Ring of Fire IV Read online

Isaac stood there and thought about that last statement for a long while. William could see the man trying to work it all out in his mind, a mind confined more to matters of soil, of subsistence. Such worldly, heady concepts were obviously difficult for the farmer to understand. He cared more about getting his fields ready for the long winter. It was a lot for any man to take in on such short notice, William could not deny that, and he regretted having to come here and disturb his comfortable routine. But this was in God’s hands now. Whether as an Anglican rector William believed in predestination or not, the truth of what will happen to them all in the future had been relayed to William’s family, and thus, it was now part of a greater plan. And I will see it through for myself and for God.

  “No,” Isaac finally said with a flurry of hand waving. “I don’t care what you or anyone else says. I’m a farmer, and that is the truth. I don’t know your sister. I don’t want to know your sister. Good day, sir.”

  He started walking away, and William said with force, “You die, Mr. Newton. You die in the other timeline, from where the Americans came. Up-time, my sister and you marry, conceive a child, and three months before he is born, you die. The history does not say how it happens—perhaps from an infection, perhaps from small pox, perhaps from ague—I don’t know. But you will die, whether you marry my sister or not, for you are a sickly man, Isaac, it seems clear to me. In six years you will be dead, and you will have nothing to leave behind as a legacy, no one to care for your fields, your home. You will die alone, here, in your manor house, and no one will remember you, save the Almighty, and that will happen whether you marry my sister or not.

  “But perhaps I can help save your life. Perhaps I can help you escape that fate at least, and perhaps you can then be a real father to your son, a real husband to Hannah. You can help me, help God, add to the substance of the universe.”

  Isaac stopped, turned, and fought the urge to cough again. “How can you do that?”

  William offered his hand. “Come with me, my friend. Meet my sister, and I will tell you both.”

  * * *

  Hannah sat quietly at her father’s table, beside a man she did not know. She did not want to know him, in fact. He was old, not very good-looking, and sickly. He kept sniffling, his nose was red, and he smelled of manure. But then he was a farmer, and a pretty good one, by William’s account. He owned a decent manor home in Lincolnshire and had sizable property. He was not rich, but he was better off than her parents. A lot of her friends would never marry such a prominent farmer or man. Her brother said that she should be honored and delighted to be betrothed to Isaac Newton. She didn’t want to be. But I can’t refuse, can I? I’m not allowed.

  “Do you like cats?”

  He sniffled, cleared his throat. “They’re useful on the farm.”

  Hannah nodded, took a deep breath, pressed on. “We have three, although one is not ours. Just a stray. She kills mice.”

  “Yes, I guess they do that.”

  Another long, uncomfortable pause. Hannah could hear birds chirping outside the window of the kitchen, but it was a cold, rainy day, and thus streaks of rainwater across the glass kept her from seeing them. She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. The wood in the fireplace had just been kindled.

  “What kind of crops do you plant?” She asked.

  “Some wheat, some barley. Beets. I also have a spot reserved for turnips. I have some goats and a few head of sheep. I’m getting fields ready for winter.”

  She used that last statement to say what lay heavy on her heart. “How can we go, then, if you are getting your fields ready? We must stay here.”

  “It’s been arranged. My brothers will take care of the farm while we’re away.”

  “And how long will that be?”

  Isaac shook his head. “I don’t know. Until any threat subsides. That’s what your brother says, anyway.”

  “He says someone might try to hurt us, or kill us. Is someone going to do that?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  William would be going with them, as a chaperone; it was the only way Mummy and Daddy would allow the trip. They were not supposed to get married yet; she was too young, only thirteen, and anyway, she hadn’t flowered. The thought of it all made her sick. “I don’t want to go,” she said, fighting back tears. “I don’t want to have children.”

  Isaac looked toward the door as if he were expecting someone to walk in; then he turned back and said in a whisper, “I don’t want to either, Miss Hannah. But I don’t think we have a choice anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “William says it’s God’s will.”

  “I don’t care. I—”

  She got up and went to the fire. She could not stop her tears. “I don’t want to leave Mummy and Daddy. I don’t want to leave my friends. I don’t want to leave my cats. I don’t care what they say. I’m tired of doing what everyone tells me to do.”

  Her back was turned to him. She could not see his expression. But the room fell silent, with just the crackle of the fire. Then he was moving towards her. She could hear his heavy boots along the floor, shuffling as he blew his nose again into his handkerchief and cleared his throat. He was near her then, far enough away as to keep her from catching his cold, but close enough to cast his shadow across her back. She could smell him.

  “Did your brother tell you what happens to me after we marry?”

  She nodded. “I read it.”

  He fell silent again. Can he read? She wondered, suddenly regretful of her impertinent response. She did not want him to feel embarrassed in the presence of a simple girl. Then he said, “All right, then you know that I die. I abandon you and our child. I’m not a smart man, Hannah, and I never will be. I’m just a farmer, but I don’t want to go out like that. I like to think that I have some honor, some integrity. I’m not a healthy man either. I get sick easily…as you can see. I haven’t always made the right decisions in my life. But maybe marrying you was the right decision. According to those papers, it was. So I will make you a promise.”

  He moved so that she could see his face. Hannah wiped tears from her cheeks, tried to look brave. “You help me now to become a better, healthier man, and I swear to you that, in the end, neither your brother nor God will dictate our future. We will be the masters of our own fate. Besides,” he said, screwing up his face in a comical, clownlike manner, “according to those papers, if I die, you go on to marry an old, disgusting ogre of a preacher named Barnabas. Grr!!”

  Hannah smiled and couldn’t help but laugh at his ghastly expression. It was true. She would have three children by this “ogreish” man, and he would reject the son she would have with this farmer standing before her. So maybe Isaac was right: It was, in the end, better for her to marry a man sixteen years her senior, than a man nearly forty years her senior.

  “Very well,” she said, standing and fixing her brown dress. “We will do what my brother says. We will go to Grantville with him, and we will learn more about our son. But first,” she said, reaching over to a chair, grabbing a coat, and pulling it on. “Can I say goodbye to my cats?”

  November 1636

  Grantville

  It was cold on the walk home, but it wasn’t the chill in the air that made Arnie shiver.…We will be arriving on the twentieth of November, and we would like to meet you…He read the line again from William Ayscough, then crumpled up the letter and stuffed it into his coat pocket.

  All he wanted was to just say hello and to give them a little “heads up” as the up-timers might say. He never meant it to become a national crisis.

  But perhaps it wasn’t and wouldn’t be. They were just coming to Grantville to pay a visit. That was all. At least, that’s what the letter said. They were coming to see Grantville for themselves and to meet the young German boy who had expressed so much concern for their family’s welfare. They also wanted to know more about a man who wasn’t born yet, to know him as a person, as a great intellect. On that score,
Arnie had little else to give them. He had sent them everything he had found on their son. There was no more to tell. But perhaps up-time teachers could give them more insight. Frau Hill, for instance. Perhaps she could tell them more, or direct them to the Imperial College of Science in Magdeburg. Surely the scholars there would know far more about Sir Isaac Newton than anyone else.

  Arnie paused at the bottom of the wooden steps leading to the back door of his mother’s apartment. Another shiver ran down his spine as he thought again about the Butterfly Effect. If it was to be believed, then the simple act of Newton’s parents meeting before they were supposed to had changed the percentage chance of their son being born. The act of leaving England, of coming to Grantville, of the father seeking expert medical advice on what chronically ailed him…all of these things would change the calculus. Was it now even possible for Sir Isaac Newton to be who he becomes if his father does not die before he is born? Was his resentment of his mother’s abandonment of him at age three a critical factor in his intellectual and independent-minded development? Arnie did not know, and more importantly, he was not sure if he could tell them all these things when they arrived. It could break their hearts.

  He shook his head. No, I cannot think like this. Sir Isaac Newton will be born. He must. God would not be so cruel as to deprive the world of such a great man because of a little tear in the time continuum. Would he?

  He entered the kitchen. His mother was there, back turned to him, working batter in a wooden bowl. “Hello, Arnulf. How was your day at school?”

  He saw the apple sitting on the kitchen table. A small, red-green, knotty one. One of the last of the season. He picked it up and squeezed it. Very firm. He tossed it in the air, watched it tumble over and over. It hovered there a split second, then fell back into his hand. He smiled and took a bite.

  Yeah…God would not be so cruel.

  “Fine, mama.” He paused to chew, then said, “But guess who’s coming to dinner?”

  Rats of War

  OR

  PTSD Is No Invention of the Twentieth Century

  Rainer Prem

  Prelude

  Ulm, Swabia

  April 3, 1627

  “Name?”

  “Peter Hagendorf.”

  “Where from?”

  “Zerbst.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “In Anhalt, near Magdeburg.”

  “Can you read? Write?”

  “German, Latin and Italian.”

  The recruiter looked up with a puzzled gaze. “Ach, Herr Professor!”

  Peter Hagendorf could nearly see what that man was thinking. He was a middle-sized, muscular man wearing torn clothes, and didn’t look in the least as if he knew Latin. Why was he even here, prepared to join a mercenary troop?

  He frowned. “Not really, only six years at the Lateinschule. Been in Venice and Italy just the last two years.”

  The recruiter looked down. Peter’s eyes followed him, seeing his shoes held together scantily by some withies. “Just crossed the Alps by foot.”

  The recruiter shrugged. “Sign here. You now belong to the company of Hans Heinrich Küllmann in the Regiment of Gottfried Heinrich zu Pappenheim. Take the Laufgeld, buy you some good shoes and go to Müllheim with the others.”

  “…von da aus sind wir auf den Musterplatz gezogen, in die obere Markgrafschaft Baden. Dort im Quartier gelegen, gefressen und gesoffen, dass es gut heißt.”

  “…from there we went to the induction place in the upper Margraviate of Baden. There we stayed in quarters, devouring and boozing as much as we could.”

  —Peter Hagendorf’s Diary

  I

  Magdeburg

  May 20, 1631

  The sky changed color from black to gray. Now the day had finally come. Magdeburg would be down today. Peter was waiting with his company for Pappenheim’s order, looking right and left for the sign of a fellow mercenary attempting to run before him.

  He took a firm grip for his saber and his pistol. No pikes and muskets today. They weren’t exactly reasonable in house-to-house fighting, and Peter was sure that such a fight would happen. It was too late for Magdeburg’s lardasses to surrender.

  For first time since he had enlisted with Pappenheim four years ago, he would get a real piece of the cake. The pay he and his comrades got—or didn’t get, at least not in time—wasn’t enough to pay the beer and bread for them; less for their families following behind.

  Peter’s family. It consisted of Anna Stadlerin, whom he met shortly after his enrollment and quickly married. A strong woman. Four years she had accompanied him, had borne him four children and buried three of them. Only Elisabeth was still alive, and only God knew for how long. For several weeks now she was sick, nearly the whole time the regiment was besieging Magdeburg.

  Anna had been seriously ill once during that time, the whole eighteen weeks during the siege of Wolfenbüttel, while the water was slowly rising behind the makeshift dam they had built. Then, when the town was finally drowned on Christmas 1627, the citizens quickly surrendered to avoid being looted. So he had no chance to look for a little extra income.

  The next three years had been filled with marching and waiting. Waiting and marching. From Baden to Hamburg, from Stralsund to Wiesbaden, to Paderborn and finally to Magdeburg.

  Peter wiped the thoughts away. If he could capture enough booty today, they could bring Elisabeth to a good doctor, could pay for the medicine, save her. Peter spoke a short prayer.

  The possibility of capturing booty had never been as close as today. Magdeburg’s city council had refrained from a timely surrender, trying to buy time for the Swedes to relieve the city. A big miscalculation. Tilly had outlawed all of the town and its inhabitants, and Pappenheim’s regiment would be the first to enter the town.

  Those Magdeburgers would now suffer for their stubbornness. The fact that Peter had been born only a two days’ walk from this city more than twenty years ago didn’t matter.

  It was over time. The company was waiting behind the most forward fieldworks, weapons in their hands, with stomachs empty of food, but full of the anger of the last weeks. Peter’s company had lost two captains to the fire of the defenders; the third had deserted, so they had no captain at the moment. Well, nobody to tell them what to do and what to refrain from. The lieutenant could be safely ignored.

  Drumbeat! That was the sign! This was the big day. This was the hour. The regiment started its march. Slowly first, but when they noticed that nobody tried to stop them, the first line increased their pace.

  When they reached the broken gate, they were nearly running. Peter lost his place in the first line when they poured through the opening in the wall. But the fellow soldiers before him soon entered the houses to the left and the right, hacking and slashing along their way, while Corporal Hagendorf concentrated on his target, followed by his privates.

  The houses of the rich patricians in the New Town.

  Next alley left, then right. Yes, Peter could see the clean whitewashed houses behind the gaping Neustädter Tor.

  A flash. He looked up, saw a puff of smoke, tried to evade. But it was too late. A kick in his stomach like from a horse made him stagger. A second kick hit him in the armpit.

  Then the world went dark.

  * * *

  “Nachher bin ich in das Lager geführt worden, verbunden, denn einmal bin ich durch den Bauch vorne durchgeschossen worden, zum andern durch beide Achseln, so dass die Kugel ist in dem Hemd gelegen.”

  “Afterwards I was brought to the camp and bandaged, because I was shot, first through the belly up front, and second through both armpits, so the bullet lay in the shirt.”

  —Peter Hagendorf’s Diary

  The next thing Peter sensed was being thrown on a cart. Somebody was pressing a hand onto his stomach.

  “He’s alive,” he heard. “Take him to the surgeon.” Darkness again.

  Sometime later he awoke from somebody pulling his arms to his back.

&
nbsp; Hot pain stabbed him. “What?” he cried.

  “Be quiet,” somebody told him. “I must get the bullet out of your belly.”

  His hands were tied on his back. Something like a fireball hit his stomach and the world went dark again.

  * * *

  When he awoke the next time he was lying on his back. He could see a familiar silhouette moving in front of the tent flap.

  “Anna,” he groaned and tried to rise.

  His wife turned and came closer. “Stay down for Heaven’s sake!” she commanded, pushing down his shoulders. “You’re half dead. Don’t move, or you’ll bleed to death.”

  “I’m dying anyway,” he gasped.

  “Not if you’ll follow my orders. I’ll leave Elisabeth with you and go fetch more bandages. Stay put!”

  She put their sick daughter next to him and left the tent.

  He couldn’t remember how long it had been before the flap opened again, waking him from his dozing.

  Anna was back, hauling a huge tankard and wearing a bundle on her back. An old woman followed her wearing a bundle of cloth.

  “This is Margarethe,” Anna said. “She helped me get the bandages.” Her voice was shaking.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  When Anna turned to him he could see how worried her face was. “Magdeburg is burning,” she said flatly. “They set the houses on fire, from where the snipers shot you, and now the whole city is ablaze.”

  Suddenly she started to weep. “They are killing everybody,” she cried. “Men, women and children. The streets are covered with corpses.”

  Peter tried to rise; he wanted to comfort her, but as soon as he lifted his head, the world turned dark again.

  * * *

  It was the same evening when his company mates came to visit him. The rest of the company had been luckier than him. Only a few other men had lost their lives or had been wounded.