The rumor was that the new paper in Magdeburg might try to publish daily. He had picked up that gossip, as well as a newspaper, in Erfurt. Gossip was still usually a bit ahead of the printed news, especially when it came to things that might affect your job, so he dropped it into his conversation with Max Leimbacher who ran the newspaper concession. Someday, Max would return the favor. Then he headed for home.
* * *
Martin tossed the local paper on the table in his brother-in-law's print shop. "Saved you a trip," he said to the general direction of the back room and sang out a vendor's call. "All the latest news, guaranteed fresh. Notice, relation, and timely information concerning what has happened and occurred in Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, England, France, Hungary, Austria, Sweden, Poland, and Silesia, with items from Rome, Venice, and Vienna. Antwerp, Amsterdam, Cologne, Frankfort, Prague, and Linz, et cetera." He tossed the Erfurt paper, and any others he had collected on his route, onto the table after it. The men sitting around picked them up. That was the way it went with newspapers. They went to city councils, to monasteries, to subscription clubs in small towns, and even to village taverns. Well, occasionally to village pastors who tempted their parishioners to more diligent attendance at the weekly sermon by the bribe of getting to read the newspaper afterwards, but more often to village taverns. And, of course, to schools and libraries. Most Latin schools expected their students to keep up with the current news.
One of the men started to read the items in the Frankfurt paper aloud. Not that the others couldn't read, of course, but if someone read aloud, everyone else could join in the discussion.
The Frankfurt paper, as was now usual in the CPE, had the Roman god Mercury in the woodcut in the header. Personally, Martin preferred it to the Thurn and Taxis logo, which showed a regular courier from the imperial postal system, wearing an armband, riding a well-fed horse which he could change at each post-house, blowing a horn and overhauling a hang-dog private messenger on a worn-out nag.
Martin thought defensively that he was not hang-dog and he took good care of his horse. One of the up-timers in Fulda, the young soldier named Garand whom he had met at Barracktown while turning over some things to Sergeant Hartke's formidable wife, the Dane named Dagmar, had explained a joke to him, caused by a person saying, "I resemble that statement" rather than "I resent that statement." Martin felt strongly that he did not resemble the Thurn and Taxis statement about private couriers.
Merga, who doubled as the saleslady, came thumping forward from behind the counter to hug him. Merga was not only settled down but settling down. Much of the settling was landing on her thighs, which, as she laughed, were safely hidden under her skirts and petticoats, but some of it was also arriving in the vicinity of her chin and waistline. Crispin had been a good provider and she was starting to show it.
"Go upstairs and talk to Mutti," she said as she let loose of him. "Her rheumatism has been bad. She hasn't been down in the shop for a week."
Martin groaned. If Mutti had been sitting upstairs by herself for a week, thinking, rather than down in the shop working, where things happened that distracted her, he was going to get the whole drama, from prologue to epilogue.
No use putting it off.
* * *
After a few days home in Frankfurt, Martin started to realize that he might be forced to settle down whether he wanted to or not. Now wouldn't that make Mutti happy. The minute he did, she would start on the marriage end of the theme.
"I never wanted to be a mail carrier for the imperial postal system," he said to Crispin. As if Crispin didn't already know, but sometimes it was a comfort to be able to complain. "I don't want to be a courier for the Swedes. Or for the CPE, the way things are developing."
"Why don't you just keep riding on your own, then?"
"I'm not sure that I can. It will be one thing if they let the private messenger system die out naturally. It will be a lot different if the reformed CPE post offices attack the private couriers, physically, by force, they way they attacked the municipal messengers who worked for the city of Cologne, back when the Thurn and Taxis post office was set up there."
"Yes," Crispin agreed. "If the new CPE post office system turns out to be anything like the way the Thurn and Taxis run the imperial post, it won't appreciate competition. A monopoly is a monopoly, after all."
"If I have to work for the postmaster, being nothing but one little cog on a huge set of gears grinding away to move the mail all over the CPE, what kind of a job is that? What would be the joy in that?" Martin lamented to Crispin. "Riding back and forth, at top speed, over the same stretch of road, day in and day out? Never seeing anything but the inside of the postal station. If that happens, I might as well have stayed in Frankfurt and made belts for Uncle Reichhard."
"You don't have to ride a short route. Frankfurt is certainly one of the largest officia in the Germanies, if it isn't the biggest of all by now. It's not just a station for changing horses; it receives the mail, re-sorts it, distributes it out to a half-dozen different routes. If you could get on here, in central . . . ?"
"I don't want to, Crispin. I just don't. I want to be on the road. A man might as well be stuck in Frankfurt making belts as stuck in Frankfurt sorting mail."
* * *
That evening Martin sat on his bed. No use wasting the candle; he blew it out.
Thinking. Reminding himself of all the reasons why he didn't want to do what Crispin so clearly thought was the sensible thing.
For a century, already, the imperial postal system had emphasized speed and efficiency. "Public, regular, reliable, and rapid" as the advertisements read. Most post routes ran once a week—a few of the busier ones twice. The ideal span from one post stop to the next—from the perspective of a horse, at least—was from eight to ten miles (a mile being, of course, a quite variable concept from place to place). In the real world, where budgets were a factor, the routes of the imperial post, governed by the terms of a 1597 imperial proclamation, had post houses every fifteen miles or so where the rider handed the bags over to a new messenger and fresh horse. The rider stayed there overnight, picked up a set of bags that came in from somewhere else, and went back where he came from.
This distance was so set that people referred to it as "una posta." The main route from Rome to Brussels had ninety-six post stations; the one from Antwerp to Nürnberg not quite so many. Customers could buy printed schedules and maps of the routes, as well as fee schedules, at any post office. They were posted on placards in the offices, as well.
The point was that the businessmen in any town could rely on the regular arrival of the postal courier, blowing his horn to announce that he was there. It was scheduled. "Mail day" structured the life of the towns that had post offices. Learned men, merchants, bureaucrats, clergy, and ordinary people had all become accustomed to being able to send out their correspondence on time, carried by someone whose actual job was to get it where it was supposed to go.
The imperial post and the Swedish field post were built on the assumption that horses and riders could maintain the desired speed for only a limited distance without damaging their future usefulness. Wearing out a horse was fine for emergencies, when speed was of the essence. The military field post that van den Birghden ran out of Frankfurt for the Swedes now could get a message from Frankfurt to Hamburg in five days. Reliably. On the Imperial Road as far as Eisenach. Five days for two hundred fifty miles; twenty post stops where the letter was passed off from one horse and rider pair to the next. And a lot of tenacious negotiation between the postmaster and the rulers of all the various territories along the way to get the routes established and the stations set up, but now the mail left each city regularly, twice a week, in addition to the special letters that were carried by Swedish dragoons. Der Postschwede, people called those men. The "mail Swede."
That was an amazing achievement. Martin could see why a Swedish general might want to get a message from Frankfurt to Hamburg fast. Once it got to Ha
mburg, after all, it could go out to Stockholm by boat. Although now, with the famous up-timer radio, maybe they could transmit the essence of the matter that way and let the post riders proceed at a more reasonable pace. But a lot of urgent things still had to be on paper—documents with signatures and seals, bank drafts, commissions for military officers.
If there wasn't any emergency, however, it was a bad idea to wear out a good horse. Martin admitted that changing horses at a postal station was all right. A fresh horse was a good thing for any courier. But changing riders did not appeal to him. He wanted to keep going.
* * *
"Oh well," he said to Crispin over breakfast, "I'm riding out again this morning, so I won't have to worry about it for a couple of weeks."
"Do I need to smile nicely at your future bride while you're gone?" Merga asked.
Martin shook his head. "I'm escaping free and clear one more time. Mutti had a little list, but I managed to avoid meeting any of her candidates."
He jogged off toward the livery stable. Merga shook her head as she watched him go. Marty was nearly thirty-five, after all. It was time for him to think of settling down.
On the Road Again
Gelnhausen, late March 1633
Martin Wackernagel's mother had often predicted that the boy's curiosity would be the death of him. She had predicted it regularly, frequently, all the years that he was growing up. She still predicted it.
So far, it hadn't been. It was still with him, though. It caused him to try to learn everything he could find out about the towns and cities through which he rode along the Imperial Road.
Coming up from the valley of the Main River, through Hanau and Isenburg territory, he reached Gelnhausen. According to the histories, in another world—a world in which Gustavus Adolphus had been killed in November 1632—Gelnhausen, in the summer of 1634, had been so devastated and destroyed by raiding Croats sent by the imperials, that it became uninhabitable and uninhabited for a time.
In this spring of 1633, with the king of Sweden alive, the town sat here, safely tucked within the well-defended borders of the Confederated Principalities of Europe—the CPE. Martin's mouth quirked. Ambitious name, that—Confederated Medium and Small Principalities of North and Central Germany would be more accurate. Nonetheless, the trial Croat raid sent toward the miraculously arrived city of Grantville the previous fall had been so effectively turned back by the king of Sweden that it now seemed unlikely that the emperor's commanders would try any such large-scale razzia into the valleys of the Werra, the Main, and the Kinzig, even if they could place their light cavalry in a position to begin one. Martin wondered if any of Gelnhausen's city fathers had studied the up-timers' records and realized their good fortune.
In that other world, there had been a boy of eleven or twelve years old whose name was Johann Jakob Christoffel Grimmelshausen. He had grown up to write a novel, perhaps the most famous one written about these wars. Martin had asked, unobtrusively. Yes, the boy was here. What would he write now, if not the Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus? Would he write anything? It was as if all the foundations of the world were melting under him, Martin thought sometimes, and he could not predict the shape they would take when they became solid again.
One thing that he could still rely on in Gelnhausen was that David Kronberg would be hanging around the post office. David had been hanging around the post office for the past ten years—maybe a bit more. Whenever the mail came in, no matter what frantic efforts his parents made to keep him away, he managed to elude them. David did not care if it was a Thurn and Taxis imperial post rider or a Swedish dragoon or a private courier such as Martin himself. He loved the post office. He wanted to know what was in the news; he wanted to know the gossip.
Kronberg. Or Kronenberger, depending upon the mood of the clerk recording the event in question. Or David ben Abraham. He was a son of parents who were prominent members of the Jewish community in this small imperial city. It wasn't a ghetto, really—not a separate miniature town within a town such as existed in Frankfurt. A neighborhood. Distinctive, but a neighborhood.
Martin, curious as always, had asked questions. There had been a Jewish synagogue in Gelnhausen for at least three hundred years. The current building was fairly new, built only thirty or so years ago. David's uncle, a man named Meier, had worked on it. He was now a builder in Frankfurt. Curious, Martin had looked him up; had even gotten to know him, in a way. It was easier for him than it would be for most Gentiles. His brother-in-law Crispin's grandfather had been a convert. Convert, as the Lutherans saw it; apostate, as the Jews saw it. But Crispin still knew people in Frankfurt's ghetto—he had been able to direct Martin to Meier Kronberg, Meir zum Schwan.
Unlike Meier, David's parents had not left Gelnhausen for the big city of Frankfurt. They would not leave Gelnhausen; would not think about having their son leave Gelnhausen. They definitely did not want to think about their son becoming a postal courier. Even in the atmosphere of the new CPE, Aberlin Kronberg, otherwise known as Aberlin ben Naphtali and Aberlin zur Lilie, and his wife Bessle Zons were having a lot of trouble thinking new thoughts about employment opportunities for their son.
Martin had offered to talk to them; to tell them about the wonderful world of the Imperial Road and all of its possibilities. David had said rather glumly that he did not think it would do much good for a Gentile to talk to them. It might even make things worse.
Today, David was even more melancholy than usual. He was being fenced in, he protested. His parents were arranging for him to marry. They were friendly with the bride's parents. Samuel Wohl—Samuel ben Aron, Samuel zur Leuchte—and Hindle Kalman had contributed a lot of money for the beautiful interior furnishings of the synagogue, the splendid, modern, baroque cabinet in which the Torah was kept. They had contributed, like the Kronbergs, to the purchase of the land where the community had its cemetery.
They were, unfortunately, just exactly the kind of people whom David's parents hoped that his parents-in-law would be. And the Wohls would never, never, never accept his wish to become a postal courier. They would never even understand it.
"I'm doomed," David said.
"Married?" Martin Wackernagel asked. "You aren't old enough to get married. You can't even be twenty yet."
"For us," David said, "that's old enough. Old enough for our parents to bind us so tightly that we will never get away."
Up and Down
The Imperial Road, early April 1633
After going past the Fulda enclave of Salmuenster, Martin had stopped in Steinau for a couple of days. He usually did. Then, past Schluechtern, he looked up at the Drasenberg, which was one of the main causes of what the Grantvillers called "traffic jams" on the Imperial Road. A rider could climb it easily enough, although, if he was considerate, he would get off his horse and walk. Freight wagons, though, had to pause and let the local teamsters attach a Vorspann, an additional team or horses, to the vehicle. Single teams could not master the steep rise.
The first thing that travelers coming from Frankfurt learned about Fulda was that the abbey's teamsters, who provided the extra horses and collected the "escort fees," had a very crude vocabulary. So did the Hanau teamsters who often accompanied commercial wagons this far. The counts of Hanau thought that their employees had a right to bring the wagons across as far as Flieden, or at the very least up as far as the Landwehr, a border fortress that was protected by ditches, a wall, and impassible thorn hedges. Fulda's teamsters, at least when there were enough of them on the spot at the foot of the Drachenberg, disputed that. The constant arguments about just who had a right to pull freight wagons up this steep spot in the road were pretty typical of what went on at any territorial crossing in the Germanies. The Grantvillers planned to get rid of this in the CPE, someone had told him. He wished them luck. No matter how many lawyers tried to negotiate complicated treaties, in daily practice the issue was decided by the number of heads, the boldness of the local men, and their bodily strength. Even in
the presence of high-born lords, teamsters rarely hesitated to enter into physical contests.
Oh, well. Up the hill, finally. Across some cattle meadows and into the forest. Past the dark ravine called the "murder grave"—Martin wasn't sure why. He had asked, but had only gotten legends. Top of the hill at the thorn field. Stop while a few wagons changed teams again. Across the "ass bridge" over Flieden Creek, past Neuhof following the old military road, and then climbing through forests again. Finally the view into the valley opened up. The road led down, crossed the Fulda River near Bronnzell, and led into the city on the right side of the river.