1635:The Dreeson Incident

Chapter 53

Grantville

Bryant Holloway heard about it all, of course. He'd been busy at work, but no one could have missed it. It had been all over the radio and papers last week. He'd even been interviewed by a reporter in Naumburg, for the "up-time reaction" to it.

He'd told the reporter that his reaction was, "damn the Krauts." Attacking the hospital, attacking the synagogue, killing Mayor Dreeson and Reverend Wiley.

It was all the fault of the Krauts. Just like the vote about moving the capital of the State of Thuringia-Franconia to Bamberg.

For which he had received an official reprimand. Representatives of the USE Fire Marshall's Office should not say such things for publication.

"That's how Stannard would have it. Sure. 'The Krauts are our allies. The Krauts are our fellow citizens. The Krauts are our friends.' Talk about a party line. Talk about being expected to hew to the party line."

So here he was, driving back into Grantville in the fire department's pickup truck that he used on out of town assignments, and practically the first thing he saw was Lenore, coming out of the administration building, standing in the street, talking to one of them. A man. A young man. A Kraut. For a married woman, going to work was nothing but a chance to find men and a chance at extracurricular sex.

He would take care of that this evening.

Lenore saw Bryant looking at her as he passed. She remembered what she had promised, turned, and went back to the office.

"Almost everyone in the office is a woman," Lenore said. "Count them, Bryant."

"The Americans are mainly women. But that guy was a Kraut. This is where we came in, I think."

"His name is Nicolas Moser. He's married to Mrs. Dreeson's niece, I think. Or her first husband's niece. They have a baby; she's a few months old."

"Which is probably why he's looking for something on the side. I remember what it was like for us when Weshelle was that age."

"You're making things up. That's what it amounts to. You're looking for excuses to blame me for things that don't exist. I was congratulating him on his promotion. That's all."

"I'm not about to forget that someone was there before me. Since you did that, what's to say that there won't be someone there next to me, too? Especially being out of town so much. With the way your family collects Krauts."

"Stop using that word. It's derogatory. Like the 'N-word' was. I read that interview you gave and I know that Steve Matheny issued a statement repudiating it. Not just Archie Stannard. Clara doesn't deserve it. Neither does Katerina or Gertrude. They're… they're family now. Not aliens. Family. Almost family, at least, for Katerina and Gertrude."

Bryant started to get up and come toward her.

She moved. "Stay right there."

He was startled enough by her tone of voice that he sat back down.

She opened a drawer. He wouldn't have been surprised if she was dumb enough to pull a knife or something on him. She wouldn't get very far with that. She was tall for a woman, granted, but not unusually strong. It was very easy to turn a knife on the person holding it and create an unfortunate accident.

Instead, it was a little plastic tube.

She took off the top, turned the base, and set it on the kitchen table in front of him. "Do you know what that is?"

He shook his head.

"What it was was Chandra's cover stick. Probably the last one in Grantville. I used it in February. To cover the marks. To cover for you."

She leaned against the sink.

"I'm not going to do that again. We're married. I'm not going to argue the point right now, whether I gave up the right to 'don't want' when I said 'I do.' Maybe so, maybe not. I've been thinking about it. But one thing is sure. Look into that tube. It's empty. There isn't any more. I used it up. If you hit me while you're here this time, I'm going out into the street with the bruises showing. And if you try hitting me where it doesn't show, I'm going down to the emergency room at Leahy and strip."

"You can't do that."

"Oh, yes. She can," a voice behind him said. "And she will. Other people will go with her to make sure that she does."

He turned around. His sister Lola was coming in from the enclosed back porch. He remembered very well how Lola had reacted when Latham Beckworth got a little on the side. He would be damned if he would ever have dreamed that Lenore would have told Lola.

Lola seemed to be reading his mind. "She didn't tell me. Faye Dashefsky did. Right after you left town this last time. Then Faye and I came down and confronted her. Got her to say what happened."

"She can," another voice said from the porch. "And she will. I still think that she should pick up Weshelle and walk out of this house with me. But if she will not leave you, if she believes herself bound by her vows, at least this time, you will not hit her. Or you will suffer consequences."

Wes' trouble-making Kraut bitch. Clara.

She laid a piece of paper on the table. It had Maurice Tito's signature. Some kind of namby-pamby protective order, at a guess.

"I told Judge Tito about your two priors over in Fairmont," Lola said. "After that, he didn't have any qualms about putting his name on the bottom line."

"How sisterly of you."

"If you hadn't arranged the whole thing while the two of you were over in Rudolstadt, I'd have damned well told Lenore about them, too. Before she ever married you."

"Neither one was my fault."

"Two beaten-up ex-girlfriends?" Lola snorted. "Not your fault? Tell me another fairy tale, little brother."

"They provoked me. Tried to ditch me before I was through with them."

"And Kiki's little boy provoked you?"

"He tried to get in between us."

"One more word." Lola said. "You won't hit Weshelle, any more than you will hit Lenore. You won't threaten to hit Weshelle to make Lenore do what you want. You won't touch Weshelle. You will not lay a finger on Weshelle. Do you understand us, Bryant? Your boss Steve Matheny knows about those two priors. So does the police chief, Preston Richards. Whoever we figured needs to know, does know. Touch either of them and you get thrown out of this house. Out of this town, if we can manage it."

"I still think," Clara said, "that she should come with me. Now."

After they left, he looked at Lenore.

"I'm sleeping in the nursery," she said. "I've moved all my things."

He went into the bedroom and slammed the door.

Damn those women. Damn all of them. If Faye Andersen had been involved, then probably every other one down where Lenore worked. Which was one more reason why married women shouldn't work. It gave them a chance to form alliances against their husbands.

Willard Carson didn't need to find Commies to have a conspiracy. All he needed to do was look around every day. Women. Sneaking, plotting, conspiring to get their own way. Not doing what they were told.

Vincenz Weitz arrived in Grantville from Halle scarcely a week after the shootings. He was directed to Jacques-Pierre Dumais by Bryant Holloway.

Business, he said, had unavoidably detained him from participating in the events of March fourth.

By this time, Jacques-Pierre had heard from Soubise, via de Ron, with a lot more information about what had been going on Zum Weissen Schwan. Weitz confirmed, inadvertently perhaps, that Locquifier had never meant the hospital demonstration to be more than a distraction.

In Weitz's opinion, although he was certainly displeased that the hoped-for effects of the attacks on both the hospital and the synagogue seemed to be backfiring, he said that he thought that Locquifier might be able to pull something worthwhile out of it yet.

Dumais found Weitz a little startling. The man was really, genuinely, indignant.

Right now, Weitz was pointing out at great length that, except for the little problem of the anti-Semitic riots, Fettmilch's 1612-1614 revolt in Frankfurt had really stood for a lot of things that Mike Stearns was trying to introduce to the USE now. A greater voice for the average citizen in the deliberations of the council, so that the old patricians who had adopted a near-noble lifestyle wouldn't have it all their way any more. Citizenship for the Calvinist refugees. An end to financial corruption. The riots against the Jews had been the least of it, and didn't happen for a couple of years after the revolt started. A man could sort of understand why Matthias, the Holy Roman Emperor at the time, had declared the actions of Fettmilch and his followers to be treasonous. Why he'd had them executed. Thirty-eight people of them tried; seven of them executed. But you'd think that if the Grantvillers meant all the stuff they went around saying about the will of the people, they ought to appreciate their pioneering efforts of Fettmilch's followers to bring democracy to one of the great imperial cities rather than heaping their heads with scorn.

"Their heads. Literally. Not one of the up-timers who passed through Frankfurt-as far as he knew, at least-had ever said a word about taking the heads down from the bridge tower.

"What heads?" Dumais asked. "What bridge?"

"The head of Vincenz Fettmilch, of course. Konrad Gerngro?, Konrad Schopp, and Georg Ebel. A gingerbread baker, a carpenter, a tailor, and a dyer from the suburb of Sachsenhausen. Just the kind of people that these up-timers claim ought to get involved in politics instead of leaving them to the great merchants and patricians. But they leave their heads up on the bridge."

Dumais let him rant.

Weitz claimed-genuinely, Dumais thought-to know nothing at all about who carried out the assassinations of Dreeson and Wiley. That didn't prevent him from having opinions. No matter who shot the men, their deaths might be useful. He directed Dumais to duplicate a flyer he had drafted, accusing Veronica Dreeson of harboring anti-Semitic beliefs because she had not been standing on the steps of the synagogue next to her husband the way Inez Wiley was Standing By Her Man. Dumais was to make some extra stencils for him to distribute in other towns. Plus doing a run of the flyers from one stencil right here and now.

Jacques-Pierre did so with great efficiency. That very afternoon. Not because he sympathized with the man's views about the Jews, but on the theory that the sooner Weitz left town again, the better. Strangers really were attracting a lot of official attention in Grantville right now.

Weitz took the stencils and left immediately. As soon as he had distributed the stencils to his contacts, the flyers would appear in multiple locations on the same day. He told Dumais that was one of Locquifier's favorite techniques, now.

It was astonishing in a way that even now, after the assassinations, Weitz managed to drop the flyers themselves, piles of them, at various points inside the Ring of Fire without being caught.

That evening, Dumais wrote a really long report for Duke Henri de Rohan and sent it out of Grantville in four copies-two to Benjamin de Rohan in Frankfurt and two to the duke himself in Besancon. In each case, one by the postal system and one by courier. At least one of them should get through. He hoped. It should be enough to enable them to make sense of all the newspaper reports, which were totally confusing, even right here in Grantville where it had all happened. They must be worse elsewhere.

Bryant Holloway certainly found the flyer completely confusing. He waved it at Jacques-Pierre. "But the attackers were the ones who were anti-Semitic. Weren't they?" he asked. "Not Ronnie Dreeson?"

Dumais admitted that they were, while wishing that Holloway had not brought up this topic in the dining room of the Willard Hotel. Luckily, no one was at the nearby tables.

"You were working with them, weren't you?" Holloway peered at him suspiciously. "The demonstration out at the hospital and everything? You had me find those men for you."

Dumais granted this also. Only as far as the hospital went. But it was probably too much to hope that even Holloway would swallow the argument that the occurrence of two riots and two assassinations on the same day had been purely coincidental. At least, not that the two demonstrations had been coincidental, considering that he had directed Weitz to Dumais.

"But then, if someone goes around saying that Ronnie Dreeson hates the Jews, that would make it seem like she's on your side, wouldn't it? Why would you want that?"

"I do not hate the Jews," said Jacques-Pierre mildly. All he needed-or didn't need-at that point was for Veda Mae to start insisting to Bryant that "we" are anti-Kraut; not anti-Jewish. With Holloway agreeing that the point of the whole thing was that they did not like having all these Kraut immigrants in Grantville.

Holloway was now digressing into a diatribe against his father-in-law's wife. Again. He was irrationally hostile to the woman, for no apparent reason that Jacques-Pierre could determine.

Veda Mae started out, once more, on the issue of the baptism of the Beasley child at MaidenFresh Laundries. Adding, this time, a new grievance: that Vesta Rawls and that manager of hers, Mitch Hobbs, who was marrying a Kraut girl, had given that Kraut preacher permission to come down and hold services in the entryway every Sunday afternoon, so Jarvis Beasley's Kraut wife, the bigamist, could go to church.

"This is just the thin edge of the wedge," she insisted. "Watch and see if I'm not right. Pretty soon, there won't be Kraut churches just on each side of town. Pretty soon, there'll be one right in the middle, with all of the proper ones, like the Baptists and Methodists. The Catholics, even.

Dumais drew a deep breath, trying to sort out the tangents into which the two of them could fly at the slightest passing thought from the essentials of the issue in regard to Mrs. Dreeson.

He patiently pointed out that propaganda did not have to be true to be effective, but just have the tiniest element of plausibility. He pointed out that from his reading of American history, he had concluded that enough of the up-timers would be inclined to assume that almost any German had covert anti-Semitic tendencies that the fact that Mrs. Dreeson was not there, combined with her lack of publicly displayed grief, should be sufficient to drive a wedge between the up-timers who held positions of authority in Grantville and the SoTF and the USE and the Richter family.

Or, at least, to begin the process of undermining the status of Hans Richter as national hero and the influence of Gretchen Richter as a principal organizer of the Committees of Correspondence, which would have a very anti-German effect.

That was what the pamphlet was really about. Anti-Semitism was purely coincidental.

Frau Haggerty and Herr Holloway seemed somewhat happier after this illuminating exegesis. Not a lot. Dismissing the flyer in regard to Frau Dreeson, Holloway returned to his diatribe against Clara Bachmeierin and Veda Mae resumed her complaints against Mitch Hobbs, his Kraut girlfriend, and Lutheran church services at MaidenFresh Laundries.

By the end of supper, Jacques-Pierre had la migraine. Badly.

Headache or not, he could still think clearly enough. It was not good that Mrs. Haggerty had said these things. If she continued to say them in public, it might cause questions. Bring people to ask where she had encountered the ideas.

Jacques-Pierre began to consider retirement. Seriously.

For the second time in his life.

The first time, Velma Hardesty had caused the thought to cross his mind.

He started to make plans to leave Grantville. Quite quickly, if necessary.

Not yet, however. There were still a few things to be done, such as arranging for the disposal of some records and papers. Records and papers in regard to Mauger's channeling the money that had financed the demonstration at the hospital that had gone so miserably awry. For the time being, they were safe enough where they were, in Madame Haggerty's enclosed back porch. She rarely used that part of her house and, unlike most Grantvillers, was far too cantankerous to have taken in boarders. But disposal was turning out to be more difficult than it might seem. He was almost certain that he was under surveillance.

Perhaps Holloway could be of assistance. Dumais understood that he would be remaining in Grantville for another three weeks before starting his next assignment.