than he really was. She didn’t think he was actually much older than thirty or so.
Emporagrius returned her gaze with an unblinking stare. He made no gesture with his head that bore even the slightest suggestion of a nod.
The introductions completed, Kagg now gestured at the gaggle of servants standing a short distance away.
“And now, Frau Richter, we have carriages ready to transport you to the palace.”
There were plenty of towns in Europe where riding in a carriage was likely to result in bruises—sometimes even broken bones. In such places, people would choose to ride in litters suspended between two horses rather than risk direct contact with the ground transmitted by unforgiving wheels. Most of Magdeburg’s streets were hard-packed dirt, but the main streets of the capital were superb, compared to those of any town or city in the continent except those of Grantville.
* * *
Another surprise awaited Gretchen once they arrived at the palace. The chambers that Kagg ushered her into amounted to a suite. She’d been expecting something more closely akin to a room that a servant might occupy.
Why were they doing this? Gretchen’s ingrained hostility toward the aristocracy—and kings and emperors were just top shelf nobility—made her suspicious.
They were trying to soften her up! Fool her into… into…
At that point, her sense of humor came to her rescue. Yes, no doubt all these courtesies were designed for the purpose of softening her up. But she remembered Mike Stearns once making the quip: “If I was scared to death of being softened up, I’d never bathe. Is it really better to stink?”
She turned to Kagg and said: “Thank you. This is very nice. When am I supposed to talk to the emperor? And where?”
“The ‘when’ depends on you, Frau Richter. The emperor thought you might want to rest for a bit after the—ah—ardors of your travels.”
Gretchen made a little snorting sound. “What ardors? I admit that flying makes me very nervous, but it’s about as physically strenuous as sitting in a rocking chair. I am ready to meet with the emperor whenever…”
She’d been on the verge of competing the sentence with “whenever it suits His Majesty.” But that seemed excessively subservient.
“Now, if he wants,” she concluded.
Kagg nodded. “In that case, please follow me.”
* * *
There were enough servants of various sorts in the palace that at least some of them rushed ahead to warn the emperor that she was coming. So, by the time Kagg ushered her into an even more palatial suite—this one a meeting chamber, though, not a sleeping one—Gustav Adolf was awaiting her in a chair, alertly observant as she came in.
They’d never met before, in the sense of being introduced, although on three previous occasions they’d been in the same room together. On the first of those occasions, Gustav Adolf had been standing over the corpse of the Croat cavalryman whose skull he’d split open with the sword in his hand. And the sword had been dripping blood, unnoticed by the Swedish king, onto the trouser leg of Gretchen’s husband, who was lying on his back with a wound in his shoulder.
That memory brought Gretchen up short, for a moment. She’d come into the chamber braced for a fight, but now she found herself disarmed. Whatever else—whatever divided them, whatever disputes they might have—she owed this man her husband’s life. And, probably, the lives of hundreds of children who’d also been in the high school that day. It was not likely that, on their own, Gretchen and Dan Frost and a busload of police cadets could have driven off the thousand or so Croats who were assaulting the school. Not without Gustav Adolf and the hundreds of cavalrymen he’d brought in time.
She cleared her throat. “Your Majesty, I do not believe I ever thanked you for saving my husband’s life. That day at the school in Grantville.”
The emperor’s eyes widened. “I wasn’t aware that I had, Frau Richter.” Then, as the memory came to him, he snapped his fingers. “Yes, now I recall! You were the young lady who was clutching the fellow that Croat was about to cut down. Ha! I never realized until this moment that you and she were the—ah… the same Gretchen Richter.”
Gretchen couldn’t help but smile. “The notorious Gretchen Richter, you meant to say.”
Gustav Adolf made a little dismissive gesture. “Notorious, yes—but notorious to whom, exactly? I am not unaware that you were the central figure in holding together the population of Amsterdam when they successfully resisted the Spanish besieging the city. Today, of course, we are on quite good terms with those same Spaniards—not allied, no, but still on good terms. But would we have had that outcome without you? Probably not, I suspect.”
He seemed to sit a bit straighter. “And I am certainly not unaware that you were—no one doubts this at all, certainly not Ernst—” He nodded toward a figure sitting in another chair off to the side. Gretchen was a bit startled to see that it was Ernst Wettin. She’d been so pre-occupied with the emperor that she hadn’t noticed him at all.
“—the central figure in holding Dresden firm against the threat of Báner.” The imperial jaw tightened. “Who followed Axel into treason.”
His momentary dark mood vanished almost at once. He gestured toward a third chair, which was positioned approximately equidistant from his own and that occupied by Wettin. “But please, take a seat. We have much to discuss.”
As she sat down, Gretchen glanced over her shoulder and
saw that Kagg had left the room. Except for two servants standing by a doorway—not the one she’d come in but one that was too distant for the servants to overhear their conversation—the three of them were alone in the room.
So. Apparently this was to be a genuinely private and informal discussion. That had been one of the possibilities, but the one she’d least expected.
As soon as she was seated, the emperor went straight to the point.
“I have a proposal to make,” he said. “Not to you alone—not by any means—but I am starting with you because if you are not willing to accept the proposal the rest will be pointless.”
She braced herself. The most likely proposal she could imagine would be something on the lines of: You, Frau Richter, must go into exile, preferably to someplace in the New World. In exchange, I will make this or that concession to your band of radical malcontents.
“The proposal is this. I will agree to remove imperial administration from Saxony, Mecklenburg, the Oberpfalz and Württemberg. I will also allow Württemberg to form its own province separate from the rest of Swabia. And, finally, I will allow all four provinces to become self-governing with a republican structure of some sort.”
For an instant, a look of exasperation came and went on his face. “One of the reasons I’m agreeing to this is to save myself the grief of trying to referee the claims of far too many Hochadel to these areas. But the main reason is to see if you and I can reach… what to call it? A modus vivendi, let us say.”
Gretchen’s knowledge of Latin ranged from poor to dismal. Some of her uncertainty must have shown because Ernst Wettin spoke up, for the first time. “His Majesty is using the Latin phrase the way the up-timers do. It refers to an arrangement—something of an informal agreement, if you will, but still binding—that enables parties with conflicting interests or goals to nonetheless coexist peacefully and without resort to violence on either side. This arrangement may be temporary—it usually is—but it can also last indefinitely.”