1635:The Dreeson Incident (assiti shards) Read online

  Ed put down the tote bag he was carrying. "Here's something for you from Annabelle."

  "Orange carrots! God bless the woman. The white and purple ones I can buy here taste pretty much the same, but I can't convince myself that they look right on my plate. It's weird to get carrot flavor when you're looking at a vegetable that resembles a turnip. Kiss her for me when you get home."

  "Be glad to."

  Ed put down his fork. "It's not as if everyone hadn't expected it. Constantin Ableidinger is definitely running for the USE Parliament from Bamberg district on the Ram Platform. He's coming through Grantville on his way back from Fulda, to work on developing a common slate of candidates in the upcoming election. We want to have one worked out and ready to go the minute Mike names the date."

  Arnold Bellamy scribbled something on the clipboard lying next to his plate. "Are Ableidinger and his people going to merge into the Fourth of July Party?"

  "They'd rather keep some level of independence. 'Closely allied' and agreeing not to ever run candidates against each other in the same race is good enough for me. I sure wouldn't want to see the Crown Loyalists picking up a seat on a plurality because we split the vote between us. Mostly, I guess, they'll run their people south of the Thuringerwald and we'll run ours north of it. One thing we'll have to work out is what will be happening around Suhl and thereabouts. Not to mention Buchenland. I expect that's one reason he's been up there, touring around with Henry. Sounding things out."

  "Who are we putting up for Becky's seat if she's willing to bow out?" Claire asked. "I swear that I haven't heard anything. Not a word. Or don't we know yet?"

  "Well, we haven't approached Becky and Mike about it yet. That's one of the reasons I'm headed to Amsterdam next. But a lot of the up-timers would like to run Chad Jenkins if the seat opens up."

  "We could do a lot worse. He supported Simpson in 1631, so he might appeal to some of the conservative-side-of-the-middle-of-the-road types who are skittish about Mike. He's pretty conservative himself. In fact, I was always surprised that he wasn't a Republican, up-time."

  Ed chuckled. "Given his druthers, I'm sure he would have been. But Chad knew better to think that being a Republican would help him much in the middle of Bobby-Byrd-Land."

  "How would it go over with the new majority in Grantville, though, having an up-timer succeed to a down-timer's seat?"

  "Chad's good at schmoozing. And there's no really suitable down-timer in West Virginia County who's both available and willing to run. They're…"

  "All still too busy making money. Recouping their war losses." Arnold put a word into the conversation. "Give it five years before one of them starts to eye Becky's seat. What about the House?"

  "Don't know yet. I want to float a few possibilities past Mike while I'm here."

  "UMWA people?" Claire asked.

  Ed shook his head. "Actually, they're all down-timers I've been working with. I don't know if Mike has even met any of them. He sure hasn't worked with them, not closely at least. I was talking to Chad and Henry the other day. Henry said, 'You know, my grandpa used to have a saying. Sometimes I feel like I've been hung out on a line to dry and then plumb forgot. ' That's the way it is, this year. Even looking at it from the province-wide level, sometimes I feel like Grantville's been hung out on a line to dry and plumb forgot. All the Fourth of July Party bigwigs are in Magdeburg now, busy with Gustav, busy with national politics. International politics, when it comes to the Congress of Copenhagen. They don't even have time to think about the town long enough to give Henry and the others the okays that they need to move on.' "

  Claire sighed. "Henry has a point, you know. As mayor. Before the Ring of Fire, our town was dying. Slower than the other little towns around Fairmont, but dying. All the ambitious kids leaving after high school-well, the way Duke did, and our kids. That's why they were left up-time. We came back when Duke retired. Then it came back to life after the Ring of Fire, and he got to oversee that. Now it's dying again. The ambitious people, a lot of them, moving out. Turning into a backwater. He's having to watch that happen, too. He's got to be hurting."

  "He has a point about getting the okays. We talk a lot about politics from the bottom up. But the truth is, as far as the party is concerned, Mike and the UMWA have kept it pretty tightly buttoned up from the top down, when it comes to nominations and such. He just.. ." Arnold's voice trailed off.

  Claire finished the sentence. "Wants to work with people he trusts. Can't blame him for that."

  Things went on from there.

  "And that's the last I've heard from Steve Salatto about the way things are falling out in Franconia."

  Someone knocked on the door. Francisco Nasi glanced up, pushing his glasses back to their proper place on the bridge of his nose. "What is it?"

  Samantha Burka poked her head into the room. "You and Mr. Piazza have to finish up now, Sir. The Gustav taking him to Amsterdam will be leaving in less than two hours."

  Chapter 9

  Grantville

  "I'll get it."

  Annalise jumped up from the dinner table and dashed for the front hall. "Hello. Yes, Mrs. Piazza? They're out! They're out of Basel? They're okay? Really all right? Not hurt or anything. You're sure? Just a minute."

  She left the receiver on the telephone stand and ran back into the dining room. "They're out of Basel. Oma and Mrs. Simpson and the archduchess. They're okay. Absolutely okay. Henry, can you come to the phone?"

  She turned right around and dashed again, so she could pick up the receiver again as fast as possible. She didn't want Mrs. Piazza to think that she'd hung up before Henry could get there. "Don't go away. He's coming right now. Thea had to get his cane for him."

  Denise Beasley spread out the morning newspaper on the kitchen table in her father Buster's trailer. Her best friend Minnie Hugelmair read over her shoulder. "Isn't that a hoot? Mary Simpson and the archduchess getting into a plane with the new king in the Netherlands so Jesse Wood could fly them off to Amsterdam." The girl's very pretty face twisted into a half-scowl. "I've never flown. I bet I would have, by now, if the Ring of Fire hadn't happened. Maybe we still can, someday."

  "Oh, sure," Minnie commented. "I can see it now. We get so famous that a plane lands out in your dad's storage lot to take us someplace exciting. Not likely. Just not. How about checking my algebra homework before we leave for school?"

  The noise in the Thuringen Gardens was deafening. But on the evening of a day that most people had spent talking about this kind of news, Henry felt like he had to show up. Flying the flag, or something. The Gardens were a kind of symbol for Grantville by now, he supposed. If you really had something to celebrate, you celebrated it at the Gardens. Not to mention-this was where he'd met Ronnie, in the first place.

  "Veronica's still with Horn's army, then?" Tony Adducci waved at Thecla to bring him another beer.

  "She'll be on her way home by the end of the week, they tell me. Horn's sending her by boat as soon as he can arrange to get her on one with all the necessary safe-conducts and such for passing through the region held by Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar. Down the Rhine and then up the Main."

  Chad Jenkins nodded. "Bernhard's being cooperative, they say."

  "Just hope that it lasts."

  Joe Stull grinned. "So, Henry, are you going to climb into that ATV to make the tour of the towns in Buchenland before the snow flies?"

  "Yep."

  "We got a new message in from Fulda right before I left the office," Ed Piazza said.

  "What?"

  "They're suggesting that since Veronica will be landing at Frankfurt, you ought to extend the tour. Go on down the Kinzigtal and meet her there. There are bits and pieces of Buchenland County along the route until you get as far as Hanau."

  Martin Wackernagel finished chewing a bite of pretzel. "Not a bad idea. It's a pretty trip. Not a very good road, but a really pretty trip, especially in the fall when the leaves are turning. I go that road all the time. The Reichsstrasse."
>
  "What a hellish racket." Missy clamped her hands over her ears. "Maybe they should have waited and not had last month's parade until they got Mrs. Simpson and Mrs. Dreeson back. That would have made for a few more floats."

  "It would have saved a lot of beer, too." Denise smirked. "Most of the guys are going to end up just as drunk tonight as they did after the parade. First they strut and then they swill. It's not as if any of them here had anything to do with what was going on in Basel, but to hear them talk, you'd think that the SoTF Reserves rode into the city with Don Fernando-the king in the Netherlands, whatever he's called at the moment-and raised the siege at the embassy."

  "Maybe we should go home early. It's not as if there's anyone here we're interested in, and we're not close enough to Dad and Mayor Dreeson to overhear anything political." Missy turned around and tapped Pam Hardesty's shoulder. "Pam? Are you ready to go?" Then, "Pam? Is something wrong?"

  Pam shook her head, eyes narrow. "No. Not really. I just spotted one of Velma's less pleasant old boyfriends, over there. Take a sighting past Wackernagel, then a little to the left and four tables toward the door. I don't want to walk past him. Is there enough room, anywhere, that we could get out one of the other doors?"

  Minnie stood up, swiveling her head. "Not right now. We'd better wait a bit."

  Missy frowned at Pam. "He didn't…?"

  "He didn't. But not for lack of trying. Talk about a nasty, nasty, man. Fish bait."

  Denise's nouns and adjectives were considerably more colorful than that, ending up with, "Maybe you'd better let Daddy give you some lessons in dirty fighting. You ought to see what Mom can do."

  "Benny's a good man," Minnie said slowly. "His sister Betty's husband seems to be a good man, too, but he's been so sick ever since we came to Grantville that it's hard to tell what he'd be like if he wasn't coughing all the time. Betty likes him, though. Her son David's nice, and so is Louise's husband, but they're both about fifty, I guess. How do you tell if someone young is going to turn out to be a good man?"

  "Wait until they're old," Missy suggested.

  "Where's the fun in that?" Denise asked. "Just arrange things so you're in the driver's seat."

  Pam looked at Minnie. "Reputation, I guess. Pay attention to what other girls say. Sometimes it does pay to listen to gossip."

  "Hell," Denise said. "Listen to what the guys say. Oh, sure, men say they don't gossip. They do, though. They just call it 'shooting the breeze.' There were a bunch out in Daddy's welding shop the other day. Older guys, not our age, but it's all the same. One of them asked, 'Who did Bobby Fitz marry, anyway?' That's what they called Austin O'Meara's brother-it wasn't his name, but everyone called him that. I don't know why. None of you probably ever met him, since he moved away a dozen or so years before the Ring of Fire. But you remember Austin-the one who got killed in a fight here at the Gardens last year. Well, first one of them said it was Obie Conway's sister down in Kentucky and then they started talking about the job corps and when Bobby Fitz met her and how her folks interfered and she married someone from her dad's snake handler church instead, but after he died, Obie dropped a word to Bobby Fitz and he gave notice at his job that same afternoon and headed for Pikeville with everything he owned in his pickup."

  Missy raised her eyebrows. "So?"

  "There wasn't a one of them who doubted that when Bobby Fitz tore out of town, he had a respectable marriage on his mind, even if it did come with three half-grown stepsons attached. Or that he'd be good to Sandy Jo and her kids. There's a lot to be said for listening to guys who work with a man. They know how he acts if it's one of those days that started by dropping an anvil on his big toe and ended by having a big weld go wrong at the last minute."

  "Yeah, maybe. But Buster's friends are old enough to tell the difference. I don't think guys our age really are." Missy looked at Minnie. "My advice is that you don't even try to tell the difference now. Just hold back for a while. I'm not planning to get serious for another ten years, at least. Not until I've finished all my education and worked for a while. Maybe not until I've traveled some, if things settle down."

  Denise grinned. "No fun and games along the way."

  Missy shook her head. "I don't need that kind of complication in my life right now." She looked at them solemnly. "Neither do the rest of you."

  Minnie stood up. "Thecla and her flying squad of waitresses have cleared a path along the wall, on the other side of the room from where Pam's nasty man is sitting. Let's get out of here while we can."

  Fulda

  "A welcoming parade," Andrea Hill said. "We've got Wes and Clara back." She waved toward the head of the table. "Henry's coming. We ought to put on the biggest parade this town's ever seen. Kids from the schools. Captain Wiegand and his city militia. The whole Fulda Barracks Regiment."

  Orville Beattie shook his head. "It won't fly, Andrea. We've got Wes and Clara back, but the Stift is missing its abbot and we don't even know where he is or if he's still alive. 'Hearts and minds' stuff. We've got to do something more subdued. We can't ignore the way the monks have got to be feeling."

  Mark Early scratched his chin. "Maybe Henry could review the militia and the regiment out at Barracktown."

  "Not a bad idea," Derek Utt said. "That way, we can pretty well secure the perimeter while Henry's up on the reviewing stand. Not that I'm expecting the farmers to try anything. The Ram Rebellion never really got violent over here, the way it did at Miltitz, and anyway, they're on our side. But we haven't caught the kidnappers and we don't know if the guys who hauled Schweinsberg away were the only ones that the archbishop of Cologne sent into our territory."

  "Did he send them because he's archbishop of Cologne or did he send them because he's the brother of the duke of Bavaria?" Harlan Stull asked.

  "I'm not even sure he could separate those two things in his own mind." Clara frowned. "If he wasn't Maximilian's brother, he wouldn't be an archbishop."

  Wes took his glasses off and started to polish them with his handkerchief. "Is he in any position to do anything after the Essen War?"

  "He's on the run," Derek conceded. "Or, at least, out of Bonn and lurking somewhere over on the other side of the Rhine. But if we've still got some of the guys he hired running around loose… And I don't know that we don't. It doesn't seem likely, but I can't be sure. A closed perimeter looks good to me."

  "Make sure there's a chair for him on the reviewing stand. George Chehab says Henry's having problems with that hip again."

  Derek nodded. "Sure. He can go through the new school building, too, while he's out at Barracktown. The roof is on, now, and there's glass in the windows. We can set up the lunch in the larger schoolroom. He can eat with the teachers. We've hired a second teacher for next year."

  "That's that, then," Wes said, putting his glasses back on. "How are you planning to get Henry out to all the small towns and villages, Orville?"

  Amsterdam

  "What is it about men whose wives have just had babies that makes them look insufferably smug and oh-so-pleased with themselves?" mused Ed Piazza. "I mean, it's not as if the man did anything except get his rocks off months ago."

  Mike Stearns' grin never wavered. "And you didn't?"

  "Oh, sure," said Ed. "I'm just quoting my wife's none-too-admiring words addressed at me, back when."

  Francisco Nasi, the only single man in the trio, shook his head. "I'm simply glad that Rebecca is well. And the girl also."

  "What are you going to name her?" asked Ed.

  "Kathleen," said Mike. "We decided that a long time ago. In fact, it was supposed to have been the name we gave Sephie, except we decided in the end that 'Sepharad' would be better for our first child."

  The term Sepharad was the word used by Europe's Sephardic Jews to refer to the Iberian homeland from which they had been driven almost two centuries earlier. As always, Nasi was struck by the name, used as the name of a child-and, still more so, by the complexities of the gentile father who had chosen that name.
Complexities which had, in the end, produced something as simple and clear-cut as Nasi's own firm allegiance to the man.

  But it was a complex world, after all. And there was always this, too-working for Michael Stearns was invariably an interesting experience. Sometimes, even an exhilarating one.

  "Kathleen," said Ed, rolling the name. "After a relative?"

  Mike's grin got a bit crooked. "Uh, no. It was my ex-fiancee's name."

  Ed looked a bit startled. Nasi, who knew the story, said: "The woman who died in the car crash. In California."

  Ed was still looking startled. "And Becky didn't mind?"

  "It was her suggestion, in fact," said Mike.

  That led Francisco to reflect on the complexities of the woman Rebecca Abrabanel. With some regrets, even. Had she not married Mike Stearns, she might have wound up marrying Francisco himself.

  Possibly. That had been his family's plan, at least. But what was done, was done, and Nasi was not a man given to fretting over the past.

  Speaking of which-complexities, that is…

  "Is it possible to speak to her?" he asked. "Or is she maintaining seclusion?"

  Mike's grin got very crooked, now. "Yeah, sure. We'll have to manage something discreet, though. Becky maintains most of the rituals and customs, but not all of them, especially the ones she thinks are-her words, not mine-'stupid and pointless leftovers from tribal pastoralism.' But she tries not to rub anybody's nose in it."

  Nasi chuckled. "Especially in Amsterdam, whose rabbis are notoriously rigid."

  " 'Reactionary scoundrels,' is the phrase Becky herself uses to describe them." Mike shrugged. "She doesn't care at all what they think. Still, most Jews in the city are religiously very conservative, if not always politically, and she doesn't see any point in needlessly irritating them. So, although she's not maintaining the forty days of seclusion, she's not flaunting the fact either. Come by our place tonight, after dark."

  Nasi nodded. Mike cocked his head quizzically.

  "What do you need to talk to her about? If it's something personal, of course, you can ignore the question."