1633

Chapter 1

"How utterly delightful!" exclaimed Richelieu. "I've never seen a cat with such delicate features. The coloration is marvelous, as well."

For a moment, the aristocratic and intellectual face of France's effective ruler dissolved into something much more youthful. Richelieu ignored Rebecca Stearns entirely, for a few seconds, as his forefinger played with the little paws of the kitten in his lap. Rebecca had just presented it to Richelieu as a diplomatic gift.

He raised his head, smiling. "A 'Siamese,' you call it? Surely you have not managed to establish trade relations with southeast Asia in such a short time? Even given your mechanical genius, that would seem almost another miracle."

Rebecca pondered that smile, for a moment, while she marshaled her answer. One thing, if nothing else, had become quite clear to her in the few short minutes since she had been ushered in to a private audience with the cardinal. Whatever else he was, Richelieu was possibly the most intelligent man she had ever met in her life. Or, at least, the shrewdest.

*/And quite charming, in person-that she had not expected. The combination of that keen intellect and the personal warmth and grace was disarming to someone like Rebecca, with her own basically intellectual temperament.

She reminded herself, very firmly, that being disarmed in the presence of Richelieu was the one thing she could least afford. For all his brains and his charm, the cardinal was almost certainly the most dangerous enemy her nation faced at the moment. And while she did not think Richelieu was cruel by nature, he had demonstrated before that he was quite prepared to be utterly ruthless when advancing what he considered the interests of his own nation. La gloire de France was a phrase which rang splendidly-but, like a sword, had a sharp edge to those who stood in the way.

She decided to pursue the double meaning implicit in the cardinal's last sentence.

" 'Another' miracle?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "An interesting term, Your Eminence. As I recall, the most recent characterization you gave the Ring of Fire was 'witchcraft.' "

Richelieu's gentle smile remained as steady as it had been since she entered his private audience chamber. "A misunderstanding," he insisted, wiggling his fingers dismissively. Then, paused for a moment to admire the kitten batting at the long digits. "My error, and I take full responsibility for it. Always a mistake, you know, to jump to conclusions based on scant evidence. And I fear I was perhaps too influenced at the time by the views of Father Joseph. You met him yesterday, I believe, during your audience with the king?"

Another double meaning was buried in that sentence as well. Subtly, Richelieu was reminding Rebecca that her alternative to dealing with him was the rather childish King Louis XIII-or, even worse, the religious fanatic Father Joseph. The Capucin monk was close to Richelieu, and was also the leader of the harshly intolerant Catholic lay organization of France known as the Company of the Holy Sacrament.

Rebecca controlled the natural impulse of an intellectual to talk. In this, as in so many things, her far less intellectual husband had trained her. Mike Stearns was a trade union leader in his origins. So, unlike Rebecca, he had learned long ago that the best tactic in negotiations is often simply to say nothing.

"Let the other side do most of the talking," he'd told her. "On average, I'd say anyone's twice as likely to screw up with their mouth open than closed."

The cardinal, of course, was quite familiar with the ploy himself. Silence lengthened in the room.

For an intellectual, silence is the ultimate sin. So, again, Rebecca found herself forced to keep it zipped!

She took refuge in memories of her husband. Mike, standing in the doorway to their house in Grantville, his face somewhat drawn and unhappy, as he bid her farewell on her diplomatic journey to France and Holland. The same face-she found this memory far more comforting-the night before, in their bed.

Something in the smile which came to her face at that memory defeated the cardinal. Richelieu's smile never wavered, true. But he did take a deep breath and, gently but firmly, set the kitten down on the floor and left off his idle playing.

"The 'Ring of Fire,' as you call it-which brought your 'Americans' and their bizarre technology into our world-was enough to confuse anyone, madame. But further reflection, especially with further evidence to base it upon, has led me to the conclusion that I was quite in error to label your… ah, if you will forgive the term, bizarre new country the product of 'witchcraft.' "

Richelieu paused for a moment, running his fingers down his rich robes. "Quite inexcusable on my part, really. Once I had time to ponder the matter, I realized that I had veered perilously close to Manicheanism." With a little chuckle: "And how long has it been since that heresy was condemned? A millennium and a half, ha! And here I claim to be a cardinal!"

Rebecca decided it was safe enough to respond to the witticism with a little chuckle of her own. Nothing more than that, though. She could practically feel the cardinal's magnetic personality drawing her in, and didn't doubt for a moment that Richelieu understood the power of his own charm quite well. By all accounts, the cardinal was a chaste man. But 'seduction' was a term which had more than one application. Time after time, Richelieu's rise to power and influence had been eased by that personal grace and charm-and, with other intellectuals, the suppleness of his mind. Were she not, for all practical purposes, the envoy of a nation at war with Richelieu, she would have enjoyed immensely spending a few hours with one of Christendom's most prodigious intellects discussing the theological implications of the strange event which had brought an entire town of people into 17 th -century Europe from a place centuries in the future called "the United States of America."

Silence, woman! Obey your husband!

And that thought, too, reinforced her own serene smile. In truth, Mike Stearns was very far removed from a "patriarch." He would be amused, Rebecca knew, when she told him of her self-admonition. ("I will be good God-damned. You mean that for once you listened to me?")

It was another little defeat for Richelieu. Something in the set of his smile-a trace of stiffness-told her so. Again, the cardinal ran fingers down his robe, and resumed speaking.

"No, only God could have caused such an incredible transposition of Time and Space. And your term 'the Ring of Fire' seems appropriate." Very serene, now, his smile. "As I'm sure you are aware, I have long had my agents investigating your 'United States' in Thuringia. Several of them have interviewed local inhabitants who witnessed the event. And, indeed, they too-simple peasants-saw the heavens open up and a halo of heatless flame create a new little world in a small part of central Germany.

"Still-" he said, abruptly, holding up a hand as if to forestall Rebecca's next words. (Which, in fact, she'd had no intention of speaking.) "Still, the fact that the event was of divine origin does not lead to any certain conclusion as to its purpose."

And here it comes, thought Rebecca. The new and official party line.

She was privileged, she realized. Her conversations with the courtiers at the royal audience the night before had made clear to her that France's elite was still groping for a coherent ideological explanation for the appearance of Grantville in the German province of Thuringia. Having now survived for two years-not to mention defeating several attacking armies in the process, at least one of them funded and instigated by France-the Americans and the new society they were forging could no longer be dismissed as hearsay. And the term "witchcraft" was… petty, ultimately.

Richelieu, she was certain, had constructed such an ideological explanation-and she would be the first one to hear it.

"Have you considered the history of the world which created your Americans?" asked Richelieu. "As I'm sure you also know, I've obtained"-here came another dismissive wiggle of the finger-"through various means, several of the historical accounts which your Americans brought with them. And I've studied them all, very thoroughly."

That's a given, thought Rebecca. Somewhat glumly, because it was only a "given" in retrospect. At the time, it had never occurred to her, or Mike, or any of the leaders of their new United States, that history books would rapidly become one of the most prized objects for espionage. Technical books, yes; blueprints, yes; anything which would enable the United States' opponents to steal some of their incredible new technology. But… high school history textbooks?

In retrospect, of course, the thing was obvious. Any ruler or political figure in the world, in the summer of the year 1633, would eagerly want to see what lay in store for them in the immediate years to come. And the consequences of that knowledge would be truly incalculable. If a king knows what will happen a year or two from now, after all, he will take measures to make sure that it either happens more quickly-if he likes the development-or doesn't happen at all, if otherwise.

And in so doing, of course, will rapidly scramble the sequence of historical events which led to that original history in the first place. It was the old quandary of time travel, which Rebecca herself had studied in the science fiction novels which the town of Grantville had brought with it also. And, like her husband, she had come to the conclusion that the Ring of Fire had created a new and parallel universe to the one from which Grantville-and the history which produced it-had originally come.

As she ruminated, Richelieu had been studying her. The intelligent dark brown eyes brought their own glum feeling. And do not think for a moment that the cardinal is too foolish not to understand that. He, too, understands that the history which was will now never be-but also understands that he can still discern broad patterns in those events. And guide France accordingly.

His next words confirmed it. "Of course, the exact events will be different. But the basic framework of that future world is clear enough. I believe we can summarize it with that term you favor so much: democracy. Or, as I would put it, rule by the masses. Because, to be frank, all the various political structures which that future world exhibits show the same basic characteristic. The authority of an established aristocracy and royalty discarded; all power vested in the 'people'; whether that people be called 'citizens' or 'the proletariat' or 'the Volk.' No rein, no check, no limits of any kind placed upon their desires and ambitions."

The wiggling fingers, this time, were not so much dismissive as demonstrative. "All the rest follows. The massacre of six million of your own fellow Jews, to name just one instance. The atrocities committed by such obvious monsters as Stalin and those Asian fellows. Mao and Pol Pot, if I recall the names correctly. And-let us not forget-the destruction of entire cities and regions by regimes which, though perhaps not as despotic, were no less prepared to wreak havoc upon the world. I will remind you, madame, that the United States of America which you seem determined to emulate in this universe did not shrink for an instant from incinerating the cities of Japan-or cities in Germany, for that matter, who are now your neighbors. Half a million people-more likely a million, all told-exterminated like so many insects."

Rebecca practically clamped her jaws shut. Her instincts were to shriek argument in response. Yes? And the current devastation which you have unleashed on Germany? The Thirty Years War will kill more Germans than either world war of the 20th century! Not to mention the millions of children who die in your precious aristocratic world every year from hunger, disease and deprivation-even during peacetime-all of which can be quickly remedied!

But she remained true to her husband's advice. There was no point in arguing with Richelieu. He was not advancing a hypothesis to be tested, here. He was simply letting the envoy from the United States know that the conflict was not over, and would not be over, until one or the other side triumphed. For all the charm, and civility, and the serenity of the smile, Richelieu was issuing a declaration of war.

And, indeed, his next words: "So it all now seems clear to me. Yes, God created the Ring of Fire. Absurd to label such a miraculous event a thing of petty 'witchcraft.' But he did so in order to warn us of the perils of the future, that we might be armed to avoid them. That we might be steeled in our resolve to create a world based on the sure principles of monarchy, aristocracy, and an established church. Perils of which, my dear Madame Stearns, you and your people-meaning no personal disrespect, and implying no personal sinfulness-are both the agents and the embodiment."

The cardinal rose gracefully to his feet and gave Rebecca a polite bow. "And now, I'm afraid, I must attend to the king's business. I hope you enjoy your stay in Paris, and if I may be of any assistance please call upon me. How soon do you plan to depart for Holland? And by what means?"

As quickly as I can, by any route available. But she restricted herself to a hesitant, almost girlish: "I'm not really sure. Travel from here to Holland is difficult, given the nature of the times."

Richelieu's charm was back in full force, as he escorted her to the door. "I strongly urge you to take the land route. The Channel-even the North Sea-is plagued with piracy. I can provide you with an escort to the border of the Spanish Netherlands, and I'm quite sure I can arrange a safe passage through to Holland. Yes, yes, France and Spain are antagonists at the moment. But despite what you may have heard, my personal relations with Archduchess Isabella are quite good. I am certain the Spaniards will not place any obstacles in the way."

The statement was ridiculous, of course. The very last thing the Spaniards would want to see was a diplomatic mission headed by the wife of the President of the United States perched in Holland, which the Spaniards had been trying to reconquer for half a century. Little, that United States might be. In physical size, simply the old regions of Thuringia and western Franconia-a small enough piece of Germany. Granted, by German standards the United States was an important principality. Only Saxony had a larger population. But its population was not even remotely as large as either France or Spain's. Still, that same new little country had shattered a Spanish army at Eisenach and the Wartburg a year earlier. The idea of an alliance between the United States and the United Provinces… would be enough to give nightmares to any Spanish official.

"Perhaps," was all she said. Smiling serenely, as she passed through the door.

Chapter 2

After the door closed, Richelieu turned away and resumed his seat. A moment later, Etienne Servien came through a narrow door at the rear of the room. To all appearances, the door to a closet; in reality, the door which connected to the chamber from which Servien could spy upon the cardinal's audiences whenever Richelieu so desired. Servien was one of the cardinal's handpicked special agents called intendants, and the one he relied upon for the most delicate work.

"You heard?" grunted Richelieu. Servien nodded.

Richelieu threw up his hands, as much with humor as exasperation.

"What a formidable woman!" Feeling a little tug on his robes, the cardinal gazed down at the kitten playing with the hem. The serene smile returned. He bent over, picked up the small creature, and deposited it in his lap. Then, as he petted the kitten, continued to speak.

"I never would have thought it possible, Etienne. A Sephardic Jewess-Doctor Balthazar Abrabanel's daughter, no less! That breed can talk for hours on end, ignoring hunger all the while. Philosophers and theologians, the lot. I'd expected to simply smile and let her fill my ears with information. Instead-"

He chuckled ruefully. "Not often that happens to me. I trust I didn't give away anything critical?"

Servien shrugged. "The Sephardic Jews also provide Europe and the Ottoman Empire with most of its bankers, Your Eminence-not a profession known for being loose-lipped. Moreover, while he may be a doctor and a philosopher, Balthazar Abrabanel, as well as his brother Uriel, are both experienced spies. Also not a trade which favors blabbermouths. Then, to make things still worse, Abrabanel's daughter Rebecca-by all accounts, including those of her enemies-is extremely intelligent in her own right. She would certainly have deduced, in any event, that France has not laid down its arms. So… best to do as you did, I think. Beyond that, she learned nothing. There was certainly no hint in your words of our grand strategy."

" 'Grand strategy,' " echoed Richelieu. "Which grand strategy are you referring to, Etienne? The greater, or the lesser?"

"Either of them, or both. I assure you, not even Satan himself could have deduced our plans from anything you spoke. The woman is intelligent, yes. But, as you said, not a witch."

The cardinal pondered silently for a moment, his lean face growing leaner still.

"Still, she is too intelligent," he pronounced at length. "I hope she will accept my offer to provide her with an escort for a journey overland to the Spanish Low Countries. That would enable us-in a dozen different ways-to delay her travel long enough for our purposes. But…"

He shook his head. "I doubt it. She will almost certainly deduce as much, and choose to make her own arrangements for traveling by sea to Holland. And we simply cannot allow her such a close examination of the ports. Not now, of all times!"

Servien pursed his lips. "I could certainly keep her away from Le Havre, Your Eminence. Not every port on the Channel, of course-that would be too obvious. But if she were forced to take ship from one of the smaller ports, she might not notice enough-"

Richelieu interrupted him with a gesture which was almost angry. "Desist, Etienne! I realize that you are trying to spare me the necessity of making this decision. Which, the Lord knows, I find distasteful in the extreme. But reasons of state have never been forgiving of the kindlier sentiments." He sighed heavily. "Necessity remains what it is. Do keep her from Le Havre, of course. One of the smaller ports would be far better anyway, for… what is needed."

The cardinal looked down at the kitten, still playing with his long forefinger. "And, who knows? Perhaps fortune will smile on us-and her-and she will make a bad decision."

The gentle smile returned. "There are few enough of God's marvelous creatures in this world. Let us hope we will not have to destroy yet another one. On your way out, Etienne, be so kind as to summon my servant."

The dismissal was polite, but firm. Servien nodded and left the room.

A moment later, Desbournais entered the room. Desbournais was the cardinal's valet de chambre, and had entered Richelieu's service at the age of seventeen. Richelieu was popular with his servants, as he was with all of his allies and associates. However ruthless he might be in the service of France, the cardinal was invariably considerate and polite to those around him, no matter what their station. Very generous to them, as well. Richelieu repaid loyalty with loyalty of his own. That was as true of his kitchen help as Louis XIII, king of France.

The cardinal lifted the kitten and held it out to Desbournais. "Isn't he gorgeous? See to providing for him, Desbournais-and well, mind you."

After Desbournais left, Richelieu rose from the chair and went to the window in his chamber. The residence the cardinal used whenever he was in Paris-a palace in all but name-was a former hotel which he had purchased on the Rue St. Honorй near the Louvre. He'd also purchased the adjoining hotel in order, after having it razed, to provide him with a better view of the city.

As he stared out the window, all the kindliness and gentleness left his face. The cold, stern-even haughty-visage which stared down at the great city of Paris was the one that his enemies knew. For all his charm and grace, Richelieu could also be intimidating in the extreme. He was a tall man, whose slenderness was offset by the heavy and rich robes of office he always wore. His long face, with its high forehead, arched brows, and large brown eyes, was that of an intellectual, yes. But there was also the slightly curved nose and the strong chin, set off by the pointed and neatly barbered beard-those, the features of a very different sort of man.

Hernan Cortez would have understood that face. So would the duke of Alba. Any of the world's conquerors would have understood a face which had been shaped, for years, by iron resolve.

"So be it," murmured the cardinal. "God, in his mercy, creates enough marvelous creatures that we can afford to destroy those we must. Necessity remains."

"Well, how'd it go?" asked Jeff Higgins cheerfully. Then, seeing the tight look on Rebecca's face, his smile thinned. "That bad? I thought the guy had a reputation for being-"

Rebecca shook her head. "He was gracious and polite. Which didn't stop him-not for a second-from issuing what amounted to a declaration of total war."

Sighing, she removed the scarf she had been wearing to fend off a typical Paris drizzle. Seeing it was merely a bit damp, she spread it out to dry over the back of one of the chairs in the sitting room of the house which the delegation from the United States had rented in Paris. Then, seeing Heinrich Schmidt entering the room from the kitchen, Rebecca smiled ruefully.

Major Heinrich Schmidt, as it happened. The officer who commanded the small detachment of U.S. Army soldiers who had accompanied Rebecca in her voyage, along with Jeff and Gretchen Higgins and Jimmy Andersen.

"I'm afraid-very much afraid-that you gentlemen may soon be earning your pay."

Heinrich shrugged. So did Jeff, who, although he had a special assignment on this mission, was-along with his friend Jimmy-also a soldier in the U.S. Army.

The next person to enter the room was Jeff's wife. "So what's happening?" she demanded, her German accent still there beneath the fluent and colloquial English.

Rebecca's smile widened. She always found the contrast between Jeff and Gretchen somewhat amusing, in an affectionate sort of way. What the Americans called an "odd couple," based on one of those electronic dramas which Rebecca still found fascinating, for all the hours she'd spent watching television-even hosting a TV show of her own.

Jeff Higgins, though he had been toughened considerably in the two years since his small American town had been deposited into the middle of war-torn central Europe in the year 1631, still exuded a certain air of what the Americans called a "geek" or a "nerd." He was tall, yes; but also overweight-still, for all the exercise he now got. Although Jeff had recently celebrated his twentieth birthday, his pudgy face looked like that of a teenager. A pug nose between an intellectual's eyes, peering near-sightedly through thick glasses. About as unromantic a figure as one could imagine.

His wife, on the other hand…

Gretchen, nee Richter, was two years older than Jeff. She was not precisely "beautiful," not with that strong nose and that firm jaw, even leaving aside her tall stature and shoulders broader than those of most women. But, still, so good-looking that men's eyes invariably followed her wherever she went. The fact that Gretchen was, as the Americans put it, "well built," only added to the effect-as did the long blond hair which cascaded over those square shoulders.

Gretchen, unlike Jeff, was native-born. Like Rebecca herself, she was one of the many 17 th -century Europeans who had been swept up by the Ring of Fire and cast their lot with the newly arrived Americans. Including, as was true of Rebecca herself, marriage to an American husband.

Regardless of her native origins, Gretchen had adopted the attitudes and ideology of the Americans with the fervor and zeal of a new convert. If almost all the Americans were devoted to their concepts of democracy and social equality, Gretchen's devotion-not surprisingly, given the horrors of her own life-tended to frighten even them.

Rebecca was reminded of that again, as Gretchen idly played with the edge of her vest. The blond woman's impressive bosom disguised the thing perfectly, but Rebecca knew full well that Gretchen was carrying her beloved 9mm automatic in a shoulder holster. She had sometimes been tempted to ask Jeff if his wife slept with the thing.

For the most part, however, Rebecca's smile was simply due to the fact that she both liked and-very deeply-approved of Jeff and Gretchen Higgins. In Jeff's case, if for no other reason, because the young man had once saved Rebecca from certain murder at the hands of Croat cavalrymen in the service of the Austrian Habsburgs. In Gretchen's case, leaving aside their personal friendship, because Rebecca knew full well that Gretchen's near-fanaticism was every bit as essential to the survival of the new society Rebecca and her husband Mike were creating as anything else.

Gretchen might frighten others, but she never frightened Mike Stearns. He did not always agree with her, true enough-and, even when he did, often found her tactics deplorably crude. But, no matter how high he had risen in this new world, Rebecca's husband was still the same man he had always been-the leader of a trade union of Appalachian coal miners, a folk which had its own long and bitter memories of the abuses of the powerful and mighty.

"Don't kid yourself," Mike had once growled to Rebecca, on the one occasion where she had expressed some exasperation with Gretchen's zeal and disregard for the complexities of the political situation. They had just finished breakfast, and Mike was helping Rebecca with the dishes. For all that she had grown accustomed to it, Rebecca still thought there was something charming about having such a very masculine sort of husband working alongside her in kitchen chores.

"When push comes to shove, the only people I can really depend on-outside of my coal miners and the new trade unions, and probably Willie Ray's new farmers' granges-are Gretchen and her wild-ass kids." Mike finished wiping the last plate and put it in the cupboard. "Yeah, sure, right now we're in the good graces of the Swedes. Gustavus Adolphus is a friend of ours-so is even his chancellor Oxenstierna. But don't ever forget that he's a king, or that the nobleman Axel Oxenstierna is every bit as devoted to the aristocracy as Gretchen hates the bastards. If the tide turns…"

Staring out the kitchen window of their house in Grantville, he shook his head firmly. "As regretful as he might find the necessity, Gustav II Adolf will cut our throats in a heartbeat, under the right circumstances. Whereas without us, Gretchen and her radical democratic Committees of Correspondence are so much dog food-and she knows it perfectly well, don't think she doesn't. However often I may piss her off by my 'compromises with principle,' she knows she needs me as much as I need her."

When he turned away from the window, his blue eyes had been dancing with humor. "Besides, she's so handy to have around. You've read about the American civil rights movement, haven't you?"

Rebecca nodded. She'd devoured books on American history-any kind of history, actually, but American in particular-ever since Mike had rescued her and her father from marauding mercenaries. That had happened on the very same day as the Ring of Fire. Two years ago, now-and Rebecca was a very fast reader. She'd read a lot of books.

Mike smiled. "Well, there's a little anecdote that illustrates my point. Malcolm X once made the wisecrack that the reason the white establishment was willing to talk to the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., was because they didn't want to talk to him. And that's about the way it is with me and Gretchen."

A motion outside the window must have caught his eye, because Mike turned away from her for a moment. Whatever he saw caused his smile to broaden into a grin.

"Speak of the devil… Come here, love-I'll show you another example of what I'm talking about."

When Rebecca had come to the window, she'd seen the figure of Harry Lefferts sauntering past on the street below. It was early in the morning, and from the somewhat self-satisfied look on his face, Rebecca suspected that Harry had spent the night with one of the girlfriends he seemed to attract like a magnet. Harry was a handsome young man, with the kind of daredevil self-confidence and easy humor which attracted a large number of young women.

She was a little puzzled. Harry's amatory prowess hardly seemed relevant to the discussion she was having with Mike. But then, seeing the little swagger in Harry's stride-nothing extravagant, just the subtle cockiness of a young man who was very sure of himself, Rebecca began to understand.

Whatever women might find attractive about Harry Lefferts, not all men did. Many, yes-those who hadn't chosen to cross him. Those who did cross him tended to discover very rapidly what the Americans meant by their expression "hard-ass." Harry was a muscular man, and his mind was every bit as "hard-ass" as his body. When he wanted to be, Harry Lefferts could be rather frightening.

"Did I ever tell you how I'd always use Harry in negotiations?" Mike murmured in her ear. "Back in my trade-union days?"

Rebecca shook her head-then, laughed, as Mike's murmur turned into a more intimate gesture involving a tongue and an ear.

"Stop it!" She pushed him away playfully. "Didn't you get enough last night?"

Mike grinned and sidled toward her. "Well, I'd always make sure that Harry was on the negotiating team when we met with the company representatives. His job was to sit in the corner and, whenever I'd start making noises about maybe agreeing to a compromise, start glaring at me and growling. Worked like a charm, nine times out of ten."

Rebecca laughed again, avoiding the sidle. Oddly, perhaps, by moving into a corner of the kitchen.

"I pretty much think of Gretchen the same way," Mike murmured. Sidling, sidling. The murmur was becoming a bit husky. "The nobility of Europe hates my guts. But then they see Gretchen sitting in the corner… growling, growling…"

She was boxed in, now, trapped. Mike, never a stranger to tactics, swooped immediately.

"No," he said. "As it happens, I didn't get enough last night."

The memory of what had followed warmed Rebecca, at the same time as it brought its own frustrations. She envied Jeff and Gretchen for having been able to take this long journey together-never more so than when she heard the noises they made in an adjoining bedroom, and Rebecca found herself pining for her own bed back in Grantville. With Mike, and his warm and lovely body, in it.

But… there had been no way for Mike to come. He was the President of the United States, and his duties did not allow him to be absent for more than a few days.

Something in her face must have registered, for she saw Gretchen smiling in a way which was both self-satisfied and a little serene. However much they might seem like an "odd couple" to others, Rebecca knew, Gretchen and Jeff were every bit as devoted to each other as were she and Mike. And, judging from the noises they made in the night-night after night, damnation!-every bit as passionate.

But perhaps she was reading the wrong thing into that smile. If nothing else, Gretchen's fervent ideological beliefs often made her a bit self-satisfied and serene.

"What did you expect?" demanded the young German woman. "A cardinal! And the same stinking pig who tried to have our children massacred at the school last year, don't forget that either."

Rebecca hadn't forgotten. That memory, in fact, had been as much of a help as her husband's advice, during her interview with Richelieu. Charming and gracious the man might be. But Rebecca did not allow herself to forget that he was also perfectly capable of being as deadly as a viper-and just as cold-bloodedly merciless.

Still…

There would always be a certain difference in the way Rebecca Stearns, nee Abrabanel, would look at the world compared to Gretchen. For Rebecca, for the most part, the atrocities committed by Europe's rulers had always remained at arm's length. Not so, for Gretchen. Her father murdered before her eyes; she herself gang-raped by mercenaries and then dragooned into becoming their camp follower; her mother taken away years before by other mercenaries, to an unknown fate; half her family dead or otherwise destroyed-and all of it, all that horror, simply because Europe's nobility and princes had chosen to quarrel over their competing privileges. The fact that they would shatter Germany and slaughter a fourth of its population in the process did not bother them in the least.

Rebecca was an opponent of that aristocratic regime, true enough, and, along with her husband, had set herself the task of replacing it with a better one. But she simply never felt the sheer hatred that Gretchen did. And knew, perfectly well, that Gretchen would have found nothing charming or gracious about His Eminence, Cardinal Richelieu. She would have simply measured that long and aristocratic neck for a noose.

"Which," Rebecca muttered to herself, "is not perhaps such a bad idea, everything considered."

"What was that?" asked Heinrich.

The major's face exhibited its own serenity. For all his youth-Heinrich was only twenty-four-the former mercenary had already seen more of bloodshed and war's ruin than most soldiers, in most of history's eras, ever saw in a lifetime. Rebecca liked Heinrich, to be sure. But the man's indifference to suffering sometimes appalled her. Not the indifference itself, so much as the cause of it. Heinrich Schmidt was a rather warm-hearted man, by temperament. But the years he had spent in Tilly's army after being forcibly "recruited" at the age of fifteen had left him with a shell of iron. He had enrolled readily enough in the American army, when given the chance. And Rebecca was quite sure that, in his own way, Heinrich was as devoted to his new nation as she was. Still, when all was said and done, the man retained a mercenary's callous attitudes in most respects.

"Never mind," responded Rebecca. "I was just reminding myself"-here, a little nod to Gretchen-"that Richelieu is capable of anything."

She pulled out the chair over which she'd spread the scarf and sat down. "Which brings us directly to the subject at hand. There's no point in remaining in Paris any longer. So the question posed is: by what route do we try to reach Holland?"

A motion in the doorway drew her eyes. Jeff's young friend Jimmy Andersen had entered from the kitchen. Behind him, Rebecca could see the other five soldiers in Heinrich's detachment.

She waited until all of them had come into the room and were either perched somewhere or leaning against the walls. Rebecca suspected that her very nondictatorial habits would have astonished most ambassadors of history. She dealt with her entourage as colleagues, not as subordinates. But she didn't care. She was an intellectual herself, by temperament, and enjoyed the process of debate and discussion.

"Here's the choice," she explained, once all of them were listening. "We can take the land route or try to hire a coastal lugger. If the first, Richelieu has offered to provide us an escort to Spanish territory and assures me he can obtain the agreement of the Spanish to pass us along to the United Provinces."

Gretchen and Jeff were already shaking their heads. "It's a trap," snarled Gretchen. "He'll set up an ambush along the way."

Heinrich was also shaking his head, but the gesture was aimed immediately at Gretchen.

"Not a chance of that," he said firmly. "Richelieu's a statesman, Gretchen, not a street thug." He smiled thinly. "The difference isn't one of morality, you understand-if anything, I'd rather trust a footpad. But there is a difference in methods. If he has us murdered while we're clearly under his official protection, he'd ruin his reputation."

Gretchen was glaring at him, but Heinrich was unfazed. "Yes, he would. And stop glaring at me, silly girl! Hating your enemies is a fine and splendid thing, but not when it addles your wits."

"I agree with Heinrich," interjected Rebecca. "Not the least of the reasons for Richelieu's success is that people trust him. His word is his bond, and all that. It's true, Gretchen, don't think it isn't."

She reached back and pulled the scarf off the seat's backrest. It was dry enough, so she began folding it. "I have no doubt at all that our safety will be assured, if we accept Richelieu's offer. But I also have no doubt at all-"

Heinrich was chuckling softly. "We'd be 'enjoying' the longest damn trip anyone ever took to Holland from Paris. Not more than a few hundred miles-and I'll wager anything you want to bet it would take us weeks. Probably months."

Now that Gretchen's animosity had been given a new target, the woman's usual quick intelligence returned. "Yeah, easy enough. Broken axles every five miles. Lamed horses. Unexpected detours due to unexpected floods. Every other bridge washed out-and, how strange, nobody seems to know where the fords are. At least two weeks at the border, squabbling with Spanish officials. You name it, we'll get it."

Jeff, throughout, had been studying Rebecca. "So what's the problem with the alternative?"

Rebecca grimaced. "There's something happening in the ports of northern France that Richelieu doesn't want us to see. I don't know what it might be, but it's more than simply this alliance with the Dutch. I'm almost sure of it. That means"-she smiled at Heinrich-"and I'll offer this wager, that we'll never be allowed into Le Havre. Some excuse or other, but Richelieu will see to it."

"You're right," agreed Heinrich. "We'll have to take ship in one of the smaller and more distant ports."

The major, clearly enough, was thinking ahead. The man had a good and experienced soldier's instinctive grasp for terrain, to begin with. And, where Rebecca had spent the past two years devouring the books which Grantville had brought with it, Heinrich had been just as passionately devoted to the marvelous maps and atlases which the Americans possessed. By now, his knowledge of Europe's geography was well-nigh encyclopedic.

"I still don't see the problem," said Jeff. "So what if we add another two or three days to the trip? We'd still be able to make it to Holland within two weeks."

"Pirates," replied Heinrich and Rebecca, almost simultaneously. Rebecca smiled; then, nodding toward Heinrich, urged him to explain.

"The English Channel is infested with the bastards," growled the major. "Has been for centuries-and maybe never as badly as now, what with the French and Spanish preoccupied with their affairs on the Continent and that sorry-ass Charles on the throne in England."

Five of the six soldiers in the kitchen nodded. The sixth, Jimmy Andersen-who, except for Jeff, was the only native-born American in the group-was practically goggling.

"Pirates? In the English Channel?"

Rebecca found it hard not to laugh aloud. For all that they had been somewhat acclimatized in the two years since their arrival in 17 th -century Europe, she had often found that Americans still tended to unconsciously lapse into old ways of thinking. For Americans, she knew, anything associated with "England" carried with it the connotations of "safe, secure, even stodgy." The idea of pirates in the English Channel…

"Where do they come from?" demanded Jimmy.

"North Africa is where a lot of them are based," replied Heinrich. With a shrug: "Of course, they're not all Moors, by any means. The Spanish license 'privateers' operating out of Dunkirk and Ostend against Dutch shipping, and the Dunkirkers are none too picky about their targets. And even for the Moors, probably half the crews, at least, are from somewhere in Europe. The world's scavengers."

Jimmy was still shaking his head with bemusement. But Jeff, always quicker than his friend to adjust to reality, was giving Rebecca a knowing look.

"So what you're suggesting, in short, is that if we take the sea route… how hard would it be for Richelieu to arrange a pirate attack?"

Rebecca wasn't sure herself. Neither, judging from his expression, was Heinrich.

Gretchen, of course, was.

"Of course he will!" she snapped. "The man's a spider. He has his web everywhere."

With Gretchen, as always, response was as certain as analysis. Sure enough, just as Rebecca had thought, the 9mm was in its place. A moment later, Gretchen had it in hand and was laying it firmly down on the table in front of her.

"Pirates it is," she pronounced, sweeping the room with a hard gaze. "Let's give them a taste of rate of fire, boys-what do you say?"

A harsh-and approving-laugh came from the soldiers. Rebecca looked at Heinrich.

He shrugged. "Seems as good a plan as any."

Rebecca now looked to Jeff and Jimmy. Jeff, not to her surprise, had a stubborn expression which showed clearly that he was standing with his wife. Jimmy…

This time she did laugh. Befuddled, he might sometimes be, at the nature of his new world. But Jimmy Andersen, a teenager devoted to his games, adored the opportunities.

"Oh, how cool! We can try out the grenade launchers!"

Chapter 3

Dr. James Nichols finished washing off his hands and turned away from the sink, fluttering his hands in the air in order to dry them. Even in the hospital, Mike knew, towels were in such short supply that James had decreed that medical personnel should use them as little as possible.

He braced himself for the inevitable complaint. But, other than scowling slightly, the doctor simply shook his head and walked over to the door.

"Let's get out of here and let the poor woman get some sleep."

Mike opened the door for the doctor, whose hands were still damp, and followed him out into the corridor. Wondering, a bit, how the sick woman was going to get much sleep with her entire family crowded around the bed.

A bit, not much. Mike himself would never get used to it personally, but he knew that Germans of the 17 th century were accustomed to a level of population density in their living arrangements that would drive most Americans half-crazy. A good bed was valuable-why waste it on two people, when four would fit?

Once the door was closed, he cocked an eyebrow at Nichols. Trying, probably with not much success, to keep his worry hidden.

No success at all, apparently:

"It's not plague, if that's what you're worrying about." James' voice was more gravelly than usual. Nichols worked long hours as a matter of routine. But Mike knew that since Melissa had left Grantville, he practically lived at the hospital. Insofar as a black man's face could look gray with fatigue, James' did. His hard and rough features seemed a bit softer, not from warmth but simply from weariness.

"You need to get some sleep yourself," said Mike sternly.

James gave him a smile which was half-mocking. "Oh, really? And exactly how much sleep have you been getting, since Becky left?"

As they continued moving down the corridor toward Nichols' office, weaving their way through the packed halls of Grantville's only hospital, James' scowl returned in full force.

"What in God's name possessed us to send our womenfolk off into that howling wilderness?" he demanded. Indicating, with a sweep of the hand, everything in the world.

Mike snorted. "Paris and London hardly qualify as 'howling wilderness,' James. I'm sure James Fenimore Cooper would agree with me on that, once he gets born. So would George Armstrong Custer."

"Bullshit," came the immediate retort. "I'm not an 'injun-fighter,' dammit, I'm a doctor. Cities in this day and age are a microbe's paradise. It's bad enough even here in Grantville, with our-ha! what a joke!-so-called 'sanitary practices.' "

They'd reached the doctor's office and, once again, Mike opened for James. "Forget 'gay Paree,' Mike. In the year of our Lord 1633, the sophisticated Parisian's idea of 'sanitation' is to look out the window first before emptying the chamber pot."

The image made Mike grimace a little, but he didn't argue the point. He'd be arguing soon enough, anyway, he knew. James' wisecrack about Grantville's sanitation was bound to be the prelude to another of the doctor's frequent tirades on the subject of the lunacy of political leaders in general, and those of the Confederated Principalities of Europe in particular. Which, of course, included Mike himself.

Once they'd taken their seats-James behind the desk and Mike in front of it-he decided to intersect the tirade before it even started.

"Don't bother with the usual rant," he growled. His own voice sounded pretty gravelly itself, and he reminded himself firmly not to take his own grouchiness at Rebecca's absence out on Nichols. For all that the doctor's near-monomania on the subject of epidemics sometimes irritated Mike, he respected and admired Nichols as much as he did anyone he'd ever met. Even leaving aside the fact that James had become one of his best friends since the Ring of Fire, the doctor's skill and energy was all that had kept hundreds of people alive. Probably thousands, when you figured in the indirect effects of his work.

"What's she got?" he asked gruffly. "Another case of the flu?"

Nichols nodded. "Most likely. Could be something else-more precisely, and be something else. But I'd say it's just another case-out of God knows how many-where we Typhoid Mary Americans inflicted the helpless locals with our highly evolved strains of influenza." His thick lips twisted in a wry smile. "Of course, I'm sure they'll be getting their revenge soon enough, once smallpox hits us. Which it will, don't think it won't."

"Any luck with-"

James shrugged. "Jeff Adams thinks we'll have a vaccine ready to go within a month or so, in large enough quantities to make a difference. I just hope he's right that using cowpox will work. Me, I'm a little skeptical. But…"

Suddenly, he grinned. The expression came more naturally to James Nichols' face than did the scowl which usually graced it these days. "You'd think, wouldn't you, that a boy from the ghetto would be less fastidious than you white folks! But, I ain't. God, Mike, talk about the irony of life. I can remember the days when I used to complain, back in my ghetto clinic, that I was mired in the Dark Ages. And here I am-mired in the real Dark Ages."

"Don't ever let Melissa hear you say that," responded Mike, grinning himself. "Talk about a tirade!"

James sniffed. "Fine for her to lecture everybody on the upstanding qualities of people in all times and places. She was brought up a Boston Brahmin. Probably got fed political correctness with her formula. Me, I grew up in the streets of south Chicago, and I know the truth. Some people are just plain rotten, and most people are lazy. Careless, anyway."

He heaved himself erect from his weary sprawl in the chair, and leaned over the desk, supporting his weight on his arms. "Mike, I'm really not a monomaniac. You just don't have any idea what disease can do to us-the whole damn continent-living under these conditions. We've been lucky, thus far. A few flare-ups, here and there; nothing you could really call an epidemic. But it's just a matter of time."

He jerked a thumb toward the window. Beyond it lay the town of Grantville.

"What's the point of lecturing people every night on the TV programs about the need for personal sanitation-when most of them can't afford a change of clothes? What are they supposed to do-in the middle of Germany, in winter-walk around naked while they stand in line at the town's one and only public laundry worth talking about?"

There wasn't any trace of the grin left, now. "While we devote our precious resources to building more toys for that fucking king, instead of a textile and garment industry, the lice are having a field day. And I will guarantee you that disease and epidemic will kill more people-more of Gustav's own soldiers, the stupid bastard-than all the Habsburg or Bourbon armies in the world."

Mike sat up himself. The argument was back, and there was no point in trying to evade it. James Nichols was as stubborn and tenacious as he was intelligent and dedicated. The fact that Mike was at least half in agreement with the doctor just made him all the more stubborn in defending Gustavus Adolphus-and, of course, his own policies. The United States of which Mike Stearns was President was, on one level, just another of the many principalities which formed the Confederated Principalities of Europe under the rule of the king of Sweden. Even if, in practice, it enjoyed a status of near-sovereignty.

"James, you can't reduce this to simple arithmetic. I know disease-and hunger-are the real killers. But one year is not the same as the year after that, or the year after that. If we can stabilize the CPE and put a stop to the Thirty Years War, then we can start seriously planning for the future. But until that happens…"

He leaned back, sighing heavily. "What do you want me to do, James? For all his prejudices and quirks and godawful attitudes on a lot of questions, Gustavus Adolphus is the best ruler of the times. You don't doubt that any more than I do. Nor do you think, any more than I do, that Grantville could make it on its own-without devoting even more of its resources to purely military efforts. Being part of the CPE, whatever its drawbacks-and I think I understand those even better than you do-is our best option. But that means we don't have any choice except to do what we must to keep the CPE afloat."

He lurched to his feet and took three strides to the window. There, he glowered down at the scene. Nichols' office was on the top floor of the three-story hospital, giving him a good view of the sprawling little city below.

And "sprawling" it was. Sprawling, and teeming with people. The sleepy little Appalachian town which had come through the Ring of Fire two years earlier was long gone, now. Mike could still see the relics of it, of course. Like most small towns in West Virginia, Grantville had suffered a population loss over the decades before the Ring of Fire. Downtown Grantville had some large and multi-story buildings left over from its salad days as a center of the gas and coal industry. On the day before the mysterious and still-unexplained cosmic disaster which had transplanted the town into 17 th -century Europe, those buildings had been half vacant. Today, they were packed with people-and new buildings, well if crudely built, were rising up all over the place.

The sight caused him to relax some. Whatever else he had done, whatever mistakes he might have made, Mike Stearns and his policies had turned Grantville and the country surrounding it into one of the few areas in central Europe which were economically booming and had a growing population. A rapidly growing one, in fact. If Mike's insistence on supporting Gustav Adolf's armaments campaign would result in the death of many people-which it would; he didn't doubt that any more than Nichols did-it would keep many more alive. Alive, and prospering.

Such, at least, was his hope.

"What am I supposed to do, James?" he repeated, softly rather than angrily. "We're caught in a three-way vise-and only have two hands to fend off the jaws."

Without turning away from the window, he held up a finger.

"Jaw number one. Whether we like it or not, we're in the middle of one of the worst wars in European history. Worse, in a lot of ways, than either of the world wars of the twentieth century. With no sign that any of the great powers that surround us intend to make peace."

He heard a little throat-clearing sound behind him, and shook his head. "No, sorry, we haven't heard anything from Rita and Melissa yet. I'd be surprised if we had, since they and Julie and Alex were planning to sail from Hamburg. But I did get a radio message from Becky yesterday. She arrived in Paris a few days ago and is already leaving for Holland."

He heard James sigh. "Yeah, you got it. Richelieu was polite as could be, but hasn't budged an inch. In fact, Becky thinks he's planning some kind of new campaign. If she's right, knowing that canny son-of-a-bitch, it's going to be a doozy."

He looked toward the south. "Then, of course, we've still got the charming Austrian Habsburgs to deal with. Not to mention Maximilian of Bavaria. Not to mention that Wallenstein survived his wounds at the Alte Veste and God only knows what that man is really cooking up on his great estates in Bohemia. Not to mention that King Christian of Denmark-Protestant or not-is still determined to bring down the Swedes. Not to mention that most of Gustav's 'loyal princes'-Protestant or not-are the sorriest pack of treacherous scumbags you'll ever hope to meet in your life."

Mike started tapping his fingers on the pane. "So that's the first jaw. We're in a war, whether we like it or not. If anything, I think the war is starting to heat up again.

"Which brings us to 'jaw number two.' How should we fight it? The same way Gustav's been doing since he landed in northern Germany three years ago? With huge mercenary armies draining the countryside? Even leaving aside any outrages they commit on the civilian population-and they do, even with Gustav's disciplinary policies, don't think they don't-it's the stupidest waste of economic resources imaginable. It's already bled Sweden of too many able-bodied men, and left Gustav's treasury dry as a bone."

His fingers moved. Tap, tap, tap; like a drummer beating the march. "We can't keep borrowing money forever, James. The Abrabanels and the other Jewish financiers in Europe and Turkey who are backing us aren't really all that rich, when you get down to it. Not compared to the resources Richelieu and the Habsburgs can marshal. So that means more taxes and levies on our own population-and there are too many already."

He turned his head and returned James' glare with one of his own. "They won't be able to afford another change of clothes either, you know, with the taxes the way they are now. Levies on everything, once you go beyond the boundaries of the U.S. And, I hate to say it, but we've got too many levies going ourselves. We don't have any choice."

Nichols looked away, his face sagging a little. James was by no means stupid, however strongly he felt about his own concerns.

Mike drove on relentlessly. "So what's the alternative-besides John Simpson's 'new military policy'?"

The mention of Simpson brought a fierce scowl to Nichols' face. Mike barked a laugh-even though, as a rule, the name "John Simpson" usually brought a scowl to his own face.

"Yeah, sure. The man is an unmitigated ass. Arrogant, supercilious, about as caring as a stone, you name it. What's that paraphrase from Gilbert and Sullivan that Melissa uses? 'The very picture of a modern CEO?' "

James nodded, chuckling. The doctor's lover despised John Simpson even more than he and Mike did.

Mike shrugged. "But whatever else he is, John Simpson is also the only experienced military officer in Grantville. On that level of experience, anyway. He did graduate from Annapolis and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, you know. And however much ass-kissing the bastard did in his years in the Pentagon, he's the only one of us who has any real idea how to plan and coordinate something like this."

Mike planted his hands on the windowsill and pushed himself away. Then, went back and sat down again.

"Look, James, on this subject Simpson is right. That's why, gritting my teeth, I supported him from the day he first advanced the proposal. Not only supported him, but took the lead in convincing Gustav Adolf and his advisers and generals. We have got to shrink that damned army of his. It's become a giant tapeworm in the guts of the country. But the only way to do that-with the enemies we have surrounding us-is to replace quantity with quality. And that means devoting a huge percentage of our modern production facilities and skills here in Grantville to military work."

He sighed, and rubbed his face. "And that, of course, brings us right up against 'jaw number three.' Because those same resources being used to build Gustav's 'toys,' as you call them, aren't being used to develop other things. Such as really pushing a textile industry, or throwing the weight we ought to be throwing behind the small motor industry-farmers need a lot of little ten-horsepower engines, not a handful of diesel monsters driving a few ironclads-or damn near anything else you can think of."

For a moment, he and James stared at each other. Then, shrugging again, Mike added: "What the hell, look on the bright side. If nothing else, the economic and technical crunch is making everybody think for a change. Think, and organize."

The word "organize," inevitably for a man brought up in the trade-union movement, brought the first genuine smile to Mike's face. "Don't underestimate that, James, not for a minute. We may be a sorry lot of filthy disease-carriers, but I can guarantee you the population of the United States is rapidly becoming the best-organized group of people anywhere in the world. And self-organized, to boot, which is a hundred times better than anything that comes down from on high."

He waved his hand in a gesture which was as broadly encompassing as the one James had used earlier. But vigorous, where the doctor's had been despairing.

"You name it, we've got it. Trade unions spreading all over the place, farmers' granges, Willie Ray's kids in his Future Farmers of Europe spending as much time arguing politics as they do seeds, Gretchen's fireballs in the Committees of Correspondence. Damned if even the old boys' clubs aren't alive and kicking and talking about something other than their silly rituals. Henry Dreeson told me that his Lions club voted last week to start making a regular donation to the Freedom Arches Foundation."

James' eyes practically bulged. Somehow-to this day nobody knew exactly how she'd managed it-Gretchen had gotten the former McDonald's franchise hamburger stand in Grantville turned over to her Committees of Correspondence. (The manager of the restaurant, Andy Yost, swore he knew nothing about it-but he'd stayed on as manager, nonetheless, and-pure coincidence, perhaps-was on the Steering Committee of Gretchen's rapidly growing band of radicals.)

Gretchen had promptly renamed it the "Freedom Arches," and the former McDonald's had instantly become the 17 th -century's equivalent of the famous bistros and coffee houses of the revolutionary Paris of a later era. Moving with their usual speed and energy, the Committees of Correspondence had begun creating other franchises patterned after it in every town in the United States-and beyond. A new "Freedom Arches" had been erected just outside the boundaries of Leipzig, the nearest big city in Saxony. Much to the displeasure of John George, the prince of Saxony, who had immediately complained to Gustav Adolf. But the king of Sweden, who was also the emperor of the Confederated Principalities of Europe, had refused to direct its dismantling. Gustav had his own reservations-to put it mildly-about the Committees of Correspondence. But he was no fool, and had learned the principle of keeping aristocrats under a tight rein from his own Vasa dynasty's history. The Committees made him nervous, true; but they terrified such men as John George of Saxony, which was even better.

The buildings in which the new "Freedom Arches" sprang up were themselves 17 th -century construction, of course. But the two arches which prominently advertised them, even if they were painted wood instead of fancy modern construction, would have been recognized by any resident of the United States in the America which had been left behind. Granted, once they went through the doors, the average 21 st -century American would have been puzzled by what they saw. The food served was more likely to be simple bread than anything else, with tea and beer for beverages instead of coffee. And they'd certainly be amazed to see a crude printing press occupying a place of honor in the "dining area," with-almost round the clock-youngsters cheerfully cranking out leaflets and broadsides.

"The Lions?" choked Nichols.

Mike grinned. "Yup. They're keeping it quiet, of course. Give them some credit, James. Sure, Gretchen and her firebrands make them twitchy, but even the town's stodgiest businessman knows we're in a fight for our lives. The Knights of Columbus aren't even trying to keep quiet about their own donations. As Catholics, they're determined to prove as publicly as possible that they're the most loyal citizens around."

James grunted. In the sometimes bizarre way that history works, the officially Protestant Confederated Principalities of Europe-in that portion of it under U.S. jurisdiction, with its rigorously applied principles of freedom of religion-had become a haven for central Europe's Catholics. By now, between the influx of immigrants and the incorporation of western Franconia after the victory of Gustav and his American allies over the Habsburgs at the battle of the Alte Veste, the majority of the population of the United States might well be Catholic. Catholics were certainly approaching parity with the Protestant population-and, typically, were even more devoted to its (by European standards of the day) radical political principles.

Mike spread his hands. "So, like I said, look on the bright side. We're buying time, James. I know as well as you do that we could get struck by an epidemic. But, if we do, we'll at least be able to deal with the crisis with a population that's alert, getting better organized by the day, and is probably already better educated than any other in Europe outside of maybe Holland."

"I still don't see the logic of devoting so much of our resources-military ones, I'm talking about-to those ironclads Simpson is gung-ho about," said James sourly. "Those things are a damn 'resource sink.' Leaving aside all the good steel we had to turn over-I can think of better things to do with miles of steel rails left over from the Ring of Fire than just using them for armor-we had to cannibalize several big diesel engines, the best pumps in the mine…"

He trailed off. "Okay, I grant you, I wasn't at the cabinet meeting where the decision was made, since I was in Weimar dealing with that little outbreak of dysentery-at least that's something we can deal with-but your summary explanation afterward never has made much sense to me."

Mike pursed his lips and stared out the window. He wasn't surprised his synopsis of the logic hadn't made a lot of sense to James, at the time. That was because it really didn't make much sense, in purely military terms, to build an American navy allied to Gustavus Adolphus which could only operate along the rivers of central Germany. It was a pure "brown water" navy, not even a coast guard.

Mike hesitated. He was reluctant to get into the subject, because the real reason involved such cold-blooded "Realpolitik" and Machiavellian thinking that he knew most of his American-born-and-bred cabinet members would choke on it. Melissa Mailey would have had a screaming fit. Fortunately, although she'd been at the cabinet meeting, Melissa generally found all military issues so vaguely distasteful that she hadn't really carefully examined this one on its own merits. For which Mike was thankful. Whenever the woman looked past her own biases and preconceptions, she had a fiendishly sharp mind.

Nichols, as a doctor-even leaving aside his romantic involvement with Melissa-would be just as likely to choke. Especially given that, unlike many doctors Mike had known in his life, James Nichols took his profession as a healer dead seriously. The Hippocratic oath was not something James Nichols had rattled off quickly just so he could get his license and start raking in the cash.

On the other hand…

Mike studied James for a moment. The rough-featured, very dark-skinned black man returned his gaze stonily, his hands clasped on the desk in front of him. There were scars on those hands which hadn't come from medical practice. Before Nichols turned his life around, he'd grown up as a street kid in one of the toughest ghettoes in Chicago. Blackstone Rangers territory that had been, in his youth.

Screw it. If this damn job requires me to lie to one of my best friends, it's not worth it.

"All right, James, I'll give it to you straight. The reason Gustav Adolf wants those ironclads is in order to secure his logistics routes in case the CPE is attacked from without. In this day and age, military supplies can be transported by water far more easily than any other way. If he can control the rivers-the Elbe, first and foremost, but also the smaller ones and the canals, especially as we keep improving them-then he's got a big edge against anyone trying to invade. But that's only part of it, and not the most important part."

He sat up straight. Harshly: "The more important reason is because he needs them-or, at least, thinks he might-in order to hold the CPE together in the first place."

Nichols' eyes widened slightly. Slightly, but… not much.

"Think about it, for Pete's sake," Mike continued. He waved his hand at the window. "The Confederated Principalities of Europe is the most ramshackle, patched-together, jury-rigged so-called realm"-the word dripped sarcasm-"the world's probably ever seen. A Swedish king ruling over a crazy quilt of German princedoms, independent imperial cities, an outright republic like ours founded by expatriate American 'up-timers'-you name it, we've got it. All of it riddled by religious bigotry and intolerance, not to mention the periodic outbursts of witch-hunting. It's something straight out of a fantasy, or a madhouse. And half of Gustav's semi-independent 'subjects'-let's start with John George of Saxony, who rules the most powerful of those princedoms-would stab him in the back in a heartbeat. While most of the rest of them-"

Nichols snorted. "Would take bets on how deep the stab wound went. And then start quarreling over who got to hold the money."

"Exactly. The whole thing could fly apart in an instant. So. Consider how the situation looks from the emperor's viewpoint. If he can improve the rivers enough, and if he can build new canals and upgrade the ones that exist, and if we can provide him with a handful of river-going ironclads which can hammer the living crap out of anybody within range, then the CPE starts looking like a viable proposition. At least, from the standpoint of naked force. Take a look at a map sometime-I can assure you Gustav Adolf has, because our surveying team provided him with the best there is today-and you'll see what I'm talking about. Consider the Elbe as the spinal cord and the aorta combined. Then look at all the branches-some rivers, some canals, some a combination of both-which tie everything together. Connects the Baltic Sea to Thuringia, Hesse-Kassel to Saxony and Brandenburg."

He smiled wolfishly. "Consider, for instance, the Finow canal which connects the Elbe and the Havel and the Oder-which, as you may know, is one of the ones Gustav has prioritized for rebuilding and upgrading. Second only, in fact, to the canals connecting the Elbe to the Baltic ports of Luebeck and Wismar. Consider what things will look like then-from the standpoint of the elector of Brandenburg, George William, who's almost as untrustworthy as the Elector of Saxony-as he contemplates one of Simpson's ironclads floating on the Havel in Berlin. With its ten-inch guns pointing at his palace."

"They could wreck the canals," protested James. "Destroy the locks, at least." But the protest was half-hearted.

Mike shrugged. "Easier said than done, James, and you know it as well as I do. With a good engineering corps-and Gustav has the best-they can be rebuilt. Besides, that all presupposes a bold and daring and well-coordinated uprising on the part of several princes acting in unison. Which-"

James was already chuckling. "That lot of greedy, bickering thieves? Not likely!"

Mike shared in the humor. Within a few seconds, though, James was no longer smiling. Instead, he was giving Mike a somewhat slit-eyed stare. "Are you that cold-blooded?" he murmured. "Hand Gustav that kind of power saw… knowing, of course, that the one part of his little empire he couldn't really use the blade against is us. Seeing as how, when you get down to it-for quite a while, at least-he's depending on us to make and man those ironclads."

Mike shrugged. "Yeah, I am. Like I said, James, I'm buying us time. And buying it for Gustav Adolf, too, because-for quite a while, at least-our fortunes are tied to his."

Nichols lowered his clasped hands into his lap, rocked back his chair, and gave Mike a thin smile. "You'd have probably done pretty good, you know, down there around Sixty-Third and Cottage Grove. Of course, your skin color would have been a handicap. But, if I know you, you'd have figured out some way around that too."

Mike's smile didn't waver. "Under the circumstances, I think I'll take that as a compliment."

Nichols snorted. "Under the circumstances, it is a compliment. The only difference between Chicago's street gang leaders and Germany's noblemen is that the gang leaders are generally smarter and the noblemen are generally more treacherous. A toss-up, which of them are more callous."

Silence fell in the room. James' face was still tight with concern, but, after a moment, Mike realized that the man's concern had moved from general affairs to the point nearest to his heart.

"I'll send word as soon as I hear from her," Mike said softly. "She'll be all right, James. I gave Rita and Melissa enough money to hire a big ship. And besides, with Tom Simpson and Julie along, any pirate who tries to attack that ship is in for a rude surprise."

James smiled. Julie Sims-Julie Mackay, now, since her marriage to a Scot cavalry officer in Gustav Adolf's army-was the best rifle shot anyone had ever met. And whatever James and Mike thought of John Simpson, both of them approved highly of Simpson's son Tom, who had married Mike's sister on the same day the Ring of Fire changed their entire world. Especially under these circumstances. Whatever other dangers James' lover Melissa and Mike's sister Rita would face in their diplomatic mission to England, they were hardly likely to be pestered by footpads. Tom Simpson was quite possibly one of the ten biggest men in the world. He'd been something of a giant even in 21 st -century America, with the shoulders and physique you'd expect from a lineman on a top college football team.

But the doctor's smile faded soon enough. Mike knew he wasn't really worried-not much, anyway-about pirates and footpads. Melissa and Rita would be dealing with people a lot more dangerous than that.

"Kings and princes and cardinals and God-help-me dukes and fucking earls," grumbled Nichols. "Oughta shoot the whole lot of 'em."

Mike's grin was probably a little on the merciless side. He certainly intended it to be, seeing as how the doctor needed to be cheered up. "We might yet. A fair number of them, anyway. Like I said, look on the bright side. Simpson may be an asshole, but he knows his big guns."

Chapter 4

The noise, as always, was appalling.

John Chandler Simpson had grown accustomed to it, although he doubted he was ever going to truly get used to it. Of course, there was a lot he wasn't going to get used to about the Year of Our Lord 1633.

He snorted sourly at the thought as he waded through another of the extensive mud puddles which made trips to the dockyard such an… adventure. There'd been a time when he would have walked around the obstacle, but that had been when he'd still had 21st-century shoes to worry about. And when he'd had the energy to waste on such concerns.

He snorted again, even more sourly. He supposed he ought to feel a certain satisfaction at the way that asshole Stearns had finally been forced to admit that he knew what he was talking about where something was concerned. And truth to tell, he did. But any satisfaction was alloyed by the fact that he'd had to worry about what Stearns thought in the first place. Taking orders from an Appalachian hillbilly "President" who'd never even graduated from college was hard for a man of Simpson's accomplishments to stomach.

Not that Stearns was a complete idiot, he admitted grudgingly. At least he'd had the good sense to recognize that Simpson was right about the need to "downsize" Gustavus Adolphus' motley mercenary army. Oh, how the President had choked on that verb! It had almost been worth being forced to convince him of anything in the first place. And even though he'd accepted Simpson's argument, he hadn't wanted to accept the corollary-that if Gustavus Adolphus was going to downsize, it was up to the Americans to make up the difference in his combat power… even if that meant diverting resources from some of the President and his gang's pet industrialization projects.

Still, Simpson conceded, much as it irritated him to admit it, Stearns had been right about the need to increase their labor force if they were going to make it through that first winter. Which didn't mean he'd found the best way to do it, though, now did it?

Things had worked out better-so far, at least-than Simpson had feared they would when he realized where Stearns was headed with his new Constitution. There was no guarantee it would stay that way, of course. Under other circumstances, Simpson would probably have been amused watching Stearns trying to control the semi-anarchy he'd forged by bestowing the franchise over all of the local Germans and their immigrant cousins and in-laws as soon as they moved into the United States' territory. The locals simply didn't have the traditions and habits of thought to make the system work properly as it had back home. They thought they did, but the best of them were even more addicted to sprawling, pressure cooker bursts of unbridled enthusiasm than Stearns and his union blockheads. And the lunatic fringe among them-typified by Melissa Mailey's supporters and Gretchen Higgins' Committees of Correspondence-were even worse. There was no telling what kind of disaster they might still provoke. All of which could have been avoided if the hillbillies had just had the sense to limit the franchise to people who had demonstrated that they could handle it.

The familiar train of thought had carried him to the dockyard gate, and he looked up from picking his way through the mud as the double-barrel-shotgun-armed sentry came to attention and saluted. Like the vast majority of the United States Army's personnel, the sentry was a 17 th -century German. Which was all to the good, Simpson reflected, as he returned his salute. The casual attitude the original Grantville population-beginning with "General" Jackson himself-brought to all things military was one of the many things Simpson detested about them. None of them seemed to appreciate the critical importance of things like military discipline, or the way in which the outward forms of military courtesy helped build it. The local recruits hadn't had much use for the niceties of formal military protocol, either, but at least any man who had survived in the howling chaos of a 17 th -century battlefield understood the absolute necessity for iron discipline. Off the field, they might be rapists, murderers, and thieves; on the field was something else again entirely, and it was interesting how eagerly the 17 th -century officers and noncoms had accepted the point Simpson's up-time compatriots seemed unable to grasp, however hard he hammered away at it. The habit of discipline had to be acquired and nurtured off the field as much as on it if you wanted to create a truly professional, reliable military force. That, at least, was one point upon which he and Gustavus Adolphus saw completely eye to eye.

He returned the sentry's salute and continued onward into the dockyard, then paused.

Behind him lay the city of Magdeburg, rising from the rubble of its destruction in a shroud of dust, smoke, smells, shouts, and general bedlam. Some of that construction was traditional Fachwerk or brick construction on plots for which heirs had been located; intermixed with balloon frames and curtain walls on lots that had escheated into city ownership. Before him lay the River Elbe and another realm of swarming activity. It was just as frenetic and even noisier than the chaotic reconstruction efforts at his back, but he surveyed it with a sense of proprietary pride whose strength surprised even him just a bit. Crude and improvised as it was compared to the industrial enterprises he had overseen back home, it belonged to him. And given what he had to work with, what it was accomplishing was at least as impressive as the construction of one of the Navy's Nimitz-class carriers would have been in his old world.

An earsplitting racket, coal smoke, and clouds of sawdust spewed from the steam-powered sawmill Nat Davis had designed and built. The vertical saw slabbed off planks with mechanical precision, and the sawmill crew heaved each plank up into the bed of a waiting wagon as it fell away from the blade. The sawmill was a recent arrival, because they had decided not to waste scarce resources on intermediate construction of a water- or windmill that would just end up being dismantled again. Only two weeks ago, the men stacking those planks had been working hip deep in cascading sawdust in an old-fashioned saw pit, laboriously producing each board by raw muscle power.

Beyond the sawmill, another crew labored at the rolling mill powered by the same steam engine. The mill wasn't much to look at compared to the massive fabricating units of a 21 st -century steel plant, but it was enough to do what was needed. Simpson watched approvingly as the crew withdrew another salvaged railroad rail from the open furnace and fed it into the rollers. The steel, still smoking and red hot from its stay in the furnace, emerged from the jaws of the mill crushed down into a plank approximately one inch thick and a little over twelve inches wide. As it slid down another set of inclined rollers, clouds of steam began rising from the quenching sprays. More workmen were carrying cooled steel planks to yet another open-fronted shed, where one of the precious gasoline-powered portable generators drove a drill press. The soft whine of the drill bit making bolt holes in the steel was lost in the general racket.

Simpson stood for a moment, watching, then nodded in satisfaction and continued toward his dockside office. It was nestled between two of the slipways, in the very shadow of the gaunt, slab-sided structures looming above it. They were ugly, unfinished, and raw, and even when they were completed, no one would ever call them graceful. But that was fine with John Simpson. Because once they were finished, they were going to be something far more important than graceful.

Another sentry guarded the office door and came to attention at his approach. Simpson returned his salute and stepped through the door, closing it behind him. The noise level dropped immediately, and his senior clerk started to come to his feet, but Simpson waved him back into his chair.

"Morning, Dietrich," he said.

"Good morning, Herr Admiral," the clerk replied.

"Anything important come up overnight?" Simpson asked.

"No, sir. But Herr Davis and Lieutenant Cantrell are here."

The clerk's tone held an edge of sympathy and Simpson grimaced. It wasn't something he would have let most of his subordinates see, whatever he might personally think of a visitation from that particular pair. Demonstrating any reservations he might nurse about them openly could only undermine the chain of command he'd taken such pains to create in the first place.

But Dietrich Schwanhausser was a special case. He might be yet another German, but he was worth his weight in gold when it came to administration. He'd also taken to the precious computer sitting on his desk like one of those crazed 21 st -century teenagers… and without the attitude. That combination, especially with his added ability to intelligently anticipate what Simpson might need next, had made him an asset well worth cultivating and nurturing. Simpson had recognized that immediately, but he was a bit surprised by the comfort level of the relationship they had evolved.

"Thanks for the warning," he said wryly, and Schwanhausser's lips twitched on the edge of a smile. Simpson nodded to him and continued on into the inner office.

It was noisier than the outer office, because unlike Schwanhausser's space, it actually had a window, looking out over the river. The glass in that window wasn't very good, even by 17 th -century standards, but it still admitted natural daylight as well as allowing him a view of his domain. And the subtle emphasis of the status it lent the man whose wall it graced was another point in its favor.

Two people were waiting when he stepped through the door. Nat Davis was a man in his forties, with blunt, competent workman's hands, a steadily growing bald spot fringed in what had once been dark brown hair, and glasses. Prior to the Ring of Fire, he'd been a tobacco chewer, although he'd gone cold turkey-involuntarily-since Grantville's arrival in Thuringia. That habit, coupled with a strong West Virginia accent and his tendency to speak slowly, choosing his words with care, had caused Simpson to underestimate his intelligence at first. The Easterner had learned better since, and he greeted the machinist with a much more respectful nod than he might once have bestowed upon him.

The young man waiting with Davis was an entirely different proposition. Eddie Cantrell was still a few months shy of his twentieth birthday, and he might have been intentionally designed as Davis' physical antithesis.

The older man was stocky and moved the same way he talked, with a sort of thought-out precision which seemed to preclude any possibility of spontaneity. That ponderous appearance, Simpson had discovered, could be as deceiving as the way he chose his words, but there was nothing at all deceptive about the sureness with which Davis moved from one objective to another.

Spontaneity, on the other hand, might have been Eddie Cantrell's middle name. He was red-haired and wiry, with that unfinished look of hands and feet that were still too large for the rest of him, and the entire concept of discipline was alien to his very nature. Worse, he bubbled. No, he didn't just "bubble." He boiled. He frothed. He radiated enthusiasm and that absolute sense of assurance of which only inexperienced youth was capable. He had, in fact, in John Simpson's considered opinion, been intended as Mike Stearns' carefully devised revenge, assigned to the dockyard with malice aforethought. The fact that the entire project had originated with one of Eddie's bursts of unbridled enthusiasm had simply provided the President with the justification he required to inflict the youngster on him.

All of which made it even more surprising to Simpson that he'd actually come to like the insufferable young gadfly.

Not that he had any intention of telling him so.

"Good morning, gentlemen," he greeted them as he continued across the cramped office confines to his desk. He settled himself into his chair and tipped it back slightly, the better to regard them down the length of his nose. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Davis and Cantrell looked at one another for a moment. Then Davis shrugged, smiled faintly, and made a tiny waving motion with one hand.

"I guess I should go first… sir," the younger man said. The hesitation before the "sir" wasn't the deliberate pause it once might have been. Simpson was relatively confident of that. It was just one more indication of how foreign to Eddie's nature the ingrained habits of military courtesy truly were.

"Then I suggest you do so… Lieutenant." Simpson's pause was deliberate, and he noted Eddie's slight flush with satisfaction. He estimated that it would require no more than another three or four years of reminders for the young man to finally acquire the appropriate habits.

"Yes, sir." Eddie gave himself a little shake. "Matthias just reported in. He says that Freiherr von Bleckede is being, um, stubborn."

"I see." Simpson tipped his chair back a bit farther and frowned. Matthias Schaubach was one of the handful of Magdeburg's original burghers to have survived the massacre of the city's inhabitants by Tilly's mercenaries. Prior to that traumatic event, he'd been deeply involved in the salt trade up and down the Elbe from Hamburg, which had made him the Americans' logical point man on matters pertaining to transport along the river.

The Elbe, for all its size and importance to northern Germany, was little more than a third as long as the Mississippi. By the time it reached Magdeburg, over a hundred and sixty air-miles from Hamburg, whether or not it could truly be called "navigable" was a debatable point. Barge traffic was possible, but the barges in question averaged no more than forty feet in length, which was much smaller than anything the Americans would need to get downriver. Some improvements to navigation had been required even to get the barges through, and it was obvious to everyone that even more was going to be necessary shortly.

For the past several weeks, Schaubach had been traveling up and down the Elbe discussing that "even more" with the locals. The existing network of "wehrluecken" provided a starting point, but very little more than that. The wehrluecken were basically permanent dams built across the river with a central gap or spillway wider than the maximum beam of a barge. The dam raised the water level to a depth sufficient to float a barge, and the spillway allowed barges passage through the barrier of the dam. Unfortunately, none of the existing wehrluecken were going to suffice for Simpson's needs, and modifying them was going to be a herculean task. It was also going to severely hamper normal barge traffic while the work was in progress, and the owners of the current wehrluecken weren't particularly happy about that prospect. Nor, for that matter, was Gustavus Adolphus, for whose new empire in central Europe the Elbe River provided the critical spinal cord.

Most of the wehrluecken owners had decided to see reason when Schaubach approached them properly. Greed helped, after Schaubach finished describing the amount of traffic which would be moving up and down the river once the infrastructure had been improved and the Americans' river steamboats were in full production. Where that failed, a discreetly non-specific reference to the Swedish Army, coupled with the observation that Gustavus Adolphus would really appreciate their cooperation, tended to do the trick.

Some of them, however, were more stubborn than others. Like the petty baron Freiherr von Bleckede. A part of Simpson actually sympathized with the man, not that it made him any happier about Eddie's news.

"I take it Mr. Schaubach wouldn't have reported it if he thought he was going to be able to change Bleckede's mind?" he said after a moment.

"It doesn't sound like he's going to be able to," Eddie agreed. He made a face. "Sounds to me like von Bleckede doesn't much care for us. Or the Swedes, either."

"I'm not surprised," Simpson observed. "Hard to blame him, really." He smiled blandly as an expression of outrage flickered across Eddie's face. He considered enlarging upon his theme. It wouldn't do a bit of harm to remind Eddie that the pre-Ring of Fire establishment had a huge number of reasons to resent and fear the upheavals in the process of tearing the status quo apart. Except, of course, that whenever Eddie cared to think about it, he already understood that perfectly. He just didn't care. Or, more precisely, he was too concerned with blasting obstructions out of the way to worry about what motivated them. And if Simpson brought them up, it would only reinforce the young hothead's view of Simpson's own "reactionary" opinions.

"Well," Cantrell said more than a little impatiently, as if to prove Simpson's point for him, "whether we blame him for it or not, we still need to get clearance for the crews to go to work on his wehrlueck. That stretch isn't going to float one of the ironclads even if we completely empty the trim tanks."

"No, it isn't," Simpson agreed. He was careful not to let it show, but privately he felt a small flicker of pleasure at Eddie's reference to the trim tanks. The entire ironclad project had originated with Eddie's war-gaming hobby interest. He was the one who'd piled his reference books up on the corner of Mike Stearns' desk and sold him on the notion of armed river steamboats to police their communications along the rivers. Of course, his original wildly enthusiastic notions had required the input of a more adult perspective, but the initial concept when authorization of the project was first discussed had reflected his ideas of how best to update a design from the American Civil War. By Simpson's most conservative estimate, there hadn't been more than two or three dozen things wrong with it… which was only to be expected when a hobby enthusiast set out to transform his war-gaming information into reality.

Eddie's design, once Simpson and Greg Ferrara finished their displacement calculations, would have drawn at least twelve feet at minimum load. That draft would have been too deep even for the Mississippi, much less the Elbe. It also would have been armored to resist 19 th -century artillery, like the Civil War's fifteen-inch smoothbores, rather than the much more anemic guns of the 17 th century. Worse than that, Eddie had called for a single-screw design. His otherwise praiseworthy objective had been to save the huge bulk of a paddle wheel housing, which would not only have cut down on places to mount armament but required an even bigger investment in armor. Given that they'd had to fight people like Quentin Underwood tooth and nail for every salvaged railroad rail dedicated to the project, that hadn't been an insignificant consideration.

Unfortunately, marine screw propellers were much more difficult to design properly than Eddie had imagined. Simpson knew that; his last assignment before the Pentagon had been as a member of the design group working on the propulsion systems for the Seawolf-class submarine. Moreover, an exposed prop and shaft would have been extremely vulnerable to damage in the event that one of the ships grounded, which was virtually certain to happen eventually to any heavy, clumsy armored vessel operating on inland rivers. And the provision of a single shaft would have meant that any damage to a propeller would leave one of the precious ironclads unable to move or maneuver in any way.

Which was why Simpson had bullied Stearns into letting him have the diesel power plants out of four of the huge coal trucks which had originally been used as armored personnel carriers. Fuel for the APC engines, though scarce, was still available, and once Underwood got the kinks out of his oil-field production, scarcity wouldn't be a problem. Not with the priority Stearns had agreed to assign to the Navy, at any rate.

With the engines figuratively speaking in hand, Simpson had created a highly modified version of Eddie's original concept-one which used powerful diesel-driven pumps scavenged from the Grantville coal mine to provide hydro-jet propulsion. The pumps were powerful enough to chew up most small debris without damage, and screens across the intakes protected them from anything larger. Using the diesels would increase the gunboats' logistic dependency on the Grantville industrial base, since it wouldn't be possible to fuel them with coal or wood in an emergency, as would have been possible with a steam-powered engineering plant. On the other hand, the diesel bunkers could be safely located below the water line, and at least if a freak hit managed somehow to penetrate to one of the ironclads' interiors, there would be no handy boiler full of live steam to boil a crew alive.

The other two things he'd done to Eddie's original design were to cut the armor thickness in half and add the trim tanks. Reducing the armor had let him squeeze an additional ship out of the rails allocated to the project, as well as saving displacement, but the tanks were at least as important. The original Monitor had been designed with minimum freeboard to reduce target area, but that wasn't going to be possible with this design. Since there was no practical way to design a proper turret at this point, they had no choice but to use a more or less traditional broadside scheme for their armament, which meant something that would look a lot more like the Merrimack… or, as Eddie was prone to correct in tones of exasperation, the Virginia. That explained the slabsided, ungainly appearance of the basic design. It also required a deeper draft than the "cheese box on a raft" Monitor's design. Simpson had managed to minimize that to some extent by designing the ships to "flood down" for combat by filling the trim tanks built into them. That had allowed him to design a roughly five-hundred-ton vessel which drew less than four feet of water with the tanks pumped out and almost ten feet with the tanks filled. Which also, just incidentally, let him save about five feet worth of armored freeboard which would be protected by water when they flooded down.

At first, Eddie had been inclined to sulk when Simpson modified his basic design. To his credit, he'd recognized that the alterations were genuine improvements, and that was the reason Simpson (although he doubted that the young man was aware of it) had specifically requested that he be assigned to the Navy. Stearns had already sent him to Magdeburg to help oversee the project, after all, which meant Simpson couldn't have gotten rid of him, anyway. And the Navy was going to need officers who could actually think. Those were rarer than one might have thought, and from his own experience, Simpson recognized the mental flexibility involved in acknowledging that someone else had actually made one of your own brainchildren better. So he'd decided to make a virtue out of necessity… which was how both Eddie and his friend Larry Wild had abruptly become junior-grade lieutenants in John Simpson's Navy.

And if it had also let Simpson get the last laugh on Mike Stearns, so much the better.

"Fortunately," he went on after a moment, "convincing the freiherr to go along with our plans isn't really our concern. If Mr. Schaubach feels that he's unlikely to be able to get von Bleckede to see reason, refer him to Mr. Piazza." He smiled again, more blandly than ever, as Eddie frowned. Ed Piazza, the secretary of state, had been Stearns' choice to serve as his personal representative to all the various minor local potentates not worthy of the personal attention of the head of state.

"That will take time," Eddie began, "and-"

"That may be true," Simpson interrupted. "But it's the secretary of state's job to deal with things like this. Or let Gustav's chancellor Oxenstierna deal with it. We've got more to worry about than convincing one minor nobleman to see things our way. Besides, whether we like it or not, we've got time before we'll actually need to get that far down-river, now don't we?"

Eddie looked rebellious, but Simpson was accustomed to that. What mattered more to him was the fact that the youngster actually thought his way through it, then subsided with nothing more than one last grimace.

"Now," Simpson went on, "was there anything else you needed, Lieutenant?"

"No, I guess not… sir."

"Good." Simpson turned to Davis. "And what can I do for you, Mr. Davis?" he asked.

"Actually," Davis replied, "I just wanted to let you know that Ollie says he should have the first half dozen gun tubes ready to ship to us by the end of the week."

"Good!"

Simpson was unaware of the way in which his genuine enthusiasm transfigured his own expression. The change was brief, but Davis recognized it. It was a pity, he often thought, that Simpson had such a completely tone deaf "ear" where minor things like interpersonal relations were concerned. Personally, Davis still thought the man was a prick, especially as far as politics went, and he didn't much care for the "admiral's" obsession with matters of rank-social, as well as military-and the perquisites which went with it. But he'd come to recognize that however unpleasant Simpson's personality might be, the man undeniably had a brain. Quite a good one, as a matter of fact, when it could be pried away from things like his political disagreements with Mike Stearns.

However much Davis hated to admit it (and, as it happened, he hated it quite a bit), Simpson's experience as an officer in the up-time United States Navy really did show in the organization he was building here in Magdeburg. The up-timers under his command might carp and complain about "Mickey Mouse bullshit" and mutter balefully about "front office management pricks," but Davis had come to realize that there genuinely was a method to his madness. Of course, sometimes the machinist wondered how much of that method was due to the fact that Simpson had a clearer appreciation of what was needed than his fellow up-timers did and how much resulted from his own innate propensity for empire building. But whatever his reasoning, Simpson's Navy was much better disciplined and shaping up as a considerably more professional organization than Frank Jackson's Army.

Too many of Jackson's senior officers were still up-timers themselves, with a casual attitude toward him and toward each other which remained essentially civilian. That was fine as far as they themselves were concerned. They knew one another, and their relationships, however casual, worked. But the core of the Army had been the United Mine Workers of America. Davis wasn't certain how well the example of that attitude would serve as those from outside the original UMWA membership began attaining senior rank. And whatever might have been the case for the Army, Simpson didn't have that existing structure to build upon. He was creating the Navy out of whole cloth. Almost a hundred percent of its personnel were 17 th -century Germans and Swedes, leavened with just enough up-timers to provide the technical skills the newly made Americans had not yet acquired. And that was another kettle of fish entirely.

It didn't make Davis like Simpson any more, but it had permitted him to at least appreciate that the man did have some worthwhile qualities. Which was why he thought it was such a pity that Simpson was so persistently unwilling-or unable-to demonstrate the enthusiasm Davis had come to realize he felt for his present task. Instead, Simpson was prone to giving the impression that he had taken on the "chore" as a matter of noblesse oblige, to save the uncouth Appalachian yokels from the results of their own ignorance. That, more than any real policy differences, explained the antagonism that Simpson had a positive genius for stirring up among the people in the U.S. government he dealt with.

Thank God we're in Magdeburg, Nat thought to himself wryly. If we'd been based in Grantville, Simpson would be getting challenged to a duel every other Tuesday-the law be damned.

"Are we going to use the wire-built design or bronze casting?" Cantrell asked. Simpson gave him a sharp glance for interrupting, but said nothing. Simpson, Davis had noticed, was prepared to cut the youngster a much greater degree of slack than he did for anyone else. He wondered if Eddie realized that?

"Wire-built, for the first half dozen, at least," Nat replied. "The power plant has more than enough Schedule 160 twelve-inch pipe for the liners for all sixteen of the rifled guns, and we've unlaid enough steel cable to provide plenty of wire."

Simpson and Eddie both nodded. Twelve-inch Schedule 160 pipe had an inside diameter of just over ten inches and a wall thickness of about one and a quarter inches. That was ample to provide the liner for a ten-inch artillery piece, and Grantville's machining capability was more than adequate for the task of providing it with rifling grooves. But that left the task of reinforcing it. The original Grantville power plant had run to relatively high steam pressures, but there was a world of difference between that and the pressures which would be exerted in the bore of a black-powder cannon!

Two competing solutions had been proposed. One was to reinforce the tubes by winding them in thick cocoons of steel wire, which just happened to be available in significant quantities once the spools of steel cable had been discovered at the coal mine. Unlaying the cables by hand to separate them into individual strands of steel wire had been a laborious and manpower-intensive task, but once the decision to support the ironclad project had been taken, the manpower had been made available.

The second solution had been to cast bronze reinforcements around the tubes. In some ways, that was a simpler approach. It would result in somewhat heavier guns, but the technology to accomplish it was already available to the 17 th -century's metalworking industry. The finished guns would be somewhat heavier, and the tubes themselves might warp slightly in the casting process, but Davis doubted very much that the warping would present any insoluble difficulties. They were planning to do a final bore in all the gun tubes anyway, in order to bring them to a uniform size.

"The theory is that until we've got the on-site ability to do the casting here, they're going to have to ship the finished guns to us overland. The casting teams are pretty heavily committed to the field artillery and carronade projects right now, so coupled with the lighter weight for shipping considerations they decided to go with wire."

"As long as they make the delivery schedule, I don't really care which approach we use," Simpson observed.

"Yeah," Eddie agreed, but his expression was pouting. "I still say we could have produced a breech-loading design, though. Our rate of fire is going to suck."

"That decision has been made, Lieutenant," Simpson observed a bit coolly. Then he relented just a touch. "I'd obviously prefer breechloaders, myself," he said. "But the Allocations Committee was right. We don't have the resources to do everything we need to do, and muzzleloaders will do the job for us. Especially with the hydraulic recoil systems."

He shrugged, and while no one could have called Eddie's nod cheerful, there was no real disagreement in it.

"At least they'll recoil inboard so they can be reloaded under armor," he sighed.

"Especially in light of your suggestion to operate the port shutters with the same recoil system," Simpson agreed. Nat was aware that Eddie still considered himself an unabashed partisan of the Stearns administration and so, by definition, a natural enemy where John Chandler Simpson was concerned. Despite that, he noted a flicker of pleasure in the redhead's gray eyes at Simpson's acknowledgment of the youngster's contribution. One of his many contributions, to be sure-but Nat was still somewhat surprised that Simpson himself could recognize it, much less be willing to acknowledge it openly.

As he had sometimes before, Nat found himself wondering if the elder Simpson had found the personal rupture with his son Tom far more painful than he ever indicated in public. If so, it might be that in some odd way John Simpson was finding in brash young Eddie Cantrell-as well as his friend Larry Wild-something in the way of surrogate sons.

It was hard to know. Whatever John Simpson's other talents, "personal sensitivity" was very far down the list. Nat shook his head slightly and returned his concentration to the matter at hand.

The gun mount design Davis and Ollie Reardon had finally come up with was a far cry from anything the 21 st century would have accepted, but it ought to be sufficient for their present purposes. It would permit the guns to recoil completely, then lock them there, with the muzzles well inboard while they were sponged out and reloaded, until the release lever was tripped and the hydraulic cylinders ran them back to battery. By adopting Eddie's suggestion and using top-opening armored shutters for the gun ports and an articulated rod between each shutter and the carriage of the gun it served, the same hydraulics would open and close the gun ports automatically as the weapon was served.

"What about the carronades for the wing mounts and the timberclads?" Simpson asked.

"They're coming along on schedule," Davis assured him. "And the team at Luebeck says that they'll be ready to begin casting Gustav's carronades on-site within another four to five weeks. We just got a radio message from them yesterday."

"As long as they don't distract resources from our project," Simpson grumbled sourly. "That monster Gustav demanded has already eaten up enough effort."

"I don't guess we should've been surprised," Eddie observed with a grin. "I did some research on seventeenth and eighteenth century navies for a war game a couple of years before the Ring of Fire, and it was only a few years ago Gustav built this really big galleon. Supposed to be the biggest and baddest warship in the entire Baltic. Named it for the Vasa dynasty."

"Really?" Davis looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "Should I assume from your expression that it was a less than completely successful design?"

"You could say that," Eddie chuckled. "Sucker sank right there in harbor. Seems they hadn't gotten the stability calculations just right."

"Wonderful," Simpson snorted. "Not exactly the best recommendation for his latest project, is it?"

"Oh, I expect they'll get it closer to right this time… sir." Eddie grinned again. "The king's naval architects just about ate my copies of Chapelle's books on American sailing ship designs. They don't show any ironclads, but the sloop of war design they settled on should carry the armor no sweat. Especially with the reduction in the weight of guns."

"I don't really doubt that the design is workable, Lieutenant," Simpson said. "Practical, now… That's something else again. It's a sailing ship. That means they're still going to have to have men on deck to trim the sails, which seems to me to leave a teeny-tiny chink in their protection."

"Guess so, at that," Eddie allowed. "Of course, the armored bulwarks oughta help some, even there."

"Some," Simpson acknowledged. "In the meantime, though, we're diverting the effort to build a real rolling mill at Luebeck."

"Maybe so," Davis said, "but it's going to be turning out iron, not steel. And the individual plates aren't going to be all that much bigger than ours, anyway." He grinned at Simpson. "Frankly, I'm just as happy to let him play with his own design while we get on with building ours."

"You may have a point," Simpson replied. He let his chair rock back and forth a few times while he considered what Eddie and Davis had reported. At least it didn't sound as if there'd been any more slippage in the construction schedule. He considered-again-suggesting that the timberclads be given a somewhat higher priority. True, they were going to be much smaller, armed only with relatively short-ranged carronades and protected only by extra thick, heavy timber "armor." In addition, they were going to be powered by paddle wheels between their catamaran hulls, and their power plants would be steam-driven. In every way that counted, they were going to be cruder, less capable designs. But they were also going to be available in greater numbers, and they were going to be shallower draft than the ironclads, even with the bigger ships' trim tanks.

He had a nagging suspicion that he ought to be pressing for their more rapid completion. After all, all they really needed was to be just good enough to do the job, not the best design that could possibly be produced. Surely he'd seen enough unhappy demonstrations during his original navy days of what happened when the service insisted on building in every possible bell and whistle!

He told his suspicion-again-to shut up. No doubt there was something to it, but there was also something to be said for building at least a few really capable units for the timberclads to back up. And if there was an element of the empire building Stearns was so contemptuous of (even while he was busy building his own little political empire), then so be it.

"I think that will probably be all, gentlemen," he told them. "Mr. Davis, I would appreciate it if you would make it your business to check in with the local ironworkers. It looks to me like our next possible bottleneck is going to be bolt production. It won't do us any good to manufacture the armor if we can't attach it to the hulls! Please see what you can do to expedite that for us."

Davis nodded, and Simpson turned to Eddie.

"As for you, Lieutenant. According to Dietrich, there's a problem with the port gun mounts in Number Three. He's not certain what it is. I'd like you to check with the crew foreman and see what you can find out. If you can deal with it yourself, do so. If you need some additional assistance, I'm sure Mr. Davis would be happy to help out."

"Yes, sir," Eddie said. "I'll get right on it."

"Good. In that case, gentlemen, dismissed."

Davis nodded, and Eddie came to attention-or, at least, Simpson decided, closer to it than usual-and the two of them turned and headed for the door.

"Just a moment." His voice stopped them just before they left the office, and they turned back to look at him as he smiled slightly at Eddie. "I almost forgot. I thought you'd like to know, Lieutenant, that the President and Congress have accepted your recommendation for names for the ironclads."

"They have, sir? That's great!" Eddie grinned broadly.

"Indeed they have. Number One will be Constitution. Number Two will be United States. Number Three will be President, and Number Four will be Monitor. I trust this meets with your approval?"

"Oh, yeah!" Eddie said exuberantly. Then he shook himself. "I mean, it certainly does, sir."

"I am delighted to hear it," Simpson said dryly. "Dismissed, gentlemen."

Chapter 5

"I have it!" Gustav Adolf suddenly exclaimed. "Let's pay them a visit!"

Standing next to him at the open window of the new palace overlooking the heart of Magdeburg, Axel Oxenstierna's eyes widened. He was staring at one of the new buildings which had been recently erected in the city. More precisely, he was glaring rather than simply staring; and doing so at the peculiar ornamentation of the building rather than the building itself.

The fact that the ornamentation was even newer than the building was not the cause of the Swedish chancellor's irritation. Almost every edifice in Magdeburg was new, or largely so. Two years earlier, in the single worst atrocity of a long war filled with atrocities, Tilly's Bavarian soldiers had sacked the city. Most of the inhabitants had been slaughtered-some twenty to thirty thousand people, depending on who told the story-and Magdeburg itself put to the torch. Between the damage caused by the siege and the sack, there had not been much left standing intact when Tilly's army withdrew.

For months now, starting with Gustav Adolf's decision the previous autumn to make Magdeburg the capital of his new imperial realm called the Confederated Principalities of Europe, Magdeburg had been a beehive of activity. No one knew the size of the population, but Oxenstierna was certain it had already exceeded thirty thousand. People from all over central Germany-even beyond-were practically pouring into the city to take advantage of its prospects. New construction was going up everywhere, and of all kinds. New residences, of course-as well as the emperor's new palace in which Oxenstierna was standing. But also, along the banks of the river Elbe, the somewhat bizarre-looking new factories which Gustav's American subjects had designed. From where he stood, Axel could see the naval works where John Simpson and his men were building the new ironclad riverboats.

"Subjects," thought Oxenstierna sourly. Like calling a wolf a "pet" because-for the moment-the wild beast has agreed to wear a collar. With a string for a leash, and no muzzle.

"You must be joking," he growled. "Gustav, you can't be serious."

He twisted his head to look up at his ruler. Gustav II Adolf-Gustavus Adolphus, in the Latinized version of his name-had a personal size and stature to match his official one. The king of Sweden and emperor of the Confederated Principalities of Europe was a huge man. Standing more than six feet tall, he was wide in proportion and very muscular. The layers of fat which inevitably came to him whenever the king was not engaged in strenuous campaigning only added gravity to his figure.

"You must be joking," repeated the chancellor, more in a half-plea now than a growl.

Gustav shrugged. "Why should I be joking?" He lowered his heavy face, crowned with short blond hair and framed with a thick mustache and a goatee. The powerful beak of a nose seemed aimed at the offending structure below.

"They are my subjects, Axel, even if-" A little chuckle rumbled. "I admit, the rascals seem to wear their subordination lightly. But I remind you that not once-not once, Axel-have they done anything openly rebellious."

"Not openly, no," admitted the chancellor. Sourly, he studied the peculiar twin arches adorning the far-distant building. The arches had been painted a bright gold, which made them stand out amidst the gray buildings which surrounded them. All the more gray, in that most of those buildings were factories.

The color annoyed Oxenstierna perhaps more than anything else. Partly because its vividness, against the backdrop of the drab new factories and workshops, served to accentuate the awkward fact that these cursed Committees of Correspondence almost invariably found a receptive audience among the new class of workmen which was rapidly arising in central Germany. Nowhere more so than in Magdeburg.

But, mostly, he was annoyed because gold paint was expensive.

The implications were disturbing to Oxenstierna. It was one thing for a realm to have a layer of its population filled with unrest and radical notions. There was nothing unusual in that. For two centuries, Europe had been plagued with periodic eruptions of mass discontent-even rebellion. The Comuneros had shaken even Charles V's Spanish kingdom to its foundations-the Dutch had thrown the Habsburgs out completely-and Germany itself had been convulsed, a century earlier, by the great Peasant War and the Anabaptist seizure of Mьnster. Even Sweden had had its share of domestic turbulence, now and then, such as the rebellion led by Nils Dacke a hundred years earlier.

But, for the most part, the rebellions had been easy enough to suppress. The rebels, as a rule, were a motley assortment of poor peasants and townsmen, many of them outright vagabonds, "led"-if such a term could be used at all-by a sprinkling of the lowest layers of the nobility. Poorly educated, as much in the realities of politics as anything else, with not much in the way of any guiding principles beyond extremist theology and sullen resentment at the exactions of the mighty. However large the "armies" such rebels could field-the peasants of central and southern Germany had put as many as 150,000 men into the fighting, at one time or another-properly led and organized regular armies could usually crush them within a year or two. Except for the Dutch, who enjoyed special advantages, none of the rebellions in Europe had lasted for very long.

This… was something different. The very fact that the Committees of Correspondence could always manage to raise enough money from their adherents to afford gold paint was a small, but vivid, indication of it.

"Curse that damn woman," Axel muttered. "I sometimes think…"

"Do not say it," commanded the king. "Do not, Axel. Not in my presence, not in anyone's." Gustav swiveled his head, bringing the predator's beak to bear on his chancellor. "I am not that English king-Henry the Second, wasn't it?-who is reputed to have said: 'will no one rid me of this priest?' "

The head swiveled back, resuming its scrutiny of the golden arches. "Besides, you worry too much. The very thing that frightens you the most about Gretchen Richter and her malcontents is actually the thing which reassures me. Those people are not ignorant villagers, Axel, never think it. I've read their pamphlets and their broadsides. So have you, for that matter. Very thoughtful and learned, they are, for all the shrillness of their tone. And do they ever name me as their enemy?"

Oxenstierna tightened his jaws. "No," he admitted grudgingly. "Not yet, at any rate. But I've met the woman-so have you-and if you think for a moment she wouldn't just as soon-"

"Can you blame her?" grunted Gustav. "Tell me, nobleman-had you undergone her personal history, would you be filled with respect and admiration for your so-called 'betters'?"

Again, the swiveling beak. Accompanied, this time, by a laugh rather than a frown. "I think not! You would do well to remember, Chancellor, that the simple fact that a man-or woman-who has a grievance is of low birth does not make the grievance illegitimate. Nor-"

The frown returned. "Nor should you forget that God does not carry these distinctions all that far. Certainly not into Heaven, whatever He may decree on this earth."

Oxenstierna suppressed a sigh. His king was a pious man, and given to his own somewhat peculiar interpretation of Lutheranism. Or perhaps, that was just the legacy of his family's traditions. The Vasa dynasty had come to power in Sweden, as much as anything else, because the great founder of it-Gustav Vasa, the grandfather of the man standing next to him-had always been willing to side with the commoners against Sweden's aristocracy. Periodically, Gustavus Adolphus saw fit to remind all of his noblemen of that fact.

"Enough!" exclaimed Gustav. There was a little tone of jollity in the word. "I want to pay them a visit, Axel, and we will do so. Today."

He turned away from the window and began lumbering toward the door. "The more so since-you told me yourself, they're your spies-this 'Spartacus' fellow is now residing in the city. I may as well take his measure now. Your own spies tell us that he, more than Gretchen Richter, is really the leader of the pack."

"They don't have a proper 'leader,' " grumbled Axel, following after his king. "Richter is the most publicly visible and best known, but there are at least half a dozen others who are as important as she. Even if-"

The sourness came back to his voice, in full measure. The next words were spoken more like a complaint than a condemnation. "How in the name of Heaven did a printer's daughter learn to speak so well in public?"

They were in the hallway now. Gustav's lumber could hardly be described as a "stride," given the oxlike weight of his steps. But he covered ground very quickly.

"So tell me more of this 'Spartacus,' " he commanded over his shoulder.

"That's not his name, first of all. Just a silly affectation he uses on his pamphlets. His real name is Joachim Thierbach-or possibly von Thierbach-and he seems to be from some minor branch of the Saxon knighthood."

"If it's 'von' Thierbach, perhaps not so minor."

Axel twitched his head with irritation. "Saxons! All Germans, for that matter. Who can keep their complicated rankings straight? Not even they, I suspect."

They were at the entrance to the palace, now, the king almost bounding down the steps to the street below. Insofar as the muddy area could be called a "street" at all. Even here, in the imperial quarter, the workmen laying new cobblestones or repairing old ones were far behind the spreading growth of the reborn city.

A squad of the Scot mercenaries guarding the entrance began to form up around the king. Gustav Adolf waved them back to their posts.

"A diplomatic mistake, that, I think." As always, the mere prospect of being bold seemed to cheer up the Swedish monarch. "I think it would be wiser to make my entrance as Captain General Gars."

He stopped and grinned back at Oxenstierna. "And would such an intrepid soldier require bodyguards?"

Axel, finally deciding to bow to the inevitable and get into the spirit of the thing, returned the grin.

"Certainly not." He eyed the sword belted onto Gustav, and placed a hand on the hilt of his own. "These are quite functional, after all, and we're experienced in their use. Students and artisans and street urchins! They'll cower before us!"

Gustav laughed. "Hardly that. But I suspect they'll be polite."

In the event, "Spartacus" was more than polite. He was downright gracious. And demonstrated, in his easy manners and relaxed if respectful demeanor, that Oxenstierna's suspicions were well-founded. "Von" Thierbach, almost certainly.

Gustav saw no reason not to find out. So, once he and Axel were seated at a table in the corner of the "Freedom Arches" of Magdeburg-the king, if not the chancellor, finding it hard not to burst into laughter at the sight of the small mob ogling them from every nook and cranny of the capacious central "dining room"-he went straight to the point.

"So which is it, young man? Joachim Thierbach? Or von Thierbach?"

Joachim smiled. The man seated across from the king and the chancellor could not be past his mid-twenties. He was slender in build, and on the tall side. The glasses perched on his nose, combined with a prematurely receding hairline, gave him a scholarly appearance.

"Von Thierbach, Your Majesty. My family is the aristocracy of a small town not far from Leipzig."

"An odd background, I should think, for someone of your-ah, shall I say, 'extreme opinions.' "

Thierbach shrugged. "Why so, Your Majesty? Why should I limit myself to the horizons of a petty Saxon nobleman?" The smile segued into a half-bitter, ironic grimace. "And 'petty' is the word, too. Squatting on a not-so-large estate, lording it over a not-so-large pack of dirty and half-literate peasants. Such is 'nobility.' "

Axel glared. Gustav smiled. "True, often enough," allowed the king.

Gustav waved his hand about, indicating the surroundings. The interior of the cavernous building which the Committees of Correspondence had obtained for their own in Magdeburg was kept very clean. Extremely so, compared to most buildings of the time. Cleanliness and personal hygiene were almost fetishized by the adherents of Gretchen Richter's political movement, simply because it was "modern" if for no other reason. Even Axel would admit, in private, that he appreciated that aspect of the Committees if nothing else about them.

Still, for all its size and cleanliness, the building's interior was spartan in the extreme. The furniture was cheap and crude, as were the stoves and ovens in the kitchen area of the building. The one exception was the new cast-iron "Franklin stove" situated in a corner of the main room. Gustav restrained himself from grinning. One of his Swedish courtiers, sourly, had recently remarked that the Committees of Correspondence had adopted the Franklin stove much as the early church had adopted the symbol of the crucifix.

The king glanced down at the platter of food which had been slid onto the table by one of the youngsters acting as a waiter. The platter contained some slices of an odd concoction of sauerkraut and cheese melted over what looked like crude bread. Gustav, despite having skipped his usual heavy lunch, was not even tempted to sample the food. It had obviously been made on the premises, by a none-too-skilled amateur baker, out of the cheapest materials available.

That, too, the king knew, was one of the things which fretted his chancellor. The combination of austerity in their personal habits and their all-too-evident skill at raising funds, bespoke a certain fanaticism in the members of the Committees of Correspondence. However much their ideology derived from their American mentors, the Committees filled that ideology with a fervor which Gustav suspected made even the Americans a bit nervous.

He understood Axel's concern. Potentially, the Committees were indeed quite dangerous. But…

A war is a war, a campaign is a campaign, a battle is a battle, and a skirmish is a skirmish. Let us not confuse them, the one with the other.

"Let me speak bluntly," he said. He hooked a thumb at the chancellor sitting next to him. "My friend and adviser Oxenstierna here is worried about your intentions. And the threat those intentions might pose to my rule."

Joachim studied Axel for a moment. There was something owl-like about the examination. Scholarly, yes-but owls are also predators.

"He's right to be worried," said the young man abruptly. "Not about our intentions, but about the logic of the situation. I will not lie, Your Majesty. The time might come-might, I say-when we find ourselves clashing. But-speaking for myself-I would much prefer to avoid such an eventuality."

The king grunted. So. Even the most radical have factions. I thought as much.

"Richter will be gone for some time," he commented mildly, probing.

Thierbach transferred the owl gaze to him. Again, he spoke bluntly. "Do not presuppose divisions in our ranks, Your Majesty. Or, at least, do not read more into them than exists. It is true that Gretchen and I do not always agree. That is no secret, after all. We've each written pamphlets and given speeches where those differences are quite evident."

Gustav cocked an eye at Axel. The chancellor seemed to flush a bit. The king was torn between amusement and irritation. Clearly enough, to the aristocratic Oxenstierna, the subtle differences in the opinions of democratic radicals had been beneath notice.

I need to set up my own network of spies, thought the king. Subtle ones, who understand what they are observing, instead of huffing with indignation. Unless I'm badly mistaken…

He set the thought aside, for the moment. He was finding the subtleties of the young man seated across from him far too interesting to be diverted.

… I will be dealing with Thierbach and Richter and their ilk for the rest of my life. Always best to know your enemies-and your friends, for that matter, since for a king the distinction is not always very clear.

"Expand on that, if you would." For all the mildness of the words, it was a royal command.

Young Thierbach did not bridle. A fact which was also interesting. Most hotheaded youngsters would have, in Gustav's experience.

"The differences between Gretchen and me are not so much differences of opinion, Your Majesty-certainly not differences over principles-as they are simply the natural differences which derive from our differing activities. Gretchen is…" He didn't seem to be groping for words so much as simply trying to find the most precise. "Call her our 'guiding spirit,' if you will. She is fearless, bold-the one who will always lead the charge into the breach."

Gustav nodded. He'd met the young woman-and the first time, while she was standing with a smoking pistol over the bodies of Croat cavalrymen in the service of the Habsburg emperor. Some of whom she'd slain personally.

Joachim smiled, adjusted his glasses, and ran fingers over his balding forehead. "I like to think I would not flinch at that breach myself, you understand. But I'm hardly cut from the same cloth. I am more of what you might call the organizer of our Committees. The one who comes behind and makes sure that the fearless ones in front don't fall over in a faint from lack of food." The smile widened. "The Americans have a crude expression for it. They abbreviate it as 'REMF.' "

Gustav grinned. Oxenstierna laughed outright. For all his snobbery, the chancellor was not a prig-and he'd led troops himself in battle. "Rear echelon motherfuckers," he chuckled. He glanced sidelong at his monarch and added: "Which is the role Gustavus Adolphus usually bestows on me, you know."

Oxenstierna's eyes moved back to the young political radical at the table, and, for the first time, Gustav saw something beyond blank incomprehension and veiled disdain in that gaze.

Thank God. I could use your intelligence for a change, Axel. Your prejudices are no good to me at all.

"Please continue," said the chancellor. For a wonder, the tone was as polite as the words themselves.

"The point I'm trying to make is simply that Gretchen, because of her position at the front, often ignores what you might call the political logistics of the campaign." Joachim's face seemed suddenly that of a much older man. "I am not oblivious, King and Chancellor, to the cost of a revolution as well as its benefits. I've studied the same history books the Americans brought with them-as I'm sure you have. And while those books played a great role in leading me to the conclusions which I have reached, they have also-more than they did with Gretchen, perhaps-cautioned me about the possible dangers. So, personally, I would prefer a slower campaign."

The owlish gaze was back-and, this time, very much that of a raptor. "Sieges can be won in many ways, after all. A furious battle at the breach, followed by a sack, is only one of them-and not, all things considered, usually the ideal resolution."

Gustav II Adolf, king of Sweden, emperor of the Confederated Principalities of Europe, returned the raptor gaze with one of his own. Given that he was almost universally acknowledged as the greatest soldier of his time, it was an impressive stare. The great beak of a nose helped, of course.

Still, the young owl did not flinch from the eyes of the eagle in his prime. For some odd reason, Gustav found that reassuring.

"True," he said abruptly. "I've fought and won many sieges, you know-more, perhaps, than any man of my time. The best way to resolve a siege is for the defenders to surrender. And, in my experience, that's always helped greatly if they are allowed to surrender with honor and dignity, and march out of the town still carrying their colors and arms. Best of all, if they then take service in your own ranks."

Finally, Thierbach seemed to be what he was-a very young man, confronting an older and much more powerful one. His expression was… not abashed, no, not even nervous-but perhaps a bit uncertain.

"So I believe also," he said softly. "I have no love for bloodshed, Your Majesty. Neither does Gretchen, for that matter, whatever others might think."

A very young man, now. His eyes were worried. "How is she, by the way? Have you heard anything?" He made a little gesture toward the crowd of people in the room. "We're all worried about her. Things in France seem… not good."

Gustav barked a laugh. "Isn't that why you sent her there in the first place? 'Not good,' indeed! The perfect place for a trouble-maker."

Joachim managed a smile, but the worry was still evident.

The king waved his hand heavily. "I have not heard anything, no. But-"

Afterward, Axel would chide and scold him. For hours, and days, dribbling on into weeks and months. But Gustavus Adolphus had always been a decisive man. Convinced, since he was sixteen, a teenage prince leading his father's troops in the capture of a Danish fortress, that hesitation lost far more battles-and wars-than mistakes ever did.

"Done," he said firmly. "Whatever I can do to help your firebrand lady, if it proves necessary, I will do. You have my word on it. For my part-if it proves necessary-I will expect your full support against my own enemies. Things in France, as you say, do not look good."

"Richelieu," hissed Joachim. Gustav was gratified to hear the hiss echoed throughout the room.

The young radical straightened. "Richelieu, the Habsburgs-all that carrion-against them, Your Highness, the Committees of Correspondence stand firmly at your side."

Again, the murmur rippling through the crowd indicated that young Thierbach spoke for all of them. Gustav nodded his head.

"Good. And now, before I leave, is there anything further you wish to discuss?"

Joachim studied him with those solemn, owlish eyes. Then, a bit abruptly: " 'Discuss' is not perhaps the right term, Your Majesty. 'Illustrate a point,' might be better."

He swiveled in his chair and pointed to one of the young men standing toward the front of the crowd. A stripling, perhaps seventeen years old, short and skinny. "That's Friedrich Gulda. He comes from Mecklenburg. He's an orphan now. Has been for five years, since Wallenstein passed through the area. He managed to hide in the fields while his family was destroyed. He was there for hours, listening to it all. Wallenstein's soldiers took their time about it."

He allowed Gustav Adolf and Oxenstierna to flesh out in their own minds the details concerning what 'took their time about it' meant. Being very experienced soldiers, neither of them had any difficulty doing so. Joachim's finger moved on.

"That girl is Hannelore. She's sixteen years old. She's from Brandenburg. A similar story, except her older brother survived also and their people were killed by Danish troops. They think, at least. Might have been some of Mansfeld's men. Who knows? To commoners, especially peasants, mercenary armies are hard to tell apart."

Gustav Adolf's jaws tightened. Hard to tell apart for their own supposed "commanders," too. Not the least of the reasons I agreed with Stearns' proposal. Or Simpson's, as I think it really emerged.

The finger moved on, centering on a hard-faced man in his mid-twenties. The expression on the man's face was… implacable.

"That's her older brother, in fact. Gunther Achterhof." Joachim's lips twisted. "When Gunther first arrived here he had some ears and noses wrapped up in a cloth. Horrid withered things. It took me a week to convince him to throw them away. Fortunately, he'd already thrown away the private parts."

He gave king and chancellor a glance which was every bit as hard as Achterhof's face. "He and his cousin and some neighbors, you see, caught two of the soldiers afterward. Stragglers. Probably not the soldiers who murdered his family, but Gunther doesn't care much. Not at all, in fact. A mercenary soldier is a mercenary soldier. And…"

If anything, Joachim's face was now even harder than Achterhof's. "As far as he's concerned, the prince who hired the soldier is simply another prince. Gunther Achterhof is no longer interested very much-if at all-in making fine distinctions. Neither is his cousin Ludwig, who is the tall man standing over there in the corner."

The inexorable finger moved on. "That red-headed man is Franz Heidbreder. He comes from Mecklenburg also. Most of his family survived, fortunately. In fact"-the finger slid sidewise-"that's his brother Friedrich and over there are his cousins Moritz and Agnes. Their farms were destroyed three years ago when your own Swedish army arrived in Germany. All the sheep were requisitioned, along with just about everything else. True, they were paid for the sheep. But you have debased your currency so many times that Swedish coin isn't accepted by most merchants."

Gustav's heavy jaws tightened still further, but he did not argue the point. He had debased his currency, trying to cover the huge expenses of his expedition to Germany.

Softly, but in a tone as unyielding as granite, Joachim continued. "Franz's mother died that first winter, from disease brought on by hunger. His youngest brother died in the spring. After the whole family left Mecklenburg to try to find shelter elsewhere, one of his cousins and an aunt died on the road. Again, disease; again, because they were weakened by hunger and had no shelter. When Franz found his aunt's body, she had a handful of grass stuffed in her mouth. At the end, apparently, she tried to eat it."

By now, Oxenstierna's face was pinched. Gustav's was simply impassive. The chancellor began to say something but the king laid a firm hand on his arm.

Meanwhile, Joachim's finger had moved on. The young Saxon nobleman's face seemed to soften a bit. "That girl there is Mathilde Wiegert. She was the one who introduced me to Gretchen Richter, as it happens. She's from the Palatinate, also driven into exile when the war struck. I met Mathilde herself when I was a student at Jena. She and her cousin Inga had become prostitutes by then, in order to support themselves and the younger girls with them."

The pretty young woman named Mathilde gave Gustav Adolf a little smile. Hers was the only smiling face in the room. But the king understood that the smile was not really directed at him. It was directed at the young man who was giving the king a none-too-subtle "illustration."

Joachim swiveled back in his chair, to face Gustav and Oxenstierna squarely. "As it happens, also, Mathilde is the immediate cause of my estrangement from my family. My noble father had no objection at all to my having mounted a commoner prostitute-in fact, he encouraged me to do so as part of my education-but he was outraged when I told him I plan to marry her once the laws have been changed here in Magdeburg to match the laws of the United States."

Once the laws have been changed. Not if. There, too, was a point being made.

"Such is the piety of aristocracy, King and Chancellor. Such is what-nothing more-all of your fine distinctions between Lutheran and Calvinist and Catholic come to in the end. Which nobleman gets to plunder and abuse which commoner at his convenience."

"Enough!" barked Oxenstierna.

A little growl rumbled through the cavernous room. Joachim fixed Oxenstierna with a stony gaze. "Yes, indeed, Chancellor. Precisely my point. Enough."

Oxenstierna started to rise, angrily. But Gustav's hand, this time, was more than "firm." The king of Sweden was an immensely powerful man. He simply seized Oxenstierna by the shoulder and drove him back down into his chair.

"You will listen to my people, Chancellor," he hissed. "I will not lose my dynasty because of the folly of nobility." He gave Oxenstierna his own version of a stony gaze; which, if it had none of the fervor of Joachim's, made up for the lack by sheer self-confidence. "Vasa. Do not forget."

He turned back to Joachim, sensing the crowd settling down a bit. For a moment, the king and the revolutionary studied each other. Then Gustav Adolf nodded, and came to another decision. It would not be the first time, after all, that the king of Sweden had found it necessary to burn a bridge while on campaign. Some of those bridges had been behind him.

"I have decided to bring my family from Sweden here to Magdeburg. My daughter, at least. Kristina, as you may know, is quite young. Seven years old."

He glanced around the room. From their appearance, most of the crowd consisted of teenagers and people in their twenties. But, sprinkled here and there, he could see a few older ones-and a handful of children.

"Palaces are stodgy places. Very boring, for a spirited young girl. I think she would enjoy an occasional outing here."

He brought his eyes back to Thierbach. The young man seemed paralyzed for a moment. Then, astonished; then…

His thin shoulders squared. "She would have to learn how to bake," he said firmly, in a voice which had barely a trace of a quiver. "It's the rule."

Axel looked like he might be on the verge of apoplexy. Gustav burst into laughter.

"Splendid!" he said, slapping the table with a meaty hand. "Her mother-my wife-will have a fit, of course. So would my own mother. But my grandmother, on the other hand-the wife of the great Gustav Vasa-is reputed to have been quite an accomplished baker. I see no reason not to restore that skill to the family."

Oxenstierna began expostulating his protests the moment they left the building. But Gustav waved him down impatiently.

"Later, Axel, later. You know as well as I do that my wife is unfit to bring up my daughter. She's a sweet woman, but… weak. How much trouble has she caused us already, by her susceptibility to flattering courtiers?"

He stopped, boots planted firmly in the muddy street, and glared down at his chancellor. "And you also know-you've read the histories, the same as I have-what happened to Kristina. In the end, for all her obvious brains and talents and spirit, she converted to Catholicism and abdicated the throne. I won't have it!"

"You were dead in that-" Axel's hand groped in midair. "Other history. You're alive in this one."

The king shrugged. "True. She still needs to be brought up among women. Part of the time, at least." He jerked his head toward the Freedom Arches. "Say whatever else you will about Gretchen Richter and her cohorts, they are not weak."

Axel's face was almost red. Gustav decided to relent. He placed a hand on his chancellor's shoulder and began guiding him back toward the palace. "Oh, do relax. I don't plan to have Kristina spend much time with that radical lot, I assure you. No, no. I'll find some suitable noblewoman to serve as her-what do the Americans call it? 'Role model,' as I recall."

Oxenstierna seemed mollified. Gustav, looking ahead to a day filled with contentious meetings, decided to leave it at that. No reason to mention the precise noblewoman he had in mind, after all.

Alas, despite his often unthinking prejudices, Oxenstierna's own brains were excellent. Within ten paces, the chancellor was scowling fiercely again.

"Don't tell me. Gustav! You can't be thinking-"

"And why not?" demanded the king. "I think my newest-and youngest-baroness would make a splendid companion for Kristina."

He held up a finger. "Given the nature of the times, Kristina should learn how to shoot." Held up another. "And, in reverse, Julie Mackay rides a horse like a sack. Kristina's already an excellent rider, so she can teach the baroness that skill-which, I'm sure you'll agree, is essential for a proper and respectable Swedish noblewoman."

"Julie Mackay is in England," grumbled Oxenstierna. "Maybe even Scotland, by now."

"So? She'll be back."

"Things in England also do not 'look good.' "

"So?" repeated Gustav. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing back to the Freedom Arches. "If I wind up having to rescue one contentious young woman, why not two?"

They plodded on in silence for a bit. Then, Axel sighed. "Or three, or four. I never thought the day would come I'd say this, but I wish Rebecca Stearns were back in our midst. I… miss her advice. She is very shrewd, and easy to work with."

Gustav chuckled heavily. "Indeed. It's a bit amazing, isn't it, the way it works. Having Gretchen Richter-or Julie Mackay-as a frame for the portrait, Rebecca Stearns suddenly looks like the wisest woman in the world."

Chapter 6

"Remember, Julie," said Melissa sternly, "that you don't have any antibiotics. So-"

"Will you cut it out?" interrupted Julie crossly. She folded another corner of the blanket around her baby's head. "If I have to listen to one more lecture about this, I think I'll scream." She gave her husband a sour glance. "Alex chews on my ear about it ten times a day."

Julie's Scot husband flushed. With his fair complexion and redhead freckles, a "flush" was fairly dramatic. "Damnation, lass," he growled, " 'tis no joking matter. I shouldna allowed you to come on this trip at all, much less bring the child."

For a moment, Julie's lips parted. Melissa almost winced, imagining the retort. And how the hell do you propose to have STOPPED me from coming? You-!

Fortunately, Julie reined in the impulse. Whatever the realities of their personal relationship, Julie had learned to accommodate her husband's need to maintain, at least in public, the faзade of being the "man of the house." That-just as his willingness, however reluctant, to allow her and their infant daughter Alexi to accompany him on his sudden emergency trip to Scotland-was one of many compromises the two young people had learned to make in order to keep their marriage a going concern.

It had not always been easy for them, Melissa knew. The clash of cultural attitudes between a 17 th -century Scot cavalryman and a 21 st -century American woman was… awesome, at times. That wasn't helped by the fact that, on one side, Alex Mackay was a Scot nobleman-born under the bar sinister, true, but still with a nobleman's attitudes. And, on the other… Melissa had to force herself not to laugh. To describe Julie Mackay as "stubborn and strong-willed" would have been much like describing the ocean as "wet and salty." A given; a fact of nature. As well command the tides to roll back as expect her to be meek and demure.

Then, too, they were both very young. Alex in his early twenties; Julie still months away from her twentieth birthday. With all the advantages of being in late middle age, and separated by far less in the way of a culture gap, it was not as if Melissa herself and James Nichols hadn't had their share of domestic quarrels.

Feeling a little guilty that she'd occasioned this latest clash, Melissa groped for words to soothe the situation. Dammit, woman, you're supposed to be a peacemaker on this mission. You're not a '60s college radical any longer, cheerfully poking the establishment.

Grope, grope. The truth was that Melissa found agitation and troublemaking a lot more natural than being a diplomat. She couldn't find the words.

Fortunately, Julie had other characteristics than stubbornness. One of them-quite pronounced, in fact-was affection. So Melissa was spared the need to play the role of peacemaker. Julie suddenly smiled, slid an arm around her husband's waist, and drew him close. A wet and enthusiastic kiss on the cheek drained the flush right out of Alex's face. And immediately put another one in its place, of course. But that was a flush of pleasure, not anger.

Nor embarrassment, even though Julie's display of affection was quite public. They were all standing on the quays where the ship from Hamburg was moored. The Pool of London was crowded with stevedores and sailors and people waiting to embark on other ships. But Alex was not disturbed. Not at all, judging from the way his own lips sought Julie's.

One of the things Melissa had learned, in the two years since the Ring of Fire, was that people of the 17 th century were far removed from the prim and proper attitudes of that later era usually labeled as "Victorian." That had surprised her, even though she was a history teacher by profession. Without ever having thought much about it, Melissa had assumed that European culture got progressively more "Victorian" the further back you went in time. She certainly would have expected the early 17 th century-the heyday of religious zeal; the era of "Puritanism"-to have been one characterized by tight-lipped reserve on all subjects, and sex in particular.

The reality was quite otherwise. The primness of social customs in the 19 th century had been a recent development, occasioned by the Wesleyan Methodist response to the horrors of 18 th -century English city life, and its spread onto the Continent through the Pietist movement. Melissa had discovered that people of the 17 th century were actually quite earthy-even bawdy. If the Scot cavalrymen who stumbled onto Grantville soon after the Ring of Fire had found the clothing of American women rather scandalous, they hadn't thought their "modern" casualness about sex to be peculiar at all. They themselves, like most people of 17 th -century Europe, had a relaxed attitude about sex which had far more in common with the mores of late 20 th - and early 21 st -century America than either did with the Victorian era.

More so, in some ways; even incredibly so, to someone with Melissa's upbringing and attitudes. She could still remember the shock she had felt when she discovered that one of the widowed farm women near Grantville had sued one of her employees because the man, coming upon her bent over in her vegetable garden, had cheerfully taken the opportunity-as the euphemism of a later era would put it-"to have his way with her" despite her vehement protests.

The shock hadn't been at the fact of rape. Melissa was no sheltered girl, and rape was common enough in 21 st -century America. It had been the attitude of the woman herself which had appalled her. True, the farm woman had been furious at the man, for acting like such an oaf. But she had not filed criminal charges of rape. She'd simply stormed into the courthouse to demand that the crummy SOB be placed under a bastardy bond to provide child support in case he'd gotten her pregnant.

The case had been quite notorious in Grantville, at the time, because it had caused something of a firestorm in the already-turbulent attempt to forge a unitary legal code for the new society being constructed. On this question, as on many others, where modern Americans tended to see things in terms of personal rights, 17 th -century Germans tended to see them in terms of property and its obligations. The fact that the man had violated the woman herself was a matter for anger, to be sure. But the real outrage was that he had endangered her property-by, possibly, begetting an unwanted child on her which would be a continual drain on her none-too-substantial resources. Even the culprit himself had seen it in those terms. On the stand, he'd admitted quite freely that he'd been hoping to embarrass his employer into marrying him and thus giving him a secure lifetime interest in the farm.

In the end, the case had been settled on the woman's terms. And, while Melissa had been angry at the time, in retrospect she wasn't sure the lout of a handyman wouldn't have been better off spending a few years in an American prison-with time off for good behavior-than being stripped of every penny and possibly locked into what amounted to a condition of involuntary servitude for two decades.

Remembering that episode as she watched Julie's kiss turn into something very demonstrative-Alex's face was almost beet red, now, but he was returning the kiss with enthusiasm-Melissa found herself fighting down a laugh again. O brave new world, that hath such people in it! There were things she detested about 17 th -century society; others, which she had found herself coming to treasure, almost despite herself.

Disease, however, was not one of them. And the fact was that Julie was taking a real risk in bringing her child on this voyage. As a rule, people of the time left their children behind-especially infants-whenever they traveled anywhere beyond their immediate vicinity. Rebecca and Gretchen hadn't even considered bringing their babies along on their own mission. Leaving aside the very real danger of piracy and highway robbery, there was the ever-present risk of disease whenever a child was exposed to strange populations. Even without travel and unnecessary exposure, a third of all children born alive did not survive their first year; fully half died before the age of five.

Hearing a clatter of hooves, Melissa turned away from Alex and Julie. A small party of cavalrymen was trotting onto the quays, some fifty yards away. They were using the weight of their mounts to brush aside the stevedores and sailors, exhibiting all the arrogance of soldiers toward civilians that was another of the characteristics of the time which Melissa despised. Move or be trampled, damn you.

Her lips tightened. The officer at the head of the troop was scanning the area, obviously looking for someone. Which, she had little doubt, was Melissa herself. Or her party, rather. Although the cavalrymen weren't wearing uniforms as such-which were still uncommon in this day and age-the similar buff coats and knee boots and gauntlets and plumed hats amounted to the same thing. Only royal troops would be so accoutered in this area.

An official escort. I'm not sure whether to be pleased or not.

She felt a looming presence behind her. She didn't have to turn her head to know that was Tom Simpson. Rita's husband had a personality which was diametrically opposite that of the haughty officer coming toward her. Melissa had seen Tom Simpson step aside for almost everyone he encountered. But the man's sheer size was enough to make him "loom" just by being in the vicinity. That wasn't due to any great height-Tom was not much over six feet tall-but simply to his bulk. All of which, she knew, was bone and muscle. Tom Simpson hadn't been out of shape as a nose guard for West Virginia University's varsity football team. The time since, most of it spent as an officer in the army of the new little United States, had kept him in even better shape.

She found that presence comforting, the more so as the officer and his cavalrymen approached. Melissa had learned, in the two years since the Ring of Fire, to dismiss her long-standing prejudice against soldiers for what it was: prejudice. But if there were Alex Mackays and Tom Simpsons and Heinrich Schmidts in the world's armies, there were also officers she wouldn't have trusted any more than she would a rattlesnake. Quite a bit less, in fact-no one had ever accused a rattlesnake of committing "atrocities."

The officer in charge of this party… didn't look promising. Plumed like a peacock, staring at everyone in a haughty manner which was almost a parody from a movie, his long nose tight with what seemed a perpetual sniff.

Not, I admit, that this place doesn't stink. Whatever else Melissa liked about the 17 th century, the smell of its cities and towns was not one of them.

"That's got to be for us," murmured Tom. "I'll get Rita."

Melissa nodded. Rita Simpson was the official ambassador to King Charles I. To all the Americans in Grantville-including the woman herself, all of twenty-three years old-that seemed a little ridiculous. But, following the advice of Balthazar and Rebecca, and Francisco Nasi-and Gustav's chancellor Oxenstierna, for that matter-Mike had given his kid sister the assignment. For 17 th -century Europeans, "diplomacy"-in the sense of crucial, binding, negotiations rather than routine matters-was not something conducted by professional ambassadors. The distances involved were simply too great, and transport and communications too poorly developed, for nations to oversee closely their own envoys. As a result, it was the common practice for ambassadors to be relatives of the rulers involved, because only they could be presumed to speak with real authority.

Granted, Mike Stearns was not a king. But he was the closest thing the United States had; and so, willy-nilly, the embassies to France and Holland and England were being officially headed up by his wife and his sister.

In the case of Rebecca's mission, formality and reality matched. Everyone, except possibly herself, had full confidence in Rebecca's ability to handle the task. Indeed, she had been given the more difficult and critical mission-to make peace with France, if at all possible, and forge an alliance with Holland.

With the mission to England, the situation was different. There was nothing wrong with Rita. Melissa thought she was a splendid example of an American young woman, sane of mind and sound in body. But nobody, certainly not Rita herself, thought she had the same brilliance which Rebecca had demonstrated many times over.

Thus, despite her own wishes, Melissa Mailey had been dragooned into serving as Rita's "adviser"-in truth, the real head of the delegation.

Damn it, I'm closing in on sixty! I'm too old and decrepit for these adventures. And I miss my bed at home, with James in it. And my little creature comforts and habits. I even miss the squeaky hinge on the kitchen door that James swears he'll get fixed some day.

The oncoming officer still hadn't spotted them. Moved by an impulse, Melissa turned back to Alex and Julie.

"We should part company. Now. There's no reason to think…" She hesitated. "Still-"

Alex nodded. "In case of trouble, best there be no known connection between us." He put his arm around Julie's shoulders and began to turn her away. Then, with a little smile: "Of course, there will be spies. But by the time they finish squabbling with Charles' tight-fisted paymasters over the price for the information, we'll be halfway to Edinburgh."

Melissa could see Julie starting to rebel, a bit. The young woman obviously wanted to give her a parting hug. But Julie was stubborn, not stupid. So, after a moment, she satisfied herself with a warm smile and a whisper: "Don't forget to stay in touch with the radio. I'll listen every day, just like we planned."

Melissa nodded. Since her head was turned away from the officer, she blew Julie a kiss. Then, firmly-and not easily; Julie had become something of an adopted daughter to her, since the Ring of Fire-she turned her back on them.

Turned her back, straightened her shoulders, reared her head as high as her long neck allowed; then, bestowed upon the approaching officer a nose which-truth be told-was every bit as aristocratic as his and a gaze whose haughtiness would have graced an empress. Not for nothing had Melissa Mailey spent years as a schoolteacher staring down youthful insolence.

The officer spotted her, then. And, a moment later, Tom and Rita Simpson standing next to her. Behind them, Darryl McCarthy and Gayle Mason and Friedrich and Nelly Bruch were standing next to the party's luggage. The two couples-true couple with the Bruchs, faked with Darryl and Gayle-were the "servants" for the mission. All embassies of the time would bring their own servants. Whose tasks, cheerfully enough, all of them would carry out-even if Darryl and Gayle could be counted on to make sarcastic remarks about it in private. But their real reasons for being there were to maintain the radio communications, in the case of Gayle; provide Tom with whatever he needed in the way of physical security, in the case of Darryl and Friedrich; and, since Friedrich's wife was a native Londoner and he was familiar with the city himself, whatever local intelligence might be needed.

Melissa saw the officer's eyes widen a bit. His nose seemed to narrow still further.

Sorry, jackass. I don't wear feathers and plumes. Low-class we may be, but this is the official delegation from the United States.

That was a bit unfair. She had, after all, tried to talk Rita into wearing a very elaborate outfit, complete with plumed hat. But that had been too much for Rita's ingrained Appalachian modesty.

The officer's eyes fell on Tom. Melissa found herself chuckling softly at the subtle change in the man's arrogant expression. Even sitting astride a horse, the officer was obviously pondering the very real possibility that Tom could bring the horse down with one hand while he plucked the officer off with the other. Judging from his squint, Melissa suspected the man was now considering what might follow.

Too horrible to contemplate, apparently. The officer forced a smile on his face and trotted up.

"Ah. Lady Stearns, I presume?"

Melissa had managed to coach Rita well enough that she didn't blurt out what would normally have been her response. You've gotta be kidding. Besides, I'm Mrs. Simpson now-this big fella is my hubby. Instead, Rita simply nodded graciously and gestured to the others. "And my party," she said.

A bit too softly, thought Melissa. But… not bad. Hey, what the hell. As long as I'm here, I may as well enjoy it.

Some time later, as their coach and its cavalry escort approached their destination, Melissa was not enjoying herself at all. She recognized the place, as it happened, having visited it as a tourist three times in her life.

"What's the matter?" asked Rita softly. "You look like you just ate a lemon."

Melissa pointed a finger out the window. "That's the matter. Where we're going. I thought they'd take us to Whitehall Palace, which is the royal residence in this period of English history."

Tom leaned over and peered out the window. A moment later, he grimaced. Melissa was not surprised to see that he recognized their destination, even though, unlike her, he'd never been to England. Tom had grown up in Pittsburgh, not a small town in West Virginia, and his parents had been very wealthy. The kind of parents who got mail from all over the world.

The place whose gates they were approaching was quite famous, after all. Its distinctive outline graced millions of postcards.

"Oh, lovely," he muttered. "The Tower of London."

Chapter 7

"It's not as bad as it sounds, Rita," said Melissa, looking around the room the officer and the escort had led them to. Rita's face had been tight with apprehension since being told of their destination.

"Being 'tossed into the Tower' isn't actually the same thing as being tossed into a dungeon. Mind you, there are some real dungeons in this place-plenty of them-but, for the most part, the Tower is where the British monarchs keep important people they want to more or less 'lock up' in comfort."

She made a little motion with her hand, indicating their surroundings. "I mean-look at it. Sure, the underlying construction is medieval, and the less we think about the toilet situation the better. But, other than that, these rooms and their furnishings are fit for a king. Quite literally, as a matter of fact. This is St. Thomas' Tower, where at least one medieval king of England actually lived. One of the Edwards, if I remember right."

Melissa moved over to one of the windows on the side opposite the Thames. The glass, she noticed, was almost as clear as modern glass would have been. Below, a narrow cobblestoned street separated the outer wall of the Tower, of which St. Thomas' Tower was a part, from the inner wall of the fortress. She pointed at the mass of stone buildings which formed most of the construction of the inner wall in this portion of the Tower of London.

"That's where they kept Sir Walter Raleigh, you know, for some twelve years-and not all that long ago. In considerable comfort."

She decided, under the circumstances, that there was no need to mention that the nickname for Raleigh's tower was "the Bloody Tower." That was legend, anyway. Who really knew if Richard III had murdered his nephews in the first place-much less done it there? She also decided there was no reason to mention the open plot of ground somewhere on the other side of the Bloody Tower-you couldn't see it, from their vantage point-where Henry VIII had had Anne Boleyn's head chopped off.

Rita seemed to relax a little. "So what you're saying, in a nutshell, is that we're under 'house arrest.' And they've provided us with the nicest house they have for the purpose."

Melissa nodded. She was about to elaborate when Darryl McCarthy appeared through a door on the far end of the connected rooms they'd been led into-what Melissa was already thinking of as "the ambassadorial suite." The young coal-miner-turned-soldier was shaking his head, but the gesture was more one of bemusement than disapproval.

"Fancy digs, that's for sure, except for the-ah-I guess we can call it a 'toilet.' But-" He gestured over his shoulder with a thumb. "They've got guards posted at a walkway that leads over to the other side of the street, and they made real clear that I wasn't allowed to go across. Said we had to wait until some muckety-muck-I didn't catch the name-showed up."

From the idle way he rubbed his chest, Melissa suspected that "real clear" had involved the point of a partisan when Darryl tried to push the issue. Probably two or three partisans, held in the hands of a squad. Like his friend Harry Lefferts, Darryl was brash and bold. The sort of Appalachian lad who had, throughout American history, provided a disproportionate share of its gunslingers and desperadoes-and, for that matter, test pilots.

Melissa had often found that hillbilly machismo rather aggravating. But…

Different times, different places. God, I'm glad Darryl's here. Worse comes to worst, at least we won't go gently into that good night. I even miss Harry Lefferts. Well… sorta. I can probably keep Darryl from doing anything really nuts. But if Harry were here with him… Eek.

She smiled, remembering times past-before the Ring of Fire-when, as a schoolteacher, she'd often enough been ready to throttle two rambunctious teenagers. When Harry and Darryl finally graduated from high school and went to work in the mines, Ed Piazza, the principal of the high school, had invited Melissa and several other teachers into his private office for a surreptitious drink from a half pint of Jack Daniels he had stashed away in a drawer of his desk.

"Now that those two are gone," he'd said, examining the empty bottle-it had been emptied very quickly-"maybe I can start following my own rules about no alcoholic beverages on the premises."

"I doubt it," grunted Greg Ferrara, the science teacher. He eyed the empty bottle regretfully. "Don't forget we've still got-"

"Shuddup," growled Piazza. "Just shuddup."

Different times, different places.

Hearing the clump of feet coming up the staircase which led to St. Thomas' Tower, Melissa turned away from the window. From some subtlety in the noise, she knew that whoever was coming up was no mere guard. The footsteps had that vaguely ponderous feel to them-dignity rather than simple force-which signified the arrival of a "man of substance."

And, sure enough, the man who came through the entry into the suite was very finely dressed. He was quite an imposing man, besides, even leaving aside the garments. Tall, lean, strong-featured if not handsome; thick dark hair and brown eyes contrasting rather sharply with the pale complexion. His expression was grave and solemn. Melissa had the impression this was more because of practiced habit than natural temperament. The quick flashing smile which suddenly appeared, quite at odds with the formal dignity of his stance, lent support to that suspicion.

"May I bid you all greetings," the man said. "On my behalf, as well as that of King Charles. I am Sir Thomas Wentworth-"

He broke off, briefly, an odd look coming over his face. It was a subtle thing. Half-surprise; half-delight-the look of a man who has suddenly remembered a recent and very unexpected stroke of good fortune.

"The earl of Strafford, actually. The king saw fit to bestow the title upon me recently." He cleared his throat. "I'm afraid the king himself is indisposed at the moment. The queen is quite ill, and between his concern for her and the press of state affairs, His Majesty asked me to greet you on his behalf. He also asked me"-another clearing of the throat; louder, this one-"to extend his apologies for not providing you with lodgings at Whitehall. Alas, the queen's illness is shared by many of the courtiers and servants, and the king fears for your safety should you be installed in what has, sadly, become a palace rife with disease."

He got that out quite nicely, thought Melissa, given that she was almost certain it was a straight-up lie. Strafford bestowed that quick smile upon them again. It was quite a striking expression-as much due to its brevity as its gleam. As if the man who made it distrusted his own tendency toward warmth.

"To be perfectly honest-I've stayed in Whitehall myself, at times-you'll be more comfortable here anyway. The royal palace is a madhouse, half the time, and so crowded we'd have been forced to cram you all into one or two tiny rooms. Whereas here-"

His hand, in a slow-moving regal gesture, indicated the charms of their surroundings. "Separate rooms-good quarters for the servants, even-one of the finest fireplaces in all England, and quite possibly the best beds this side of the queen's chambers in Whitehall. Much better."

That much was probably true, Melissa suspected. She'd barely recognized St. Thomas' Tower when they'd been led into it. From the outside, it looked not too different from the way it had looked when she'd visited the Tower in the late 20 th century. But the inside, on her tours, had been barren. More than that, really, because the people who managed the Tower had deliberately left some of the old architecture exposed so that tourists could see the way in which the Tower had been constructed in layers, century after century. Today, she was seeing the place the way it would have actually been used in those long-gone centuries. Carpets, rich tapestries, linens on the beds and the fine upholstery of the furniture looking as if it had been used recently. Most impressive of all, to her, was the great fireplace which dominated the suite. She remembered the thing, from her visits as a tourist. But there was a great difference between the cold if majestic structure she remembered, and this fireplace warm with ashes and half-burned logs.

Of course, I could have done without the authentic smell.

But even that was something wafted in through the open windows on the Thames side of the suite. Most of it came from the still waters of the moat, which was, for all intents and purposes, an open-air sewer. The rooms in St. Thomas' Tower themselves were immaculately clean.

Melissa was about to say something when Rita spoke. "I thank you, Lord Strafford. And please convey my appreciation to His Majesty. But when, may I ask, will we be able to meet the king himself?"

Strafford clasped his hands behind his back and leaned forward a bit. "I'm afraid I can't say. The press of affairs really is frightful at the moment-and was, even before the queen took ill. And with that coming on top of it all…"

Strafford's expression was a diplomatic marvel. Melissa almost laughed. It conveyed the subtleties of a man who, moved by bonhomie and good will, would impart a confidence to strangers in whom he had taken a sudden trust and liking. False to the core, but-well done. Oh, very well done indeed.

"If I may say so, the king perhaps dotes a bit too much on the queen. Personally, I think the accusations that he is besotted with her are quite false-even slanderous. But there's no doubt the man treasures her deeply. When she's ill… it's difficult to tear him away from her side, and then only for the most immediate and urgent matters."

Melissa decided Rita was handling the situation well, and let her continue. However nervous the young woman might be at the role she had been called upon to play, it was a role she would have to learn. No way to do that, after all, other than to just do it.

"I see. Well, let's hope for Her Majesty's quick recovery, then. In the meantime…" Rita glanced toward the window overlooking the rest of the Tower of London. The aplomb she'd managed to retain thus far seemed to desert her a bit.

Perhaps sensing the awkwardness, Strafford intervened smoothly. "Your servants, of course, will be quite free to move about the Tower in order to obtain whatever you need." He gave Darryl a quick, skeptical glance, but left it at that. "They will not, however, be able to leave the Tower itself. And I'm afraid I must ask you, Lady Stearns, as well as your husband and-ah-"

He was looking at Melissa. Like Rita herself, Melissa had not quite been able to force herself to wear the plumage of a noblewoman of the times. But, also like Rita, she was clothed in garments which were considerably finer than those worn by the Bruchs or Darryl and Gayle.

"Melissa Mailey," she announced.

Strafford frowned slightly, as if searching his memory. Melissa was struck by how rapidly the frown vanished. "Ah, yes. You are one of the members of-what's the term?-yes, 'the cabinet,' I believe, of your government." He nodded graciously, extending a personal welcome. "And yourself as well, then. Please do remain in your quarters."

Rita seemed unable to think of the right words with which to register a protest. Neither could Melissa, for the simple reason that she was in something of a state of shock.

Not at the restriction to quarters-she'd been expecting that; it was standard practice for important "guests" in the Tower-but at the simple fact that Strafford knew who she was.

God in Heaven, the man can't have arrived in London but recently. And he's already learned this much about us?

As suavely as ever, Strafford glided on. "The restriction is for your own safety, do please understand that." He turned his head, scowling at the river visible beyond the southern windows. "I'm afraid there's been some turbulence in the kingdom recently. No way to know how much of the sedition may have spread into the Tower itself, and who knows what madmen might think to do?"

He straightened a bit, bowed. The gesture-very well done, as everything the man did-conveyed, simultaneously, regrets and cordiality and firm resolve and… I've done what I had to do and I'm getting out of here. Adios, amigos-and don't even think of messing with me.

A few murmured words of polite departure, and he was off. Moving more quickly than he had arrived, perhaps, but still with that same, solid, dignified tread.

When he was gone, and clearly beyond hearing, Melissa blew out a breath and stifled a curse.

More or less. "Damnation. Wentworth! And they've already made him an earl!"

Shit-shit-shit. But she kept that vulgarity to herself, from the lifelong habits of a schoolteacher.

Everyone was staring at her. Melissa turned to Gayle. "Can anyone hear us?"

The stocky woman shook her head. "Nope. While Darryl was busy playing macho-man with the guards, I checked everything. So did Friedrich. There's no place for hidey-holes or listening posts, and the guards outside can't possibly hear anything in here short of a shout or a scream. Or a gunshot."

Melissa nodded. "All right, then." She moved over to a nearby armchair and plopped herself into it. Very plush and comfortable, it was. "Gather round, folks. Let me explain the situation-as near as I can figure it out, anyway."

When they were clustered about, Rita and Tom perched together on a small couch and the rest standing, Melissa pointed a finger at the entryway through which Wentworth had departed.

"That man is probably the most dangerous man in England. For us, anyway. Sir Thomas Wentworth, later to become the earl of Strafford. Except in our universe, the king didn't make him an earl until…" She groped in her memory. "I can't remember the exact year, but it sure as hell wasn't as early as 1633. He's supposed to be on his way to Ireland right now. Just recently appointed Lord Deputy of the island."

The name finally registered on Darryl McCarthy. Melissa had been wondering when it would. For all that Darryl had the typical Appalachian working-class boy's indifference to history, there was one subject on which he didn't. Darryl's father Michael had been a long-time supporter of NORAID, the Irish Northern Aid Committee, and the whole McCarthy clan were rabid Irish-American nationalists.

"Black Tom Tyrant!" he snarled. "The fucking bastard! He's the one who killed the Men of '98!"

Melissa sighed. And, as usual, he had his history all jumbled up. She could remember a test question, years before, which Darryl had answered: "George III, first president of the United States."

"He's forty years old, Darryl!" she snapped. "So he'd have been five years old when he 'killed the Men of '98'-assuming, of course, that those had been the men of fifteen ninety-eight instead of 1798, which is when the rebellion actually happened. You're almost two centuries off."

Darryl was glowering. Not at the reproof-water off his back, that; always had been-but with the glower of a man who knew what he knew, dammit, and don't confuse him with the facts.

Melissa rubbed her face, reminding herself that she was a diplomat these days, not a schoolteacher. No point in trying to correct Darryl's grasp of history. For whatever reason the young man detested Strafford, the detestation was probably good enough. She wasn't certain yet, but all the signs pointed to an England which was already lost to them. She'd come here looking for peace-even, possibly, an alliance-but with Strafford now an earl, and all the rest she'd seen…

"The point's this, people. Wentworth was always-by far-the best adviser and official King Charles ever had. But, in the world we came from, Charles never much cared for the man. Basically, because Wentworth was too smart and too capable and too efficient."

"Didn't trust him, huh?" grunted Tom.

Melissa shook her head. "No, it wasn't that. Wentworth-Strafford-was loyal to the bone. When the time finally came, oh, when was it? In 1641, I think, give or take a year. When the time came when the English revolution demanded Strafford's head, King Charles let them have him-even though he'd sworn to Strafford that he would stand by him no matter what."

Melissa, unlike Darryl, had a sense for the grayness of history. Heroes were rarely simply heroes, nor villains always "villainous." Strafford, like Richelieu-like Wallenstein, even-was a man of many parts. Some of which could only be admired, however much the men themselves might be enemies of what she stood for now, in this time and place.

"Strafford's quite a guy, actually," she said softly. "He sent-would send, years from now, in that other universe-a letter to the king absolving him of his vow. And by all accounts, even those of his enemies, went to his death with great courage and dignity-and not a murmur of complaint about his-"

There was no reason to be diplomatic. "His worthless, treacherous, useless, incompetent, feckless, shithead of a king."

There! I feel better.

Darryl was grinning at her use of the vulgar term. Miz Mailey!

Everyone in the room chuckled. Melissa grinned herself.

"King Charles the First was-is-one of the dumbest kings the English ever saddled themselves with. Well… 'dumb' isn't exactly the right word. Frankly, that's giving him too much credit. He was-is-probably smart enough. So he doesn't even have that excuse. But he's got the temperament of a child. He sulks, he pouts, he always wants to have his cake and eat it too. For years he neglected his French Catholic wife, in favor of his infatuation with his favorite courtier, the duke of Buckingham-who was an even bigger jackass than he is. Buckingham was assassinated in 1628. That's happened in this universe too, because it was before the Ring of Fire. Since then, Charles has been doting on his wife. And-never fails!-Henrietta Maria is another royal twit. She's Louis XIII's sister, and she's pretty much cut from the same cloth as her brother. If Louis didn't have Richelieu running France for him-at least he's smart enough to know talent when he sees it-he'd be in a mess."

Tom chuckled heavily. "Are there any kings or queens who can tie their own shoes, in this day and age? Outside of Gustav Adolf, of course."

"Several, as a matter of fact. King Christian of Denmark is quite an impressive monarch. The biggest problem he always had was trying to bite off more than he could chew. But-capable, no doubt about it, even if he is drunk half the time. And if the current rulers of Spain and Austria aren't anything to write home about, their younger relatives are something else. Don Fernando of Spain-they'll already be calling him the 'cardinal-infante,' I imagine-is just about to start his impressive military career. That's the Spanish Habsburgs. On the Austrian side of the family, Emperor Ferdinand's son the King of Hungary is also on the eve of coming into his own."

She twirled her fingers in the air, trying to depict the confused workings of space and time. "In the universe that was-would have been; hell, probably is somewhere else-the cardinal-infante and the king of Hungary would lead the Habsburg armies that defeated the Swedes at Nordlingen in 1634. Of course," she added, comforting herself, "they didn't have to face Gustav Adolf himself, since he died at Lьtzen."

Tom Simpson, if nothing else, knew his military history. "November of last year, that would have been." His thick chest rumbled a little laugh. "Not in this universe, though. We pretty well put the kibosh on that at the Alte Veste."

Rita shushed him with a hand on his arm. "Keep talking, Melissa."

"The point is this," she repeated. "The reason Charles didn't like Wentworth-and his queen Henrietta Maria disliked him even more-is because the man pestered him. 'Do this, do that.' The fact that he was unquestionably loyal and his advice was generally good didn't matter to Charles. He just found the man tiresome, that's all. Wentworth distracted him-tried to, anyway-from his beloved round of masques and the flattery of that pack of toadying courtiers he and the queen always had around them."

She snorted. "Earl of Strafford! Wentworth didn't come from the nobility, he came from the gentry. Like any capable and ambitious man of his time-this time-he wanted honors and recognition. For years, hard years in which he served the king ably and even brilliantly, he petitioned Charles to make him an earl. And, naturally, Charles-God, what a sorry man he was-is-rewarded him with indifference. He showered earldoms on every twit of a courtier who gained his or Henrietta Maria's favor, but nothing for Wentworth. Nothing except another assignment. Not until almost the very end, when England started to blow up under his feet, did Charles finally make Wentworth the earl of Strafford. Years from now, that should have happened. Right now, Wentworth is supposed to have just arrived in Ireland-where he'd spend years hammering that place into shape for the English."

Darryl scowled but, thankfully, kept quiet.

"Do you see what I'm getting at, people?" She pointed again at the entryway. "In this time and place, Charles has already made him the earl of Strafford. And you can be sure it isn't because Charles is any brighter or less of a jerk. So what does that tell us?"

"They know what's going to happen," said Tom immediately. "Of course, we were already pretty sure of that, once Rebecca found out that Doctor Harvey took some copies of pages from that history book he ran into while he was visiting Grantville. But knowing is one thing, figuring stuff out is another."

He rose, and went to the window overlooking the street between St. Thomas' Tower and the inner wall of the Tower of London. "The shit's hitting the fan, isn't it? That's what you're telling us, Melissa."

"Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that," she said primly-until the laugh which swept the room reminded her that she'd use the vulgar term herself, not minutes past. Then, smiling a bit sheepishly, she continued:

"But, yes, that's the gist of it. Charles obviously knows there's a revolution coming and the 'historical agenda' has him scheduled for the chopping block. It's like Samuel Johnson said: 'Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.' Not even Charles is silly enough to let his petty irritation with Wentworth stand in the way of staying alive and staying in power. So he must have called him back from Ireland and given the task of stopping the revolution before it even starts into his very capable hands."

She nodded toward the window overlooking the Thames. "We all noticed that the shipping pattern in the Channel was odd."

Then, nodded toward Bruch. "To be precise, Friedrich told us it was." In years gone by, Friedrich had served as a sailor on one of the Hanseatic League's ships. "And then, how busy the river traffic on the Thames seemed to be. Remember that most so-called 'warships' in this day and age are just armed merchantmen. At a guess, I'd say the English are preparing some kind of naval expedition."

"What for?" asked Rita, her face creased with a frown. "I'd think that if Charles was worried about revolution at home, that he'd be keeping his attention on that. Not playing games with military adventures somewhere else."

"I don't know myself, Rita. But…" Melissa tried to figure out a quick and simple way to explain the complexities.

"Look, we've been hearing about the new Spanish expedition against Holland for months now. And about France's reaction to it. Well, the English aren't all that fond of the Dutch themselves at the moment. In our own history, Charles and the court actually favored the Spaniards over the Dutch, despite all the English pride in having defeated the Armada. Of course, our Spain didn't get around to launching its 'Second Armada' until several years from now in our history, so the fact that they're planning one now seems to indicate that they've been doing a little future research of their own.

"But my point is that even though 'official England' favored Spain then, there's no way Charles would have actually helped the Spaniards. However much he disliked Holland, he recognized a certain commonality of interest with them. And he knew Richelieu's policy was always directed at defeating Habsburg power, so siding with Spain against the Dutch would have made him France's enemy, as well. That's why he stayed neutral in this particular little conflict in our own past.

"But if he's preparing a naval expedition now, then that suggests he doesn't plan on sitting this one out this time around. I can't believe he'd openly support Spain-not with the potential for pissing off Richelieu, and especially not in light of the fact that there's nothing in particular Spain could give him to make it worth his while. But if not Spain, then he has to be planning on siding with the Dutch, instead, and that doesn't make any sense either. Unless Richelieu is involved somehow."

"But why would he want to help Richelieu?" Rita asked with a frown.

"It all comes down to money, in the end," Melissa replied. "Charles hasn't summoned a Parliament in years, now-not since the Parliament of 1628 which infuriated him. But without a Parliament, his means of raising funds are pretty limited. That was always what hamstrung the English monarchy, you know. It's the reason that England has a much smaller army than most countries of this day and age. The crown doesn't have much of a war chest without getting Parliament's approval. And summoning a new Parliament is the one thing Charles is not going to do, for sure. The last one had already become a hotbed of Puritan dissent."

Not to her surprise, Tom's mind was already ranging ahead. If the huge soldier didn't have his father's temperament, he had inherited the man's brains. "He needs money to crush revolution at home, so he's getting it from abroad. Why not France? His wife's the French king's sister, after all. But wherever he gets it, he'll have to pay a price for it. So, yeah, that could be by supporting somebody else's military adventures-like Richelieu's bid to stop the Spanish Habsburgs from regaining control of Holland."

He cocked his head away from the window, looking at Melissa. "Makes sense, I suppose. But it also seems a bit fancy, though-far-thinking, let's call it-for a king as goofy as you've described Charles."

"It is. But Wentworth's capable of thinking that far ahead. And, as I said, he's been made the earl of Strafford…"

"Way ahead of schedule," Tom concluded, turning back to the window. A moment later, he seemed to stiffen.

"And here's something else." He pointed down at the street below. "Dunno what it means, Melissa, but they're hauling somebody else into this joint. And I'd say, going by the chains they've got all over him, that he's not going to be getting the 'royal treatment' we are."

Melissa rose hurriedly and came to the window. Looking out and down, she saw a man being frog-marched past on the street below. Each of his arms was firmly held by a guard, with more guards marching ahead and behind. The precautions seemed a bit ludicrous. As Tom said, the man's wrists and ankles were manacled, with chains connecting to a heavy leather belt cinched around his waist.

For a moment, his eye perhaps caught by the motion in the window, the man looked up at her. There was no expression on his face, beyond stolidity. It was the face of a man who was determined to show neither fear nor favor to fortune. Come what may, 'tis all God's will. I am who I am.

Then he looked away, giving her a view of his profile.

"Oh, Jesus," she whispered. The face was younger, of course. But she recognized it easily enough. It was a distinctive face. The same one she'd seen on portraits, in every book in Grantville which discussed the English Revolution of 1640.

Darryl was at another window, by now, and he recognized the face almost as quickly as she did.

"That son-of-a-bitch!" he snarled. Then, almost shouting through the heavy panes of the window: "I hope they draw and quarter you, you stinking-"

Melissa spun away from her own window. "I've had quite enough from you, young man!"

That was the True Voice. The schoolmarm in full fury. Darryl fell silent as instantly as he had in years gone by. He even cringed a bit.

She glared at him. Then, looking at Tom, pointed a stiff finger at McCarthy. "You will maintain discipline with your subordinate. You will see to it that the lout-the cretin-the wet-behind-the-ears-"

Tom grinned. "Not to worry, ma'am." Then, flexed his shoulders. Even Darryl, clearly enough, found that intimidating. He cringed still further.

Melissa smiled thinly. "Excellent." She bestowed a look upon McCarthy which did not bode any better for his future than that same look, in times past, had boded for his grades and chances for advancement.

"I will save the history lesson for another time, young man. But for the moment, we have business to deal with. And you will obey me."

Darryl almost gulped. He did nod hastily.

"Splendid." She turned now to Friedrich and Nelly. Like everyone in the party, the Bruchs were now standing at one of the windows which overlooked the street. "You'll be able to move around more easily than any of us, and you don't have Gayle's odd accent. So you'll be our spies."

She glanced out the window. The man being marched under guard was now being taken through a doorway farther down. The kind of doorway which practically shrieked: This way to the dungeons!

"Will you be able to recognize him again?" The Bruchs nodded.

"Try to find out exactly where they've taken him and, if you can, what they plan to do with him."

Nelly opened her mouth to say something, but Melissa was driving on. "Tom-you too, Darryl-we need to start planning an escape. Nothing immediate, and I hope it won't come to that. But we need to be ready, if necessary."

That statement immediately brought back Darryl's usual insouciance. As Tom started scrutinizing the rooms, calculating the possibilities, Darryl was opening one of the great trunks they'd brought with them. It didn't take him more than a few seconds to work his way under the mass of clothing and start retrieving the items secreted there. Over Melissa's objections, Mike Stearns had insisted they bring those items. Just in case, as he'd put it.

"I can't believe they were dumb enough not to search us," Darryl said gaily. Thump, thump. Two automatic pistols materialized on the low table next to him. Thump. A box of ammunition.

"That would have been most undiplomatic," said Melissa. "I was almost certain they wouldn't."

Thump, thump, thump. Three sticks of dynamite. Clink. Melissa recognized some blasting caps.

Thrump. She was pretty sure that was what they called "primacord." Not positive, of course-she knew very little about explosives, beyond the primitive incendiary bombs an anarchist boyfriend of hers had once fiddled with in his attic, in the long ago and heady days of the 60s. But she hadn't stayed with him very long. Even in her radical youth, Melissa had frowned on violence.

THUMP. A battery, that was. She could imagine its purpose.

She sighed, remembering those innocent days.

"Besides," she added, "people in this day and age think of firearms as big and clumsy things, which take forever to reload."

"Yup," said Darryl cheerfully. "Betcha we can find plenty of places to hide these little-bitty eeny-weeny itsy-bitsy Smith and Wessons." He glanced up at one of the heavy shelves along a wall. "And the dynamite's a gimme. Just smear a little dust on 'em and hide them up there with all the rest of the candles. Just like Harry and me once-"

He broke off, glancing guiltily at Melissa, and busied himself with something heavier at the bottom of the trunk. Then, heaving:

WHUMP.

"Jesus, Darryl!" chuckled Rita. "We're not going to be climbing a mountain."

Darryl shook his head firmly. "You can't ever have too much rope. And this is nylon, too. We've got enough-ha! I remember that time Harry and me almost got caught, because-"

Again, his eyes avoided Melissa's, and he went back to his rummaging. "Well, never mind. Dammit, where's the smoke bombs?"

Melissa didn't know whether to laugh or scream. Well, at least this time the rascal is on my side. I hope.

Nelly came up to her.

"Oh, sorry, I think I interrupted you earlier. You were going to ask me something?"

Nelly nodded; then, transferred the nod toward the distant doorway where the prisoner had been taken.

"What's his name?"

Before Melissa could answer, Darryl did it for her. "Oliver Cromwell. The rotten bastard, may he burn in eternal hellfire." But he said it quietly, and kept his eyes away from Melissa while he continued his rummaging. Not, of course, without adding: "The butcher of Ireland. The tyrant-" The rest trailed off into a murmur.

Melissa tighten her lips. "On some other occasion, Darryl McCarthy, I will explain-attempt, I should say-the complexities of the matter. But, for the moment…"

Her eyes swept the room, taking in everyone.

"For the moment, here is what matters. In this day and age, that man is simply country gentry. A man in his mid-thirties; a relatively unknown member of Parliament. In his own district, however-in East Anglia, near Cambridge-he's rather famous."

She gave Darryl's back a sharp look. " 'The Lord of the Fens,' they call him. That's because, for a few years now, he's been the leader of the poor farmers in East Anglia trying to resist the encroachment upon their lands of their rich neighbors."

Darryl's shoulders twitched and his head popped up. He gave Melissa a puzzled look. "I didn't know that."

Melissa almost laughed. Whatever his Irish-American attitudes on other subjects, Darryl was also a fervent union man. Like all members of the United Mine Workers of America, he tended to divide the world into simple class categories: hard-working stiff, good; rich gouger, bad. And now he found himself caught in one of history's multitude of contradictions.

"There are a great many things you don't know, young man," snapped Melissa. "As I recall saying to you-quite often-in times past."

Tom finished the history lesson for the day. "I didn't know that, either. But I do know what he became later." He seemed to have little, if any, of Darryl's ambivalence. Even though, as the scion of a family which traced its own roots back to English nobility, the name of Oliver Cromwell could hardly have been passed on with favor.

" 'Old Ironsides' himself," said Tom, seeming to relish the words. "In the flesh, by God. The man who created the New Model Army which overthrew the English crown. Except for Gustav Adolf, and maybe that young Turenne fellow who's just getting started in France, the best general of the era. Lord Protector of England, eventually."

He grinned down at McCarthy. "Of course, that came a bit later. After he separated King Charles from his head. Which, from what I hear, was no great loss."

Darryl stared up at him. Outside of Irish history, what Darryl knew of any other could easily be inscribed on the head of a pin. "I didn't know that."

"Yup," said Tom cheerfully. The edge of a huge hand slammed into the palm of another. "Chop. Cut the sucker right off. Oliver Cromwell. One serious hard-ass, even by hillbilly standards."

Chapter 8

The cell was dank, and, sunset now past, lit only by the taper in Strafford's hand. The light was just enough to make out the figure of the man squatting against one of the stone walls. The dim light glinted off the manacles on the man's wrists and ankles, but the earl could make out few details of the face beyond that distinctively strong nose.

Strafford resisted the impulse to order the chains and manacles removed from the prisoner. His sudden elevation to royal favor was too recent for Strafford to risk incurring the king's displeasure for such a small matter. And it would be hypocritical anyway, since Strafford was doing his best to convince King Charles to have the man executed outright.

A husky voice came out of the darkness. "You're looking prosperous, Thomas."

The tone in the voice was filled more with harsh, bitter humor than anything in the way of real anger. It had been five years since the earl and the prisoner had last seen each other, but the man's composure did not surprise him. Strafford-Thomas Wentworth, as he'd been then-had spent some time in the private company of his fellow young member of Parliament. The two men had taken something of a liking to each other. Perhaps that was because they came from similar backgrounds, gentry families rather than nobility, striving to gain a place in the sun. Or, perhaps, it was simply a matter of temperament.

"I only found out two days ago, Oliver, when I arrived in London." Strafford cleared his throat. "I am sorry about Elizabeth. The men had no orders to harm your wife."

"Soldiers. What did you expect?" Again, that harsh, bitter humor. "But you were always adept at washing your hands, as I remember."

Any trace of humor left, then. All that was left was raw and bitter pain. "They shot her like a mad dog, Thomas. And she never laid so much as a hand on one of them. Just denounced them for a pack of mongrels. Then shot my son Richard, when he cursed them for it. Killed both of them in front of my eyes, with me already chained and helpless."

Strafford winced. He began to utter harsh words of his own, vowing to see the culprits brought to justice. But the phrases died in his throat. The earl would have neither the time nor the opportunity to see to the punishment of undisciplined soldiers.

And Cromwell knew it. A harsh chuckle came from the corner where he squatted. "Good for you. Whatever else, at least you've not become a liar."

"I've never been a liar," grated Strafford.

"No, you've not. Other things, but not that. So tell me then, honest Tom-why?"

Cromwell thrust his face forward, further into the dim lighting thrown out by the taper. Strafford could now see the man's mouth as well as his nose. He'd forgotten the prominent wart on Cromwell's lower lip.

"Why?"

The sight of the wart froze Strafford for a moment. His thoughts veered aside, remembering a portrait of Cromwell he'd seen in a book which the king had shown him. That had been one of the history books which Richelieu's men had obtained from Grantville, and presented to the king of England as a gift.

There had been a portrait of Oliver Cromwell in it, made when he was much older than the man chained and manacled in the cell. A man in his fifties, not one in his mid-thirties. A portrait of the "Lord Protector of England," regicide and ruler of the island, not a prisoner in the Tower.

Much was different, but the wart had been in the portrait also. That would have been like Cromwell, Strafford knew. Most powerful men ordered their portraits idealized. This man would not have done so.

Strafford took a deep breath and let it out. Had God willed it so, he would have far rather been the minister for King Oliver than King Charles. But… things were as they were. Charles, for good or ill, was the legitimate monarch of England. And Oliver Cromwell, however much Strafford might admire and respect the man, was not. He was simply a rebel and a traitor in the making, and Strafford had seen enough of the lunacies of parliaments to know what havoc and ruin rebellion would bring in its train.

"Why?" demanded Cromwell again.

"You didn't know? They didn't tell you?"

Silence.

Strafford sighed. No, they wouldn't have. Just had the soldiers murder his wife and one of his sons and drag him here in chains.

"You've heard of this new place on the continent, in Germany? This town called Grantville, delivered here from the future."

"Wild rumors. The fens are full of superstition."

"No superstition," replied Strafford, shaking his head. "It is true enough, Oliver. Believe it true. They broke the Spanish at Eisenach, and the imperials at the Alte Veste. 'Tis said one of their women shot Wallenstein himself, across a distance of a mile, with one of their fiendish guns."

The prisoner's eyes widened. "So what does that have to do with me?"

The earl stared at him for a moment. "They brought other things than guns with them from the future, Oliver. Histories, for one. The cardinal of France-Richelieu, that is-saw to it that several such books were given to King Charles. In the future-"

He cleared his throat. "The future that would have been, I should say. There would be a revolution here in England. Starting not many years from now. By the end of it, you would rule the country-and have the king's head on a chopping block."

The face drew back, now shadowed again. Only the nose still showed in the candlelight. "You are something of a Puritan yourself, Thomas, as I recall. Predestination, is it?" A wintry chuckle came from the corner of the cell. "Leave it to King Charles to kill a regicide's wife and son, and leave the regicide alive. I advise you to have me executed. For I will do my best, I can assure you, to see that God's will is not thwarted."

Strafford tightened his jaws. Never a liar. "Indeed. I so advised His Majesty yesterday."

Silence again. Then Cromwell asked: "And you, Thomas? In that future world."

"I was executed as well. Before the king." He saw no reason to tell Cromwell of the shameful manner of the king's behavior. Even Charles had had the grace to look away, embarrassed, when Strafford came to that portion of the history in his reading.

Cromwell was not fooled. "Threw you to the wolves, did he? That would be just like the man. And you, Thomas-how did you manage the affair?"

The earl of Strafford straightened a bit. "I died well. Even my enemies said so."

"Oh, I am not surprised. Remember it, Thomas Wentworth." The face withdrew completely into the darkness. "Best you be off, now. The king will have more chores for you. And I have grieving to do."

Laud was waiting for him in Strafford's chambers in Whitehall. The bishop of London was pacing back and forth, obviously agitated.

"What's this nonsense His Majesty's been telling me?" he demanded, as soon as he caught sight of Strafford.

The earl restrained his temper. A part of him wanted nothing so much as to throttle the bishop, but… when all was said and done, Laud was a friend of his-and Strafford suspected he had few friends left, these days. Nor did he have any doubt that as soon as the current archbishop of Canterbury died-and Abbot was by all accounts on death's doorstep-Laud would succeed him. So had it happened in "the other world"; so it would happen here. King Charles approved of Laud.

Not throttling the man, however, did not mean being delicate with him. Strafford had been expecting this quarrel, and was ready for it.

"Don't be an imbecile, William. Even you must understand that the new situation requires us to set aside your plans for reforming the church. Plans which, I might add, were the single most prominent cause of the revolution which took place"-his hand groped in midair-"in that other history."

He matched the bishop's glare with one of his own. "Damn all zealots, anyway! You and your meddling with the Scots once you became archbishop-ruin, that's what it brought. Would have brought, but not now. And I so told the king, and told him firmly."

He stalked over to a chair and threw himself into it. "And His Majesty agrees, so there's an end to it. There will be no meddling with the Scots and their Presbyterian obsessions. Leave them alone, William. Leave those thick-headed half-barbarous clansmen to their own quarrels and feuds. Stir them up-as you did, in another time-and they'll become the hammer to the Puritan anvil."

May as well get all of it over with, he told himself firmly. He was expecting a complete rupture with Laud. That would sadden him, personally, but-so what? It had saddened him to see such a man as Oliver Cromwell rotting in a dungeon also. The needs of the state remained.

"And the same for Ireland. Leave the Old English there in peace with their papist idolatries, and Ireland will be a bastion for royalism. Stir them up, and we'll have another rebellion to contend with."

Laud was starting to splutter, but Strafford's strong voice overrode his protests.

"Damnation, William! Is it impossible for you to see your hand in front of your face? Did you read the books?"

"And why should we trust them?" shrilled Laud. "For all we know, those books were created by the Satanists themselves-or they're French forgeries." The bishop's eyes narrowed. "You met the witch yourself, earlier this day. Surely you could smell the stench of abomination."

Strafford burst out laughing. "The 'witch?' Which one, William? The one by the name of Melissa-who, I must tell you, is as fine looking an older woman as any duchess in Europe? Or the young one by the name of Rita? Who is as obviously a prince's young sister, uncertain of her role but determined to carry it out, as any infanta of Spain?"

He sat up straight, shaking his head. "There was no stench, William. Put that aside, man. You don't even believe it yourself-the whole notion smacks of village superstition. Is Satan so powerful he can create a new universe? Nonsense. Wherever these people came from, it was not the Pit. On that issue, if nothing else, I am inclined to agree with Richelieu. They are not personally evil. Indeed, it is that very lack of personal wickedness which drives home all the more strongly God's warning to us: let this madness unfold, and even the best will be encompassed in the ruin."

As always, theological questions were able to distract Laud as nothing else could. The bishop's scowl remained, but it became more one of thought than simple outrage. "You cannot trust a papist cardinal to reason properly, Thomas, never think it. Ours, here in England, is the only true catholic church. Still…"

He resumed his pacing. "I will admit that Richelieu's reasoning-in this instance-has substance to it. Still…"

He stopped his pacing, spun around, and extended a beseeching hand. "Can't you see what you're doing? For all intents and purposes, you are adopting the policies of-of-them." His lips pursed, as if he'd eaten a lemon. "Religious toleration. Let every fool in the land set himself up as if he were a bishop."

Strafford laughed again. " 'Them?' The colonial Satanists, you mean?"

Laud seemed to have calmed down enough for Strafford to have hopes of preventing a complete rupture. He arose, went over to his old friend, and put an arm around the smaller man's shoulder.

"I did not say we must forever abandon our plans for reform of the church, William. Nor, I can assure you, do I share the foolish belief of these 'Americans' that religious toleration is some kind of principle."

Not, he added sourly to himself, that a heavy dose of it wouldn't be of benefit to the world's statesmen. Idiots!

"But even the Son of God required three days to return from the dead, after all. We can't do everything at once, William. Without a king to serve as the anchor, an established church is impossible-you know that as well as I do. So will you allow me the freedom to do as I must to ensure the survival of the throne? Or-"

His tone hardened, as did the grip of the large hand on the bishop's shoulder. "Or will you enroll yourself in the ranks of my enemies? Choose, William. Choose now. His Majesty has seen fit to bestow the task upon me, and I will not shirk from the duty. Not for anything, including friendship or personal sentiment."

Laud's shoulder stiffened. Then, slumped.

"Oh, not that, Thomas. An 'enemy'? Never that."

"Good." Strafford used the hand on the shoulder to steer Laud into a nearby chair. "That settled, old friend, I could use your advice and guidance. The Lord knows I could use your energy and discipline."

After both men were settled, Strafford pushed the advantage. "Besides, look at all the bright spots. With the money the French are showering on us, I can afford to hire some real soldiers. For once, the king of England will be able to bare some real teeth."

"Not French soldiers," hissed Laud. "Let those swine onto the island…"

Strafford laughed. "Was I born yesterday? The cardinal's envoy made the offer, of course-indeed, he even raised the possibility of Spanish troops, if you can believe it."

Laud's face turned bright red. "Spanish troops!" he screeched.

Strafford, still chuckling, waved his hand. "Rest easy, William. There's this much good came out of the madness on the Continent. After fifteen years of warfare, there are thousands-tens of thousands-of experienced English mercenaries, any of whom would be delighted to return to England and serve under their own king's colors."

Laud was not quite done with his glowering. "A scandalous lot. Soldiers-for-hire. Sinners."

Wentworth shrugged. "Frankly, all the better. They'll hardly care about the fine sentiments of Parliament, now will they?"

He rose and went to a window, overlooking the great city. Then, completed his conversion of the bishop.

"They'll certainly not be given to tenderness dealing with the Trained Bands of London."

Mention of the militia of England's capital, that body of artisans and apprentices who had caused so much grief and disturbance over the years to England's monarchs and bishops, brought Laud to his own feet.

"Crush the rabble!"

Strafford clasped his hands behind his back, and straightened his shoulders. Then, gazing serenely down at the dark streets of London:

"Oh, I intend to. Be sure of it, William."

Some time later, over a much more convivial meal, Laud inquired as to the fate of the new prisoner in the Tower.

Strafford's face darkened a bit. "Tomorrow, I shall try again to convince the king to have Cromwell beheaded. Pym, too, once the soldiers bring him to the Tower. And Hampden, if we can catch him. But…"

"He's an indecisive man by nature, Thomas."

The king's new prime-minister-in-all-but-name shook his head glumly, thinking about the king he served. "Worse than that, really. Indecisive in big things, stubborn in small ones. I think he has vague notions-probably put there by his wife-of having some sort of grand spectacle of a trial at a later date. When he can haul all of his enemies out of the Tower and put them up for display."

"In front of whom?" demanded Laud. "Not Parliament, surely!"

Strafford shrugged. "That will be up to us, I suppose. Create some suitable body to replace Parliament, I mean. On that, it occurs to me-please take no offense!-there's something to be said for the French system-"

The argument which erupted thereafter was fierce enough, in its own way. But it was the ferocity of an argument between friends, enjoying the dispute, not that of a quarrel between enemies.

And so Thomas Wentworth, the earl of Strafford, was able to end the day on a better note than it began. And was able to carry with him to his bed the memory of a friendship retained, to blunt the sorrow of seeing a man he much admired fester in a dungeon, grieving a murdered wife and son.

Duty, of course, remained.

First thing tomorrow-I'll do my best to convince Charles to remove his head. Oliver is dangerous. If he ever gets out…

He drifted off to sleep, comforted by thoughts of the thick walls of the Tower. True, men had escaped from the Tower, in times past. But never men immured in the dungeons.

Strafford would have been less relaxed-considerably less-had he witnessed what a young man named Darryl McCarthy was doing at the very moment he fell asleep. For all his brilliance, the earl of Strafford-like Richelieu-had not fully grasped the nature of the new American technology. He could accept, readily enough, guns which fired across half a mile with uncanny accuracy. But still, he-like Richelieu-had the ingrained habits of men born and bred in the 17 th century. An impressive machine or device, they could accept, yes. But, without even thinking about it, they assumed that such a machine or device would look impressive.

A cannon which can destroy a stone wall does, after all. A great, big, brute of a thing.

"That's it," said Darryl softly, turning his head and smiling up at Melissa. "You just give the word, ma'am, that fancy wall is so much rubble and we're outa here. Assuming you can scrounge us up some transportation, of course." He gave a skeptical glance out the window at the moat and the Thames beyond. He couldn't see the water, in the darkness of the night, but he could smell it. "Can't say I much want to swim in that stinking river, much less the moat, even if I could make it across in the first place."

Melissa winced. "I can't quite believe I might destroy… I mean, the Tower of London, for God's sake. It's a world historical monument."

"Not here, it isn't," said Tom Simpson. "Here, it's just another damn prison."

Melissa nodded. She eyed the little hole in the wall which Darryl was now disguising with mud smeared over bits of stone. Once the mud dried and a little dust was spread over it, there would be nothing to indicate an explosive charge except a thin wire leading off. The wire would be disguised behind furniture-a heavy couch that Darryl and Tom said would help direct the blast-and, in any event, wasn't something that a 17 th -century guard would recognize anyway.

"Doesn't look like much, does it?" chuckled Tom.

"That's what I'm counting on." Melissa turned away firmly. If nothing else, over the past two years, she'd learned to discipline her own "finer sentiments." World historical monument or not, if the time came she would have that wall destroyed. Let the middle ages and its architecture take care of itself. She had living people to answer for.

"How's the radio coming?" she asked.

Gayle looked up from where she was squatting on the floor. "I've got the generator assembled, Friedrich's screwing the pedals down next to the loveseat, and Nelly's stringing the antenna. It's a good thing the guards can't see us or they'd think we're insane."

Melissa made a face. "I'm not sure they wouldn't be right."

Chapter 9

On his way home, moved by a sudden impulse, Mike swung away from his normal route and walked past the complex of trailers where, the year before, Gretchen's somewhat peculiar extended family had lived. "Officially"-which really meant whatever the rather fearsome Gramma Richter said-it had been known as the "Higgins residence." Jeff had married Gretchen Richter, very shortly after the Ring of Fire, and her grandmother Veronica had insisted on the proper marital protocol. Proper, at least, by American standards if not her own. The fact that Gramma herself thought Jeff was much too young to be a husband had been neither here nor there.

Privately, Mike-like most people in Grantville-had thought of it otherwise. Depending on the circumstances, either as "the boys' place," since Jeff's friend Larry Wild owned one of the trailers and his other two best friends Eddie Cantrell and Jimmy Andersen lived there also; or "the Richter place," since Gretchen and Gramma Richter's huge collection of relatives and unofficially adopted orphans had moved in after the wedding. Since Jeff and Gretchen's wedding, the confusion had deepened. To native-born Americans, Gretchen was now "Gretchen Higgins" and that made it the "Higgins' place." But 17 th -century Germans did not follow the custom of a woman assuming her husband's last name, so for them it was still "Richter."

Mike couldn't help but chuckle. There had been plenty of time he'd thought of the place simply as "Gretchen's Lair." If ever Mike had met a tigress in human form, it was that young woman.

He stopped for a moment, and stared at the trailer complex. Everything had changed since then, and Mike wasn't entirely sure how he felt about it. Granted, the changes had all been positive ones-the inevitable transformations brought into peoples' lives by marriages, childbirths, and other duties and obligations. Still, he found himself missing the rambunctious energy the place had had in the days immediately after the Ring of Fire. Perhaps more than any other place in Grantville, he'd always thought that trailer complex was the brightest symbol of a hopeful future.

But… things change.

Call them the Higginses or the Richters, they were all gone now. The trailers themselves were still full of people, but these were tenants. Several related German families, as Mike understood what Gramma Richter told him. He didn't know them personally.

Again, he chuckled. Gramma now managed the complex for Jeff and Larry, in their absence. Knowing Veronica, Mike was quite sure the new tenants paid the rent promptly, and in full. It would be unfair to label the woman a "scrooge," but… she had a proper and thoroughly Teutonic notion of the value of property.

He glanced at his watch and saw that he was coming home a bit earlier than usual. So, moved by another impulse, he walked across the street and turned down another. He was heading in the opposite direction from his own house, now, but he didn't have far to go.

Less than a minute later, he was standing in front of the very large two-story house owned by Grantville's mayor, Henry Dreeson. The house was on a corner, and the new gas lamp situated there had already been fired up.

Mike studied the lamp for a moment. He had mixed feelings about that also. On the one hand, he understood and agreed with the logic of moving away from Grantville's profligate use of electric lighting. The problem wasn't the power supply, as such, which would last indefinitely. The problem was much simpler, and somewhat maddening-as most of Mike's problems were. Sure, there was plenty of power. But power doesn't do you any good once you run out of lightbulbs-and those, like so many "small" things 21 st -century Americans had taken for granted, were now in very short supply and very difficult to replace.

On the other hand… it also seemed stupid to have to fall back on 19 th -century technology when they knew everything they really needed to know in order to make such things as lightbulbs and other types of lighting fixtures. But, that was the reality. It was the old, well-known if not always accepted, distinction between science and engineering. The simple fact that you understand the scientific principles involved doesn't necessarily mean that you have the technology or the economic resources to do anything about it.

So the decision had been made to start switching over to gas lighting; and Henry Dreeson, being the mayor of the town, had taken the lead in having the first new gas lamp installed in front of his own house.

Mike heard the door open and swung his eyes toward it. Henry Dreeson himself was emerging and coming down the stairs toward him.

"Hi, Mike!" The elderly man saw what Mike had been examining, and smiled. "Oh, stop fretting. The next thing you know, you'll be wallowing in the classic problem-toilet paper."

Mike grimaced. "Don't remind me."

Henry was still smiling, but there was a trace of apprehension in the thing. "Is there any news? I mean-"

Mike shook his head. "Nothing bad, Henry. So far as I know, Gretchen and the boys-and Becky and Rita and Melissa and everybody else-are fine. That's not why I came over. I just… I don't know. I guess I wanted to see you, and Ronnie, and the kids. It's nothing pressing, if you're busy."

But before he'd even finished, Dreeson had him by the elbow and was marching him up the stairs.

"No, no! Come in! Ronnie'll be glad to see you. Of course, you won't know it, from the way she'll fuss at you about letting those 'innocent babes' wander around loose all over war-torn Europe, but-"

The old man grinned. "Hey, what can I say? I'm crazy about the lady, but I'll be the first one to admit my new wife's something of a harridan."

"Oh hell, Henry, I wouldn't call her a harridan, exactly, just-"

But now Veronica Dreeson was standing in the doorway herself, hands planted firmly on her hips, and glaring down at the two men coming up the stairs.

"So! They are all dead, yes? I warned you!"

"Not exactly a harridan," muttered Mike. "Just… close."

Henry grinned up at his wife. "Now, sweetheart-everybody's fine. Mike just told me so."

Veronica Dreeson was not to be mollified so easily. She sniffed, imparting to the sound a lifetime's worth of bitter experience. Men and their lies.

"And how does he know what's happened to the children?" Somewhat grudgingly, she stepped aside and waved Mike into the house. As he passed by her, she continued to scold. "They are probably lying in a ditch somewhere. Tot-alle! All dead. Maybe the girls are still alive. Ravished, of course, and turned into camp women."

Mike winced. He was tempted to argue with the old woman, but…

The fact was that the horrors she was depicting were all too real. Veronica Dreeson, in the years since the Thirty Years War erupted, had seen all of them happen-and to her own family.

Fortunately, someone else came to the rescue. Gretchen's younger brother Hans was sitting on the couch in the living room, next to James Nichols' daughter Sharon. The young man sprang up with his usual energy and extended a hand of greeting.

"Welcome to our house, President of the nation!" He gave his grandmother a stern look of reproof. Which, needless to say, bounced like a pebble off a stone wall. Veronica didn't even bother to sniff.

Sharon's greeting was considerably less formal. "Hi, Mike."

Mike gave her a smile and a nod. And made a silent vow not to mention Sharon's presence here to her father. James Nichols, perhaps because of his own ghetto childhood and youth, was more inclined toward paternalistic intervention in his daughter's romantic affairs than most American men with a twenty-three-old daughter would dare to be. Mike didn't want to get an earful. Another earful.

The problem wasn't that James Nichols didn't approve of Hans personally-at least, leaving aside the young German's recklessness when driving the American motor vehicles Hans adored. The problem was simply that, first, Hans was three years younger than Sharon and James had his doubts whether the age and educational gap between the two young people wasn't simply insurmountable. So did Mike, for that matter, if not as much.

The other problem was even simpler. In James Nichols' eyes, the young man for whom his daughter had developed an affection suffered from a character trait which placed him in the legions of Satan.

He's a young man, dammit! I remember what I was like at that age! And lemme tell you-only one thought on his mind-

"And don't tell Daddy I've been here," she added. "I don't want to get another lecture."

As ever, Veronica was not bashful about her own opinion. "If Hans started courting you properly, your father would not object." Sniff. "I would, of course, because Hans is much too young to be courting anyone. But-"

She heaved a sigh which contained the grief of the ages, and plumped herself into her favorite armchair. "So be it. Americans are all mad-even my Henry-and I have given up. Do as you will."

Mike smiled down on her. He was quite fond of Veronica Dreeson. Sure, sure, she was a tough old biddy. So what? Mike approved of "tough old biddies"-in the new world created by the Ring of Fire even more than in the one they had left behind. One of the reasons he hadn't been quite as concerned as he would normally have been at the fact that Rebecca and Gretchen were leaving their infants for a few months was because Gramma Richter had immediately volunteered to make sure they were looked after properly. Which, indeed, she had. Directly, in the case of Gretchen and Jeff's two children, who were now living in the Dreeson household. Indirectly, in the case of Mike and Rebecca's daughter Sephie, for whom she had found a young German couple who could serve as Sephie's live-in nannies while Mike was absent during the day. Mike had trusted the old woman's judgment, and had not found reason to regret doing so.

Old woman. She wasn't, really. Veronica was still short of sixty-almost the same age as Melissa Mailey. If she'd been a 21 st -century American, people would have thought of her as being in late middle age. But the rigors of her time and her life made her appear much older than Melissa; older, even, than her husband Henry, who was pushing seventy.

Still…

"You're looking good, Ronnie," he announced. And, in truth, she was. The withered crone who had appeared in Grantville two years earlier, as part of the family Jeff and his friends had rescued from mercenaries, was long gone. Now, Veronica just looked "weathered by experience." She'd gained her normal weight back, for one thing, and for another-

"It is my new teeth," announced Veronica with satisfaction, opening her mouth to display the marvelous dentures. The teeth clacked shut firmly. "Other than that-no difference. Just a feeble old woman."

Mike and Henry both started assuring her that there was no truth whatsoever to that self-assessment-which there certainly wasn't when it came to the "feeble" business-but were interrupted in mid-peroration. Gretchen's younger sister Annalise more or less barreled into the living room, holding Jeff and Gretchen's son Joseph.

"Are they all right?" she demanded breathlessly. Not waiting for an answer, plunged on to the real question which preoccupied a sixteen-year-old girl nursing her first serious crush: "Has anything happened to Heinrich?"

Then, glancing guiltily at her grandmother: "I mean, Major Schmidt."

Mike suppressed a grin. The glare Veronica was bestowing on her granddaughter Annalise was truly a wonder. Entire legions of vagabond hoydens might have crisped like bacon in that basilisk gaze.

Veronica had firm opinions on the subject of romance, and they were the opinions of most Germans of the era. Rather to Mike's surprise, he had discovered that people in northern Europe in the 17 th century did not typically marry at a young age. Quite the opposite, in fact. Most men didn't marry until they were in their late twenties, and women not until they were in their mid-twenties.

The reason was simple, and economic. Unlike a modern industrial society, where men and women could find jobs which could support a family at a young age, northern Europeans-unless they were of the nobility or rich-had to spend years accumulating the capital necessary to do so. In the case of young men, usually by learning a trade or establishing themselves as a farmer; in the case of young women, often, by working as a servant.

So, there was not much of an age gap, either, between groom and bride. Certainly not the eight-year gap which existed between Heinrich and Annalise-even assuming Heinrich was interested in the first place, which Mike rather doubted. He knew the young German officer was aware of Annalise's enthusiasm, but so far as Mike knew Heinrich did not return it. Judging, at least, from veiled comments the man had made to him before he left with Rebecca on their diplomatic mission. (With some relief, from what Mike could tell-Annalise was not exactly subtle about the whole thing.)

It wasn't that Heinrich didn't find Annalise attractive, of course-no healthy man his age wouldn't have found her attractive. At the age of sixteen, it was now evident that Annalise was going to be even better looking than her older sister, and her personality was considerably sunnier than Gretchen's. But Heinrich shared Veronica's traditional German view of such things: marriage was something which was a matter of practicality, not "romance" in the American sense of the term. And while the handsome young officer might have been willing to engage in a casual dalliance with an eager teenage girl-

Doing so with Gretchen's younger sister was not something even the boldest soldier would undertake lightly, even leaving the doughty grandmother out of the equation. Although it had never been proved, the story that Gretchen had once dealt with a mercenary lusting after Annalise by cutting his throat-and scrambling the thug's brains with a knife through the ear for good measure-was accepted throughout the area as Established Truth. Indeed, the story had become rolled into the ever-growing "Gretchen legend."

Hans, as it happened, was one of the exceptions to the rule that Germans viewed romance differently from Americans. Perhaps because of his own situation with Sharon, or simply his age, he had acculturated on this issue more than most. So, seeing that Veronica's glare at Annalise bid fair to become fixed in stone, the young man demonstratively moved to stand by his younger sister.

"He is a respectable officer, Gramma," he stated forcefully, "and in a real army. The United States Army. Not a typical mercenary! Furthermore-"

Mike decided to intervene, before what had started as an impromptu social visit turned into a family brawl he wanted no part of. So he took a few hasty steps forward and bent to examine the infant.

"And how's Joseph?" he asked the baby himself. Joseph stared up, with what seemed to be a slight look of alarm at the very large man looming over him. Belatedly, Mike remembered that the baby was now old enough to start feeling "stranger anxiety." And while Mike wasn't precisely a stranger, he wasn't often in the baby's presence because of the press of his own responsibilities.

But it was enough to break the moment's tension. Annalise smiled and kissed Joseph's fuzz-covered scalp. "He's fine. So's Willi. Although I think Willi's old enough to miss his parents. But this one-" She laughed softly. "At his age, I really don't think it matters much that they're gone for a while."

Silently, Mike hoped she was right. So far as he could tell, his own daughter Sephie wasn't showing any real ill effects from the total absence of her mother and the frequent absence of her father. But it was hard to know, for sure, and he often worried about it.

And now it was Gramma's turn to intervene, and she did so in a manner which Mike found very relieving. Acculturation worked both ways, after all, and on some subjects he'd come to the conclusion that 17 th -century German stoicism was superior to 21 st -century American…

Psychobabble, let's call it that.

"Of course the baby is fine!" snapped Veronica, sounding quite peeved. "Why would he not be? He is well fed, warm, properly taken care of." Her glare at her granddaughter softened a bit; or, at least, eased onto a different focus. "The biggest problem Joseph has is that Annalise spoils him constantly."

And now Wilhelm, Gretchen's older son, was toddling into the room, his hand being held by one of the young women who were part of the Richter family. Mike couldn't remember the girl's name-she was so shy he'd never heard her talk-although he recognized her. Like most of the members of the "Richter family," she wasn't actually related to Veronica and Gretchen. The girl had been one of the few survivors of a farming family ravaged by Tilly's mercenaries, and Gretchen had taken her under her wing shortly before those same mercenaries got chewed to shreds when they attacked Grantville.

"Willi's certainly looking good," said Mike. And, indeed, he was. His father, now dead-killed in that same battle outside Grantville-had been one of Tilly's mercenaries who had taken Gretchen for a concubine after her own town was overrun. By all accounts, the man had been a sheer brute. But other than sharing his father's blond hair and-it was already obvious-his large size, Wilhelm's temperament seemed to derive far more from his stepfather. Like Jeff, who was also large, Willi seemed to be studious and solemn by nature.

Of course, at his age, it was hard to assess Willi's personality all that well. But the boy was staring up at Mike with interest and curiosity, much as Mike had often seen Jeff pondering some new aspect of the universe which he'd suddenly discovered.

"Why'd you drop by, Mike?" asked Henry Dreeson. "Not that you aren't always welcome, of course."

Mike had wondered a bit himself, standing outside the door. And now, the answer coming to him with the force of a hurricane, felt himself fighting off tears. Tears not brought on by grief, or sorrow, but simply a sense of satisfaction so deep and profound that it seemed to shake his soul like a tree in the wind.

Slowly, his eyes scanned the room-now crowded, as more and more of the "family" came to see who the visitor was.

Henry Dreeson's kindly old face, smiling at him. A man Mike had known all his life, the mayor of what had once been nothing more than a small coal-mining town in West Virginia. The tough, almost hard, face of his new German wife, a refugee blown into their midst by the holocaust sweeping central Europe.

The face of her blond granddaughter, a face that was as sunny as it was beautiful despite the hardships she had been through herself as a young girl. Next to her, the wiry figure of her brother, almost-but not quite-comical in the way he exuded youthful vigor! To one side, still sitting and gazing warmly on her young German boyfriend, the dark face of James Nichols' daughter Sharon.

Children, everywhere. Healthy, all of them. A mixture of disparate people which had somehow, in some way, managed to begin the process of blending themselves into a new and genuine nation. And if there was a goodly share of hardness in that room-more, really, in the tough old biddy of a grandmother than the valiant youth-there was far more in the way of love, and caring, and acceptance, and a quiet resolve to make the best of things.

So the trailer complex was not gone, really. It had simply moved into somewhat more spacious and comfortable quarters.

"Oh, nothing, really," he murmured softly. "Just… touching base, let's call it."

He glanced at his watch. "And now I've really got to go. I like to tell myself, anyway, that my little girl Sephie expects me to be on time and gets upset if I'm not."

He departed, with Henry ushering him out the door and Gramma's tough old biddy wisdom following.

"Nonsense," sniffed Veronica. "Your daughter is a baby. The world begins with a tit and ends with a tit. So easy! Later, of course, she will give you plenty of grief."

He hurried home, down streets which were now dark. Perhaps because of that darkness, Mike allowed his steps to have more of a swagger than he usually did, now that he was a man well into his thirties and enjoyed the august title of President of the United States. The same cocky swagger with which years earlier, as a young professional boxer, he had entered the ring.

Go ahead, Richelieu. Start something, if you're stupid enough. But you'd do better to listen to my wife.