1636: The Ottoman Onslaught Page 13

  In the United States he’d come from, a body of running water the size of the Amper would probably have been called a creek rather than a river. But Mike had enough military experience by now to understand that it didn’t take much of a body of running water—call it a river, a creek or whatever you chose—to pose a serious obstacle to an army more than ten thousand strong which was operating with the sort of equipment available in the early seventeenth century.

  The march on Munich from Regensburg posed one major geographical problem for the Third Division. They could easily cross over to the Isar’s souith bank somewhere between Dingolfing and Landshut, where the Bavarians had no sizeable forces to oppose them, and then follow the river all the way down to Munich.

  The problem was that in the year 1636, Bavaria’s capital was a far cry from the metropolis it would eventually become. In the time period Mike had come from, Munich straddled the Isar. But today, the city was located entirely north of the river. So arriving at Munich on the south bank would do them no good at all. To be sure, the Isar was narrow enough that they could bombard the city’s walls from the south bank. But sooner or later, once a breach was made, they’d have to cross it—right in the face of the enemy, entrenched in the city’s fortifications.

  No, they had to stay on the Isar’s north bank all the way down—but that posed the problem that they’d first have to cross the river’s main tributary, the Amper. Hopefully, Captain Finck and his men would find a good spot to do it. They needed someplace the Third Division could reach easily—while the Bavarians could be held at bay long enough—and which had solid enough footing and enough forest in the area—groves, at least—to build the bridges they’d need for the purpose.

  He’d have given a lot to have just one or two APCs with him. The vehicles weren’t amphibious but they’d do splendidly to drive off enemy cavalry while his engineers threw up the bridges. But in his infinite wisdom—being fair about it, the damn Polish king was being just as pigheaded about keeping the war going—Gustav Adolf insisted that all the functioning APCs had to remain with Torstensson’s forces around Poznań.

  “Might as well wish for one or two M1 Abrams main battle tanks, while I’m at it,” Mike muttered.

  “I didn’t catch that, sir,” said his adjutant, Christopher Long.

  “Nothing. Just dreaming the impossible dream.”

  USE naval base

  Luebeck

  Admiral John Chandler Simpson believed very firmly—as you’d expect from someone raised in the high church Episcopalian tradition—that a man who used profanity thereby demonstrated his inferior intellect and primitive grasp of the glorious English language. But, as he lowered the message from Veleda Riddle he’d just finished reading—the parsimonious old lady had even paid to have it sent by radio transmission, which indicated how agitated she was—he couldn’t help himself.

  “Well, fuck me,” he said.

  Grantville

  It was hearing someone else express her own deepest qualms that finally settled Veleda Riddle’s mind.

  “But she’s not one of us!” exclaimed Christie Kemp.

  The statement stuck in Veleda’s craw, as the saying went—all the more so because she completely agreed with it. The woman was not only “not one of us,” she was so far removed from “us” that she might as well have been living on Mars.

  That was to say, one of the many planets He had created.

  “Christie,” she said, trying to keep her tone from being too disapproving, “we are a church, not a country club. I think we need to keep that in mind.”

  “I agree with Veleda,” said Marshall Kitt.

  “So do I,” added his wife Vanessa.

  Christie threw up her hands. “Fine! But you need to face some facts, people. We are not—not, not, not—prepared to deal with this. We have exactly one priest—well, that we’re compatible with—and he’s not leaving Grantville. We have no bishop who could ordain more priests, leaving aside that snot Robert Herrick whom Laud saw fit to make the bishop in Magdeburg. Herrick’s a goof-off anyway and we all know it. That means we’re still completely dependent on Archbishop Laud, who is—pardon my Baptist—an asshole who won’t give us the time of day. Even if he weren’t, he’s in the Netherlands.”

  She had a point, as crudely expressed as it might be.

  “I will write to him again,” Veleda said.

  Amsterdam, the Netherlands

  “That pestiferous woman!” Laud exclaimed. He held the radio missive clutched in his fist and waved it under Thomas Wentworth’s nose. “She’s at it again!”

  “I just came in the door, William,” Wentworth said mildly. “On what I intended to be a simple personal visit. What has you so agitated?”

  Politely, he didn’t add this time, as he so easily could have. Exile was a wearing state of affairs for anyone, but his friend the archbishop of Canterbury handled it with particularly poor grace. Perhaps that was due to his age. Laud was now sixty-three and was likely to be feeling his mortality pressing down on him. So much still to do—and now, so little time left in which to do it.

  Laud heaved a sigh and sank back into his chair. “It’s the American woman, Veleda Riddle. I’ve told you about her. She keeps pestering me to give the Americans their own bishop. I’ve already sent them some priests! Well. Two priests—and I made one of them the bishop in Magdeburg. And there are only a very small number of American so-called ‘Episcopalians’ anyway. What do they need a bishop of their own for?”

  Without waiting for Thomas to reply to that—clearly rhetorical—question, Laud raised his message-clutching fist again and waved it about.

  “I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you! They intend to break away from the authority of the true Anglican church, that’s what! I’m not a fool, you know. I’ve read the history books. In their world the archbishop of Canterbury was just a so-called ‘first among equals.’”

  He broke off for a moment, glaring at the inoffensive wall opposite from him. “They called it the ‘Anglican Communion.’ Each national church having its own separate identity and authority, with only token acknowledgement given to the English fountainhead of the church.”

  Wentworth had heard this all before—more than once. “Oh, leave off, William!” he said impatiently. “Why do you even care, other than as a matter of personal pride?”

  “You don’t understand, Thomas. They’re not part of us.”

  Wentworth took a seat on the small divan under the window. “No, they’re not. I have met some Americans, you might recall. But the way I see it, that’s all the more reason to let them go their own way.”

  He leaned forward, planting elbows on his knees. “William, we have more than enough problems to deal with. One of them—do I need to remind you, of all people?—being to place you back in Canterbury where you belong. Why in the world would you want to pile onto your shoulders this additional distraction?”

  Without moving his arms, he spread his hands wide. “So let them have their bishop, why don’t you? Then, hopefully, they’ll go on their way and that woman who aggravates you so mightily won’t bother you any further.”

  Laud said nothing for a minute or so, he just continued to glare at the wall. Then, he sighed again.

  “I suppose you’re right.” He rose to his feet and moved toward his writing desk. “There’s this much of a blessing, at least. The ancient harridan made a specific recommendation once. If I can find it…”

  He rummaged among the papers piled around the desk.

  “Ah, here it is.” He handed the letter over to Wentworth. “This will spare me the nuisance of having to send someone to investigate the possibilities.”

  Wentworth scanned the letter quickly. When he got to the name of the man whom the Riddle woman had recommended, his eyebrows rose.

  “Well, he certainly has the pedigree,” he said.

  “In that case, I’ll send the appointment by radio transmission.” The expression on Laud’s face was mischievous; indeed, it border
ed on being malicious. “They call it a ‘collect call,’ you know.”

  He reached for the bell on a side table and rang for his secretary. “I can’t actually ordain him over the radio, of course. That requires a laying on of hands. But I can appoint him bishop-elect and make the appointment widely known.”

  Regensburg

  Tom Simpson wouldn’t have paid for the radio message, except for the name of the sender. What would the archbishop of Canterbury want with him?

  It took no more than a few seconds to read the message. A few more seconds to re-read it. At least a minute, though, for the meaning to finally register.

  “Well, fuck me,” he said.

  * * *

  As he headed toward the entrance, the radio operator called him back. “There’s another message coming in for you, Major Simpson.”

  Tom turned around. “From who?”

  “Your father, it says.”

  After Tom read that message, the situation became much clearer.

  “I swear to God,” he muttered, as he emerged back onto the street, “if you planted that woman in the middle of the Gobi desert—oh, hell no, plant her in the middle of Antarctica—she’d find an apple cart to upset. Take her maybe two minutes, tops.”

  * * *

  His wife’s reaction when she read the message from Laud was a variation on the theme.

  “Oh, fuck no! Tom, you can’t accept!”

  He made a face. “I’ll have to check with Veleda or somebody else who’d know the protocol. But I’m not actually sure I can refuse. Legally speaking—well, ecclesiastically legally speaking—I think this is more like being conscripted than volunteering. You know how it is in this day and age—half of your top clergymen are political appointees.”

  “I don’t give a damn! I don’t want my husband to be a fucking bishop! I’m just a trashy country girl hillbilly! I want to get laid once in a while!”

  Tom laughed. “Episcopalian clergy aren’t Catholics, honey. They—we—don’t take vows of celibacy.”

  “Doesn’t matter! How can I possibly screw a goddam bishop?”

  His grin widened. “Come here and I’ll show you.”

  * * *

  An hour or so later, Rita was much calmer. Not quite mollified, but close.

  “Well, I guess there’s one upside to the whole thing,” she said, her head nestled on his shoulder.

  “Hmm?” Tom’s eyes were closed. He’d have been purring, if humans were equipped to do so.

  “You can get Ursula out of our hair. Send her to Dresden to do her proselytizing. Let her drive Gretchen Richer nuts. It’d serve her right since this is all her fault in the first place.”

  His eyes opened. “I’m not sure I have the authority to do that. Ursula is just laity, not clergy.”

  “Says who?” Rita levered herself up on an elbow and looked down on him. “Your church ordains female priests. I know it does.”

  “Well, yeah—up-time. But here…”

  His eyes were wide open, now.

  Rita laughed and slapped his chest. Which was like slapping a side of beef. “Oh, Laud will have a shit fit! Welcome to the seventeenth century, way-too-smart-for-his-own-good husband of mine. What should we call it? Hey, I know—the Bishop Wars.”

  PART II

  May, 1636

  The sudden blood of these men

  Chapter 13

  Lower Silesia, near Boleslawiec

  By the time he got to the outskirts of Boleslawiec—or Bunzlau, as the town’s mostly German inhabitants called it—Jozef Wojtowicz was in a quiet rage. Once he’d gotten beyond Görlitz, which marked the easternmost outpost of Saxony, the area he was passing through had quickly come to resemble a war zone—and a very recent war, at that.

  What infuriated him was that the destruction had not been caused by Poland’s enemies but by soldiers who were officially employed by King Wladyslaw to protect the area. That would be the army commanded by Heinrich Holk, a man who had one of the worst reputations of any mercenary in Europe—which was saying a lot, given how low that bar had been set by now.

  Holk had been employed by the Elector of Saxony, John George, right up until the moment that Gustav Adolf invaded Saxony and John George had need of his services. At that point—he might have taken ten minutes to decide, but probably less—Holk immediately fled across the border into Lower Silesia and offered his services to the king of Poland.

  Who, for reasons known only to himself and God, had chosen to accept them. Jozef’s best guess—which did not mollify his anger in the least—was that Wladyslaw had been preoccupied with the threat that Gustav Adolf posed to Poland and had no troops he was prepared to send into Silesia to deal with Holk. So, he hired him instead. In essence, he bribed Holk to leave him alone.

  The up-timers had a term for this sort of arrangement. They called it a “protection racket.” Which wouldn’t perhaps have been so bad if Holk had been an honest criminal and satisfied himself with the bribe. Instead, he’d made no effort to keep his soldiers under control and they’d set about plundering the countryside.

  And that was another thing which enraged Jozef. Silesia was a borderland between the Germanies and the Slavic nations, and had been for centuries. At one time or another Silesia or parts of it had been under the control of Poland, Bohemia and Austria. Its inhabitants were a mix of Germans, Czechs and Poles. The rough rule of thumb which held generally through most of the region was that the towns and cities were heavily German, sometimes with a Czech and/or Jewish element, and the countryside was mostly Polish.

  The largest city in Silesia was Wroclaw, known to its mostly-German inhabitants as Breslau. By 1518, the city had joined the Protestant Reformation but a few years later, in 1526, it came under the control of the Catholic Austrian Habsburgs. Until the Bohemian revolt of 1618, however, the Habsburgs had allowed a considerable degree of religious freedom. Thereafter, Ferdinand II had imposed his harshly Catholic policies over the area, although the brunt of those policies had initially been borne by Bohemia more than Silesia.

  The war itself—what the up-time histories called the Thirty Years War—didn’t reach Silesia until 1629, when it was invaded by a Protestant army under the command of the German mercenary Ernst von Mansfeld. In response, the Austrians sent their mercenary commander Albrecht von Wallenstein to drive Mansfeld out, which he did—and followed by imposing his own harsh rule.

  And then, just five years later, Wallenstein himself rebelled against the Habsburgs and restored Bohemia’s independence with himself as the new king. At the same time, he laid claim to all of Silesia—but that had been mostly a gesture, since the Polish monarchy seized Lower Silesia and Wallenstein was too pre-occupied with the Austrian attempts to restore Habsburg rule to pay much attention. All he really cared about was Upper Silesia, anyway, which was still largely under his control.

  And there things stood. Most of the peasants were Polish Catholics, who lived in reasonable amity with the inhabitants of the towns and cities, who were mostly German Lutherans. Both Poland and Bohemia claimed to rule Silesia, but the Bohemians made no attempt to enforce their claim except in some immediate border areas and the Polish claim was enforced by a German mercenary thug whose real allegiance was to lucre and liquor.

  As stinky situations went in the already quite smelly continent of Europe, Silesia was a veritable cesspool.

  The worst of it was born by the Polish peasants. The German towns and cities generally governed themselves and had sizeable militias at their disposal. Jozef thought Holk’s army was large enough and strong enough that it could have overrun any of the cities of Silesia except possibly Breslau—but only at a significant cost. That was the sort of cost in blood and treasure that even very competent mercenary commanders tried to avoid. Holk and his men satisfied themselves by extorting bribes from the towns to leave them alone and periodically ravaging the villages.

  * * *

  As he passed through one small and deserted village, Jozef’s angry musings wer
e interrupted by an odd little sound. Turning quickly in his saddle, he saw a small foot vanish around the corner of a house—not much more than a shed, really—that hadn’t been as badly damaged as most of the village’s buildings.

  That had been a child’s foot. He got off his horse, tied it to a nearby post, and went to investigate.

  Coming around the corner, he saw the foot again—the foot and most of the leg—sliding under a pile of debris that looked to be the burned remains of another shed.

  “Come out, child,” he said in Polish. “I won’t hurt you.”

  Moving slowly, making sure to keep his hands outstretched a bit so the child could see that he held no weapons, he advanced on the shattered and burned wreckage.

  As he got close, he heard a little whimpering sound. He leaned over and—carefully, he didn’t want to dislodge a pile of wooden slats to fall on whoever was hiding there—lifted the largest of the intact boards and peered beneath.

  Looking up at him, their faces full of fear, were two small children. A boy and a girl. The boy was perhaps six years old, the girl no more than four. From the mutual resemblance, he was pretty sure they were brother and sister.

  “Where is your family?” he asked.

  The children stared up at him, mute and silent.

  He moved the board entirely aside. “Come out, children. I won’t hurt you, and you must be hungry. I have some food.”

  He glanced around the village square—such as it was, which wasn’t much—and saw there was no well. “And water,” he added. There was a stream fifty yards away which the village had probably used as its water supply. But the children would have been too frightened to leave their hiding place except at night—and possibly not even then.

  The children seemed paralyzed with fear, still. Jozef knelt down and gave the girl’s face a gentle caress. “I won’t hurt you, I promise. But you can’t stay here forever. Come with me and I’ll take you someplace safe.”

  He had no idea where that might be, but he couldn’t simply ride off and leave them here. They were too young to survive for very long on their own. The boy might, but the girl would surely die.