1637 The Polish Maelstrom Read online

  After a moment, Franz nodded. At least, this Don Morris and his Abrabanel agent were not so wildly impractical as to imagine they could conjure up good cavalry from the ranks of ghetto dwellers and rustics.

  Infantry…yes. Perhaps even artillery, if not too much was demanded of it in the way of maneuvering. But cavalrymen, like archers, almost had to be born to it. At the very least, they had to have spent years learning all the necessary skills.

  “So. And for that, you seek to hire me. Yes?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And the terms?”

  Abrabanel’s description was short, clear and to the point. When he was done, von Mercy studied him for a few seconds.

  “And all this is going to come from the purse of one man? Who is not even a duke, much less a king. Pardon me, but I find that hard to believe. I’m not a village peasant, who thinks a ‘rich Jew’ is some sort of devil-summoned creature with bottomless coffers.”

  Uriel smiled. “You might be surprised, actually, at how rich some of these up-timers have gotten. The Roth fortune derives largely from cut jewelry, of which at the moment they have an effective monopoly and is a rage sweeping Europe. More than one monarch—and any number of dukes—are opening up their coffers to obtain the new gems. And, at that, Don Morris’ wealth is rather small compared to the fortune being amassed by the Stone family with their pharmaceutical and chemical works. Still—”

  He waggled fingers in a gesture that simultaneously dismissed the problem and cautioned the need for discretion. “Not all of the funds, of course, will come from Don Morris himself. Probably not even most of them. I said that Wallenstein was not directly involved here. I did not say he was not involved at all.”

  Von Mercy leaned back in his chair, and felt the tension caused by the Austrian emperor’s refusal to hire him begin to ease. It seemed he would be able to keep his regiment intact, after all. Some of those men had been with him for years and would have been very difficult to replace quickly if at all.

  In fact, he had heard tales of the wealth of the man Roth in Prague. The intricately carved new jewelry he and his partners had introduced to Europe was, indeed, all the rage—at least, among those circles who could afford such gems at all. But there were a lot of noblemen in Europe, many of whom were very wealthy themselves—and it seemed as if each and every one of them was bound and determined to acquire one of the dazzling new “Prague jewels,” as they were now being called.

  And if Wallenstein was also involved, even if only at the level of providing funds through the back door…

  Yes. Roth could afford to employ an experienced general and a regiment of cavalry, even on the munificent terms he was offering.

  “Done,” he said. “Where do you want me to take my troops? And by what date, and by what route?”

  “As to where, Brno. Wallenstein—Roth is in charge of it—has launched an armaments industry there, so it seems a good place to station your regiment. Especially since Brno is in Moravia, not Bohemia, which should reassure Emperor Ferdinand that you are not a threat to Austria.”

  “It’s not far from the Moravian Gate, either,” observed von Mercy.

  “No, it isn’t,” said Uriel, smiling. The Moravian Gate was the great pass between the Carpathian and Sudetes mountains that allowed easy access into Poland and the lands beyond.

  “As to when…” Uriel shrugged. “There is really no great hurry. Two months from now would be ideal, but three months would be acceptable if you need that much time.”

  He made a little grimace. “The tricky question is by what route, of course. Given the unfortunate state of hostilities between Austria and Bohemia.”

  He glanced at Piccolomini.

  “I’m afraid not,” said the Florentine officer. “To allow Franz and his troops to pass directly from Austria into Bohemia would be just that little too blatant and obvious. So I’m afraid he’ll have to take the longer route.”

  “That’s time-consuming but not difficult,” said von Mercy. “Provided I’m given free passage through the USE. I’ll need to pass through the whole of the Oberpfalz and enter Bohemia at Cheb.”

  Uriel’s good cheer was back in full force. “Not a problem.”

  Piccolomini and von Mercy both gave him skeptical looks.

  “Johan Banér’s in command of the USE Army in the Oberpfalz,” pointed out Piccolomini.

  “And he is, by all accounts,” added Franz, “choleric to the point of lunacy.”

  “Banér.” Abrabanel spoke the word much the way he might have named an insect. “Merely a general. Meaning no offense. Did I mention that my niece dotes upon me? And she, in turn, is doted upon by her husband?”

  After a bit, his grin was met with two smiles.

  “Well, then,” said Piccolomini. “All seems to be well.”

  November 1634

  Prague, capital of Bohemia

  “You look tired, Melissa,” said Judith Roth. She gestured to a luxurious divan in the great salon of the Roth mansion. “Please, have a seat.”

  Melissa Mailey went over to the divan, hobbling a little from the effects of the ten-day journey from Grantville, and plopped herself down. Her companion James Nichols remained standing, after giving the couch no more than a quick glance. Instead, his hands on his hips, he swiveled slowly and considered the entire room.

  Then, whistled admiringly. “You’ve certainly come up in the world, folks.”

  Judith smiled. Her husband Morris looked somewhat embarrassed. “Hey, look,” he said, “it wasn’t really my idea.”

  “That’s it,” scoffed his wife. “Blame the woman.”

  The defensive expression on Morris’ face deepened. “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just…”

  The gesture that accompanied the last two words was about as feeble as the words themselves.

  “The situation,” he concluded lamely.

  Nichols grinned at him. “Morris, relax. I understand the realities, what with your being not only one of the king of Bohemia’s closest advisers but also what amounts to the informal secular prince of Prague’s Jewry. Of at least half the Jews in eastern Europe, actually, from what Balthazar Abrabanel told us.”

  Looking a bit less exhausted, Melissa finally took the time to appraise the room. And some more time, appraising Morris’ very fancy-looking seventeenth-century apparel.

  Then, she whistled herself.

  “Et tu, Brutus?” Morris grumbled.

  “Quit complaining,” Melissa said. “You asked us to come here, remember? With ‘Urgent!’ and ‘Desp’rate Need!’ oozing from every line of your letter.”

  “Asked you,” qualified Nichols. “Me, he just wanted to come here to give some advice to his fledgling medical faculty at his fancy new university. I’m just a country doctor.”

  “From Chicago,” Melissa jeered. “South side, to boot—which has about as much open land as Manhattan.”

  James grinned again. “You’d be surprised how much open land there is in Chicago’s south side. Vacant lots, I’ll grant you. Nary a crop to be seen anywhere except the stuff handed out by drug dealers, none of which was actually grown there. My point remains. I’m here in Prague as a modest medical adviser. I’m not the one who just landed a prestigious position at Jena University as their new—and only—‘professor of political science.’ I’m not the one Morris asked to come here to explain to him how to haul eastern Europe kicking and screaming into the modern world.”

  Melissa made a face. “My knowledge of eastern European history is pretty general. But…I’d say your best bet is to hook up with whatever revolutionaries you can find. There’s got to be some. Poland produced almost as many radicals and revolutionaries over the centuries as it did grain and layabout noblemen. For that matter, the nobility itself produced a fair number of them. Remember Count Casimir Pulaski, in the American revolution?”

  James looked startled. “Is that who Pulaski Boulevard in Chicago is named after?”

  “Doctors,” scoffed Meliss
a. “Talk about a self-absorbed class of people. Yes, dear, that is who one of your hometown’s main streets is named after. But don’t get a swelled head about it. There must be a thousand Pulaski streets or avenues or boulevards in the United States, in just about as many towns.”

  “How the hell am I supposed to find Polish revolutionaries?” demanded Morris. “I’m a jeweler. Fine, my family came from Kraków. That’s ancient history.”

  “We’re in ancient history,” said Melissa. “Start with Red Sybolt. He’s an old friend of yours and he’s been a labor agitator for years. By now, if he hasn’t run across some wild-eyed Polish rebels, I’ll be surprised. Plant Red on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific, and he’d somehow manage to rouse a rabble.”

  Morris chuckled. “Well, that’s true. Of course, first I’d have to track him down. He hasn’t been in Prague for months.”

  “That’s a manageable problem. Somebody will know where he is. Moving right along, you need to get Uriel Abrabanel—remember him? he works for you already—to start investigating the chances of cutting a deal with the Austrians. Now that that bigoted bastard Ferdinand II died, we’re dealing with a new emperor in Vienna. He’s a lot more capable than his father, by all accounts.”

  “Yes, we’ve heard that,” said Judith. “He’s not narrow-minded, the way his father was—and his sister Maria Anna just turned half of Europe upside down thinking for herself.”

  Morris scratched his jaw. “‘More capable’ could be bad as well as good, y’know. Still, it’s worth looking into. In fact, if I know Uriel, he’s already started.” He eyed Melissa skeptically. “And how many more rabbits do you want me to pull out of a hat?”

  “Well, here’s one,” said Melissa. “See if you can make an accommodation with the Cossacks. You’d have to find a suitable emissary, of course.”

  Morris’ eyes widened. “Cossacks? For God’s sake, Melissa! They’re the same murderous bastards who led the Chmielnicki Pogrom—which is named after their leader—in the first place! Not to mention such minor accomplishments as the pogroms at Kiev and Kishinev.” His face grew hard. “Or the massacres carried out in the Ukraine during the Russian Civil War by the counter-revolutionary armies, half of which were made up of Cossacks or their hangers-on. The stinking swine murdered something like fifty thousand Jews before the Red Army put a stop to it. Fuck the Cossacks. Every one of them can rot in hell, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “I’m with Morris,” said Nichols stoutly.

  “Stick to doctoring,” sniffed Melissa. “See if you can come up with a cure for excess testosterone, while you’re at it.” To Morris she said: “You’re being childish, to be blunt. How is dealing with Cossacks in the here and now any different from what Mike Stearns has been doing with Germans? Compared to what they did to Jews in the Holocaust, the Cossacks are nothing.”

  “Well, yeah, but…”

  “But what? Since when did you start believing in racial destiny, Morris? Nazi Germany was the product of centuries of history. Change the history, like Mike is doing, and you eliminate them before they even appear. So why can’t you do the same with the Cossacks?”

  “Because they’re nothing but a bunch of—”

  “Mounted hooligans? Thugs? For Pete’s sake, Morris, in this day and age—early seventeenth century, remember?—the ‘Cossacks’ are barely even ‘Cossacks’ yet. They’re just getting started. A lot of them are former serfs, in fact, who ran away from their masters. We’re at least a century away from the time they started serving the Russian tsars as their mailed fist. This is the best time I can think of to stop that in its tracks, too.”

  Morris looked mulish. Melissa looked exasperated. “Dammit, you asked. At my age, I’d hardly have come racing to Prague on horseback of my own volition.”

  “You rode all the way?” asked Judith.

  James grinned. “She rode on a horse for exactly one day. After that, she put her foot down and insisted we hire a carriage. One of those litter-type carriages, of course, not a wheeled one. Going over the mountains on a wheeled vehicle is best left to mad dogs and Englishmen.”

  It was Melissa’s turn to look defensive. “I spent my youth waving a placard at demonstrations. I did not attend the kind of ladies’ finishing school where Mary Simpson learned to ride.”

  “How’s she doing, by the way?” asked Morris.

  “Given her recent hair-raising adventures, quite well. It helped a lot, of course, that when she got back to Magdeburg her son was waiting for her along with her husband.”

  Judith peered at her. “I thought you detested the Simpsons. Well, except Tom.”

  “I did, sure, when John Simpson ran that godawful campaign against Mike three years ago.” Melissa waved her hand. “But three years is ancient history, as fast as things have been changing since the Ring of Fire. I think quite well of them, these days.”

  She pointed an accusatory finger at Morris. “And there’s a lesson for you. If I can make friends with Mary Simpson, why can’t you do it with Cossacks?”

  He threw up his hands. “They’re barbarians, for the love of God!”

  “Again, so what? Yes, they’re not far removed from barbarism. What do you expect, from a society being forged out of runaway serfs and bandits on the borderlands? Nobody is simply one thing or another, Morris. It’s always more complicated. To go back to Mary Simpson, she’s still haughty as all hell—can be, anyway—and I don’t think she’ll ever really be able to see the world except through her own very upper-crust perspective. But that’s not all there is to the woman, not by a long shot. The trick is finding a way—which is exactly what Mike did—to match her and her husband properly to the right circumstances. Bring out their best, instead of their worst. So do the same with the Cossacks.”

  “They don’t have a ‘best side,’ that I can see,” Morris groused.

  “Oh, that’s silly,” said his wife. “Of course they do, even if it’s only courage. If they hadn’t been tough bastards, the tsars couldn’t have used them in the first place.”

  A young servant entered the salon. “Dinner is ready, Lady Judith.”

  Judith rose. “Thank you, Rifka. Come along, folks. You must be starving by now.”

  * * *

  Fortunately, they were hungry—or James might have spent half an hour instead of three minutes making wisecracks about Lord and Lady Roth and the way they bid fair to make pikers out of any European aristocrats barring maybe the odd emperor here and there. He didn’t even make one wisecrack about the food being kosher.

  Of course, he might not have noticed anyway. But Melissa did, and after the meal was over she gave Morris a little smile.

  “I see even you can bend a little. Smart move, if you ask me.”

  Morris was back to being defensive. “I didn’t eat pork in the old days, even if I never had any use for most of those silly kashrut rules. Here…”

  His wife gave him a mildly exasperated look. “To start with,” she said, “we didn’t really have any choice. Things are changing in Prague, but there’s still no chance of Jews, even very rich ones, hiring Christian servants. And even if you could, you couldn’t trust them not to be spies working for somebody else. So all the servants in the house, including the cooks, are Jewish—and the only way they know how to cook is kosher.”

  She shrugged. “So, I persuaded Morris that it just made sense to make a virtue out of the business. You know how Jews are, Melissa, even if”—she gave Nichols a skeptical glance—“James is probably awash in goofy notions. Most of Prague’s Jews, and certainly all of the rabbis, know that Morris’ theological opinions are radically different from theirs. But Jews don’t care much about theology, the way Christians do. They care a lot more about whether people maintain Jewish customs and traditions and rituals. And since we now do—”

  “Not all of the customs,” said Morris, half-snarling. “I was born Reform, raised Reform, and I’ll damn well die Reform. No way I’ll ever—”

  “Husband, q
uit it,” snapped Judith. “We follow most of them, and you know it perfectly well. And you also know that between that and the fact that all of Bohemia’s Jews depend on you to keep them in Wallenstein’s good graces, everybody is being friendly to us. Even the rabbis, most of them.”

  She gave Morris an accusing glare. “And don’t pretend otherwise! You even like some of those rabbis.”

  “Well…”

  “Admit it!”

  “Fine. Yes, I like Mordecai and Isaac. But they’re—they’re…”

  He made a vague motion with his hand. “Not exactly just orthodox rabbis. It’s more complicated. More…”

  “Many-sided?” asked Melissa. “Full of potential, not just limits?”

  Seeing her triumphant look, he scowled. Then, transferred the scowl to the servant Rifka when she entered the dining room.

  Timidly, seeing her employer’s expression, she drew back a pace.

  “Oh, stop it, Morris!” snapped Judith. “He’s not glaring at you, Rifka. He’s just glaring the way he always does when one of his pet peeves develops legs and starts walking around on its own instead of obeying his orders.”

  She added a winning smile to settle the young woman’s nerves. “What do you need?”

  “Ah…nothing, Lady Judith. It’s just that some people have arrived and insist on speaking to you immediately.”

  “And that’s another thing I miss,” muttered Morris. “Doorbells, so you’d know when somebody was at the blasted door.”

  “House this size,” James muttered back, “you’d need a foghorn.”

  Judith ignored both of them. “Please, show the visitors in. We’ve finished eating anyway.”

  * * *

  When the newcomers entered the room, Morris’ expression darkened still further. Melissa’s, on the other hand, was full of good cheer.

  “Well, I do declare. Red Sybolt, in the flesh. We were just talking about you, as it happens. Or rather, I was. Morris was trying to evade the subject.”

  “What subject?” asked Red. “But, first, some introductions.” He gestured to the four men who’d come in behind him.