1634: The Ram Rebellion (assiti shards) Read online

  The “dentist” wasn’t so bad, maybe. If he’d actually been a dentist. Just a man in late middle-age, round-shouldered and with something of a stoop, wearing a nondescript cloth coat.

  The problem was that Emma knew his actual position. He was Freiherr von Bimbach’s official gaol-keeper and executioner-a post which, in this time and place, doubled as “official torturer.”

  His much younger journeyman assistant was even worse. No unobtrusive cloth coat for him. He was wearing the sort of outfit that blacksmiths wore while working in their shops. And he was just about as big and bulky as any blacksmith Emma had ever seen.

  There was even a brazier glowing in a corner. With tongs being heated in it!

  Unbelievably, things got worse. The door to the chamber was opened by a soldier, who ushered in the lord of the castle. He was holding something in his hand, but Emma was too pre-occupied with the Freiherr himself to notice what it was.

  Emma stared at him. This was the first good, up-close look she’d had of Freiherr Fuchs von Bimbach since her kidnapping.

  His appearance was… not promising. Bimbach was in his forties, stocky to the point of being overweight, and with a hard and heavy face. Clean-shaven, which made his jowls prominent.

  He came right over to her and held up the object in his hand. Now, she saw that it was one of the pieces of Mormon literature she’d hastily stuck into her pocket when she’d been lured away from her stand in Bamberg.

  “You are a heretic,” von Bimbach stated. “Here is the proof of it. Heresy is a capital crime, and I am charged with enforcing the law. And I have the Halsgericht.”

  Emma rallied her will. “Not the new laws. You can’t-”

  Von Bimbach slapped her across the face with the booklet. “You do not have permission to speak.”

  He moved over to Meyfarth and held the booklet under his nose. “And you! A man who claims to be a Lutheran pastor, no less. You have tolerated this-no, have conspired with her.”

  Meyfarth said nothing. But he returned the Freiherr’s glare without flinching.

  After a moment, von Bimbach turned away. The soldier who had ushered him in was still standing at the open door. The Freiherr beckoned and the man brought him over a packet. Apparently he’d been carrying it with him.

  Von Bimbach went over to a nearby table and spread open the packet. Emma could now see that it contain paper and writing material.

  “You will compose a letter to your authorities,” von Bimbach stated. “To abuse the term. Both of you. And you will sign it.”

  “I will not!” Emma hissed. Meyfarth shook his head.

  Von Bimbach gave them a long, heavy stare. “Yes, you will.”

  By now, Emma’s fear has been replaced by sheer outrage. “I will not! Go ahead and torture me, if you want to. I still won’t!”

  The Freiherr’s sneer was something out of a lousy movie, too. “Not you, witch. For my negotiations-unfortunately-I shall probably need you and the so-called pastor intact. Still, you will the compose the letter.”

  He swiveled his head to the soldier again. “Bring in the old woman.”

  * * *

  “You promised me they wouldn’t hurt her!” Judith Neideckerin shrieked at Noelle, half-rising from the chair in her chambers.

  Noelle couldn’t meet her eyes, yet. All she could do was stare out of the window.

  Another shriek. “Let’s kill him! Now!”

  “We can’t,” Noelle hissed.

  “You have a gun! An up-time gun! Don’t lie to me, I know you have it!”

  That was finally enough to break Noelle’s paralysis. She spun around and faced Judith squarely.

  “Yes, I do.” She reached into the pocket of her heavy skirt and drew out the Browning automatic. “Here it is. I’ve got it loaded, too. But does it look like a magic wand to you? It’s got less than ten rounds. And they’re not very powerful. What we call a .32 caliber.”

  Hissing, again: “A so-called ‘lady’s gun,’ that Dan Frost thought I could handle better. As slender as I am. Damn him!”

  She stuffed the pistol back into the pocket. “But it doesn’t matter, Judith. Even if I had a .44 Magnum-and assuming I could handle the great thing-it wouldn’t matter. The soldiers are on alert, all over the Schloss.”

  “The staff-”

  Noelle shook her head. “Not now. Not yet. They’re not ready to take on the Freiherr’s mercenaries, all by themselves. And if they did, they’d probably be beaten down, anyway. Except for the blacksmith and his apprentices-maybe some of the stable hands-they’re mostly just clerks and servants.”

  Judith slumped back into her chair and lowered her head into her hands. Then, started sobbing.

  Noelle went over and placed an arm around her shoulder. “I don’t think he’s planning to kill your mother.”

  “He’s hurting her,” came the words between the sobs. Then, Judith lowered her hands and stared at the floor through tear-filled eyes.

  “For the first time-ever-I wish the swine had sired a child on me. So I could strangle it.”

  Noelle tightened the arm. “No, Judith. You wouldn’t.”

  After a while, she added: “Just wait. There’ll be a time. Soon, I think.”

  * * *

  The torturer and his assistant had the old woman strapped into the contrivance that had reminded Emma at first of a very primitive dentist’s chair. Except now she could see that it was more like the equipment that hospitals used for women in labor. The pastor’s landlady was secured to the wooden base of the horrible thing with a heavy leather belt across her waist. Her hands were immobilized by other straps and her feet had been locked into stirrups.

  Her legs were half-spread and bent upward, removing any support. The torturer pushed back the woman’s skirt, exposing her left shin.

  “Now.”

  His beefy assistant raised the iron bar in his hands and brought it down. The sound of the breaking bone was quite audible all through the chamber.

  “I’ll write it! I’ll write it!” Emma shouted, her voice so loud it almost drowned the old woman’s cry of pain.

  Von Bimbach looked at the pastor. Meyfarth swallowed.

  “The other leg,” the Freiherr commanded.

  The torturer and his assistant had already moved to the opposite side of the apparatus. Again, the torturer shoved aside the skirt; again, the iron bar came down.

  “I’ll write it,” said Meyfarth. His voice sounded like a croak. Emma could barely hear the words, beneath the screams.

  Chapter 15:

  “The ram has taken Halsgericht now”

  Bamberg, early September, 1634

  “This has to be,” Anita Masaniello said, “one of the slimiest letters I have ever read.”

  “Ah,” Constantin Ableidinger answered, “it was written, of course, by Dr. Lenz. ‘Pestilenz.’ Who delivered it in person.”

  “At least, apparently, Emma and Meyfarth are alive. And still in fairly good shape, if we can rely on their notes. But I simply cannot believe the sheer idiocy of this.”

  “The Freiherr believes, of course, that the location of his Schloss, well within the borders of Bayreuth, immunizes him from all serious danger.”

  Anita, since coming up to Bamberg the previous month to take charge of connecting the dots between the Thorntons, Meyfarth, the Neidecker woman who had been his landlady, the Freiherr, the printer’s widow who was the ewe-though not bearing any actual resemblance to the logo of Ewegenia-and who was still, following the city council elections, locked into a battle with the local guild on the topic of forced marriage of said daughter to a candidate of its choice, and anything else she could put through her analytical techniques, had gotten pretty good at parsing Ableidinger’s conversation.

  “Believes?”

  “Margrave Christian has accepted oaths of allegiance from many of the farmers and townsmen who were previously considered to be the subjects of the lesser nobility within his territories.”

  “Nice way to put it.
” She shifted uncomfortably. The theory had been that last month, already, she would be on her way back to Grantville to have the baby at Leahy Medical Center with an up-time doctor doing the honors for the Salatto blessed event. Then Ableidinger showed up in Wuerzburg. Plus a sudden SOS from the Fulda people that drew off a half dozen of the Wuerzburg staff.

  She looked down at her stomach. If they didn’t make progress about getting Emma and Meyfarth back pretty soon, she was going to have the baby in the Bamberg headquarters of the Franconian administration. Probably behind her desk; then pick herself up like a pioneer woman and go back to negotiating. Von Bimbach was demanding that they barbecue the ram. Not just Brillo. He wanted to fill Franconia with roast mutton.

  “So he wants to parley.”

  “The Freiherr says that he is willing to return them unharmed. On reasonable terms. Reasonable from his perspective. And parley only under the conditions that he set.”

  Anita picked up the letter again. By one corner, carefully, between thumb and forefinger. “Why me? Why not you, Vince?

  The question was reasonable enough. Vince Marcantonio was the Franconian administration’s head in Bamberg. He should have been prestigious enough for any Freiherr to meet with.

  Vince Marcantonio looked a little abashed. “Previous intemperate statements about what I would do to the certain parts of the man’s anatomy if I ever caught him, I’m afraid. Wade Jackson said worse. We were more than a little pissed that he plucked them out right from under our noses. And a reporter overheard us.”

  “Curses. I suppose that Cliff Priest can’t possibly get back here, and then up to Bayreuth, by the deadline this guy has set?”

  “Not a prayer.”

  “Okay, go back to Lenz. Say that I’ll go up and talk to the Freiherr. Not in his Schloss. No way am I going inside the man’s walls, not if I could bring the whole USE army with me, which I can’t. Outside. In a field. With a big enough batch of troops along to make a difference. Tom O’Brien and his pick of the crop. As many as von Bimbach will let him bring.”

  “And,” Constantin Ableidinger said, “stipulate that people have the right to come and watch. Ordinary people. Standing around the edges of the field. Witnesses to make sure that Fuchs von Bimbach attempts no treacherous undertaking. He can hardly object to that.”

  Enclave within Bayreuth, September, 1634

  The negotiations were going well, Freiherr von Bimbach thought. The fact that Salatto’s heavily pregnant wife had actually appeared reinforced his convictions about the importance of his hostages. Which meant that his strategy was going well. Once she acceded to the demands that Lenz was presenting, he would have humiliated the man, Salatto, doubly by doing it through the woman. Much more effective than dealing with the administrator directly.

  Yes, he could afford to be quite intransigent. Require them to give him the ram and the ewe to get the hostages back; send out propaganda proclaiming that this showed how little the USE cared for the Franconians by comparison to his own people, while hanging the rebels. Demonstrate to the Swedes that only he was capable of bringing sanity back to the region.

  Lenz thought that he was doing well on the Freiherr’s behalf. He had not conceded a single point. All they had to do now was wait for the up-timers to admit that he had won.

  * * *

  Breaking into the torture chamber proved to be as simple as opening the door and walking in. There had been no soldier standing guard, as Noelle had feared there might be. That wasn’t really surprising, though. Most if not all of the soldiers still in the Schloss were at the windows on the upper floors, watching the parlay taking place on the field beyond the castle.

  She took three steps into the room, with Eddie following her.

  “Where are they, do you think?” She looked around the large empty room. There was nothing here that even vaguely resembled “cells.” In fact, to her surprise, the chamber had very little resemblance to what she’d thought a “dungeon” would look like. It was more like a half-basement a man might devote to a workshop.

  It was not gloomy at all. There was a bright sun outside, and plenty of light came through the windows near the ceiling.

  Before Eddie could reply, Noelle got her answer. The door opposite the one she and Eddie had entered swung open. A middle-aged man came though, followed by a very big younger one.

  “What are you doing here?” the man demanded. “Get out!”

  Noelle pulled out her pistol. “I want the prisoners. Now.”

  The man gaped at her, for a moment. Then shouted: “Seize her, Johannes!”

  The big assistant came around and moved toward her. Noelle brought up the gun. Before she could aim it, Eddie grabbed her by the shoulders and swung her aside. Then, lunged at the assistant.

  A moment later, the two men were grappling. Noelle stepped to the side. The older man-the castle’s executioner and torturer, she assumed-was just staring at her. He was not more than fifteen feet away.

  Weeks of tightly-repressed fury boiled to the surface. She raised the gun, grabbed it with both hands as Dan Frost had taught her, and fired.

  Four times. Ricochets zinged from the stone walls, causing her to duck frantically.

  When she looked up, she saw the executioner running out the door he’d come in through.

  She’d missed. All four shots!

  A heavy weight hammered into her, knocking her down. On her knees, gasping from the shock, Noelle looked up and saw that she’d been accidentally slammed into by Eddie and his opponent, as they wrestled fiercely.

  Eddie was losing the match. Pretty badly. He was a big enough young man, and stronger than he looked. But he was simply overmatched by his opponent.

  As she watched, the torturer’s assistant swung Eddie around and slammed him against some sort of huge, horrid-looking chair. The impact caused Eddie to lose his grip on the man’s arms. A moment later, the torturer had him by the throat and was starting to choke him. Bent backward over the chair the way he was, Eddie had little leverage. His hands scrabbled helplessly at his strangler’s thick arms.

  Noelle lunged to her feet and strode over.

  She couldn’t afford to miss again, and she certainly didn’t trust her marksmanship. But how-

  She saw an opening and thrust the pistol under the torturer’s right arm. Under, and up against his chin, below the jaw. As soon as she felt the heavy flesh yielding beneath the barrel, she fired.

  The torturer flung his arms aside, and stumbled back from Eddie. Blood was gushing everywhere. He smashed against a wall and collapsed to the floor, his back propped against the stonework and his head hanging loosely.

  Noelle thought he was already dead. He certainly looked like it. But as big and strong as he was, she didn’t dare take a chance. She stepped forward and shoved the barrel against the top of his head. Pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  Nothing. The gun had misfired.

  It wasn’t supposed to do that!

  As much angry as confused, she stared down at the weapon in her hand. Then, hearing a grunt, turned her head.

  Eddie had straightened up from the chair and was rubbing his throat with his hands. There were already bruises forming there. His eyes were wide open. He tried to speak, but couldn’t. Just swallowed, before removing one hand and pointing to something on the floor.

  Noelle looked down and saw the magazine of a pistol lying on the floor; one cartridge was sticking straight up from the lips. Startled, she looked down at the gun in her hand. Sure enough, the magazine was missing.

  What-

  Belatedly, she remembered. Dan Frost had warned her once against firing the gun pressed directly against a body. That might produce too much pressure in the chamber, he’d said. The bullet would fire, but it might damage the gun.

  Apparently, it had blown out the whole magazine.

  She stooped, picked it up, and looked at it. It seemed undamaged, at least; she thumbed the top cartridge back in place.

  But would the gun
still work?

  There was only one way to find out. Which she needed to, since she might very well need to use the gun again. She shoved the magazine back into the pistol and cocked the slide. Then, looked around for a suitable target.

  There wasn’t any, that didn’t risk another ricochet. Except…

  The body of the torturer slid from wall. The sound drew her eyes. She saw that from a half-sitting position, it had gone to being sprawled across the floor. The man’s eyes were half-open, staring emptily. There was still blood spilling out from the gaping wound, but it was no longer spurting. The man’s heart had stopped.

  Not surprisingly, she realized. Even with a .32 caliber, that shot must have scrambled half his brains.

  She looked over at Eddie. He shrugged.

  Noelle turned, raised the gun, aimed it carefully with both hands at the center mass of the torturer’s body. The target wasn’t more than six or seven feet away. She pulled the trigger.

  The gun worked, sure enough. But she missed again. Another ricochet zinging all over the stonewalled chamber had her and Eddie down on the floor.

  When she looked up, Eddie even managed a laugh.

  “Okay, fine,” she snarled. “So I’m not Annie Oakley.”

  Eddie had read a lot of up-time books, in the three years since the Ring of Fire. “Sure aren’t,” he croaked. “But you do a pretty good imitation of Calamity Jane.”

  * * *

  Anita asked herself whether Lenz was actually insane? Or his master was insane? There was no way that Gustavus Adolphus would ever place Freiherr von Bimbach in charge of Franconia!

  * * *

  No sooner had Noelle and Eddie gotten to their feet than a small group of men came into the chamber from the main entrance she’d used to enter. She was relieved to see that it was the blacksmith and three of his journeymen.

  “You are not hurt?” he asked. She shook her head.

  He looked over at the body of the torturer’s assistant. “Saved us some work, I see. Very good. Where is the swine himself? And the prisoners?”