Ring of fire II

"I… I…"

"Spit it out, sow's get!"

"I thought she was a whore!" the man blurted. "She was dressed so strangely-indecently! Her hair was unbound in public. She was singing in a tavern! What was I to think?"

Gunther slammed his head back against the cart again. "If you had been thinking, you would have realized that no one was treating her like a whore, that everyone was respecting her and her companions. You would have had even the small enough amount of wisdom to ask questions." Wham! went the head against the cart one more time, leaving the man even woozier than he was when he was dragged out of the tavern.

When Gruber seemed to be able to focus again, Gunther said in a softer tone, "Have you heard of the Americans, in whatever midden you climbed out of?" Receiving a shaky nod in return, he said, "She is American." The man moaned, and sagged to the point that it was only the strength of Klaus and Reuel that kept him out of the reeking mud. "Yes, now wisdom arrives. If you had managed to harm her, they would have hunted you to the ends of the earth, they would have razed the town where you were born to the ground and sowed that ground with salt, they would have made your name so notorious that mothers would have used you as a bogey-man to frighten their children with."

Gunther stepped back. "You know of the Americans." His voice was hard again. "Do you also know of the Committees of Correspondence?" A shaky nod. "Do you know of Gunther Achterhof?" Again a nod. Leaning forward close enough to smell the foul breath of the frightened Gruber, he snarled, "I am Gunther, and that woman is under my protection. Tell me, why should I not kill you now, and leave the world a cleaner place?"

There was an acrid reek as the now thoroughly-panicked man's bladder released and he tried to struggle with those who pinioned his arms. Gunther let him struggle for a moment more, then stepped up and grabbed his hair again, yanking his head around to stare at him eye to eye. "I should kill you now…" he brought his large clasp knife out of his pocket, flicked it open and held it up in Gruber's vision, where he stared at it with dread fascination, "… but I will not. You are not worth cleaning your blood from my blade." Releasing him, he closed his knife and put it away.

"Even in her anger, Lady Marla," Gunther noted to himself in some surprise that he had started thinking of her that way, "had enough grace to command you be left alive and unmaimed." The object of his scorn and rage looked up, hope dawning in his eyes in the moonlight, until he saw the predatory smile on Gunther's face. "However, she said nothing about not punishing you."

The rock-hard maul of Gunther's fist drove into the pit of Gruber's stomach. Air whooped out of lungs, and Gunther watched in some satisfaction as he doubled over, retching. Long moments passed. Just as the wretch started to straighten a little, Gunther's boot crashed into his groin. Klaus and Reuel released him to drop to the mud. The three CoC men stared at him as he curled into an agonized ball, unable to do more than sob and gasp.

Gunther finally stirred. "Take him away from town, and leave him." His confederates looked at him in some surprise. He glowered at them, which produced its usual effect. They hastily dragged the moaning bundle of reeking cloth and limp body up and began marching it down the alley. Gunther watched until they turned the corner into the nearest street, then wiped his hands on his trousers and returned to the tavern.

Franz somehow put a damper on his anger as the door slammed behind the CoC man and turned to Marla, enfolding her in his arms. The others gathered around them, shaken, saying nothing, not touching, but emanating concern nonetheless. Marla was shaking slightly as she returned his embrace. "Shh, shh," he crooned. "It is all right. No reason to fear." He felt her shaking increase, and thought for a moment she was going to begin crying, until she pushed away from him and he saw that she was laughing. Laughing! Laughing with an angry icy glint to her eye, but laughing just the same. From the expressions he could see, their friends were as dumbstruck as he was.

"I'm not afraid," Marla finally explained. "I'm angry. No, I'm beyond anger-I'm furious." She pulled away from him, crossed her arms, and stared at the floor for long moments. She finally looked up with a crooked smile. "You might as well know, I guess. You would have found out sooner or later. When I was fourteen, I was nearly raped in the back seat of a school bus. If my brother hadn't missed me and come looking for me… well, it wouldn't have been good. He kicked the guy out of the bus, and then beat him to a pulp." She brooded for a time, staring at the floor. Franz didn't know what to say, so he decided that the course of wisdom was to say nothing and wait. Finally, Marla heaved a sigh. "Afterwards, I swore I wouldn't let that happen again, and learned a few things from Dan Frost and Frank Jackson. I hoped I would never need it, but…" another sigh, "… as Reverend Jones keeps saying, nowhere in the Bible does it say that life is fair." She turned to Franz with a fierce expression. "I wanted to hurt him. I wanted very much to hurt him very badly." Her voice took on a plaintive tone. "But, he hadn't actually hurt me, and he was ignorant. And what would it have accomplished, except to change the way you looked at me? I wouldn't chance that," her voice broke.

Franz once more took Marla in his arms. There were no words that he could say; all he could offer was the comfort of his presence. As his arms encircled her, her arms in turn went around him and delivered a ferocious hug. They stood thus for some time, sheltered by their friends.

They all turned as the rear door opened again.

Gunther found Marla and Franz standing near the door in a semi-circle of their friends. She had her hands in her jeans pockets, and his arm was around her shoulder. Her expression was calm… remote, even, but the fire in Franz's eyes was a match for that in Gunther's. Franz dropped his arm and took a step forward, saying with an understandable bitterness, "Is this how you protect her?"

Gunther felt a twist in his gut. He took a deep breath as Marla laid her hand on Franz's shoulder. "The fool was no one, an idiot who had just arrived in Magdeburg and had never seen American women. There was no real danger to Fraulein Linder. I regret that what happened, happened, but it will not happen again."

"You…" Franz began.

"Franz, enough," Marla interrupted. He turned his hot gaze on her, but she simply repeated, "Enough." Gunther watched as the anger drained, as the fire died away in Franz's eyes, leaving only a young man with worry and nascent grief on his face. She reached up to brush his hair back; he caught her hand and held it against his cheek for a moment.

"I couldn't stand it…" Franz murmured.

"I know."

They stood in a silent tableau for a moment, then Marla dropped her hand and turned to Gunther. She eyed him expectantly. "I won't see him again, will I." It wasn't a question.

Gunther smiled thinly. "No. He is being escorted out of town, alive and unmarked," he held up both hands, "but chastened, and with a clear understanding that he is no longer welcome in Magdeburg."

"Thank you," Marla said quietly.

Gunther hesitated, then finally asked the question that had been in the front of his mind ever since the whole scenario had begun. "Fraulein Linder, what… what did you do to him?"

She stepped up to him. "This." Swift as a serpent, her hand flashed to his throat. His eyes widened as he felt her thumb and middle finger snap into the little hollows on each side of his larynx and begin to squeeze. The strength in those fingers was undeniable. He couldn't talk; he struggled to breathe, he felt the cartilage begin to creak. Just as a flutter of panic began to make itself felt, she released her hold and stepped back.

Gunther rubbed his throat, coughed experimentally and decided that things were where they belonged. "Fraulein Linder…" he said as she started to turn away.

"Call me Marla, Gunther."

He wondered why the brief smile flashed across Franz's face, but continued on with, "Would you sing the song for us?"

Franz was almost astounded at the nerve of Gunther Achterhof. To ask Marla to sing after such a thing happening! He opened his mouth to let the man know that, regardless of who he was, he had no right to ask Marla to sing for him or anyone else right now. Before he could speak, he heard Marla say, "Yes."

"Marla!" Now Franz was truly shocked.

"It's okay, Franz," she said. "Tonight I need it just as much as they do." The level stare from her blue eyes and the firm tone told him that it would be fruitless to argue further, so he sighed and followed her and their friends back to their table.

During the summer, as their circle of friends had performed the Irish music at the Gardens and elsewhere, they noticed that the members of the Committee of Correspondence quickly developed a real affinity for the Irish songs of rebellion. "The Rising of the Moon" became one of their favorites, and they would roar the words right along with Marla or Isaac as they sang. But there was another song that they asked for, over and over again. It got to the point that they just began asking for "The Song." It was one of those for which Marla had adapted the lyrics. It wasn't one of the bouncy, catchy ones; in fact, it was rather grim. They would never sing along with it, but every time they heard it, the CoC people seemed to condense and become almost all edge. Now, as Marla, Isaac and Rudolf readied themselves, the people of Magdeburg were about to hear for the first time what seemed to have become the CoC's anthem.

Isaac led off with a haunting line on his violin, almost a quiet wail. The room grew deathly still. Marla opened her mouth, and began to sing.

I sat within the valley green,

I sat me with my true love.

My sad heart strove the two between,

The old love and the new love.

The old for her, the new

That made me think on Deutschland dearly.

While soft the wind blew down the glade

And shook the golden barley.

Despite the softness of her tone, Marla's voice was very intense. It reached throughout the room, filling every nook and cranny, and it seemed to cast a spell. All were still. No one moved. No one did more than barely breathe. All in the room were focused on the tall young woman singing with the flute, violin and harp underlying her voice, pouring her heart and her talent and all of her emotions into the song.

'Twas hard the woeful words to frame

To break the ties that bound us.

But harder still to bear the shame

of foreign chains around us.

And so I said, the mountain glen

I'll meet at morning early.

I'll join the bold united men,

While soft winds shook the barley.

Earlier in the evening, Marla's voice had been warm, even inviting. Now, as she sang "The Song," it was just almost serene, with a purity of tone that was almost angelic, yet raising neck hairs all over the room. Franz shivered a little, knowing what was coming next.

'Twas sad I kissed away her tears,

My fond arms round her flinging,

When a foeman's shot burst on our ears

From out the wild woods ringing.

A bullet pierced my true love's side

In life's young spring so early.

And on my breast in blood she died,

While soft winds shook the barley.

A note of loss and grief had crept into Marla's voice, and almost they could hear the keening for the dead. By the end of the verse she sounded so forlorn that, despite himself, despite knowing the song intimately, Franz felt tears welling up in response.

The first two lines of the last stanza were snarled, and several of the hearers jumped.

But blood for blood without remorse

I've taken at Oulart Hollow.

The second two lines were sung quietly again, almost meditatively, but again with a forlorn note.

I've lain my true love's clay cold corpse

Where I full soon must follow.

Marla was giving the finest performance of this song that Franz had ever heard; far surpassing the recorded version she had learned it from. The final lines were so poignant, and Marla invested them with so much grief, that his heart ached within him.

Around her grave I've wandered drear,

Noon, night, and morning early,

With breaking heart whene'er I hear

The wind that shakes the barley.

No one stirred. No applause was given. Finally, through the moisture in his eyes, Franz saw Gunther give Marla a salute and slip out of the tavern.

Friday, October 21, 1633

Marla hammered out the final chords of the "Revolutionary Etude," bringing it to a driving finish. She held the final chord for a long moment, then released the keys and sat back on the bench, smiling. "Well," she said to herself-or so she thought-"that wasn't too bad."

"I agree."

Gasping, she sat bolt upright and twisted on the bench, only to recognize Mary Simpson seated in a chair some distance behind her in the great room. "You startled me!"

Mary laughed. "Marla, my dear, I could have come in the door with clashing cymbals and you wouldn't have heard me. I don't think I've ever seen anyone focus like you do when you play."

"How long have you been here?"

"Let's see… I believe I came in during the middle of the Waltz in C# Minor, and after that I heard the 'Moonlight Sonata' and the 'Revolutionary Etude.' All of which, I might add, were performed very well."

Marla blushed a little. "Thank you."

The other woman stood, walked over to the piano and leaned against it. "So," she said, "have you decided on your program yet?"

"I think so… the instrumental part of it, anyway."

"And what are you considering?"

Marla began ticking off her fingers, beginning with the thumb. "For the flute, the first movement of the Spring concerto of Vivaldi's The Seasons."

"Good," Mary nodded.

"For the piano, Bach-either the Little Fugue in G or 'Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring.' "

"Umm, I think maybe the Jesu would be the better choice, but I wouldn't argue with either one. What's next?"

"Piano, Mozart-first movement of 'Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,' " ticking off the index finger.

"The transcription I heard the other day? Excellent! Next?"

The middle finger was ticked for "Piano, Beethoven-first movement of the 'Moonlight Sonata.' "

Mary frowned. That frown caused Marla to tense a little. "I agree the program needs Beethoven," Mary said slowly, "but I'm not sure that's the best piece to use. It's beautiful, of course, and you did an excellent job of playing earlier, but I'm afraid it's too still, too placid for the audience you're going to have. You risk losing their attention with that one. Hmmm, do you know 'Fur Elise'?"

"I have the music for it, but I haven't played it in quite some time." Marla attempted to hide her reluctance, but Mary noticed.

"Marla, I'm really not trying to be patronizing. You are the artist, not me, and you know best at this point what you can play." Mary straightened to her full height. "But, I know these people, and I'm telling you that 'Moonlight Sonata' would be a mistake for this program. Later, after you've raised their understanding of music, they will appreciate the elegance of it. Now, they would just consider it simple, and would tune it out. You would lose them, and probably not regain their attention. For your first recital, and the first program of the music we-sorry, not we, but you-have to offer, you really can't risk that. If you don't like 'Fur Elise,' then find something comparable that you like that you can work up quickly."

The older woman stared steadily at Marla as she worked through everything that Mary had just told her. She didn't like anyone telling her what she could play, but Mary was right… she didn't know these people. And, truth to tell, since she had never performed a recital like this at all, she really didn't have any experience of her own to guide her. It took several moments before Marla came to the conclusion that Mary was the closest thing to a mentor she had right now. Mary's experience in the world of music and the arts, although not that of a performer, was so much wider than her own, particularly in the area of production. It would be at best foolish, and at worst suicidal to ignore her advice at this stage of her career.

Decision made, Marla gave one firm nod. "I can polish up 'Fur Elise' fairly quickly."

Mary smiled. "Good. You won't be sorry for the change."

"For the final piano piece," Marla resumed her program list, "I considered something by Mendelssohn, one of the 'Songs Without Words,' perhaps, but I finally decided to do one of the Chopin pieces."

"Do you have a preference?"

Marla grinned. " 'Revolutionary Etude,' of course."

"Good choice," Mary replied, her own smile broadening.

Marla set her hands back on the keys and began doodling a little, feeling good about what they had just worked out, and likewise feeling good about how her relationship with Mary seemed to be developing. When she first arrived several days ago, she was somewhat uncertain about how to react to Mary Simpson. She had heard all the stories about the Simpsons, and even though they seemed to have changed, those stories had worried her a little. Too, arriving the way she did hadn't done anything to bolster her self-confidence, either. But Mary seemed willing to give her room and not dictate her every move. She could live with that, she decided.

Looking up, she said, "Tell me something…"

Mary raised her eyebrows. "All right."

"Why is the piano here? In the Weaver guild hall, I mean."

"Basically, politics," Mary responded with a laugh.

"Politics?" Even to her own ear, Marla sounded as confused as she felt.

"Not national politics, dear. Community politics, the kind I used to see in Pittsburgh all the time."

"Umm…"

"What happened," Mary explained, "was that word got around that I was bringing you and the piano to Magdeburg, and that you would be giving a concert. Well, that immediately started a spirited competition to see who would get to host you. Several of the guilds and even a couple of the wealthy burgomeisters made offers."

"So how did the weavers win?"

Mary grinned wickedly. "First of all, they had the nicest room. That gave them an advantage… although I didn't tell them that, of course. Second, they trumped everyone else by offering to pay for all the costs to relocate the piano and to support you and the others for six months. I didn't even have to prompt them; they gave that offer on their own initiative. Of course, I didn't tell them how much they overbid the others, either."

"Of course," Marla murmured, continuing with her doodling.

"It's a fair trade. We got what we needed to get you here and get you established, and they get a major prestige boost of the finest kind." Mary sat up straight, as if something had jabbed her. "Oh, by the way, dear, you may be sharing the billing. I've been trying to get Maestro Frescobaldi to come here from Florence."

"Italy?" Marla was astounded.

"Of course, Italy, dear. If we can bring him here and introduce him to our modern music, he could be an influential force in spreading the information and the techniques."

"Um, wow." Marla had moved from astounded to stunned. "I'm, uh… are you sure about that? I mean, about me being in the same recital as someone like Frescobaldi?"

"Of course, dear. You have the talent, and you have music that no one else can play or sing. Besides, it's not even definite yet that he can or will come. The Medicis may very well refuse him permission to leave their court."

Marla decided she had too much to do to worry about Frescobaldi right now. She began playing through part of the Jesu piece. After a few measures, she asked, "How long do I have to finish drawing up the vocal part of the program?"

"I'm leaving for Grantville soon, and I'll be gone for a while. I'd say until about November fifteenth. We have to have time to write and print the programs, if nothing else. Among other things, I'm working with Elizabeth Matowski to fund a performance of The Nutcracker."

"Elizabeth Matow…" Marla began, confused, but suddenly the light dawned. "Oh, you mean Bitty!"

"Bitty?" Mary was now confused in her own right.

"Oh, nobody calls her by her name. She's gone by Bitty for years."

"Is that short for Elizabeth?"

Marla laughed. "Nobody knows what it stands for. She won't say. But, she's pretty attached to that name. Somebody called her 'Bitsy' one day, and she tore into him and chewed him up one side and down the other.

"So, she's doing Nutcracker this year? That's great! I really missed seeing it the last couple of years."

"Let's say I've talked her into it," Mary said. "She's the best hope of bringing modern ballet to this time. I haven't actually met her yet, but from the letters I've received she doesn't seem to like me very much, though."

"I took dance from her for a few years as a kid, until I shot up six inches in the middle of sixth grade. I quit when I caught a good glimpse of myself in a mirror next to the other dancers. I looked like a pelican among ducks. Anyway, I know from experience that Bitty's a perfectionist and can definitely be prickly at times."

"I can deal with her not liking me." Mary's eyes had turned steely gray. "But she needs my help if she wants to preserve and spread ballet. She needs to work with me."

"Bitty's pretty sharp," Marla replied, still doodling on the piano, marveling a little at how she seemed to be somehow sidling into an inner circle. She doubted that Mary would say the things she'd just revealed to just anyone. "But she's not really very fond of people telling her how to stage her shows. I imagine that as long as you really listen to her, give her a little respect and let her handle the staging, she'll get along with you."

Mary absorbed that in silence, then nodded slowly. "All right." After a moment, she sat down in a nearby chair and continued, "Anyway, I'll probably be gone for about two weeks, so you'll have time to finalize the total program before I return. Do you have any thoughts?"

"There's an aria by Purcell I can do, and of course something from The Messiah. I was thinking something by Mozart, maybe from The Magic Flute or the Requiem."

"Can you do the 'Queen of the Night' aria from The Magic Flute?"

Marla squirmed a little. "Well," dragging the syllable out, "I've never performed it. My teacher was working it with me right before the Ring fell."

"I'll bow to your judgment, but if you can do it, that would create exactly the kind of effect we're looking for. What else?"

"Something Verdi or Puccini, don't know what yet."

" 'Un Bel Di,' perhaps?"

"That's one I'm thinking about."

"What about something from northern Europe?" Mary asked.

"Wagner, Mahler and Bruckner would be too over the top, I think."

Mary laughed. "Agreed. What about Schubert or Brahms, though?" Before Marla could answer, Mary's eyes kindled, and she exclaimed, "Schubert! What about 'Der Erlkonig'?"

"Umm, I don't know. Wouldn't that seem awfully pagan… I mean, given the times, and all?"

"No, no, no," Mary said quickly. "The audience for this performance will be the educated elite, the patrons, and they have all been steeped in the Greek and Roman myths. I don't think they would flinch at a literary treatment of one of their own."

"Okay." Marla was a little dubious, but she'd already decided to follow Mary's judgment in things like this. "I think I've got the music, but I've never sung it, so it will take some time to work it up. If I remember right, that's in a pretty low key. It might be under my range."

"Can you transpose it?"

"Sure, but it might sound funny."

"I've heard it done by a soprano. I believe it was Jessye Norman. It was very effective. See what you can do, please." Mary tapped her lips with a finger. "We don't have time for anything Russian. Wait… what about Rachmaninoff's 'Vocalise'?"

"I don't have the music."

"That's a pity. Well, it can't be helped, I suppose."

Marla didn't mention to Mary that there was at least one recording of the piece in Grantville and Thomas could notate it from the recording. She was afraid that what was supposed to be a recital was going to be a marathon as it was, without including a bunch of new music like the 'Vocalise.'

Mary set that disappointment behind her, and moved on. "What are your thoughts about twentieth-century choices?"

"I figured I'd select mostly Broadway songs," Marla said. "Partly because the Impressionist, post-Impressionist and Modernist stuff would be so dissonant to seventeenth-century ears, and partly because that's really the only kind of music I have from that time." She smiled. "Sort of making a virtue out of necessity. I haven't made any choices yet, though."

"Then the only thing I'll say now is to look at the strongly melodic composers: Sondheim, Lloyd Webber, maybe even some of the Disney composers." Marla felt her eyebrows raise, and Mary gave her light laugh again. "Oh, yes, there are some delightful little songs hidden in some of the Disney musicals. It's just a thought, though."

Marla shrugged. "I'll check it out."

She had been doodling all the while, and now her doodling led into a quiet rendition of "Amazing Grace." She played it several times through, varying the style each time. She held the final chord for several moments, letting the sound resonate. After it died away, she released the keys.

"Very nice," Mary commented. "I'm always amazed at how easily musicians can improvise."

"I'm not really very good at improvising," Marla replied. "I know that hymn well, so I know when and how to change it up. But if you hand me a new melody and tell me to improvise while I'm sight reading it, I'd be doing good to just put simple chords behind it the first few times through it. I need to improve, though, because it's considered one of the standards of musicianship in this era. Bach was well known for it, for example. If you want to hear someone who's really proficient at improvising, even by down-time standards, you should hear Maestro Carissimi some time. He's so good at it I can't even be jealous. He's awesome."

Mary took a deep breath. "Carissimi? Giacomo Carissimi? Composer of the oratorio Jephtha?"

"That's the one," Marla grinned.

"Franz told me he was in Grantville," Mary said. "I was stunned. I still am. I almost went to Grantville that day. The thought of meeting him just sends chill bumps up and down my spine." Marla found it a bit humorous that Mary sounded much like a school girl hoping to meet her favorite teen idol. There was a definite air of excitement about her, unlike her normal cool, collected grace. "Tell, me what is he like?"

"Well, he's very reserved, almost shy, but he seems to be a very nice man. He doesn't act like he's famous or anything. In fact, he seems to want to keep a low profile. His friend, Signor Girolamo Zenti, attracts a lot more attention. I had to read in the encyclopedia and some of the album notes to find out about him, or the him that would have been before the Ring fell." Marla paused for a moment… something about what she just said didn't sound right. "I mean… oh, never mind. Even without those write-ups, though, I would have known he was really talented, really good, just from the way he talks about music and from the way he took to the piano."

"He's learning piano, then?"

"Oh, yes. He's made connections with Elizabeth Jordan, my old voice teacher. She's a pretty good pianist in her own right, so she can show him all about it. Plus, she's got copies of all my notes from the seminars we did this summer, so I'm sure he'll be picking her brain about all of that, too. From what I could tell before we left, he was obsessed with learning as much as he could as quickly as he could."

The two women shared a smile as they both remembered their conversation about obsession on Marla's first day in Magdeburg.

"So, Franz said something about him writing a piece for you? For the recital, I assume," Mary said.

"Actually, no it's not." Mary looked surprised as Marla continued. "No, it seems that he has conceived of a new piece since the Battle of Wismar. He wants to write a lament, a formal eulogy piece, in memory of Hans Richter."

Mary was quiet for a very long moment, staring off in space.

"Mary?"

"Hmm? Oh, sorry, just thinking that through. Methinks I detect the fine hand of Mike Stearns in that. I could be wrong; it could be Don Francisco Nasi, but I'll wager that one or the other of them is involved in it." Mary saw Marla's confusion, and gave one of her light chuckles. "No, dear, I'm not disparaging them. Mike, probably more than anyone except my husband and Colonel Wood, knows the bitterness of the price paid to win that battle. But at the same time, it's entirely too convenient that a composer of Giacomo Carissimi's stature arrives in Grantville and just happens to want to write this piece at a time when it would have the most political benefit.

"Oh, I'm sure it will be a fabulous piece of music, and no doubt it will be a catharsis for everyone who hears it. Mike would push for it anyway, because he would think it the right thing to do, but he wouldn't be Mike Stearns if he didn't see the political advantage of it as well.

"So, does Maestro Carissimi have a title for it yet?"

"The last I heard, he was going to call it 'Lament for a Fallen Eagle,' " Marla said.

Mary gasped. "That is perfect. That is absolutely perfect. That will mean so much to Sharon Nichols and Gretchen and the family, and will speak so strongly to everyone in the country as well. Have you seen anything of it yet?"

"No," Marla smiled. "Right before we left, he had started writing the theme and was really feeling handicapped because there is no orchestra in Grantville."

"Oh, no," Mary laughed. "How did he take that?"

"Well, he tried for a little while to score it for band instruments. He figured out pretty quickly that wouldn't work, though. That was about the only time I saw him showing strong emotion during the little while I was around him. He threw his pencil down on the desk, grabbed the sheet of paper he was working on and tore it into little pieces. He muttered something in Italian that I think must have been pretty vulgar. At least, Signor Zenti looked awfully surprised at what he heard."

"So what is he going to do?"

"Well," Marla said, "he found out that about the only string players in Grantville are my friends Isaac and Josef, and that Rudolf, Thomas and Hermann can play flute. So, he told me that he would score it for that ensemble with piano right now, and rescore it later after he finds an orchestra."

"Something else we need to work on," Mary noted. "Not now, dear," in response to Marla's alarmed look. "Not until after the New Year, anyway," and she chuckled again at the resulting expression of relief. "So, will you be involved in the lament, other than providing the instrumental ensemble?"

"It's for solo voice with instruments," Marla said, "and he's asked me to sing the solo."

A pleased smile spread across Mary's face. "That's wonderful, Marla. Principal performer in a high-profile work by a major composer. This will help establish you just as much as your recital will. When does he think it will be performed?"

"Well, that's the tough part. He wants to do it before Christmas in Grantville."

"What?" Mary looked aghast. "But you're doing your recital here in Magdeburg on December fifteenth!"

"Tell me about it. I really want to do it, but there has to be some travel time and at least one rest day. And I-we-have to see the music soon."

"Yes, you do." Mary looked determined. "I will see to that."

"Thank you."

Mary leaned over and placed her hand over Marla's. "You will be a great success, my dear, both in your recital and in Maestro Carissimi's work as well. Believe that."

Marla watched as her new mentor picked up her coat and walked out of the room. She was still impressed at how much strength of purpose and will was enclosed in that small lady, and she was very glad to have her support.

Tuesday, November 16, 1633

"I can't wear that."

Franz winced a little at the sharp tone in Marla's voice. They were in Mary Simpson's parlor, gathered with Mary and a seamstress. It was Mary's first day back from her trip to Grantville. She had called the women together to address the question of what Marla would wear for her concert performance. Franz had quietly shadowed Marla, as was his wont. He could have told Mary that Marla would reject the down-time styles, but as the lone male in the room, he wisely chose the course of silence.

Affronted, the seamstress looked first at the young woman who had spoken, and then at Mary Simpson. Marla caught that glance, and before Mary could say anything, she continued, "I'm sorry, no offense, but it's just… too much. Too much fabric, too much bulk. I wouldn't be able to move freely. That outfit would restrict me in playing the flute and the piano."

The seamstress' daughter, who was modeling a clothing ensemble similar to what the seamstress wanted to prepare for Marla, did a slow turn, showing off her mother's fine work. Franz admired the quality of the tailoring; it was equal to anything he had ever seen in the prince-bishop's court in Mainz. But, somehow he doubted that he would ever see Marla wearing anything like it.

"Are you sure?" Mary asked.

"Yes," her young protege answered firmly. "I mean, look at it: underskirts, overskirt, bodice, blouse, jacket, large sleeves, ruff collar. At least it's not an Elizabethan ruff, but still…" She laughed a little. "Mary, without shoes I'm four to six inches taller than most of the down-time women. What looks dainty on them would start to look ponderous by the time it's scaled up to my proportions, besides the fact it would make me so bulky I'd have trouble getting through doorways and sitting on chairs."

Franz nodded agreement from his seat by the stove.

"Not to mention," Marla frowned at the model as she concluded, "that after a few minutes of performing in that rig," the seamstress bristled a little-she wasn't sure what a 'rig' was, but it didn't sound complimentary-"I'd be sweating like a pig." Turning to her mentor, Marla said, "I understand why I can't wear my prom dress… bare arms and shoulders, and all that."

"That's right," Mary replied. "After that little episode at The Green Horse, you should understand the problem of down-time perceptions now."

Marla shrugged. Franz felt the flash of anger he felt every time he thought about what had happened a month ago. Marla had been able to put it out of her mind by the day after, but he still wanted to hurt someone… preferably the fool who had accosted Marla. His fists balled… or at least his right one did. The pain from his crippled left hand as it tried to close jerked him out of his mood. He forced himself to relax, rubbing the stiffened ring and little fingers on the crippled hand.

"I'm willing to accommodate perceptions." Marla had quieted. Perhaps she hadn't put that unpleasant event totally out of her mind after all. "But only to some extent, and definitely not if it interferes with my ability to perform." She stood, stretched her arms out, and performed her own slow rotation in front of the other women. "Mary, Frau Schneider, look at me. I am five feet nine and one-half inches tall in my bare feet, and I weigh somewhere around one hundred fifty pounds. I am not a small woman, and you can't dress me like I am. I may not know yet what will look good on me, but I'm very certain that what I've seen today will not work."

"Well, what do you want, dear?" Mary asked.

The young woman sat down again with a pensive look. "I don't know." There was a pause. "I just want to look… elegant." The momentary expression of longing that crossed her face tugged at Franz's heart.

Mary smiled her slight smile and reached into the large bag on the table near her. "Do you think you could wear something like this?" She pulled out a piece of paper with a bright splash of color on it.

Franz could see that it was the shiny paper that was found in some of the "magazines" that had come from up-time. He couldn't see more than that from where he was seated, but obviously it attracted Marla's attention. She took it from Mary's hand and focused on it. After a long moment, she nodded. "Yes, I could. We'd have to make sure I could raise my arms without binding, but I think… I think this would work. I like it."

"Good." Mary retrieved the page. "Frau Schneider," she beckoned the seamstress over, "can you make something like this?"

The down-time woman took the page, and her eyes widened a little as she took in the picture. After a moment, she said, "Yes, but…"

"But what?"

"Is this a dress? It looks more like a shift for bed wearing," with a slight frown.

Both Mary and Marla laughed, and Mary responded, "Yes, it is a dress. It's called an Empire style, and I had a little trouble finding a picture of one that I could bring back with me." She stood, and took the page back from the seamstress. "I suspected that Marla would not care for the styles currently in favor at the courts. She is right, you know. She is enough larger than most women here and now that she would look odd and out of place in court dress. But she is also right in her desire to look elegant. Here," Mary tapped the paper, "here is the solution: a dress that is somewhat fitted on the top, yet free to flow from the high waist; a dress that will allow her the freedom to move as she needs, yet will at the same time look elegant."

"But… but…" Frau Schneider sputtered, "it is so… so plain!"

Mary's smile returned. "Marla, stand up again, please." Turning to the seamstress, "Look at her, Frau Schneider. Imagine her dressed in that dress, in a deep, rich color. See her carriage, her grace. Imagine her walking in that dress." The down-time woman said nothing, but after a few moments began to nod. "Yes," Mary said, "she needs no ornamentation. In fact, anything more than the richness of the fabric would detract from her."

The seamstress tapped her finger on her lips slowly several times, then gave a firm nod. "Yes, I can do this. I will do this. And perhaps," she smiled a little, "perhaps we will see this become the new fashion." Franz could just visualize her rubbing her hands together in glee at the thought that she might become the leading name in Magdeburg court dress with this new creation. "Velvet in rich color, you said. What color do you desire?"

Mary looked to Marla, who said, "I don't care, as long as it's not olive green, yellow or pink."

Looking back to the seamstress, Mary asked, "What would you recommend?"

Frau Schneider walked over to where Marla stood and peered at her, looking at her skin, her hair, her eyes. The young woman bore the seamstress' scrutiny calmly. "I would say a deep blue."

Mary nodded. "Do you have enough on hand to make such a dress?"

"I know where I can buy it."

"Good. My contacts could not find a pattern that I could acquire. Can you make it from this picture? And can it be done in four weeks?"

Once again the seamstress looked affronted. "Of course I can, Frau Simpson. And I have a Higgins sewing machine." Franz observed as the expression on her face settled to one of satisfaction, almost glee. "It will take me longer to get the cloth than it will to sew it."

"Good. Then why don't you and Marla step into the next room so you can measure her."

The seamstress, her subject and her daughter all moved into the office. Franz remained where he was seated, deciding that he would be just a bit superfluous in the bustle that would be occurring in the other room.

"Franz," Mary said quietly. He looked up, to see her beckoning to him. Rising, he walked across the room to the chair Marla had just vacated, and sat just as Mary was removing some other items from the bag on the table.

"First of all," Mary handed him a large packet of paper, "this is the final version of the parts to Maestro Carissimi's 'Lament for a Fallen Eagle.' You can give it to Marla after the measurements are done. Tell her that he has decided on St. Stephen's Day, the day after Christmas, for the performance."

Franz grinned. "She will not be happy that it was not given to her last night when you returned."

"I know." Mary smiled back, "but I know her well enough now to know that if I had given it to her last night, I wouldn't have been able to get her here for this session, and in its own way this time with Frau Schneider is almost as important She may not think so, but it is. So, I prioritized her time a little bit for her. She won't stay mad long, not after she gets her hands on it."

Mary then handed a small box to him. "This is the other thing we talked about."

Franz opened it carefully. The sight of what was revealed caused a wave of pleasure and anticipation welled up in him, to the extent that he felt light-headed. He bowed slightly to Mary. "It is beautiful. Thank you."

"It was truly my pleasure. Do you know yet when it will happen?"

"Oh, yes," he breathed, "I do."

Thursday, December 15, 1633

Mary Simpson paused for a moment to look around. The great room at the Weavers' guild hall was beginning to fill. Those she had invited to the concert tonight were beginning to arrive, and as expected, were bringing others with them.

From where she stood she could see her husband, the admiral, and a few of his naval officers talking to some of the younger nobility. The events of the month of October had rung the status quo of Europe like a bell. Many young men of the lesser noble families were displaying a surprising ability to read the Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin on the wall, and were seeking to enroll either in the newly mustering regiments or in the navy that was being built by John Simpson.

Beyond them stood Wilhelm Wettin (who, according to her sources, was becoming known as "The Great Commoner") and those men and Hoch-Adel present who were aligned with his growing movement, all deeply in conversation about some undoubtedly political topic. Fortunately, there were few in Magdeburg tonight who would contend with them, so hopefully this evening would be free of impassioned political debate.

To the other side of her she could see the group of women around the abbess of Quedlinberg, the core of her Magdeburg arts league. The names in that group were beginning to read like a Who's Who of many of the noble families in central Europe.

Yes, things were progressing nicely, and more were coming in the door at regular intervals. As she watched, a man entered who doffed his hat and cloak and handed them to a hovering guild apprentice, who bowed and scurried off to hang them in an impromptu cloak room. He was dressed well, in expensive forest green cut in an unfamiliar style, although not nearly as elaborately as the nobility in the room at the moment. The gentleman definitely knew how to make an entrance, striking a pose to shake his hair back and adjust his lace cuffs.

It took Mary a few moments to realize that she knew him, but as soon as she did she advanced across the floor. "Signor Zenti, how good of you to come." She had met the redoubtable Italian in Grantville during her recent trip to confirm Bitty Matowski's production of The Nutcracker ballet, due to be staged in two more weeks. Her time with him and his-to her-more notable companion, the composer Maestro Giacomo Carissimi, had been very enjoyable. Girolamo Zenti was an outrageous flirt, to be sure, who managed to have her laughing and blushing at the same time, while Maestro Carissimi tsk'd at him. However, when the topics turned to music and instruments, even in his sometimes stilted English, mangled German, and the Tuscan dialect that was partly comprehensible to her twentieth-century Italian ear, he still managed to communicate intensity and passion about his work. All in all, she approved of Signor Zenti.

The Italian gave an elaborate bow as she reached him, then took her hand and raised it to his lips. "Signora Simpson, when I realized that I would in Magdeburg be at this time, I swore to attend. Maestro Giacomo drove me, reminding me that I would to Magdeburg go soon at any event, and begging me most piteously to hear Signorina Linder's concert tonight and plead with her to hear her practice of his 'Lament.' The poor man is almost prostrate with nerves. Chewing his mustache, chewing his pens, chewing his lace he is, waiting for her to return to Grantville so he can hear how she will sing his new work." Zenti chuckled. "It is divertente… how you say… humorous, to see him fret."

Mary laughed. "You are an awful man, Signor Zenti."

"Si, so I am told many times," he said equably, turning away as others came in the door and claimed her attention. She watched out of the corner of her eye as he headed for the buffet tables at the back of the room. Zenti collected a glass of wine, but was diverted from the food tables by a stack of programs. The program text was in German for the most part, listing the pieces to be played, the composers and the "dates" of composition. For the vocal selections, especially those from opera and theatre, there were brief paragraphs establishing the context of the song and the related story.

Just then, Amalie, landgravine of Hesse-Kessel entered, which gave her a swift sense of relief. With Amalie and the abbess on hand, the success of this evening's event was assured. They quickly clasped hands, and delivered the obligatory kiss to each other's cheeks. Then the landgravine released one hand, and turned to face the man following her, drawing Mary with her.

"Mary, may I present to you our guest, Signor Andrea Abati. Andrea, this is Frau Mary Simpson, of whom we have told you so much."

Mary felt her composure start to slide as she faced her friend's guest; and she was forced to grasp it quite firmly. If Signor Zenti had made a definite entrance earlier, this man trumped that in spades, posing as if he were an up-time model. Signor Abati presented quite a figure, and from the slight smile on his face he obviously knew it. Tall even by up-time standards, he was lean, with a face framed by thick, long, curly red hair, that from the way it floated when he moved his head was not a wig. And the face-heavens, the man was beautiful.

Signor Abati was obviously not one to keep a low profile. His sartorial selection for the evening was a statement designed to attract maximum attention. Starting at the ground, the shoes were the soberest part of his ensemble, being a gleaming black with large buckles that were obviously gold. The stockings on his well-formed calves were an almost gleaming white silk, while the culottes that ended below the knee were of bronze brocade. Overlaying the britches was a long waistcoat in white, which was elaborately embroidered in gold thread. This was, in turn, overlaid by a silver brocade coat which reached almost to his knees. Lace spilled, fountained even, from his collar and sleeve cuffs. Atop his head was a flat-topped, high-crowned blue hat, out of which sprang plumes. Mary saw an ostrich plume, a peacock feather and a third that she did not recognize. The final component was an ebony cane with an ornately carved ivory head on it, held casually to one side.

On someone else, Mary would have sworn that an up-time pimp had somehow been in Grantville when the Ring fell, only to find a new career as a fashion consultant for the tailor involved. Signor Abati, however, had such panache, and exuded such an aura of self-confidence, that on him it worked.

Mary shook her head slightly, then extended her hand to the Italian. Signor Abati gave an even more flourishing bow than his countryman had earlier. When he took her hand to kiss it, he looked up at her through thick eyelashes and she felt like a doe in headlights. She railed at herself for acting like she was sixteen, but the feel of his lips on her hand sent her heart racing nonetheless. Clearing her throat, she said, "I… I'm pleased to meet you Signor Abati."

"Enchante, madame," he murmured in flawless French. His voice gave her another shock, for it was pitched higher than her own.

At that moment Landgrave Wilhelm stepped up and Mary forced herself to turn away from the Italian. After exchanging greetings, the landgrave suggested to his guest that they find the wine.

Mary turned to Amalie, and hissed, "Who is that?"

The landgravine gave a wicked little grin, and whispered, "He's from Rome. They call him Il Prosperino, and until recently he was il gentilhuomo premiere in that city, and the pope's favorite singer."

"Oh," Mary said, as the light dawned, "he's castrato."

"Mmm-hmm."

"Oh… my." Mary's thoughts whirled. "Well, what's he doing here?"

"He was invited to reside at the court of the elector of Brandenburg for a season, to sing for them. Both of his coach horses took lame near here, however, and he came to Magdeburg until they can be replaced or restored to health. Horses are in scarce supply, however," for military reasons, Mary thought, "and his are slow in healing, so it appears he will be our guest for some time." Amalie flashed her wicked little grin again, and murmured, "There are the most interesting rumors about him."

Recalling both her history and the effect Il Prosperino had had on her, Mary said faintly, "I can imagine."

Girolamo was headed for the buffet when he heard his name called in a soprano that seemed familiar but couldn't be placed.

"Signor Zenti! Signor Girolamo!"

He turned, a smile forming on his face, only to freeze when he saw someone who was one of the last people he had expected to see in Magdeburg. Il Prosperino! What was he doing here? He quickly made a bow. "Signor Abati. Signore stimatissimo ed illustre. Che sorpresa meravigliosa il vedervi!"

The other man bowed slightly, and laughed. "Infine, un viso civilizzata in questo incolto terreno culturale."

Girolamo caught a motion from the corner of his eye as someone near them turned and frowned. He stepped closer to his countryman. "Attento, mio signore estimato. Ci sono i presenti che capiscono l'italiano."

More laughter. "Shall we speak English, then?"

"Si, I mean, yes, esteemed sir."

Abati linked his arm through Girolamo's and they walked together as they conversed. "Do call me Andrea, and I shall call you Girolamo. We are almost brothers, are we not, in this cold, almost barbarous country?"

"Yes… Andrea."

"See, that was not so hard, was it? By the way, I must tell you that the harpsichord you made for the Holy Father was excellent, perhaps the finest I have played."

"Thank you." They were walking slowly around the perimeter of the room, with every eye on them. Girolamo was still somewhat nervous, and could not bring himself to say much yet, arm in arm with a man who was arguably as famous as the pope… at least in Italy.

"So," Abati said in his cool soprano tone, "this music we are to hear, will it be worth my while, or will I be as bored tonight as I have been on every other night of this trip?"

"I believe you will find it worthwhile," Girolamo said, mustering his assurance.

"Of course Maestro Frescobaldi's works will be of interest, but what of this woman who will sing?" Doubt dripped from Il Prosperino's tones.

"Even so. Maestro Carissimi judges her accomplished enough to sing his newest work, a lamento."

Eyes wide, his companion stopped and said, "Maestro Carissimi is here? In Magdeburg?"

"No, he is in Grantville, where the lamento will be performed soon."

They resumed walking slowly. Abati said slowly, "I met il Maestro some time ago. He is a composer most gifted, and he writes such beautiful melodies. If he thinks that highly of her, then I will truly listen."

Marla peered out through a crack between the room dividers that screened off the end of the hall from the area where the guests were. Hermann had been playing music on the piano for some time, music from the down-time era. She could see the guests milling around and conversing, grazing from the buffet and soaking up wine. Hermann's music seemed to be providing dinner accompaniment. It still seemed strange to her that the concert would include food and drink, but Mary had explained to her that this was simply the way things were done here and now. Now that she thought of it, though, it really wasn't any different than singing in The Green Horse. If she could grab the attention of two-fisted drinkers in taverns, surely she could do it here.

She placed her hand over the gold cross hanging around her neck under the dress, remembering when Mrs. Simpson had given it to her earlier in the evening.

Marla was finishing dressing, using her mother's ebony combs to draw her long hair back from her face to let it cascade down behind her ears and down to the high waist of the Empire gown, when the older woman had entered the room carrying a small box. "Let me look at you, my dear." Marla had stood straight and turned slowly, coming around to face her mentor, who was wearing a big smile.

"Oh, Marla. You look exquisite. You only need a few touches." She had set the box down on a table, opened it, and showed it to Marla, who gasped. "I will loan you these tonight to provide just the right accent of elegance." She lifted out the pearl drop earrings and handed them to Marla, who received them very gingerly. "John gave these to me on our fifth wedding anniversary. He was stationed in Viet Nam for a while, and was able to buy these over there, even on a lieutenant's salary." As Marla had put them in her earlobes, Mary had lifted out the necklace and unfastened it. "This, too. Here, let me help you put this on." Marla remembered lifting her hair out of the way and bending down slightly so Mary could fasten the necklace around her neck.

Mary had turned back to the box and lifted out a thin gold chain with a crucifix hanging from it. "The pearls are for the audience. This one is for me. My mother gave this to me when I graduated from college. We-John and I-only had one son, and we… weren't on good terms with Tom when he left." Mary had looked slightly forlorn. "I know… hope… we will eventually reconcile, but I don't know when. In any event, this isn't something for a man, anyway."

Mary had looked her in the eyes. "I know you lost your mother when the Ring fell. In a way, this would be your senior recital, so let me give this to you in her place." As in a dream, Marla again lifted her hair and let Mary fasten the necklace around her neck. "Tuck it under your dress, dear. This will be our secret."

The two Italians had collected glasses of wine and continued to drift around the hall, conversing about this and that. It occurred to Girolamo that perhaps Il Prosperino was keeping him by himself for familiarity's sake. The northerners in this room would be a strange audience to him, which, as hard as it might be to believe, just might be causing a slight amount of uncertainty. Certainly, he was making no attempt to capitalize on the many swooning glances directed at him by many of the young-and even not-so-young-women in the room. Most unlike him, according to his reputation.

"So, my friend," his countryman said as they drew up behind the instrument being played by the very short German. "What is this… this Steen… way?"

"Steinway," Girolamo corrected.

Andrea grimaced, and said, "Steinway, then. It looks like as if it might be un grandissimo harpsichord, yes? But it sounds nothing like one."

"It is," Girolamo declared, "a piano, and it will revolutionize music."

"Oh, come now," the other scoffed. "Surely that is very strong language for such a thing."

"That is not just my judgment, sir, but that also of Maestro Carissimi."

"Is it indeed?" Andrea's attitude returned to thoughtfulness. "So then, what or who is this 'Steinway'?"

"It is the name of the family who built it. They were Germans originally…"

"Surely you jest," the other said with a smile. "Can anything excellent come out of Germany?"

Zenti chuckled at the Biblical allusion. "Andrea, from what the up-timers tell us, the future of music was almost dominated by Germans not long after our time. Composers, instrument makers, orchestras, it was all in their hands."

His companion stared at Girolamo with wide eyes. "I find that very hard to believe, but I must take your word for it. So, this Steinway was a German, then?"

"The family name was originally Steinweg, but after moving to America they changed it to Steinway."

"Did they invent this piano, then?"

"No, it was invented by a Tuscan."

"I knew it!"

Girolamo smiled at the enthusiasm for things Italian heard in the other's voice. "But it was this Steinway who took a number of innovations and created the great instrument you see before you. Even at the time when this so-called Ring of Fire occurred, for one hundred fifty years Steinway was the standard of excellence for pianos."

"And why do you know so much about them?"

"Because I will make pianos, and I will learn from the best. I just concluded the purchase of the only other Steinway in Grantville, one that is in need of renovation, for that express purpose."

Andrea sniffed. "I do not care much for their cabinet ornamentation. So plain," he said disparagingly. "Even your journeyman work was much better."

"There is a certain Spartan elegance to it. When it is so simple, it must be absolutely flawless. However, those who will come to me will want more, of course. I think you will find that I have not lost my skill. But of all people, Andrea," Girolamo said gently, "you should know that the quality of the gems on the hilt say nothing of the quality of the blade in the sheath. So it is here. I will learn from the best."

And with that, they began walking again, with Abati whispering improvised scurrilous doggerel in gutter Italian about various random individuals in the room, reducing Zenti to almost helpless laughter.

Marla returned to the present as Franz stepped up beside her, dropping her hand from where it had rested over the cross. She was still somewhat surprised by the gift from Mary-not the value of it, because it wasn't that much, but the personal-ness of it. She wondered at why it had been given, then shook her head to clear it.

"Is it time, yet?" she demanded of Franz.

"Almost," he replied. "I think I see Princess Kristina entering now."

Mary turned as the latest group entered the hall, and sighed in relief as she recognized Princess Kristina and Lady Ulrike. Finally. Now the concert could begin.

"Mrs. Simpson," from the princess.

"Princess Kristina." Mary bent and offered her hand. Having just spent a couple of weeks together on the round trip to Grantville, she and Kristina got along well. "I'm so glad you came tonight. I believe you will enjoy the music."

"Thank you, Mrs. Simpson," the young girl replied in her Swedish accented English.

Mary walked with them as they visited the buffet. She helped Kristina make her selections and collect a glass of apple cider, then escorted them to the chairs that had been set aside for them as the evening's most important guests. As she straightened and looked around, she could see Franz Sylwester standing against the side wall, watching her. Stepping away from the people who were slowly but not-so-subtly drifting to coalesce around the princess, she beckoned to him.

"Is she ready?"

"Past ready," Franz chuckled. "She dances as if she has ants in her stockings."

Mary laughed. "Are the others ready?"

"Yes. All are feeling some nervousness, perhaps, but excitement as well."

"How about you?"

Franz sobered. "I am ready to do my part. I hope to, ah, 'get it right,' as Marla says."

"And is tonight the night?"

The brightness of his smile almost blinded Mary. She waved her hand at him. "Go. Tell them to begin any time." He stepped back from her and slipped along the wall to disappear behind the room dividers.

Franz stepped in behind the room dividers, and walked over to where Marla and the others waited. They looked at him expectantly, and in Marla's case, impatiently. "Mary says to begin at any time." They stood and gathered their instruments.

"Isaac," Marla said, "give Hermann the high sign. We'll start as soon as he finishes the piece he's playing now." Turning to Franz, she accepted a quick hug and kiss on the forehead. "It's time."

Hermann stopped playing the piano background music. Most everyone in the hall looked in that direction for a moment as a screen was placed in front of the piano, followed by an ornately decorated harpsichord placed in front of the screen. There was a brief spatter of applause as Mary stepped forward to offer her hand to a somewhat pudgy man and lead him from his seat to the harpsichord.

"Princess," she bowed her head in that direction, "lords and ladies, friends, please lend your ears to the music of Maestro Girolamo Frescobaldi as he presents toccatas, canzonas and ricercare for your enjoyment." A slight amount of applause sounded as she returned to her seat by her husband.

The next hour or so was filled with music of the time, the contrapuntal works for which the good maestro was known. Mary watched the audience as much as she did the performer, and noted that although a good many of the people did pay him some attention, there were others who never once looked his direction.

The question of where Prime Minister Stearns was kept popping up in her mind. He had accepted her invitation, but as of yet still hadn't made an appearance. That wasn't like him. For all that he wasn't her favorite person on the face of the earth, he was unfailingly polite to her and would have made his excuses if something had arisen to prevent his coming. She kept wondering what had come up. After the third time through those thoughts, she firmly banished them to the back of her mind and spent the rest of the time listening to the music.

At length Maestro Frescobaldi's portion of the program came to a close. He stood and gave his bows, spoke to the princess for a moment after she motioned him over, then resumed his seat. The harpsichord meanwhile was removed. Then the screen was drawn aside to reveal the stark lines of the ebony Steinway, gleaming in the candlelight.

Mary's heart seemed to swell as she saw Marla leading the other players into view from behind the other screens. Tall in her royal blue Empire gown, Marla looked well from the audience, she decided. The richness of the velvet, with no ornament except the many small gold buttons lining the long sleeves; the high white collar framing her dark hair and face; the pearls-all combined into a picture of elegance that truly made Marla the focus of attention. The women in the hall all leaned toward each other and whispered behind fans and programs at the sight of the gown. Mary smiled. The seamstress would undoubtedly be receiving inquiries tomorrow.

The whispers redoubled as Marla raised her flute. No one in Magdeburg had seen a metal transverse flute before, and the Bohm keys just added to the mystery of what sound it was going to produce. Mary saw her give the slight dip of the head that gave the count to the others, and they began.

The first notes of the first movement of Vivaldi's La Primavera took flight, and everyone in the room stopped. The rapid notes as Marla played the solo part on the flute just mesmerized every listener. Mary looked over at Princess Kristina, who was staring at Marla, eyes gleaming, watching her fingers fly. The thin grouping of instruments behind the solo flute-violin, viola d'amore, Baroque flute and piano-sounded unusual to Mary, but she had to admit that they did justice to the piece.

It seemed like only moments passed, and suddenly it was done. A spattering of polite applause was offered. As the others filed out behind the room dividers, Franz came out and raised the piano lid, propping it to its most open position. He turned and took Marla's flute, then left.

There was a burst of conversation as the transition occurred, but as soon as Marla sat down it began to quiet. Mary was impressed that, by the time Marla began, the room was still again. She had anticipated that Marla would eventually become the focus of the audience's attention, but in the event it occurred much quicker than she had expected.

Franz slipped down the side wall of the hall, emerging from behind the room divider screens to watch this portion of the concert from the back. The piano pieces rolled smoothly, one to another. His heart lifted and soared with each, watching Marla; watching her every graceful move at the piano-never quite still, always moving, leaning forward, back, to one side or the other, hands lifting, floating across the keys.

The 'Little' Fugue in G minor, BWV578, by Johann Sebastian Bach, greatest scion of that incredible family of musicians, now never to be if the butterfly effect theory was correct. It was performed without flaw, and was received by a burst of spontaneous applause at its conclusion.

The first movement of the Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, K525, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, perhaps the greatest German musician of the so-called Classical era. Again, performed flawlessly. The applause was greater this time, and the listeners flowed into a semi-circle around the performance area.

The Bagatelle in A minor, by Ludwig Beethoven, otherwise known as "Fur Elise," a lilting composition that sounded deceptively simple but in fact required more than a modicum of skill to play well. At its conclusion, the princess clapped furiously, obviously taken with the beauty of the piece.

And finally, Etude No. 12 in C minor, from Opus 10, by Frederic Chopin, usually called the "Revolutionary Etude." Marla paused for a long moment, as she always did before she played this one. Someone coughed in the silence, and Franz jumped. Finally, she raised her hands and attacked (the only word Franz could use) the keyboard. As with the very first time he heard it, he was astounded by the rolling arpeggios, the percussive chords, how the music seemed to emerge from chaos. He tore his eyes from Marla, and looked around. Everyone was transfixed by her electric performance of the piece. When the final chords were hammered home, the room rocked with wild applause, which Franz joined for a moment before slipping back up the wall and behind the dividers.

The amazing young woman stood at the end of the piece, and despite being in a gown, gave a bow to acknowledge the applause. After she walked behind the screen, there was a moment of quiet, then conversation erupted all over the room. Everyone who had a program was pointing at it, everyone who did not was either looking for one or was gesticulating in the air. They all seemed to understand the term Intermissio which lay between the piano and the voice music in the program. Some few of them had headed for the wine table with alacrity, and a few more were picking up the remaining tidbits from the buffet.

Girolamo turned to Il Prosperino. He said nothing; merely raised an eyebrow, as if to say, "I told you so."

Andrea nodded in response, acknowledging the point. "How soon can you make me a piano?"

Girolamo shrugged. "Perhaps a year."

"Why so long?" in a surprised tone.

"First, I must finish refurbishing the one I purchased, which is dedicated to a special patron. Despite what I have already learned, I will learn more by doing, which is a slow process. While that is going on, I must locate an iron foundry that can cast parts according to my specifications. Even more critically, I must find a reliable source of relatively fine gauge steel wire. Then, and only then, will I be able to begin crafting my own pianos." He thought for a moment. "I have a facility in Grantville, but I believe I will relocate to Magdeburg."

"You will not return to Rome?" Andrea eyed him with even more surprise.

"No. Even if the Casati family were to forgive my putting a sword through a son's shoulder, everything I have learned in the last few months tells me that the future is here," he waved his arm around, "here among these Germans."

Andrea shook his head.

"I mean it," insisted Girolamo. "You think what you have seen and heard tonight will not change our music?"

Josef and Rudolf joined hands with the others and said, "Do well," then slipped out the way Franz had come in. Franz, Marla, Isaac and Hermann looked at each other, no one wanting to say anything. Finally Franz laughed. "To quote our good friend Ingram Bledsoe, 'Knock 'em dead.' "

Franz turned Marla to face him, looked into her gleaming eyes. "Continue as you have begun. You have won them over, now seal it." He kissed her hands. "Go. They await you." She squeezed his hands and turned to follow Hermann.

Franz and Isaac slipped back down the wall behind the dividers, to emerge at the rear of the room and join their friends. The applause that greeted Marla resounded around them. The four of them stood together at the back, not able to see very well because many of the patrons were standing, but listening nonetheless.

Her butterflies were gone, Marla noticed. She was calm, now that she was finally getting to do what she had prepared all this time for, what she had always dreamed of. She turned her head to give a slight nod to Hermann. They began.

"Thy hand, Belinda…" The opening words of Dido's farewell recitative sounded in the room, and Mary closed her eyes and drank in the sound of that lovely voice. Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas had always been one of her favorite early operas, and the despairing recitative and aria where Dido realized that she had driven away her love and subsequently died never failed to grip her. It was a lovely choice by Marla, not just because it was from later in the seventeenth century and so would be easy for those present to relate to, but also because the classic story taken from Virgil's Aeneid was one that almost everyone in the room had heard before in many forms. Here was a fresh new form, and one of beauty, sung by one of the finest young sopranos she had ever heard.

"When I am laid, am laid in earth…" The aria began; Mary abandoned herself to the music, drifting with its rise and fall, until the final plaintive line, "Remember me, but oh, forget my fate."

The room was hushed. Someone at last broke the rapture and began to applaud. The room echoed with the sound for some time. Isaac and Rudolf nodded to the others before slipping back behind the screens to return to the head of the room. When the applause began to fade, they stepped out and joined Marla by the piano.

Hermann began an introduction, and soon Marla's voice was soaring again, this time with the beautiful melody of Mozart's "Laudate Dominum" from Vesperae Solennes de Confessore, K339. Mary remembered wondering if Marla knew what she was doing when the young woman told her that they were going to adapt this song, re-scoring the central section for a trio instead of a quartet. Now she didn't wonder, she just melted into the music and let that effortless soprano voice carry her along. Isaac's tenor and Rudolf's baritone added to the glory of it, but the solo ending, where Marla sang the final phrase, just was heavenly.

Once again the room was hushed. It took longer for someone to begin the applause this time, and it lasted longer. Marla, smiling, took a bow with both Isaac and Rudolf, and they exited.

The rest of the evening moved from one triumph to the next: "Rejoice Greatly, O Daughter of Zion" from Handel's Messiah was followed by "Senza Mamma" from Puccini's Suor Angelica. Each was received by great applause. Marla bowed, beaming.

Franz, knowing what was coming next, held his breath. If the audience would stumble over anything in the concert, it would be this piece. It had taken some little time to transpose it to a key that was at the same time low enough to retain some of the darkness of the original music, yet was high enough that Marla could sing it comfortably. They had finally achieved it two weeks ago, and Marla had diligently practiced it since then.

She opened her mouth, and sang.

"Wer reitet so spat durch Nacht und Wind?

Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind;

Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm,

Er fa?t ihn sicher, er halt ihn warm."

Franz could almost feel the temperature in the room drop as the opening verse of Goethe's poetry mated with Schubert's music in Der Erlkonig was revealed. The story of the father and son's ride home continued to unroll; shivers chased one another up his spine, and the hair on his neck began to bristle. Once again, Marla was bringing to a performance an indefinable something that he never heard during rehearsals. It was as if being in front of an audience raised her to a plane where her voice was a tool in the hands of God. He looked over at Isaac, to see him with his arms wrapped around himself. From the look on his face, he was feeling it too.

The song progressed. In each succeeding verse, the child grew more and more panicked at the sight of the pursuing Erlking, and the worried father tried to calm him, assuring him he was safe. The tension in the great room was building, more and more.

The last verse arrived, and Franz braced himself for the ending. Marla arrived at the final line, and declaimed:

"In seinen Armen das Kind…"

with a very pregnant pause, then

"war tot!"

Immediately applause broke out. Franz could see that this time it was led by none other than the very flamboyant gentleman standing with Signor Zenti. Whoever he was, he obviously liked that song, and to Franz's great relief was dragging everyone along with him. Marla was breathing deeply as she took her bow. Even after the applause died down she stood with her head down for several long breaths. Finally she straightened, smiled, and moved on to the penultimate section of the program.

Mary was almost wrung out at this point. Marla had so far delivered an absolutely bravura performance. She was so proud of the young woman, her protege in part. In the afterglow of the intensity of the Schubert, she finally admitted to herself that perhaps she was living a little vicariously through her young friend, but perhaps even more her relationship with Marla had helped to fill the void in her heart caused when she and John-no, to be honest, mostly just she-had driven their son away.

Looking at her copy of the program to refresh her memory of what was next, Mary saw that Marla had filled the twentieth-century section of the concert with songs from three musicals. She didn't object-they were, after all, from three of the most memorable productions done in the last twenty years before the Ring fell, and the selections that Marla had chosen were among the strongest. It would be interesting, however, she thought to herself, tapping her finger against her lips, to see how some of them would be received.

Marla sailed through the next few songs, almost breezing through them. "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita led the way. Isaac then joined her to do the duet "All I Ask of You," also from a Lloyd Webber work, The Phantom of the Opera.

They then moved on to selections from Les Miserables, by Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schonberg and Herbert Kretzmer. Marla led off with Cosette's wistful "Castle on a Cloud." She then stepped back and took a rest while Isaac stepped forward and sang Valjean's pleading "Bring Him Home," which led to sustained applause, then followed it up with Marius' "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables." His pure tenor voice rang with sorrow, grief and anger throughout the song, and at the end generated applause almost approaching that offered to Marla. Finally, Rudolf stepped out from behind the screen, and joined them in performing "Do You Hear the People Sing." The rousing conclusion of the song led to another round of sustained applause.

Franz moved to the wall as soon as the applause began, slipping behind the dividers until he reached the front of the room again. The final section of the program, entitled Christmas, was about to begin. Isaac and Rudolf each smiled and placed a hand on his shoulder for a moment as they moved past him on their way out. Once the applause began to wane, he took a deep breath, tugged on his jacket hem, picked up his violin and bow and checked that the newly-attached chin pad was still seated solidly. He softly tested the strings to see if the tuning had held, took another deep breath, and walked out to join Marla.

He took station at the end of the piano. She looked over from where she stood in front of the curve, melting his heart with one of her brilliant smiles, then nodded to Hermann to begin.

The introduction was short and soft, then Marla began to sing.

"Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!

Alles schlaft; einsam wacht

Nur das traute heilige Paar.

Holder Knab' im lockigen Haar,

Schlafe in himmlischer Ruh!

Schlafe in himmlischer Ruh!"

Marla's voice was so soft and warm that Franz got lost in it and almost forgot to raise his violin to play. He gave a swift prayer that he would play well as she began the second verse, tucked the violin between his chin and right collar, positioned the bow in his left hand over the strings, and began to play a descant over her melody.

Franz was unaware of the picture he presented to the audience. Their other friends had dressed in attire that was normal for musicians of the day: knee britches/culottes, waistcoats, long coats with large sleeve cuffs over it all, embroidery with brass thread that in the evening's light looked to be gold, and much lace at sleeve and collar openings.

In contrast, Franz was dressed in long trousers, much like the styles worn by the up-timers, such as Admiral Simpson. They were black velvet, and looked very well indeed. He had wanted a coat out of the same material, but the black was so costly and so difficult to acquire that his jacket had instead been made out of the same royal blue velvet of which Marla's dress was made. And it was a jacket; rather short-waisted, instead of the long-tailed coat that was the rule here and now. Marla in her Empire dress and he in his trousers, jacket and short hair presented to the audience a glimpse of the future. The portrait was most striking.

The descant repeated over the third verse, then Marla dropped out for an interlude. Franz played the verse melody solo over Hermann's soft accompaniment. He poured his heart into the simple music, letting his violin sing.

Once the interlude was over, Marla sang the next two verses with Franz's descant, but when the final verse began, both he and Hermann ceased playing, and Marla sang a capella.

"Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht!

Hirten erst kundgemacht

Durch der Engel Alleluja,

Tont es laut bei Ferne und Nah:

Jesus der Retter ist da!

Jesus der Retter ist da!"

Marla held the last note for a moment longer than strictly called for, letting it resonate within the room. As it died away, the audience burst into applause. Franz gave a thankful prayer, and grinned in relief-he'd done it! He'd played his part, simple though it was, flawlessly. All of the challenges had been surpassed, all of the work had paid off, all of his fears had proved groundless. He now knew, without a doubt, he would once again be the musician he had been before the attack that crippled his left hand.

He looked to Marla and saw that brilliant smile again. She held out her hand to him. He stepped to her, joined hands, and they took a bow together. Then he stepped back once more and pointed to her, focusing everyone's attention on her, which let him escape. When he stepped behind the screen, Isaac, Josef and Rudolf all pounced on him, clapping his shoulder, pumping his hand, and hissing congratulations to him. He reveled in it for a moment, then hushed them as the applause out front began to die down. Gesturing to them that they should slip out again, he laid the violin and bow down, sat and leaned his head against the back of the wall. The final piece of the night was about to happen, and he didn't want to share that with anyone.

Hermann began the familiar introduction of the oh-so-beautiful Schubert song, and Franz was taken back in time twelve months, to last year's Christmas concert at the Methodist church in Grantville. This time, knowing what to expect, as soon as Marla began to sing, he was transported.

"Ave Maria!

Gratia plena, Maria,

Gratia plena, Maria,

Gratia plena.

Ave, Ave!

Dominus, Dominus tecum,

Benedicta tu in mulieribus,

Et benedictus,

Et benedictus fructus ventris,

Ventris tui, Jesus."

Hearing Marla sing, it was as if Franz was lifted out of his body. Even more than last year, he felt that he stood before the very throne of God, hearing what could only be described as the voice of an angel. Tears ran down his face. If this was what Mary had heard so many, many years ago, then she was indeed blessed among women. After what seemed to be an eternity, the song came to an end as Marla sang the final Ave Maria! and Hermann finished the last few measures of accompaniment.

If the earlier hushes in the hall had been notable, what followed now was nothing less than remarkable. For the longest time, there was no sound: no applause, no movement, no coughing, no rustling-nothing. Franz began to worry and stood to put his eye against the crack between the dividers to see what was going on. Just as he did so, he saw one of the seated nobles stand to his feet and begin applauding. Within a moment, everyone in the room had followed suit. The storm of applause that followed seemed to have the walls of the hall bulging. He even thought he heard some muted cheering.

Franz stepped back and looked past the end of the screen, to see Marla giving bow after bow and motioning for Hermann to stand and take a bow. Recalling what his next responsibility was, Franz wiped his face and scrambled around behind the chair to find the long package that he had secreted there earlier. He unwrapped it and smiled at the bright colors. About to walk out from behind the screen, he stopped short and felt in the pocket of his jacket. Finding the expected lump, he squared his shoulders, and stepped out.

The applause seemed to be almost a physical force once he was out from behind the screen. He walked over to Marla, and as she turned to him he presented her with what appeared to be a long stemmed rose. She stared at it in amazement-December was not a month to expect roses, especially in Magdeburg-but reached out and took it anyway. Once her fingers touched it, she began to laugh, as Franz's little joke was revealed. Unable to find flowers, he had found a brass smith who had created him a rose in brass, which he had then enameled in the red and green of a true rose. She turned and lifted the "rose" above her head. The audience's laughter joined hers, even as they continued to applaud.

Mary watched, tears in her eyes, clapping and whistling for all she was worth as Marla acknowledged the applause of the elite audience. Her protege's career was well-founded now, even assured, with this reception.

Just then Franz dropped to one knee, and Mary had to be very stern with herself to keep from laughing or cheering. The applause died away as everyone wondered what would occur next. Those behind the front rows craned to see. Franz took Marla's left hand in his, reached into his pocket and removed something that he slipped on her ring finger. Marla gasped, and would have dropped her "rose" if Hermann had not come up behind her and taken it from her. She pressed her right hand against her mouth, staring at the ring on her hand. Those in the front row were close enough to see the tears that began to roll down her flushed cheeks. Cheers erupted from the back of the room as she reached down and pulled Franz to his feet, only to then engulf him in a fierce embrace and a most passionate kiss, right there in front of the princess, who was grinning and clapping again.

"I think he got it right," Mary said to no one in particular.

Finally all the noise died down, and Marla and Franz slowly circled the room, accepting compliments and congratulations from all. Marla was bearing her "rose" as if it were a scepter, which it perhaps was on this evening of triumph. Mary was close enough to hear the conversation when two Italian gentlemen finally approached.

"Signora Linder," Girolamo Zenti began, obviously moved, "I have not the words in English to compliment you as you deserve. I do not have the words even in l'Italiano to say it. Semplicemente magnifica. Belissima."

He stopped, obviously at a loss, only to be nudged by his companion. "Introduce me, lout," was hissed at him, and he jerked.

"Perdonarme, Signorina Linder," he said. "May I present to you Signor Andrea Abati of Rome, a most well known singer and famous musician, an acquaintance of both myself and Maestro Carissimi."

Abati elbowed him aside, almost rudely, only to say expansively, "Signorina, I congratulate you on your magnificent performance." Marla blinked at hearing a soprano as clear as her own coming from what appeared to be a man. "I have been singing for twenty-four years now as un gentilhuomo, and tonight I have heard that which, for the first time, made me wish that I had been born a woman. You were not, perhaps, perfect," Marla's eyes started to cloud over, and Franz began to bristle. The Italian hurried on to say, "But, only one of great experience, such as myself," theatrically laying a hand on his breast, "could possibly have noticed the tiny flaws." He took her hand in his, and smiled, "No, signorina, as I understand, this was your first concert such as this, and it was remarkable." He placed a hand over his breast again, and bowed to her. Marla's expression eased, and Franz stepped back.

"Now," Abati exclaimed, "Girolamo, you must help me find quarters here in Magdeburg. I will be staying for some time."

"But… but Andrea," the other man stuttered, "what of your trip to Brandenburg? What of the fees and acclaim you would earn?"

"Bah! Mere money, mere noise!" Abati drew himself up, flung a hand in Marla's direction. "Here, here is art! What is more, it is new art, art that I, Il Prosperino, will become a part of, will take to new heights. Here is new music I must learn, here are deserving pupils I can teach." He abandoned his theatrical posture, and laid a hand on Zenti's shoulder. "After all, Girolamo," he said in that disconcerting soprano tone, "you were the one who told me that the future of music was here in Germany. After tonight, I believe you, and I would be a part of it."

The two Italians made their farewells and walked off together, talking volubly and, on the part of Abati, gesturing flamboyantly.

Mary stepped up to the couple and took both their hands. "Well done, both of you."

"Thank you," Marla replied. She was beginning to droop a little as the adrenaline of the evening drained from her, but her smile was still the brilliant light that Franz loved. Franz said nothing, just nodded.

"Now," Mary said, "you have a taste of what the future could be. Do you still want it?"

Marla looked over at Franz. They both smiled and joined hands. "Now more than ever."

Ellis Island

Russ Rittgers

"Jeez, but it's cold out here," Wade Threlkeld said to Elizabeth Biermann, flapping his arms and stomping his feet next to the large bonfire that late January 1632 night. Their week-long assignment was to keep the fire in this mountain pass large so that all travelers coming to Grantville from outside would be attracted to it. Once there, they would be put into the old barn, fed and then held until one of the immigration medical staff could check them over. A few small bouts with typhus and now the entire community was wary of newcomers until they'd been cleared.

"Ja, but at least we have the fire," she confirmed, secure in her unbelievably warm army clothes and well-made insulated boots. Small and dark, her face was cold but her hands and feet stayed warm as long as she kept using them. The small family who'd come shortly after dark last night was only the third set of "immigrants" they'd seen this week.

"You know what this place is?" Wade asked.

"Ja. It is your Ellis Island. You tell me this every day," she grumbled. Ellis Island, the Gateway to America before the Ring of Fire. The Island of Tears as well because ten percent of the people who'd made it that far were sent back to their country of origin, mostly for medical reasons, Wade had told her. Fortunately, that didn't happen here. But they could be quarantined until their health cleared.

Elizabeth hadn't needed to worry about that. She'd been christened Elzhbieta Piwowska, one of the camp followers at the Battle of the Crapper six months earlier. When she'd gotten the opportunity to join the army, she had, changing her name to one which had about the same meaning and whose sound was comfortable in the mouth of Americans. She'd known and respected Gretchen, but Julie Sims was her role model. Vibrant, athletic and a dead shot.

Elizabeth had a lot of men she'd like to touch on the opposing side of a battlefield. Yes, reach out and touch a few mercenaries from a couple hundred yards away. Touching as in removing his brains from his head. Or better yet, a couple feet lower. She knew she'd never find the ones responsible for killing the rest of her family and raping her four years ago, but she'd take substitutes. She'd very reluctantly become a camp follower to a different group of mercenaries. One of them had lost her in a card game to Adam a year ago. Of course, what was left of Adam was now fertilizing a field outside Bamburg, she thought with quiet satisfaction.

Father Mazzare said it was not healthy to dwell on the past. Nor was it healthy to plan your future around making someone else's death. So each time she went to confession, she told him of her sins and he gave her penance. She wouldn't think along those lines again until she next picked up her rifle. Her smooth, sleek, steel-barreled rifle, capable of… Stop, she thought. You can't even remember their faces anymore. A moment later she looked away from the fire and into the darkness, imagining looking down the sights from a concealed position at some oncoming mercenaries… Line up the shot, breathe smoothly, slowly and squeeze…

"Hey, Lizbeth," Wade interrupted her fantasy. "Where did you say that last family was from?"

Elizabeth wasn't out here on a mountain pass next to a huge fire because she was a good shot. She was here because she could speak four different German dialects as well as Polish. "From a town called Lositz. The Swedes, mercenaries, they claim, burned their town before Christmas and they've been traveling from town to town since then. When they heard there was food and jobs in Grantville, they took a chance and went through the mountains. As usual, they have nothing but needs," she bitterly commented, her mouth tight. It wasn't a new story. Only the point of origin and the destroying army had changed.

"Lighten up, Lizbeth. I haven't seen a single one coming through the pass who was a, a mercenary or b, someone who wanted to just sit on his butt. Lots of solid citizens in the making."

"Hmpf," she grumped. "Increase the fire," she told the younger soldier. That he'd actually do it came as a revelation four weeks ago. They were both privates, he a 1631 graduate from Grantville High, technically senior to her. She, well, she was three years older than him. Back in the old days… She shook her head and smiled as she watched him. America has it better.

Wade threw four more chunks of dry split wood on the fire. "Don't think we're going to get any more business tonight," he said, taking off his gloves to warm his hands directly on the fire.

Elizabeth walked away from the fire in the moonlight to the edge of the clearing and looked to the south at the white snow. Had there been a dark spot to the left of those trees earlier? "Wade, komm hier!"

"Papa, I'm cold," Drina complained, her six year-old hands, feet and legs bundled in pieces of an old blanket sewn together. Her teeth were chattering as she followed her father and older brother on the trail they'd broken through the snow.

Three weeks ago her mother had died of illness in the village where they lived. It had taken Drina's papa two days to dig her grave. That night he told Joshua and her that the next day they were leaving the farm and going to find somewhere to live, somewhere the soldiers would not find them. Somewhere the memories would not hurt.

So, with all the possessions they could carry on their backs, the family began moving carefully. They rarely traveled by the day even if it was warmer, reasoning that soldiers would be able to see them from a distance and at night, they would see the soldiers' campfires and avoid them. But mostly they traveled the trails high in the Thuringian forest.

"We're all cold, Drina," her eleven-year-old brother briefly turned his head to say. Joshua wore an old coat of his father's covering his own clothing and like Drina, his hands were covered by mittens sewn together by his father two weeks ago. Also like her, he had outer trousers made from old woolen blankets.

"Quiet, you two," Papa said, breaking the trail in the snow between the trees. "There are real wolves out here who'd like nothing better than to eat you. Not to mention the human wolves who are even worse."

That was as much as Papa had said at one time while walking on the trail in the past two days, Drina thought. He was stumbling and was leaning on Joshua more and more often. They'd ground, boiled and eaten the last of their wheat a week ago. Before stopping each day, they set snares to catch rabbits and twice they had. They boiled it up with some grass and herbs in the small pot Papa carried. The last was three days ago and since then they had passed by two devastated villages.

Papa had gone down into the villages looking for food, coming back empty-handed the first time and with a freshly killed dog yesterday morning. "It's food," he said briefly, silencing any opposition. "It had been tied up. It was starving but still alive. Better than the pigs the wolves fed on." Drina didn't understand but Joshua shuddered.

"Did I tell you about Grantville?" Papa asked for the third time today, picking up Drina for a moment as Joshua took the lead. "I heard all about it when we were at that town a little over a week ago. The one where the bad man wanted to touch you, Drina."

He'd only put his hand on her shoulder but she'd cried out immediately. Papa turned quickly and hit the man with his shovel. She didn't know why the man had touched her but he shouldn't have. That's why they left that town.

"People in that town claimed that Grantville, no, it's not a French town, was populated by witches and wizards. Then I talked to a man from there who called himself an American. Grantville is filled with magic, he said, the good kind. Lights everywhere, machines that do the work of hundreds, all at your fingertips. Even carriages that didn't need horses. I asked about the streets of silver and he just laughed. Not silver, just black tar with stones in it. He said the people there are just like everyone else but each and every one went to school for ten or twelve years! They were all older than Joshua when they stopped, he said. Can you imagine? And it doesn't matter what your religion is, Catholic, Protestant or Jew, he said. All are equally welcome. That's where we're going."

Papa put Drina down again. "Come on, we've got to catch up with Joshua," he said, taking her hand. "Grantville can't be far now. Probably just on the other side of that pass."

Half an hour later Drina stumbled in the darkness and would have fallen if Papa hadn't grabbed her. "Just a little farther, darling. It's bound to be just over there. All we have to do is go up this pass and then down. Then you'll be warm and fed. Just a little farther," Papa said, breathing heavily in the cold mountain air.

Shortly after that, Papa stumbled and fell. "Papa!" Joshua looked back to see his father come slowly to his hands and knees, Drina standing next to him.

"Look, Papa," Joshua came back to him. "It's just over the hill. Not much farther now," he desperately urged. But Papa was slow to rise. The moon was out now and Joshua could see the hollows in his father's bearded cheeks. Suddenly he felt guilty for having taken that last piece of boiled dog. He knew it had been Papa's but he'd been so hungry.

"I'm exhausted, Joshua." Papa spoke slowly with great effort. "We'll stop here for the night. Build a back wall before we make a fire. It'll help hide the light from any soldiers. We'll sleep until afternoon and then go through the pass. Grantville has to be on the other side."

"But Papa, we don't have any food to eat," Joshua protested. "You'll just be weaker when you wake up."

"I'll be weaker but I'll be rested. So will your sister. We'll make it easily tomorrow," Papa answered, not really seeing him. "Go to the top of the pass and find Grantville. There will be lights, many bright lights, far more than any town or village you can imagine. The people, men and women will be happy to see us and we'll be safe. Go, Joshua and I'll keep your sister warm inside my arms."

Joshua knelt down, hugged and kissed his sister before rising and kissing his father on the cheeks. "I'll be back soon, I promise." His father hugged him and then turned to begin building a bank for shelter and to reflect the heat of the fire.

The boy looked toward the pass and, using the hoe as his hiking stick, steadily began moving forward.

"Found him passed out and he looks half-starved. Hope he doesn't have bad frostbite." Wade had carried the burden on his shoulder into the small cabin heated by a pot-bellied stove. He rolled the boy down onto one of the two bare cots. It wasn't the first time he'd brought in people unable to take the last few steps.

"This one looks much more than half-starved," Elizabeth grunted. "Here, let me see if he will take a little of this warm broth. Come on, open your lips and let this warm you up inside," she crooned in German, putting the spoon to his mouth. The boy's lips twitched and unconsciously sucked in the nourishment.

"Mama," he muttered.

"Not quite. But with a lot of rest and feeding up you'll probably live."

"Ever the optimist, aren't you, Lizbeth?" Wade looked over her shoulder at the boy.

The boy's eyes popped open. "Papa, Drina! Where are they?"

"Shit!" Elizabeth muttered in English. "He has family out there." Then switching to German, "This man behind me and I will find them and bring them here. Is it just the two of them or are more with you?"

"No, only two. Only Papa and Drina." He struggled to get up but Elizabeth stopped him with a hand on his thin chest. "We will find them and bring them here. You drink this broth and rest. We will bring them."

"Is Grantville?" the boy asked, looking around the small room.

"This is Grantville," Wade responded. "The city is not far. We will find your family. We will bring them here."

"Grantville." He sighed and laid back, relaxing into a sleep.

"If he was the strongest, God help his father and sister," Elizabeth said, quickly dipping broth from the kettle into an insulated flask. "We will follow his trail back. Put on snowshoes and grab some blankets."

"Teach your grandma to suck eggs," Wade muttered inaudibly as he strapped on snowshoes. Damn bossy women! Only reason he…

It was midmorning when the light shining through the single window in the small cabin hit Joshua's eyelids and woke him. Drina's small dark head was visible in the cot opposite his.

"Awake, are you?" Elizabeth's feet were propped up and her chair tipped back in the corner of the room where she'd been dozing. She'd kept watch outside alone from midnight until dawn while Wade slept. Now Wade was on watch. She pushed a chamber pot towards Joshua with her boot. "Use this or go outside. Doesn't matter much up here but down in the city, well, you'll see the difference."

"But where's Papa?"

Elizabeth sighed and shook her head. "He didn't make it. We found your sister wrapped in his arms and the blanket that should have gone around both of them was doubled across her. It was a very loving thing he did for her. Just for the record, what was his name?"

"Moses. Moses Amramsohn," Joshua answered and began sobbing.

Two days later, the sky was a bright blue and the morning sun reflected off the snow into Wade's eyes. He stood with his arms folded next to the much shorter Elizabeth as they watched Joshua and Drina walk with the medic down the hill. "The folks at the synagogue will take them in."

Wade took a breath and put his arm over her shoulders. "Going to America wasn't always easy," he slowly began. "Back when I was growing up you'd see reports of Haitians drowning, trying to cross a few miles of ocean to get to America. Chinese dying in cargo containers and Mexicans dying of thirst in the desert, all for the chance of a better life, mostly for their kids. The first generation of people coming in illegally generally had it really hard."

He lightly gripped Elizabeth's shoulder and she looked up at him. After a short pause she said, "Our reliefs are coming up this afternoon for their week at the fire. I want a long shower, clean clothes, food I do not have to make and four large beers. What do you think?"

Wade bent over, kissed her at the hairline and shook his head. "Two beers. You fall asleep after three."

Malungu Seed

Jonathan Cresswell-Jones

A telephone rang in the seventeenth century.

Nearly three years after his adopted town had changed times and changed a world, James Nichols heard an interruption, not a miracle. He laid aside a handful of Leahy Medical Center charts, reaching past his study's desk-clutter to the phone. "Yes?"

"Good morning, Herr Doctor, it's Margritte. There is a man here, a new arrival, who wishes to see you."

His Thuringian-born receptionist was cheerful, efficient, trilingual, and possessed of a voice that could melt men like taffy. Nichols' own German was serviceable and attractive-perhaps, to crows; he stayed with English. "Margritte, I have rounds this afternoon at the center. I am working on a public health plan for next spring…" He suppressed the edge that wanted to creep into his voice. His heart knew that he was sitting in an empty house shuffling paper, while Melissa was a king's prisoner in London. In his own time, that distance meant an hour's flight; here, a month of storms and bandits.

"You know you must not call me-very much not call me at home-for every refugee and, and, carpetbagger that has a speech for me. That is what the bureaucracy is for. You must deal with it just as I do. You deal with it better than I do." He grabbed left-handed at a sliding chart, caught it.

"I apologize, Herr Doctor. But he wears the robes of a Jesuit, and this man… well, he looks like you. And so rarely have I seen a man who looks like you."

Nichols stared blankly at the chart he held. The white paper stood out sharply around the creased ebony skin of his thumb, cracked and rough from a surgeon's hygiene; as stark a contrast as his own color within this town, this province-this entire United States of Europe.

So rarely have I seen a man who looks like you.

"Herr Doctor?"

He thought of the half-hour walk to the center, its noisy offices, the urgent to-do lists: Translate appendectomy procedure notes. Find paper clips. Stop bubonic plague.

"Margritte," he said slowly, "you must almost never call me at home. Or bring anyone here to meet with me. I think this is one of the times you should do both." He set the chart down.

"To your house? Like a fine guest? He is only a traveler, Herr Doctor-a lay Jesuit, not a Father. He arrived with no ceremony at all! That coachman with the beard brought him in; Heinrich, that is, the fellow who married my second cousin in the summer, after…"

Nichols let his gaze drift across the study-formerly a living room, but the house wasn't large and his workload and cobbled-together library had swamped it. Borrowed books in a borrowed house; all that he'd once owned had been left in twentieth-century Chicago when the world changed. An ember popped in the fireplace, the only sound in silence. His daughter's hand-copied paramedic certificate hung over the mantel; Sharon was in Venice, stagnant lethal Venice, as far away as Melissa in London. Two travelers in foreign lands, with no safe home as he had.

"There's room," he said softly. "Plenty of room."

At the second knock, Nichols cracked the door onto freezing air and two backlit figures.

Margritte nodded. "Herr Doctor." Beside her genial bulk, a taller, thinner man hunched in a tightly-wrapped coarse robe, probably once black but faded now to a scuffed brown lighter than Nichols' own complexion. October sun was not kind to him; that complexion showed chalky highlights where strong features shaped, sharp-cut shadows. The dark, bloodshot eyes seemed calm enough, intently focused, but something in them…

Nichols' greatest pride-when he had time for pride-was that Grantville hadn't seen a refugee with that look for a year; they'd done that much good, at least. He'd seen thousands of eyes in 1631 and '32 with what he'd learned to call in his own time, in Vietnam, a thousand-yard stare. Not every wound hurt the body.

The traveler waited with stoic patience, robe ruffled in the wind. Nichols realized something belatedly. "I speak an inferior Latin," he said. "Physician's knowledge."

Hesitating a moment while he clearly parsed the words, the traveler inclined his head towards Nichols; a crucifix glinted in his robe at the motion. "Guten tag, Herr Doctor," he said in a soft-accented rumble. "Matthias Mbandi, via Asuncion. Sprechen sie Deutsch?"

"Ah. Yes. Yes, I do." Nichols blinked. "Is that his?"

Margritte hefted the satchel. "Yes, Herr Doctor. I have checked it, there are only clothes and a bag of spices. Is there anything I may help you with here?"

Nichols knew from experience that Margritte's gifts included a love of gossiping over anyone not actually a patient. He couldn't help taking a harder look at the stranger, at Mbandi, checking shoulders and stance and hands; his own hands were chipped with marks much older than incessant scrubbing, older than his time in the Marines. Ten, fifteen years younger than himself, probably. Longer reach-but worn thinner than his robe. Mbandi returned the gaze without fear or challenge; Nichols eased to a smile, nodded, and glanced over. "No, thank you. I will see you at the center, and I will telephone if I need arrangements."

"Ah." Her eyes cut sideways to the thin stranger. "Well, if you are certain-"

Nichols' smile widened. The seventeenth century was a dangerous place at times, but assassins generally tried to blend in. "Here," he said, and took the satchel. "Now, please, at least one of us should be working. Thank you."

He gestured Mbandi inside and closed the door, plunging the hallway into dimness. "Through to that room," he said, hooking a hand toward the study. "Please, go to the fire, for the warmth. Ah, tea?"

"No, thank you," said Mbandi; but in the study, he stood against the mantel close enough to singe his robe. Another man's face might have dissolved into bliss. His did not.

Nichols dropped the satchel on his desk, then sat behind the cluttered surface, half-amused at doing so. The doctor is IN. He remembered early days as a physician, the occasional doubt or hostility, the whisper to the receptionist-maybe someone else, ma'am, with you know, more experience? He hardly needed to impress himself on a man who'd come-

"How far did you say? Asuncion. Is that in Spain?"

Mbandi looked up from clasped hands-for warmth, Nichols saw, not piety. "No, it is across the great Atlantic. Six days up the river Parana from Buenos Aires."

"Jesus H.-" Mindful of the robe, Nichols bit off the rest. "That is very, very far."

"It is. I crossed that ocean once before." He smiled as sharply as Nichols had earlier. "I liked it better this time. I could see."

In his mind, Nichols shoved aside the charts and papers. "You are a courier, then?"

"No, I carry no letters. Only, something far more important. Ah-" The traveler set himself in a formal stance. "Father Ruiz Montoya of Asuncion sends greetings to the famous Moorish physician of the United States of Europe, the 'medical-doctor' James Nichols. It is his understanding that in your time, it is known what will succeed in ours, and what will fail. The work he has given his life to-" Mbandi hesitated in his clearly memorized speech "-the reducciones, the Jesuit missions, of Guaraya-the security and happiness of so many-this is now known to fail. The communal ways of living he practiced among the Guarani Indians, and that others are said to twist into such misery in later centuries, cannot survive. Their enemies will inevitably destroy them. And so the Company of Jesus has decided, with wise logic, to cease those ways. The Guarani missions will close and the fathers be recalled to where their efforts will bear fruit."

Something twisted in Mbandi's expression. "Father Montoya cannot convince the father general that this is wrong. Or that-that his enemies, the paulistas, raiders of the missions, can be stopped. Can, sometimes, be saved. Or that there is hope and will beyond logic.

"Therefore, he will depart from the Company, and remain with the Guarani to aid them as he might. He has only a few years before his body will fail, but his spirit will not… Others are staying with him, choosing between their oaths and their dreams. His last hope, which failed him, he now wishes to pass freely to you."

Nichols concentrated on following the archaic German, and quashed the flicker of cynicism: No one gives anything for free, in this century or any other.

"Years ago, when word from your books first went through the Company, Father Montoya sent Father Gustav-" Mbandi smiled at that name "-to try to gain something which your time has shown to succeed. In the Apolo region of the Viceroyalty of Peru, near the mines of Potosi, grows a certain tree whose bark has the highest property of curing fevers-"

"Quinine?" said Nichols, jerking upright in his chair. "You, you speaking are-" he floundered a moment "-are speaking of quinine?"

"Yes, what is, will be, called cinchona roja. The bark from which a true febrifuge can be made."

Nichols stared at the fat satchel. "Cinchona bark?" Jesus H. Christ, there must be ten pounds of it.

He looked back to Mbandi in astonishment, and new respect. There'd been solicitors enough before; Grantville, an alien pocket of future lore, drew them like a lodestone. Princes and courtiers, spies and merchants, and never a one of them could offer Nichols what he wanted. Clean your cities, inoculate your people. Stop the plagues and the dying. Even in the midst of what up-time records called the Thirty Years' War, humans couldn't kill each other as fast as pathogens could. And quinine worked, even if it didn't cure. The dose wasn't large, this would be enough to…

On the heels of surprise, dull realization settled in, a medical official's mindset trumping a doctor's. Not enough. Not for the coming summer. Malaria was widespread, even through much of Europe; it killed popes in Rome, kings in Spain, merchants in Venice-Sharon!-even Oliver Cromwell, supposedly, although perhaps now they'd never know. The Jesuit's Bark that could treat it traveled in small quantities like this-exotic, expensive, like the contents of the glass jar Balthazar Abrabanel kept under lock in his apothecary.

"No, not the bark," said Mbandi hastily. "Although there is a little. Father Montoya offers, offers…" He shrugged aside his recitation and took two hasty steps to the desk and his satchel, opened the buckles and dumped out an oilskin bag. Tugged at the lacings-

"Father Montoya offers seeds."

Nestled in the oilskin was a shifting mass as dark and fine as pepper.

"He has said that there are fifty thousand in this bag, and also in this other. Each seed may grow one tree, to provide bark for years. I am to be giving one bag to you, Herr Doctor, so that you may find your own places to plant them-not here, but in warm countries." He gave a belated shiver.

"Fifty thousand," marveled Nichols. He felt a shiver of his own. "And the other bag?"

"I will take that to Africa," said Mbandi with infinite calm. "I will go wherever I can, and wherever the soil is right, and the slope, the air and the rainfall-I will plant them, five in a cross, as the cascarillos, bark-hunters, learned from the fathers. And I will go on again. This is what Father Montoya has asked of me, and I will do it."

Nichols absorbed this for a few moments. It stunned him with its scope, but… He lifted a hand. "Who is this Montoya? You said he was the provincial, the senior Jesuit in the region? What is his interest in quinine-why was he there at all?"

"He is a great man," Mbandi said sincerely. "He founded the mission at Lareto more than twenty years ago. At first it was only to teach Christian ways to the Guarani, the Indians near the Parana River…"

Nichols' patient questions-and an atlas from the shelf-pieced together the account. In what would become Uruguay and Argentina in Nichols' own time, a handful of Jesuit missions had themselves become pockets of communal society ever since 1609: Willingly organized, wisely ruled, and humane beyond anything else in this time, it seemed. Thousands of Guarani dwelt there without lords or kings; prospered; learned the catechism in their own tongue. "There was even an orchestra at San Mini," murmured Mbandi with wistful pride.

The coming of the up-timers changed all that in a year's time: both at the missions, and far away in Peru.

"Some books told of cinchona, the bark that cured fevers." Mbandi shrugged. "Who could tell what bark it was exactly? But all who heard came down upon the viceroyalty of Peru, hungry for bark worth a fortune for each quintal's weight." Government agents, adventurers, brigands, men who would be kings; a locust-swarm, seeking their feast. Many bark-cutters would have none of it; they claimed the cinchona as their own. Others fobbed off any bark as cinchona, and laughed at the joke with a pocketful of gold. All was chaos.

"And Father Montoya?"

Ruiz Montoya's great leap was to do what he had always done: to help those about him, and let them make their own choice. After a deadly flurry of attacks on the most vulnerable missions, those closest to Brazil, there was no choice but to retreat to the city of Asuncion; but Montoya spared an effort, and a man, to a new quest. He sent Father Gustav-Mbandi again seemed wistful at the name-to do what he could among the bark-cutters in Apolo. "While Father Montoya organized a desperate retreat of twelve thousand people-hundreds of miles down a river's falls and rapids, with paulista raiders snapping at their heels-Father Gustav befriended a cascarillo in dire straits, promised him sanctuary, and earned the gathered treasure of a secret hillside's cinchona roja. His name was Mamani, his loyalty unswerving, and he accompanied the Jesuit back to Asuncion with his great gift, determined to follow him forever.

"Father Gustav was my own guide to the faith for eleven years," explained Mbandi. "It was he who taught me German, and a little Latin like yours."

Father Montoya, rejoicing, sent this Mamani to look about Asuncion and the missions upriver, find a place where the cinchona might grow. He knew of the up-time texts that condemned the missions, and the debate at Rome as to their fate; his hope was that by offering a valuable crop, he might stave off the inevitable decision, even give the Guarani a prosperity all their own. His hope was soon destroyed. Cinchona would not grow at the missions.

"Too low-the land must be much higher. Too wet a soil, too thick a jungle." Mbandi shook his head slowly. "Upriver, far upriver, perhaps-but that is Brazil highlands, a few days' march from Sao Paulo, where the paulista bandits make their nest. No mission could survive there without guns and aid from Portugal and the Company, and no aid would come. In another time, it did, at Father Montoya's own appeal, and the missions lived another one hundred fifty years-but not in this time."

A lot of things won't happen this time, Nichols wished to say against this gentle accusation. Did they tell you of the dictator with the mustache? Either one? Instead he said, "These paulistas-they seem very…" Savage? That was a disturbing word; he fumbled for another. "Angry. Fierce. Why-oh, no matter. You would not know."

"But I do," said Mbandi. "I was one of them myself. That is how I came to know Father Gustav, and was saved."

Nichols sat back carefully. "Okay," he muttered. "Ah… Mbandi, you will need to tell me something that I have been wanting to know of, to know, from when I saw you. How did you come to be in a Jesuit mission in-in Uruguay? Were you born in Brazil, or…"

"I was born in Ndongo, a kingdom in the Malanje highlands. That is perhaps ten days' march inland from Luanda, the colony town of Portugal. Less by river."

"In Africa? In… Hold on," muttered Nichols in distracted English, flipping the atlas' pages from one continent to another. "Ah… Luanda's still there… will still be there… Jesus!" He looked up. "You're Angolan?"

"Ngola means 'ruler' in the Kimbundu tongue." Mbandi smiled thinly. "The Portuguese called us all rulers, then? That is a bad way to treat one's king, how they treated us."

He spoke absently, his eyes on the open atlas, as they hadn't been before. Nichols turned the book about and slid it slightly across the desk. "Show me where?"

"I do not know these names." Mbandi peered down at Central Africa. "But the rivers… Here, the Lukala. My father fought a great battle there in his youth, when we gained independence from Kongo and a kingdom of our own. And the Kwanza-there I fought my battle, the year of our Lord 1619, against the Portuguese and their Imbangala mercenaries. He won his battle, and I lost mine."

"You were a warrior?" asked Nichols neutrally.

Mbandi grinned. "A farmer, as he was. Even farmers fight when there is need… My soba called us, and we came, and fought. And lost. He was killed, they say, along with many other sobas, and the city fell the next day; great Kabasa overrun and the kingdom lost with it, the king himself long fled. I was already marching west in a coffle."

Nichols set his face. "To a ship?"

"Yes. They baptized us there, at Luanda port, so that the ones who died aboard ship would find grace. I cannot say if that was a wrong thing… but the ship itself was a very wrong place, very hard, and some did die. I lived to see Brazil, and that too was a wrong place." He shivered again, glanced down, relaxed. "There are many strange names here."

"Yes." Nichols pointed. "English, French names for countries. Lines on a map, most of them… What happened to your city happened almost everywhere. The Belgians-here. The Germans-here. The French-here, here, and all through here. They brought-will bring-trade goods, and take away human beings, until all this-" He spanned a hand over the subcontinent "-is bled half to death."

"Yes. This is what Father Montoya wishes to stop."

Nichols blinked. "Stop the slave trade? Why does he want that?"

"Why should not any good man? But all things are one, to such a man as he is. He sees the links of them. The great chain of misery." Mbandi set his face in stillness. "I am such a link. In Brazil, I was angry when the work-drivers hurt me, afraid I might be killed. I fled into the jungle, full of my anger and fear, and nearly starved on the journey. To Sao Paolo, the paulistas' kingdom. I joined them. I did… many bad things, to prove myself, to survive. I did not care who suffered them."

A Chicago alley surfaced in Nichols' mind, jolt of a pistol butt gripped in his hand as he whipped a weeping juvie's face to blood; a boy no older than he was. Blackstone, baby! You fuckin' well know Rangers own this turf! He drew a breath. "Yes-I understand, I think. You hit back. Anyone will do, sometimes."

"We marched west. To Lareto and San Mini, the strange black-robes and their Guarani cattle. Good wealth to be taken…"

"Gold?"

"Guarani," said Mbandi bleakly. "For slaves. They fetched much money in Brazil… So many of us were Christian, though, that we did not harm the fathers-only taunted them, sometimes pricked them with our spears. They went on, unafraid. Father Gustav gave a sermon while we raided. I came to mock… and stayed, to hear. I could not run away from fear in the deepest jungle, but this man could stand against it, and calm others too. Our loot was nothing next to that… The following day I slipped away from the march back to Sao Paolo, and sought out Father Gustav. He blessed me and took me in." Mbandi touched a hand to his crucifix. "This is his own. After eleven years, it is a great gift, but not so great as what he gave me then. A new life, a good life."

"Different boot, same kick up the ass," muttered Nichols in English. He grinned momentarily. "Mine was a Marine high-top, and damn did it hurt…"

"But I was only one. There were thousands more taken from my homeland, from elsewhere, each year to Brazil, and each year more ran as I had." Mbandi beat his palm gently on the desktop. "Captive-slave-runaway-paulista. You see, then, the chain? Two years ago the paulistas came in great numbers, drove us downriver, smashed the missions, took many slaves. The Company of Jesus believes that they have defeated us forever. And so my journey here began."

He hesitated. "Father Montoya might have sent Father Gustav. He spoke Spanish and Latin very well, and a little English, and he… he had chosen to fight for the Guarani, like Father Montoya. But I am of the Malanje highlands. I know that ground, and the mountains farther east. I speak many Bantu dialects, some Kiswahili, and the Mandinga trade tongue. And… it was guessed that I might be of some interest to you, Herr Doctor."

Nichols grinned. "That was true."

"But… it was hard, to leave him there. Very hard. Perhaps in a few years more, he might have ordained me as a member of the Company. He was my confessor, my friend."

"And he had already taught you German, you said."

"Yes. Words come easily to me, since boyhood. I learned many dialects to speak with the different kijiko at the capital, when raising crops."

"What are kijiko?"

"King's laborers. We would say 'kinder,' I think."

"You use children to take in harvests?"

"No-not small child. Law-child, dependent. Captives from battle."

"POWs?"

Mbandi shrugged. "I do not know that word."

"I suppose you wouldn't…" Nichols tasted the next word, found it bitter, spoke it anyway. "Slaves?"

"No. That is what I was, in Brazil. My father would not treat another man like that, nor would I. Nor even the worst of our kings."

"But he owned men, you are saying. You owned men."

"The king's tendala did. I owned only their work." Mbandi spread his palms on the desktop. "Herr Doctor, you have not farmed? No? The beans do not grow themselves. It needs skill and work. He who has the decisions must have the, the…"

"Ownership?"

"The ownership, yes, for a plot larger than I may tend as my own."

"You can own the land, without owning the men!"

"No, we cannot. That is strange to me. Everywhere, here, there are barricades-fences," he said in puzzlement. "Holding in nothing but empty fields… Land is land. A man takes what no one else is using, grows what he needs. That, he owns. And what his kijiko grow, he owns through them…"

"Okay. Look." Nichols pushed back from the desk, crossed his arms. "Just tell me what you want, Mbandi, what you came here for."

"I have angered you," said the traveler slowly, straightening. "I did not wish to. As I said, I have done bad things, but only when others have hurt me. And it is Father Montoya's wishes I speak of."

"It doesn't matter. Hell, German POWs raised Allied crops during WWII…" Nichols realized he was muttering in English again. "So. No matter. Father Montoya wishes to stop the slave trade, you say. But quinine will make it easier for Europeans, Arabs, anyone to go into Africa and take them. In this time, diseases are weapons. You would disarm a continent."

"He has two ways of logic. Firstly… of numbers. We speak of young men here. Slave-takers-Portuguese or Imbangala, no matter-may only take whom they defeat. As the coastal states weaken, they will lose more battles like mine, and fight among themselves to survive. More defeats, more captives. More kijiko… Yet many more young men die from the fevers than die in fighting-even in Ndongo highlands-and many, many in Brazil, or the sugar islands. Fewer of us from Africa die when taken there, and so we are more of value as slaves. If quinine becomes common, cheap, then the fighters will not die, the workers will not die."

"I see," said Nichols. He rubbed at his chin, reflecting that malaria killed without regard to skin color-thousands of Europeans, but millions of Africans. No good having a guard dog that rips out your own throat. "There are other fevers quinine does not treat… but those may be reduced by good water, or proper treatment of wastes. So not the same… rate of replacement."

"Secondly, of men. For any man outside of Africa, to go there is a bad risk. Many die of fevers. So-if it is dangerous to go to Africa, then only dangerous men will go. Only the greatest wealth can draw them, and they value no one's life, even their own. If they risk so much, they want much; wealth that walks on its feet. With quinine, better men may go without the bad risk, and trade in kinder ways. We have much to trade: Hausa gold, fine steel from Sudan. Ivory, pepper, Mandinga cloth. In a few years, quinine…" He shrugged. "In Kabasa, we too had an orchestra. There will be others. We may trade in ways of life, not the taking of it."

Nichols nodded slowly. "Father Montoya is… wise. And what of you? Why do you do this-will you go home, then, to Ndongo? Settle there when you are done with the seeds?"

Mbandi looked away, to the far wall, and far past it. "I cannot go home. There has been word through the Company, from Luanda. A new king in Kabasa palace, set there by Portugal. The true king is long dead. His sister, Nzinga, fought on for years from islands in the Kalandongo River, gained allies, seized another land's throne. Now she is queen of Matamba, kingdom to the east, riding on spears back into Ndongo. There will be more kijiko. The saying is 'the victors eat the country.' No one will talk of seeds there, with killing to do and wealth that walks. I cannot go home." He shifted, looked down to Nichols. "I think it is the same with you, Herr Doctor? We have a Kimbundu word: malungu, a fellow-traveler on a ship that will never return. You and I, we are malungu. It is not the distance. Men may cross any distance. It is the changes… the time."

"Yes," said Nichols. He reached out and gently closed the atlas, smoothed the spine.

"I do this for Father Gustav." Mbandi blew out a hard breath. "This is his crucifix. This is his robe. You asked what I wanted. Only what Father Montoya wants-your help.

"I cannot make men grow these cinchonas. It needs years, nearly as many as a man's to grow of age. I cannot keep them growing after I move on, when another man may come and raise another crop; cannot ask a family to squat on a jungle slope and wait. People must live… And it is dangerous in places. If there are Imbangala about, I must hire them as guards or face them as enemies."

"You need gold, then," said Nichols.

"Yes. Beads, if you have fine ones. Good iron nails. Horses."

"A fifteen-year supply of trade goods? That will take time," said Nichols. "Months, perhaps. Governments move slowly. No matter. There will be much to talk about while you wait."

Mbandi blinked. "But-No, Herr Doctor. There is very little time, and I have lost much of it already. Winter is colder each day. The harbors will freeze, the winter storms will close in. I must leave within ten days at most, or I will lose half a year; and I do not know how many years I have."

Nichols nodded slowly, thinking a moment of rats and fleas. "None of us do… But if we cannot decide in that time?"

"Then I must leave without help, and do what I can."

"Very well. You must tell me exactly-" Nichols glanced aside at the thump of the door knocker. "Busy day. Excuse me." He rose, made his way to the front door, opened it.

"Good afternoon, Dr. Nichols."

Nichols recognized the creased face and well-pressed cassock immediately. "Hello, Father, I wasn't expecting you."

Father Kircher pursed his lips and made a whooshing sound. "No one expects the Grantish Inquisition," he cackled.

"Oh, for-" Nichols leaned against the wall for a moment to gather his strength. "Who showed you that?"

"Heinzerling, of course."

"Of course… Seriously, how did you know so fast?"

"Of your visitor?" Father Kircher smiled benevolently, shifted to German. "Ah, Herr Doctor, by that darling girl whom I shall one day steal away from your wearying service, and place in my own-that is, the Company's. At a higher wage, too."

"Margritte. Figures." Nichols stayed with stubborn English. "I'll double your offer, Father."

"Generous, but can you afford such?"

"Sure, I'll dock half her pay for gossiping. Come on, he's in here." Nichols gestured the Jesuit past him in the hallway, swung shut the door, and hurried after, brushing past Kircher into the study. "Mbandi! This is Father Kircher, one of our Jesuit priests. If you would…"

He checked words and step alike as he caught sight of Mbandi's face: startlement, even fear, and then hardening, a man locking down his emotions. Caught off guard, or just caught? he thought an instant; then-"Father Kircher, this is Matthias Mbandi. He has just arrived from South America." Nichols knew Kircher well enough to afford Mbandi the courtesy of not saying, "claims to have just arrived." The Jesuit would frame the statement as such from logic if nothing else.

Mbandi lifted his chin slightly. "Good day, Father."

Kircher inclined his head. "It's considered an honor to welcome a procurator," he replied, adding with another nod to Nichols: "Ah, a Jesuit provincial representative, sent to report and negotiate in Rome… It's never been my privilege before."

"I have not come to report," said Mbandi. "To protest, perhaps. Or to testify… There will be no more procurators from Uruguay province. Nor a father-provincial to send them. Father Montoya may perhaps already be dead."

Kircher's smile dissolved. "What has happened?"

"Father Montoya has left the Company. There was a letter I was to have-" He shook his head. "No matter. You must believe me when I say that Father Montoya will have no further dealings with those who have abandoned him and his people. I thank you for the welcome, but I cannot accept it either. I, too, have renounced the Company. I will walk the world alone."

"If what you say-" Kircher paused, visibly shifting his thoughts from Jesuitical strategy to the human scale of a weary, wary man; Nichols warmed to him for it. "Matthias, many who study to become full Jesuits never succeed in their lifetimes, and some who do, fail in a task, and are punished-but there is no casting out. There is room in God's service for all. If you have come so far, in such urgency, then do not fear anything at the end of your journey. I am offering no punishments."

"Again, I thank you. But while I may yet fail in my task, I do not leave because of failure… not because of my failure, or Father Montoya's. Because of our abandonment. I will serve man, and God, upon my own, with more loyalty than I have seen offered to him and me. If you had seen-"

"Matthias! This is wrongful!"

"-if you had seen, when San Ignacio fell, when, when the paulistas began herding together their cattle-"

"Mbandi," broke in Nichols. "He does not know. You may tell him what you told me."

The traveler collected himself. "I-Of course. When we received the orders to withdraw…" He sketched the events much more bluntly than he had when speaking to Nichols, either from urgency or from no need to convince-or to sway. He finished, leaving three men standing silent in the room for a time, while the fire chuckled to them.

Kircher broke the silence first. "Your letters and your money were stolen. What was not?"

"The burden I will carry now."

"Cinchona seeds," said Nichols. "A large quantity."

"That would require a large effort… Did you gather them yourself, Mbandi?"

The traveler set his face. "That was Father Gustav's work, and Father Montoya's gift. To the United States of Europe, in hope of assistance. And to Africa, merely in hope."

Father Kircher visibly weighed his next words before he spoke them. "That is the act of a generous and good man. But it is also that of a provincial of the Company, serving its authority-and subject to it. As you state you were when you took up this burden."

"Do you claim the seeds for the Jesuits, then, Father?" said Nichols, keeping his own voice calm.

"No. That is not my place-and this man is your guest, Doctor. But I must raise the subject. In fact, there is a great deal to decide here, and you will agree that is more than may be judged by a medical official. Nor, thankfully, by myself."

"You intend to refer to the superior? Isn't he attending in Rome?"

"I believe this is a matter not for God, but for Caesar," said Kircher dryly. "President Piazza, in this case… Matthias, know that you are welcome at the Company dwelling. Please know that, always."

The traveler bowed silently; Kircher turned away and rustled from the room.

"He will appeal to the ruler here, then?" said Mbandi after the door had closed. "To this president?" At Nichols' nod, he hunched. "We should hurry, if you know a quicker way. The first to speak in a dispute is often the victor."

"With some men, yes." Nichols sighed. "Not this one. It will not be an… official meeting. And you are exhausted. You may rest here; I will summon Margritte to keep company with you."

"I should be there," said Mbandi.

"You will truly not speak with Father Kircher?"

"I have renounced the Company," repeated Mbandi, as though stating the obvious.

"Do you realize how this will appear to anyone judging a… dispute?"

The traveler shrugged. "Appearances are no concern to me."

"Trust me; it would be a concern to this president." Nichols deliberately sat at his desk again, and reached across it. "We have some little while. Would you like to see the atlas again?"

"Ed, it's phenomenal. There's a whole other Thirty Years' War going on in Angola!" Nichols turned in his pacing as he spoke. "1624 to 1658, civil war, raiding, treaties broken like pie crust. Nzinga becomes queen, eventually, and cuts some deals with the Portuguese. It doesn't end well. Nothing really did there…"

He turned again. Seated at the upstairs taproom's single table, Governor Ed Piazza watched him steadily. A mug of small beer rested beside him, untouched; the location had been chosen to make this meeting as unofficial as possible, not for the beverages. His slight slump wasn't inattention; a Croat musket-ball had smashed ribs and a shoulder blade, two years ago, as he defended the high school he'd once been principal of.

"But look what the Dutch did in Java! A pound of seeds that an English botanist got to them, and in a few years they had plantations of cinchona. Hundreds of thousands of trees. And there's places all over Africa with mountain rain forests. Zaire, Cameroon, Tanzania, Rwanda. You remember our Rwanda, Ed? Jesus, what if we could stop that four hundred years in advance? Or keep Leopold's butchers out of the Congo?"

Governor Piazza nodded. "It would be a hell of a thing to be able to do, yes." He was a small thin-faced man; smaller behind a coarse-planked table. Pain had whittled down his features during a convalescence extended by work. His lips were often pinched, as they were now-as they'd been when Nichols dug a flattened chunk of lead out of him, sharing half an ampoule of morphine with another casualty. He'd offered Piazza the bullet as a keepsake. No, Doctor. Trophies are for sports.

"And with our half, maybe we can beat the Dutch to Java. Or trade it to them for something. Who cares, as long as the stuff gets grown cheap enough? Montoya's a goddamn genius."

Piazza glanced to this right, where Father Kircher sat. "Jesuits have a reputation for being… thoughtful. No question there. But, James-in this time, a thoughtful man will give his courier a letter, to back him up and confirm the details. Parchment. Seals. Something official. Did this man bring a letter of some kind?"

Nichols' enthusiasm faded. "Well, no. He told me about that-Montoya wrote several letters for him to bring, but he got sick in Lisbon, and some bastard stole his purse. Money, letters, all gone, but they didn't think anything of a bag of seeds."

"I see. And, Father, you aren't yet able to confirm if he's even a Jesuit, that's correct?"

The priest quirked a smile. "You mean, a secret handshake? I'm afraid not. It will take some time to contact Rome and obtain the routine reports from that province."

"More than ten days, I'm guessing."

"Yes." Kircher turned a palm upward. "They might show his name, if nothing else. I am sure that if I spoke to him at length, it would become clear if he had been even a lay brother… but he declines."

Nichols shifted on his feet. "We've established why he does. I doubt he'll change his mind, either."

"Well, that's possible. I've known stubborn folk before." Perhaps it was coincidence that Piazza held Nichols' eye at that moment. "If his story is true, he'll need to be stubborn… But these letters bother me. He had them long enough to memorize-then at the last stop of the trip, they're gone."

"It is possible," said Kircher, "that-with no offense to you, Doctor-that this man calling himself Mbandi has intercepted a genuine courier, robbed him, and wishes to take a great gamble to gain great wealth."

Nichols frowned. If they risk much, they want much. "But then he would have the letters, the proof, anyway."

"Any such letter would describe the bearer in detail-appearance, scars, and so forth. Would this man have visible scars?"

Nichols nodded grimly. "I'd guarantee it."

"Then an imposter could not use them." Kircher sat back slightly, closing the logical loop.

"It'd be one hell of a coincidence that an imposter would be black, though. Maybe in South America it wouldn't, but to travel all the way here is a long way to go for any payoff."

"True enough…" Piazza tented his fingers. "Here's the thing, James. When I was in the State Department, we had one spice trader turn up who claimed he'd spotted Prester John's balloon over Ethiopia. He wanted one of our aircraft to fly there, to force it down so he could interrogate the crew and find the lost kingdom's riches. He'd split it evenly with us, of course-that was only fair, since we would provide the aircraft."

Nichols couldn't help a grin. "You sent Harry to talk to him, right?"

"Yeah. He bounced a few times on his way out."

"Not a real bright sales pitch. No balloons yet."

"Poetry travels, it seems." Piazza cracked a brief smile. "We tend to forget that while at first we only saw down-timers through our history books, now a lot of them only see us through our books, or a garbled version of them… James, there's a word I need to use. It's not a nice word."

Nichols tensed. "I've heard 'em all."

"Mountebank."

"Ouch." He tried to smile. "They got some nasty ones here. Yeah, I'll say it too-con man."

"A lot of people want our help, and a lot of them need it; some don't. When I was a principal, it was kids. In State they were princes; now they're traders. But some things never change, and a con man always tells you what he thinks you want to hear. James, by now half the world knows who you are, and has an idea what you want." Ed turned up one palm. "I suppose now's where you suggest that maybe I don't believe him because he's black?"

"I guess so," said Nichols dryly. "And then you say that I'm too eager to believe him because he's black." It was hard to argue with Piazza in some ways; he was too damn calm.

"Glad we got that out of the way, then. I think he's impressed the hell out of you, but not because of that."

"He said some things would have sounded better if he had lied, but with our books, we could check everything, so he didn't bother. Very, ah, Jesuitical."

"Yeah." Piazza sighed. "Were there battles at Kabasa in 1619? Yes, I think we can check that. Was a farmer named Mbandi captured by the Portuguese there? James, even history books about Europe don't name foot soldiers. We can't see that closely. Although, maybe…" He looked to Kircher; the priest shook his head.

"Okay, but are you suggesting he knows that? How could he know exactly what information we're missing?"

"Probably not," Piazza conceded. "But he can guess that we can't confirm the seeds either."

"Oh, shit. Why not?" Nichols blinked. "And how would he-"

"It sounds like everyone's blundering around Peru with no idea just what to look for. Therefore, we probably don't know. Because anyone who got the information about cinchona existing at all would not have stopped looking until they got everything of ours that they could."

"Ed, were you a Jesuit?"

"You'd be surprised how smart high school kids can be. Some were bigger than me, I had to outthink them… But, no, we can't verify these seeds. I've seen the crop species lists-even Stone's stuff. I'll check with Willie Ray at the Grange to be certain, but you said there's dozens of species even of this one kind of tree, and most are useless for quinine, right? It's just birdseed to us." Piazza added without smiling, "We could set up a greenhouse and plant samples. Might get a testable result in ten years."

"Great. I can be a gardener when I retire. Does it matter? What do we have to lose?"

"Reputation, for one. Mountebanks don't exactly keep low profiles. You've read Kipling? 'And Danny fell, and he fell…' If this country of, ah…"

"Ndongo."

"Right, Ndongo, if it's in a state of civil war, we could be sending a rogue into it with enough wealth to seriously affect things. He could just be a failed bark-cutter who'd like to be a king, or make one-or break one. We're not about to start busting up Africa ourselves… Or he could be perfectly sincere-right now-but change his mind in six months."

"Or he could be straight up, and we could save millions of lives. Ed, I know the hurry looks suspicious, but I understand it. Time costs lives, a lot of them."

Father Kircher cleared his throat. "I agree. While I cannot speak for the father general, I do know that your people and ours share many goals, and I truly believe that if these seeds are to be used in this manner, this beneficence, then it will not divide us. But the risk is serious, and we must be certain. The goals of the long term take precedence."

"As they just did in South America?"

"I have given this some thought, Doctor. From the account, and reports I have seen, the upriver missions in Uruguay have become impossible to defend against slaving raids. In your time, support was given by the king of Portugal that helped to drive off the attacks, make the region safe for more than a century. Here, it will not be given."

"You could have tried," said Nichols.

"We did." Kircher smiled slightly at Nichols' surprise, and turned to the governor. "The will was the same as in your time, although with 'foresight' we moved a little faster… King Philip-or, more to the point, the conde de Olivares who 'advises' him-has refused any aid to a society that follows the laws of communism. He has read of this monstrous force of history, and it terrifies him." Kircher met Nichols' eye. "In your time, it was Father Montoya himself who made the successful appeal as procurator to Philip, some years from now. It would be a terrible irony if his own choice to leave the Company has deprived it of such a convincing voice."

"Never mind that. From the sound of it, nobody could persuade him. Was he really that frightened?"

"Every ruler is frightened, James," said Piazza. "But if they lose to us, they retire. If they lose to revolution, they'll get hanged. Or worse. Our histories are their horror stories… Father, since you can't get support, what is the Company's intention?"

"If we continue to develop the upriver missions," said Kircher relentlessly, "we will only stock the larder for hungry slave-raiders, by bringing together many Guarani where they may easily be attacked. And God is patient. We must be so as well. If, instead, we make efforts to resist the slave trade from outside-perhaps, in time, with Philip's help, and with that of the USE-we can do far more good in the long term." He folded his hands. "Father Montoya became too entangled in his own situation to understand this larger need."

"I can understand his take on it," rasped Nichols. "Look. I'm not a Jesuit either, and I don't care shit for politics. This is a way to fight disease, and I will be damned if I don't make use-"

Governor Piazza lifted a hand. "Okay, hold it. Didn't one private expedition already go off to another continent last year, looking for rubber and pitching malaria treatments on the side?"

Nichols blew out a hard breath. "Dieter was carrying artemisia. Different drug, different cultivation, different economics-if artemisinin production gears up here, it's not likely people in Africa can afford it, just like in our time. If we had an opportunity to make another cheap antibiotic, would you tell me to just be happy with chloramphenicol?"

"It works," said Pizza neutrally.

"Until something becomes resistant to it, yes. Monocultures are vulnerable. Ask Willie Ray."

Piazza nodded. Willie Ray had been a small farmer through much of the twentieth century-which meant that he'd lost a biological war that Cargill and Monsanto Inc. had won. "Point taken. But that bunch also gave us time to think it over properly. Ten days? I'm responsible to my council; there's no secret budget I can tap. Mike could, or Rebecca, but they're not here."

"No black funds. Huh. Kind of ironic." Nichols tried to match Piazza's coolness. "There's a lot at stake here. You've heard me rant on epidemics before, but this could be a big, big leverage against slavery in the New World-more than making nice with kings and counts. A lethal place means you send disposable people there-it's not cruelty, just, just fucking economics. Hell, we've got German people poor and desperate enough to emigrate to the West Indies and cut sugar cane for pay-if it's not a death sentence."

"I understand Mike's position on the slave trade very well," said Piazza. "It's already under way, but the big numbers aren't happening yet, and we can't project power very far. Yet. When we're ready, we are going to destroy it, though-no question. There aren't many things we could feel good about exterminating, but this is one… And I hardly need to ask your position, James."

"Ah. Well. It's not really that simple, for me."

Piazza showed actual surprise. "How can you say that?"

"I'm a complicated man, Ed. Y'know, like Shaft." Nichols grinned emptily as he finally hit a cultural reference that Father Kircher drew a blank upon. "I hate disease. I hate pain and suffering and what human beings do to each other when they're allowed to own people. But who I am, what I am, it isn't going to happen anymore. I'm so glad, some ways, thinking that Sharon will grow up where people who look like us don't get shot forty-one times reaching for our wallets… but part of what America was came from Africa. Good parts. Mbandi won't be the first black Jesuit, but an American would've been. Blood typing. Heh-blood, all right. One hell of a lot of Purple Hearts, from Fort Wagner to the Gulf. It meant something.

"The whole civil rights struggle that made Melissa what she is-King, Malcolm X. Won't happen. Sojourner Truth won't happen. Gospel. Jazz. Half the music of the twentieth century won't. Who's gonna inspire Elvis, for God's sake?"

"I could live without rap," offered Piazza.

"Don't dis yo' timeline… Hell, even the language won't be the same. We'll all sound like ruddy Englishmen or something." Nichols sobered. "It gets worse. Look where they sent me as a Marine. Like you said, soon we can 'project power.' I got projected into Khe Sanh because we had a medical corps that could keep me from catching the galloping crud. Everyone'll get quinine in a while, and learn how to dig latrines properly. English redcoats in India? Richelieu's musketeers in China? The world won't play nice because we tell it to."

"I understand. But we may not always play nice ourselves. My apologies, Father, if I speak a little bluntly here?" Kircher nodded. "Well, this gift of seeds is… Generous isn't the word. It could be worth, what, billions in the long run. And Montoya may be a defecting Jesuit, but he's still thinking like one. That's one hell of a bribe, James, and if I take it, that will oblige Mike to honor it when he gets back-oblige the USE to do something, and you bet Montoya knows it. And that's a long way off to send anyone to do something, not just up some river in Europe…

"I'm an honest politician-have to stay bribed. I need to know, James, I need your final word on this."

Nichols swallowed. "How soon?"

"Can you get any information over the next ten days that you don't already have?"

"… No."

"Then very soon."

"I am sorry that he will not speak to me," said Father Kircher as he wrapped his cloak against the outside chill. "I suppose it is best if I do not accompany you back. You do understand, Doctor-the seeds are yours to make use of."

Nichols huffed out a cloud of breath. "You're sure of that?"

"I am certain of it. Are you certain of what to do with them?"

Kircher's eyes were mild, but it was an effort to meet them, and too great an effort to lie. "No."

"I believe you know your heart in the matter, though."

"I don't practice medicine with my heart, Father. There's no room for that. But to lose a year…" He trailed off, looking down the street at a running figure. It waved jerkily.

"Herr Doctor!"

"And to think I was about to run into her arms," murmured Kircher; then he stiffened. "Something is wrong."

Margritte all but staggered up to them. "Herr Doctor, the traveler! He is sick, he is very sick! You must come!"

"Shit." Nichols looked around, but no one was nearby enough to overhear. "Come on, and keep your voice down. Could-"

Father Kircher touched his arm, halting him. "I will come, if I may."

Nichols looked at him, hesitated, nodded. "Yeah, you already know. Hurry, then."

"James!"

He turned. Piazza stood in the doorway. "Don't run. People will see you."

"Ah. Right. Thanks, Ed-I'll call you when I find out what's going on."

Colder now than the air could make him, Nichols marched stiffly back to his house with Kircher and Margritte a step behind, nodding at the few passers-by; waved the others in, slammed the door.

"In here!" cried Margritte from the study. The atlas lay splayed on the desk; Mbandi sprawled in the armchair by the fire, shivering violently enough to see from across the room.

Nichols examined him with hasty care; dry skin, obvious chills. "He has not been sick of the stomach?"

"No, Herr Doctor."

Pulse fast and thready. No blue tinge under the fingernails-Wait. "You said you were ill in Lisbon. On the journey. You were ill again two weeks after that, weren't you?'

Mbandi nodded through the shivering. "It began this way, as well. The cold, such cold-then the heat. Dry, then wet."

Nichols counted backward for incubation. "About a month to cross the Atlantic… Buenos Aires, then. You were infected there by an insect bite, a mosquito. God damn it, you already have malaria!"

He choked off self-directed anger at missing the signs. The hell with thousand-yard stares; he'd not noticed the jaundiced yellow of the eyes themselves. "We cannot bring you to Leahy Center. They will see a strange man with a disease, and…" Belatedly realizing something, he turned.

Margritte had flattened herself against the wall, her face slumped white with shock. "Malaria," she said. "The air-fever, Jesus God in Heaven. I touched him, I touched his belongings."

Father Kircher gestured toward her. "Calm yourself-"

Nichols overrode him. "Margritte, listen. Listen, please! You have nothing to fear. This disease only moves from one person to another by the, ah, the bite of an insect that cannot live in cold air, or in clothing. It cannot hurt you. Look." He reached and took a fistful of coarse brown robe, gripped it-tried not to think of typhus, or another parasite that any traveler might really be carrying. "He is badly sick, but he cannot make you sick, or anyone else. I promise you this." He stared at Margritte, holding her gaze.

"Very well, Herr Doctor." Margritte straightened, swallowed hard, then nodded. "If you say it is safe, then I know it is so."

Nichols glanced back to Kircher. The Jesuit met his eye, tilted his own head silently. Nichols could read the gesture easily enough: Yes, the reputation works.

"Good," he said absently. "Then you may care for him, here, to help me. Please put at least two pots of water on to boil… Father, if you could drag that couch over here." Don't need to quarantine Mbandi, but we sure-hell need to quarantine any gossip.

"Herr Doctor?" said Margritte on a rising note; but she smoothed her dress and strode into the hallway, only slightly veering her step around the traveler; the patient, now. Once her shock wore off and Margritte reclassified him as such, she'd be safe to return to her desk and its telephone.

"Is that necessary?" asked Kircher quietly as he crossed the room.

"No. It never is. Although usually it is the men who need to be kept occupied…" He turned to the traveler beside him. "We will make for you in comfort here, until you are again well. Do not be afraid. I do not have any way to treat the malaria itself, but there are powerful medicines to cool your fever, and we can give you water through a small tube, to… what is it?"

He followed Mbandi's eyes to the satchel on his desk. "Oh, no. That is not tested-"

"It is my only test left," hissed Mbandi through chattering teeth. "My only proof. No letters, no sig-signet ring, no Father Gustav to, to, to speak for me. Let this speak for me, then. It is the true cinchona roja; it will cure me."

"But if you are wrong, and I do not treat you as I should with my medicines, you could die." Falciparium, by the recurrence period. Twenty percent mortality in healthy adults, let alone in him. Jesus.

"All men die." Mbandi's eyes clenched shut. "Father Gustav will die, in my place, because Father Montoya sent me away instead. I know this. I cannot fail him."

"I took an oath…" whispered Nichols. Furniture groaned over the floor behind him, almost silencing his voice.

"All the fathers took oath as well. To the pope himself, in person, to obey his word. Those who saw what must be done, t-they broke it. I ask you, break yours this one time. Let me prove myself and my task. Please."

Nichols rose slowly, walked to his desk. He looked from the telephone to the satchel, and back; from the twentieth century to the seventeenth, aspirin and IVs to unknown quinine. The atlas was crumpled across Central Africa, he saw as he picked it up; sighed, and slammed it shut.

"Help me get him on the couch," he rasped to Kircher. "Then we need to grind up a handful of this bark he has brought, and make an infusion."

The dry chills lasted for five hours; the first infusion, cautiously gauged at thirty grains of an unknown powder's strength, did nothing. As the windows darkened, Mbandi's shudders faded to lassitude-and his temperature began to rise.

"I don't know how long this crap takes to work," muttered Nichols, as Father Kircher poured another cup infused from sixty grains. "Or if it works at all." He slipped the thermometer from Mbandi's slack jaws. "One-oh-three and a bit. God damn it…"

"Keep trying," mumbled the traveler. His skin was as glossy and hot as a kettle. "Remember, I have lived through this before."

"Yes, and each time it's been tearing up your liver." Nichols had to steady his head as he drank. He'd doused the study lights long before; firelight and lamplight were gentler.

Two more hours. One-oh-four. Nichols picked up the phone, gripped it tightly; set it down. "Everything I do does harm," he muttered. "Always did. Come on, you fucking lunatic, you better be right or I'll kill you myself."

One-oh-five, and Mbandi began to babble snatches of words, his eyes no longer tracking. German. "Loreto, it's fallen." Spanish. "Paulista, este non hombre-este perro." Fragments of African dialects. His hands fretted at the blanket's edges, as though they could piece the words into sense. Sometimes, when he glimpsed Nichols' face above his own, he cried out in joy, spoke rapid tongues that sounded a continent away. "Malanje-"

Still the fever did not break. For another hour, Nichols sat slump-armed in the armchair, listening to garbled pain and joy and history. Is this how they saw us, these glimpses? Prester John's balloon, all right. But the fever did not break, did not break…

"A hundred and twenty grains, Father. This is the last try."

Kircher's thick fingers rasped the bark into powder, timeless in the firelight; steeped it into a glass of hot water. "It is no easy thing to clash with an oath, for some men," he said as the red tinge spread through the liquid. "I still believe-aside from my duty-that Father-Provincial Montoya was wrong in his choice. But I would not wish to have been in his place."

"Do you think I'm breaking mine? Because I'm afraid to decide?"

"I think," said Kircher slowly, "that man is making a very brave choice, and you are the instrument of it… and this too requires courage. You will know soon enough. Come, this is ready, is it not?"

Mbandi focused long enough to gulp the liquid, sighed "Cinchona roja, Mamani," and closed his eyes in sunken sockets.

Old in the ways of healing, Nichols took a meal in the kitchen, exchanged quiet words with an equally tired Kircher, and rested a while. He'd matched his strength against disease before, knew to husband it. In a weary predawn hour, he walked back into the dimness, the frail form on the couch; cradled the fire-hot head for the thermometer's test.

One-oh-three.

"Well," said Nichols softly. Beside him, Father Kircher murmured something-not English, not German, but Latin. He laid his own hand upon Mbandi's forehead a moment, and withdrew it. "Go, then," he said more strongly in German. "And may God go with you."

He turned away without another word.

Mbandi's eyes flickered, opened, fixed on Nichols' own. "Malungu. Kamerade," he said in a slur of German and-Kimbundu, was it? "Malungu, there is for us, no home behind. Only ahead. Seeds, across oceans. Malungu seeds."

Thin new-fallen snow crackled under Nichols' steps, frozen grass beneath. The knife-edged arc of the Ring of Fire had eroded to a gentle slope here, a good walk southeast of Grantville, a displaced circle knitting slowly with its surroundings. He looked back over fallow fields and thought of hoof prints leading west, toward Lisbon and a long voyage south. "Do you think it'll work?" he asked.

Ed Piazza shrugged inside his parka-carefully, when cold made the old wound ache. "Don't ask me now. I did this on your word, remember."

"Yeah. I don't doubt him-I might not be able to outthink a Jesuit, but I know he wasn't lying or faking, not half-cooked like that. Another hour and I'd have filled him with aspirin. Winter journeys are a bitch-must have triggered the relapse."

"Ah," said Piazza. "About that. I talked to Margritte for a while-"

"Hang on. I figured something out this morning. Amazing what sleep will do… Mbandi said that Father Gustav would 'die in his place.' " Nichols shortened his stride to climb the slope. "Let me play Jesuit for a second. Assume that the Jesuits got everything they could from us about their own history, and that Montoya gets a good part of that relayed to him as a provincial father. He knows he will ordain Mbandi in a few more years… but he sees that in our history, no black Jesuit appears until Healy in 1850."

Piazza sighed. "I get it. If Mbandi died fighting at the missions before he was ordained, then he disappeared from history. Down in the grain, just another foot soldier who changed sides."

They both paused at the crest. "Right," said Nichols, trying not to puff. I'm not old, just need four hundred years to catch my breath. "Maybe that got to Montoya after a while. So he sent Mbandi away, broke the timeline-and somehow Mbandi found out, or figured it out. That's hard on a man-because you always feel relief first. Always." He stared at the horizon as he spoke, a thousand yards away; hearing the burr of a mortar fragment flying past his own ear, the impact into another man's flesh, the instant's thought: Thank the Lord it was him and not me.

"No wonder he tried so hard to convince me, then, is it? No letters, no proof. Just the sickness he was carrying himself, and the bark to cure it."

Piazza stuffed his hands in his coat pockets. "Well-as I said, I talked to Margritte, and she mentioned something that seemed peculiar. She was chatting with the coachman who'd driven Mbandi into town, and the coachman said this 'schwartzenjesuit' was riding on the roof the whole last day in; no coat, no robe, just shirtsleeves. In that terrible cold! The guy said he could practically hear the Jesuit's teeth chattering over the noise of the coach wheels. Now, tell me what that was about."

Nichols closed his eyes for a moment, smiled. "Oh, I can tell you. He wanted to make sure." He shook his head ruefully, kicked a clot of frozen earth loose. "Damn! You see? No letters, no backing from the Company-more likely the opposite-and everyone knows Jesuits are tricksy, right? How could we trust him? But nobody lies through a high fever-so he tried to bring one on, kick-start the 'quartan fever.' No logic games, just humanity. Not many'd take that sort of chance, just to save a year." His smile faded. "Of course, he knew that he doesn't have that many years, carrying falciparium. Not many like him around. Not many malungu. One less, now." That leaves just about one.

"I should get back," said Piazza. "You can freeze yourself like him if you want… But this 'malungu' thing. It sounded familiar, so I checked. Anyone told you about the Gowens, that family owned a farm a bit north of the Ring?"

"No. What's the point? I sure can't meet 'em now."

"They called themselves Melungeons-mixed-race, bit of everything; Indian, European… African. Angolan."

He nodded to Nichols' stare. "Yeah. That was the story, anyway. A lot of folks around here know it. When the Portuguese hit Angola, and started shipping people to Brazil, English privateers hit them along the way. Captured some slavers and took them into the Virginia colony to sell off."

"To sell," said Nichols flatly. "Not just the ships, then. The people got sold too."

"Into indentured labor, just like everyone else without money, white or black. But, James-after a few years, they were free. And no Jim Crow laws yet, no real racism until the eighteenth century. They bought land, married whomever they liked-they settled."

"Do you think it's true?"

"Maybe." Piazza shrugged. "Bob Gowen used to claim he was part Turk, for God's sake. We'll never know. Still… I think it was 1620," he added thoughtfully. "Ought to be raising the next generation about now. Sure sounds like African-Americans to me. If not them, it'll be someone else; even oceans don't hold out forever. Maybe some of those kids hear about a famous foreign 'Moorish physician' now and then, hey?"

"Well. That's… something." Nichols stared back toward Grantville's steam plumes. Seeds, across oceans.

Piazza shivered, stamped his feet. "C'mon, malungu, let's go home. We've got work to do."

Trials

Jay Robison

The young woman put her hands together in front of her chest, as if praying. The stone-faced prison guard wove the cords of the sibille around the thumbs of her joined hands. The guard held onto the whipcords, ready to tighten them.

She looked at the man who had caused her so much pain, both physical and emotional. He looked back. Was the sneer on his face real or imagined? She looked down again at her hands; it would be a small thing to endure if she could inflict pain in equal measure on the man whom she now confronted.

The judge asked her, "Is what you have said in your prior examination true?"

The cord tightened. Pain.

"It is true."

"Is the confirmation you have given here today the truth?"

Tighter now. More pain. The young woman steeled herself. She would be damned if she would cry out.

"It is true!"

The cord tightened yet again. The pain was nearly unbearable.

"It is true, it is true, it is true, everything I said!"

Artemisia Gentileschi awoke, sweating, to daylight and a concerned servant. She rubbed her thumbs, massaging away phantom pain and pushing the memory back down inside her mind. It took her a moment to realize where she was: in Rome, staying in the palazzo of Cassiano dal Pozzo, a friend and patron. She was sweating and didn't know if it was the June heat.

"Are you all right, Maestra Gentileschi?" the young woman asked. She held a bowl of water.

"I am fine. I will have breakfast after I get dressed."

The servant curtsied and left the water on a table. Artemisia rose from bed to wash her face. Her eyes fell on the letter lying on her bedside table and the news it contained. Her father, Orazio, was dead.

It had taken six months for the letter to come via agents of her patron, King Philip IV of Spain. His Most Catholic Majesty was currently an ally of England in the League of Ostend. Due to the war threatening to engulf half of Europe, communication with England was anything but quick. Six months for Artemisia to find out that her father had succumbed to plague.

Artemisia splashed cool water on her face, hoping to wash away her grief with the sweat. The sweat, at least, was cleansed. The grief remained, as well as the old memories it dredged up. She finished dressing, had breakfast, and a carriage took her to the Church of San Matteo, where Galileo's hearing was to be held.

Galileo was the reason she was even in Rome in the summer. He was an old friend, and it had pained her deeply that she had been unable to do anything for him. She was living in Naples, far from where he was being held; she had no money she could give him and no influence she could exert on his behalf. She had written him a few letters but wasn't sure if he'd ever gotten them; she'd had no response.

When Artemisia heard that Galileo was being brought to Rome to stand before the Holy Office-a de facto trial if not an official one-she decided the least she could do was to come to Rome and, if possible, be present in the church where the hearing would be held. She didn't know if Galileo would even know she was there, but at least there would be one friendly face among the spectators.

At least, she reflected as she stood in line with other noble parties, she would be able to sit in a pew rather than stand. Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the Holy Father's favorite sculptor, had made the arrangements. Artemisia couldn't help thinking, somewhat sourly, that it was another favor she owed the man. Almost two years before, he had made arrangements for her oldest daughter, Prudentia, to travel to Grantville in the company of Giulio Mazzarini. Gian Lorenzo would, Artemisia knew, collect on his favors in due time.

As the English might say, "In for a penny, in for a pound." For Artemisia, the benefits received from a favor had to outweigh the inevitable obligations to be incurred in asking for the favor. In this case the benefits were worth it. Because supporting Galileo was not the only reason Artemisia had for wanting to be present at the hearing. She wanted to see Father Lawrence Mazzare for herself. Prudentia had written many times of his kindness; the Grantville priest had helped make satisfactory living arrangements for her daughter, and he had never asked for anything in return. Artemisia hoped to meet the American priest and thank him personally if possible.

Finally, she was let into the church. Crowded as San Matteo's was, it was cooler than standing in the street. She looked around; everyone seemed to be whispering and pointing at a nobleman in very fancy cavaliere dress and the stout priest seated with him. They were sitting not far away. The whisperers were saying something about them being Polish, but to Artemisia-who'd dealt with several agents of King Charles of England-the cavaliere had the look of a Scotsman. Still, with as many mercenaries as were on the loose these days, who could tell? Artemisia was tempted to ask them herself, but they looked distracted.

Then the hearing started. Like every one else around her, Artemisia was completely unprepared for what happened next.

She came out of San Matteo's in shock, along with most of the other bystanders. The strange cavaliere, it turned out, was not Polish but (as she had suspected) a Scotsman in the service of the United States of Europe. Artemisia, being long familiar with the politics of Rome, had no doubt that the implications of a Scots Calvinist being willing to exchange his life for the pope's would be a topic of endless conversation for the foreseeable future. The cavaliere-Lennox, his name was; he was an officer rather than a knight-had not, in fact, been killed. His cuirass had stopped the ball from the pistol of the holy father's would-be assassin. The truth was spectacular enough, but Artemisia had no doubt that before long, half of Rome would be claiming to have personally witnessed a legion of angels defending the pope against the demon servants of Lucifer (in human guise as heretical fanatics) while the holy father miraculously brought Captain Lennox back from the dead and made him see the folly of his Calvinist ways.

Artemisia herself could hardly get back to her rooms at dal Pozzo's quickly enough. The first order of business was to send a letter to Father Mazzare. She knew from what friends had told her where the American was staying; she wrote a brief note expressing to Father Mazzare her desire to meet him, in order to thank him personally for his kindness to Prudentia. As soon as a servant was dispatched to deliver the letter, Artemisia hurried to a room that had been set aside for her to work. She had to sketch.

She knew there would be hundreds, thousands, of depictions of what had just transpired at the Church of San Matteo. Works would be commissioned, and many more artists would complete works in hopes of selling them and getting noticed by the pope himself, other members of the Barberini family, or someone hoping to ingratiate himself with them.

The picture Artemisia began to sketch was different. For her the enduring image of the day's events would not be Lawrence Mazzare's eloquent defense of Galileo or Lennox's heroism, but a young man comforting his brother after the boy accidentally killed a man.

It was just as well Artemisia had work to occupy her. After the spectacular events surrounding Galileo's hearing, everyone in Rome wanted to meet Father-soon thereafter Cardinal-Lawrence Mazzare. Artemisia counted herself lucky that only a week later, she received an invitation from Cardinal Antonio Barberini the Younger to dine with himself and the brand-new cardinal-protector of the United States of Europe.

Artemisia made sure she was looking her best when she went to Palazzo Barberini. As soon as she was shown into the sitting room, she executed a smooth and practiced curtsy, kissing the rings of both cardinals.

"Your Eminence. Your Eminence."

Mazzare laughed. "I'm afraid, Maestra Gentileschi, that I'm not used to being called that yet. I'm not sure I ever will be. And I wanted to tell you what an honor it is to meet you. I've long been an admirer of your work and have been looking forward to this ever since I received your letter. Cardinal Barberini was kind enough to arrange it for me." Cardinal Mazzare spoke excellent, if oddly accented, Italian.

"And I am hoping to be able to discuss some business with you, Maestra, if you would not object," said Antonio the Younger.

"Of course I would not object, Your Eminence." She turned to Cardinal Mazzare. "I am still known, Your Eminence? Where you came from?"

Mazzare sipped his wine. "Not to the extent you deserve, alas. But I have a feeling that's going to change. And your daughter is becoming quite well-known in her own right. She's made quite an impression on Grantville, I can tell you."

Artemisia felt her cheeks warm at this compliment to herself and her daughter. She was sure she was blushing. "You do me too much honor, Your Eminence. I am grateful that you made arrangements for her, and though you have never asked for anything in return, I am your servant if you should ever need me. It was hard to send Prudentia away, but I felt it would be too good an opportunity for her to miss. I wanted her to be appreciated for who she was, not be looked on as an exotic animal in a menagerie."

From the looks on their faces, neither man seemed to know how to handle that remark. Artemisia regretted saying it. Now was not the time to bring up old hurts.

A model of tact, Cardinal Mazzare decided not to comment on that sentiment. "Tino Nobili and I have had our differences over the years, but he's one of the most generous men I know. And Prudentia has been a model of good behavior."

"In her letters, my daughter has spoken highly of Signor Nobili and his household. They have treated her like a member of the family. She also tells me," she said, with a significant look at Cardinal Mazzare, "that she has become quite enamored of a young man. A young soldier by the name of James Byron McDougal. Do you know him, Your Eminence?"

"Not as well as I'd like," Mazzare responded candidly. "Pete, Jabe's father, never grew up in a church. Zula, his mother, was raised Catholic and had her kids baptized, but she doesn't come to church very often now." The American cardinal looked rather sad at this. "Still, they're a well-regarded family in Grantville. Pete and Zula both are good parents and hard workers."

"But he's a soldier," said Artemisia with not a little scorn.

"In Grantville all the young men are expected to have some military training. The girls too, if they can pass the physical tests and wish to volunteer. They complete their training and for most of them, that's it. They're available as a reserve force if they're needed, but most of them go on to other things. Jabe has enlisted for a year, but I'm quite sure he doesn't plan to make a career in the military. You should also know," said Mazzare, with a significant look of his own, "that Pete McDougal is an old friend of Prime Minister Stearns. They used to work closely together."

Artemisia seemed mollified by this explanation. If the young man in question was well regarded, with good connections, perhaps she would not object to a match with her daughter-if one was proposed.

They were summoned to the dining room. The meal was served, and the conversation drifted into small talk. Cardinal Mazzare was fascinated by Artemisia's stories of her time in Florence, her opinions on the notoriously difficult Galileo, as well as her admiration of Caravaggio-another of the American cardinal's favorite painters. Antonio, for the most part, observed; Mazzare was turning out to be quite cultured for a man who, by his own admission, had been a priest in a small provincial town until fairly recently. After the meal, Antonio the Younger broached the topic that had been on his mind.

"Maestra," the pope's nephew said, "I should be most annoyed with you. If you'd wanted to send Prudentia to Grantville, you should have come to me, not Bernini."

"Gian Lorenzo is an old friend. I did not want to disturb Your Eminence with such trifles." Artemisia surprised herself by keeping a straight face while saying that.

"The fact is, Maestra, that I would much rather have you owing me a favor than owing Bernini one." The three laughed. Antonio continued, "I am hoping, and my family is hoping, that you would consent to accept our patronage once again."

"That will mean severing my ties with King Philip," she said.

"That miser isn't paying you half as much as you deserve. You know we are a generous family."

"And you have better taste," Artemisia said. The remark sparked more laughter. "You know, Your Eminence, that I would love nothing more to have the Barberini back as my patrons. I am hoping, however, to go to Grantville. Perhaps permanently."

"Why? Meaning no offense to my brother in Christ, but it is my understanding the artistic world in Grantville, and the USE as a whole, is practically nonexistent." Antonio didn't sound angry, merely curious.

Artemisia gathered her thoughts. In the past week she had been pondering this question a great deal. Bernini and dal Pozzo had asked the same thing when she'd sounded them out for advice; for that matter, it was a question she'd asked herself.

"Your Eminence, in the past few weeks, I received news from England. My father died about six months ago."

"I am sorry to hear Orazio has passed away," said Antonio with genuine feeling. Cardinal Mazzare added his sympathies. "I shall have a requiem mass said in his honor at our family chapel at Sant' Andrea della Valle. But what has that to do with your decision?"

"If you don't mind telling us," Mazzare added. From the look he gave to Antonio, Artemisia guessed that the American thought his fellow cardinal quite rude for pressing the matter.

"I do not mind, Your Eminence. It is a question I expected to be asked. I find myself tiring of the competition. I don't like Naples. It's crowded, dirty, and dangerous. I love Rome and will miss it, but I confess I rather enjoy the thought of being a preeminent artist up north. And I look forward to working where I will be appreciated for my skill as an artist, rather than treated as a curiosity."

"I appreciate your honesty, Maestra," said Antonio. "I must tell you that I have decided to direct considerable patronage to you."

"Would staying in Rome be a requirement?"

"What would you do if it was?"

Artemisia said nothing. The pope's nephew continued: "It is not. It is something my brother Taddeo might do, but not me. In any case, distance should not pose any great difficulties. The distance from London to Naples hasn't proved any great obstacle to your work for King Charles, after all. And it is my understanding," said Antonio, with a sly smile at the American cardinal, "that my American brother seems to have a way of communicating rather quickly."

Cardinal Mazzare did not react to Antonio's last statement. He smiled at Artemisia and said, "If you wish, we-our delegation, that is-would be more than happy to have you travel to Grantville with Gerry and Ron Stone. In fact, I am quite certain it would set their father's and stepmother's minds at ease if you did."

After witnessing the pandemonium the Stone boys had been in the middle of last week, Artemisia wasn't quite sure she was up for the challenge. Still, she didn't see how she could gracefully refuse the offer. And it would be safer for her, in any event.

"I thank you, Your Eminence," she said. "I very much appreciate your kindness. Please let me know when the boys are ready to leave, so that I may make arrangements. I will need to collect my younger daughter and wrap up my affairs in Naples."

Cardinal Mazzare nodded.

"Maestra," said Antonio, "His Holiness has asked me to tell you that he wishes you to see him before your departure."

Artemisia had to fight down a brief flutter of excitement and anxiety. "Of course, Your Eminence. I am entirely at His Holiness's convenience."

It was a quiet night at the Club 250. Sherry Dobbs Murray was drinking alone. It was something she tried not to do too much, but tonight she couldn't help herself. Things were going to hell with Ronnie, her husband, and it was either drown her sorrows or go crazy.

The problem with drowning your sorrows alone, thought Sherry, is that pretty soon you end up going crazy anyway. She had to go home sometime; it might as well be now. With luck Ronnie would be asleep or passed out. As Sherry left the Club 250, she saw a party leaving the Thuringen Gardens. She approached close enough to see what was going on. The only people she recognized were Pete McDougal's oldest boy and the Italian girl he'd been going around with the past few months.

That's when she saw the only unattached male in the group. He looked like a soldier-and a kraut. Normally, Sherry didn't have much use for krauts, but she couldn't deny the boy looked like a stud. Strong jaw, wide shoulders and a nice, tight ass. What more could a girl want? Sherry was lonely, drunk and horny; Ronnie had been hitting the sauce even harder than usual lately, which made him more useless than usual in bed.

Sherry wasn't what anyone would call beautiful. She knew she was sexy, though. The kraut stud gave her a second look. She was curvy, with auburn hair; men in this time liked a girl with meat on her bones. They eyed each other speculatively, and then Sherry joined the group. They went to Constantine and Danielle Nobili's house; apparently, most of them were getting sent to Rome for something or other, and it was a last chance to party with the wives and girlfriends. Jabe McDougal and his girl didn't join them. They made their apologies and left for the evening.

At the house, the conversation got louder and raunchier. The Revenooers Rue flowed freely. This stuff is almost as bad as tequila, Sherry thought, but it gets the job done. Dietrich, that was the kraut stud's name, was undressing her with his eyes, and Sherry was getting turned on.

They went somewhere private, but not before indulging in more moonshine. They were gone for about a half an hour, and all Sherry wanted to do by that point was go home.

Artemisia and Constantia Gentileschi arrived in Grantville, along with Gerry and Ron Stone, in October. In the livery stable at the edge of town, she found Prudentia waiting for her, along with a gangly, shy-looking young man. She hugged and kissed her oldest daughter, and then the two sisters had a joyous reunion.

"You look good, my daughter," Artemisia said. "I trust you have been working hard?"

"Yes, Mama."

"It is wonderful to meet you, Maestra Gentileschi," the young man stammered out in Italian.

Artemisia tried to look stern but couldn't quite manage it. "You must be young Giacomo."

"James, ma'am. Most people call me Jabe."

Artemisia's accent couldn't quite manage "Jabe;" for her, he would remain "Giacomo," "Gia' " for short-the Italian version of "James" or "Jim." She was rather pleased that her daughter's suitor was easygoing enough to accept his new nickname. It was always a good sign when a man didn't take himself too seriously. She introduced him to her younger daughter, Constantia.

Jabe had hired a horse cart to take them into town. Prudentia explained that Signor Nobili offered a place for both of them.

"But, Mama, the house is rather crowded. I thought Constantia could stay with me, and you could stay at the Higgins Hotel. I know you like your quiet."

"Hotel?" The word was unfamiliar.

"It's like an inn, ma'am," said Jabe. "Larger than most inns, though. And much cleaner."

As soon as all passengers and baggage were stowed on the cart, they lurched off. Artemisia and Constantia were too tired for a full tour of Grantville, but Jabe and Prudentia pointed out some of the sights on the way to the hotel. Constantia pointed at the decorations on the street.

"Are you preparing for a celebration?" the ten-year-old asked in fair English.

"Yes," Jabe said. "Our president-well the president of Thuringia-Franconia, anyway, not the whole USE-our president, Ed Piazza, had Congress declare October 7 a holiday. State government offices will be closed and everything. There's also going to be lots of ceremonies and celebrations up in Magdeburg."

"It's in honor of the heroes of the Battle of Wismar. It's the first anniversary," Prudentia added.

"Officially, they're calling it 'Remembrance Day,' " Jabe continued. "But most of us call it 'Hans Richter Day.' There's going to be lots of parties."

"I know you're tired of traveling, Mama, but we will need to leave for Magdeburg in a couple of days."

"One of Prudentia's paintings is being officially presented to Princess Kristina."

Her daughter blushed deeply. Jabe grinned wickedly, enjoying putting Prudentia on the spot.

Prudentia recovered quickly, though, and gave as good as she got. "Just wait till you see Jabe's documentary. It's being televised again." It was Jabe's turn to blush now. Artemisia was unfamiliar with "documentary" and "televised," but judging from the banter between her daughter and young Gia, she thought it might be wise to start raising money for a dowry.

Sherry knew she couldn't hide things from Ronnie much longer; if she didn't say something soon, her body would tell the tale for her. She was long past being "late," and was getting sick pretty much every day. If her husband wasn't drunk or hung over all the time, he'd have noticed something was up long before now, but even Ronnie wouldn't be clueless enough to miss a bulging belly. Better to tell him now and get it over with.

Ronnie's reaction was even worse than Sherry imagined it would be. He didn't hit her; that wasn't Ronnie's way. But the verbal abuse was worse than his fists would have been.

"You fucking kraut-loving slut! Whore! How much did he pay you, huh? Did that include popping out his fucking little kraut bastard kid? Whore! Stupid fucking whore! I bet you'd do your dad too if you had the chance!" From there Ronnie just got louder and less coherent. It was too much, even for the Club 250. They were kicked out, Ronnie calling her everything he could think of every step of the way.

Artemisia had had three days to recover from her trip. Constantia had been having fun tagging along with Prudentia, which kept her occupied. Jabe managed to get a day off from his work in the Grantville office of the Joint Armed Services Press Division to give her "the grand tour" and to help her get properly settled in. The first order of business was setting up a bank account. After that was done, Jabe engaged a local "real estate agent," Huddy Colburn, to find a short-term lease. It would give her time to decide what she needed for a house in Grantville.

At her audience with Pope Urban VIII, before she left Rome, Artemisia was given several commissions. Urban, after seeing her initial sketches for a painting of Frank Stone comforting his brother at San Matteo, told her he wanted the original when it was completed and directed her to paint a copy as a wedding gift for Frank and Giovanna Stone. In addition to that work, she would complete an altarpiece for Sant' Andrea della Valle, and there were frescoes to be painted in a USE church. The specific church would be left up to Cardinal Mazzare or his appointed agent, though the holy father made it clear that he expected to be kept informed as work progressed.

The practical upshot of all this was that Artemisia had two hundred scudi-about $10,000 in USE paper money-to sustain her and her household in Grantville for a few months, an advance on the commissions the pope had given her. She had a letter of credit for an additional twelve hundred scudi she could access once the altarpiece and painting were finished and work began on the frescoes. To show her appreciation for Jabe's efforts, Artemisia paid for dinner at the Thuringen Gardens.

When they left, the plan was to join Tino and Vivian Nobili for dessert at their house. It was a Saturday night, the Gardens was at its busiest and dessert with the Nobilis would be a chance for quiet conversation. As soon as they got outside, Artemisia noticed a couple arguing in front of a rather disreputable-looking establishment across the street from the Thuringen Gardens.

Jabe recognized the man's voice. "Ronnie Murray. He's a drunk and a bully." The scorn in the young man's voice surprised Artemisia; it didn't seem to fit with his nature, as she'd gotten to know him over the last few days. From the look on Prudentia's face, she was a little surprised as well.

"Let's go," Jabe urged. "He probably won't hit Sherry. Odds are he's so trashed he won't even remember this tomorrow." If not for Ronnie's choice of words, Artemisia might have agreed and kept on walking. However…

Ronnie's words echoed in her mind and became something else: "She was wild and leading a bad life… she was a whore, and her father didn't know how to remedy this… she told me her father wanted to use her exactly as if she were his wife… she flirted out of her window so much you'd have thought her house was a bordello."

These words flared inside Artemisia Gentileschi, erupting from a core of rage that remained at the center of her, even though it had been nearly a quarter-century since those lies had been directed against her in open court. Without being fully aware of what she was doing, Artemisia marched toward the argument. She spared only a quick glance back at Jabe; he was frozen, as if he couldn't decide what he should do.

Drunk and furious as Ronnie was, it took the brute a moment to realize she was even there. He tailed off in disbelief-he seemed shocked that someone had actually gotten involved.

"Monster! Bastarde! Leave her alone!"

Ronnie Murray found himself looking not at his cowering wife but at a very determined woman, a total stranger to him. Artemisia had never been petite but at forty-one the stockiness of middle age had long since set in; clearly she was not a tiny female inclined to back down against the likes of a cowardly bully. If looks could have killed, Artemisia's dark eyes, burning with fury, would have been deadly weapons.

"Mind your own goddamned business, bitch," Ronnie growled. "Or I'll give you what I'm gonna give her."

Eerily calm, Artemisia pulled out the knife she always carried with her, ever since… that day. Ladylike it was not, but she long ago determined that whoever tried to do to her what Agostino Tassi had done would pay. Dearly.

Fortunately for Ronnie two local constables chose that moment to arrive.

Marvin Tipton and Jurgen Neubert were technically off duty. Marvin had just received news that he was to be a grandfather, and Jurgen had insisted they have a drink together when their shift was done. When the disturbance call went out over the radio, Marvin told the dispatcher he and Jurgen would handle it, as they were already on their way to the Gardens. Marvin had to suppress a smile when he saw a woman holding a knife on Ronnie Murray.

"Okay, what's going on here?" Marvin asked.

He almost wished he hadn't asked the question. Ronnie started up with his rambling, drunken, profanity-laced version of events; Artemisia, reverting to her native language under stress, was trying to talk over Ronnie, ably backed by her two daughters. Jabe McDougal was trying to say what he had seen. Sherry Murray, Marvin noted, was the only one not saying anything.

"QUIET!" When everyone had fallen silent, Marvin continued: "Jurgen, why don't you take the ladies to the station in the cruiser? I'll find somewhere better to talk to Ronnie. Sergeant McDougal?" asked Marvin, turning to Jabe.

"Yes sir?"

"See the girls home. Where can I get hold of you?"

"I think I'll wait with Prudentia and her sister at the Nobilis' house, Officer Tipton," Jabe said.

"Good. I'll call you there when we're done." With that, Marvin led Ronnie back toward the Club 250, and Jurgen escorted Artemisia and Sherry to the patrol car.

Marvin caught up with Jurgen at the station about an hour later. The two women were nowhere to be seen. "They are at Leahy Medical Center. Herr Doktor Adams is examining Frau Murray," Jurgen said. "It seemed to me correct procedure after Frau Murray told me what happened. I told Herr Doktor we would meet him at the medical center after you returned."

"You can fill me in on the way, I guess. So much for a drink at the Gardens."

Jurgen gave Marvin the complete story, recounting his report. Sherry had broken down once they'd arrived at the station, and the whole story came pouring out, more to the woman with her than to Jurgen. A few nights before Ed Piazza's embassy departed for Rome, there had been a party.

As Marvin drove, Jurgen continued reading from Sherry's statement: "There was this young kraut-Marine, I think. He looked good. Ronnie hasn't… well, the kraut looked good, like I said. We were pretty smashed, we went off alone and things started getting kinda hot and heavy. I was into it, y'know, I was liking it. But when he started getting under my shirt, I started thinking what if Ronnie found out? And I told the guy I wanted to stop. But he wouldn't. He just kept on… he wouldn't stop." His partner looked at him, his face full of concern. "Marvin, she started crying then, and I could not get any more information, but it was clear she should go to the medical center."

"You were right. What about the Italian lady?"

Jurgen couldn't resist a wide smile. "Artemisia Gentileschi, famous artist; she's painted for kings. She said I had an interesting face, and she might want to sketch me!"

Somehow Marvin wasn't surprised that his partner knew who this Artemisia whoever was. Jurgen had a deep curiosity about the world, and Marvin knew for a fact he spent a lot of his free time in the library. He even took his cousin's family there on weekly outings. If Jurgen Neubert were up-time, Marvin thought, he'd probably go on Jeopardy! and win a bunch of money.

"And what about you, Marvin? What of Herr Murray?" asked Jurgen.

"Well, I think I talked Ronnie into not pressing charges against Ms. Gentileschi." Judging from Jurgen's expression, Marvin figured he hadn't mangled the woman's name too badly "He could always change his mind, but I told him it was a waste of time."

"Frau Gentileschi did pull a knife on him. That is a violation." Jurgen was one of the most by-the-book officers Marvin had ever worked with.

"Maybe. But a judge or jury wouldn't convict. She wasn't even really threatening Ronnie with it; she was just making him think twice. Even Ronnie admitted as much."

They'd arrived at Leahy Medical Center. Jurgen parked the car, and the officers headed inside. Marvin paused before opening the door.

"Mark my words, Jurgen. If Sherry's story is even close to true, there's going to be a world of trouble."

"Well, Sherry's definitely pregnant," said Dr. Jeffrey Adams as he came into the office where Marvin and Jurgen were waiting for him. "Ten to twelve weeks, probably, based on when she thinks her last period was. Hard to tell exactly without doing an ultrasound, which I can't do."

"Was she violated, Herr Doktor?" asked Jurgen.

"She says she was. Medically? There's no way to tell, not now. If she'd gotten an exam right away, we might have been able to say, but nearly three months later?" He shrugged.

"She didn't mention any names, perhaps, Herr Doktor?"

He thought for a moment. "She wasn't sure. She said he was German. Definitely a Marine, attached to the Rome delegation. Thought his name was Dieter, Dittmar, something like that. She didn't remember for sure. Said she was pretty drunk at the time."

"That matches her official statement," said Marvin. "I was almost hoping she was lying. Damn. Damn, damn, damn. This is going to be a mess."

The constables-Marvin and Jurgen-took Artemisia and Sherry to the Higgins Hotel. It hadn't been easy for Artemisia to turn down Tino Nobili's offer to stay at his place, but with Constantia staying there and the grandchildren often there when Danielle needed a babysitter, the Nobili house was too crowded and noisy for her. The Higgins Hotel would do until Signor Colburn found suitable housing for her and her daughters.

By the standards of the day, the Higgins Hotel was luxurious, not to mention maybe the cleanest inn on the European continent. Artemisia thought it even put her rooms at Cassiano dal Pozzo's Roman palazzo to shame. There was a helpful staff that would deliver meals to the room upon request; all one needed to do was call them on a device known as a "telephone." Each room had two beds with freshly laundered sheets, a bathroom with running water, electric lighting (and what a marvel that was), something called a "hot plate" for heating water, a teapot and a selection of "Frau Tibelda" brand teas. Artemisia selected a packet labeled "Frau Tibelda's Calming Chamomile" and started some water heating. She noticed the woman standing in the middle of the room, not doing or saying anything.

Artemisia indicated one of the beds. "That one's yours. You can sleep here as long as you need to."

The woman-Sherry-didn't move. "Why're you doing this? You don't know me."

Artemisia studied the teapot sitting atop the burner. "My name is Artemisia," she said, realizing the woman probably hadn't caught her name with all that had gone on. "Your man said some things that made me angry. No one should say that to someone they care about."

She sat down on the bed. "He's my husband. Ronnie."

Artemisia nodded. "May I ask you something?" Sherry merely shrugged. "Are you so sure that the child isn't your husband's?"

Sherry laughed bitterly. "Ronnie's been snipped." Artemisia looked at her questioningly. "So he don't have no kids. You know?"

Sherry had shut down mentally when Ronnie started laying into her, but she was finally starting to come back to herself. She realized that the woman now making tea for her was clearly a down-timer. Sherry was fuzzy on people's status, but she could tell this Italian woman's clothes were well-made. That probably meant she was important. Which left Sherry even more puzzled as to why this woman gave a damn about the likes of her. Be that as it may, this woman wouldn't know what a vasectomy was.

"He didn't seem like he'd been unmanned," Artemisia said seriously.

It took Sherry a moment to realize what Artemisia meant by "unmanned." When she did, she had her first good laugh in months. She laughed so hard she cried, and Artemisia couldn't help joining in. Sherry attempted to explain.

"No, nothing like that. They didn't cut off his balls. Though in Ronnie's case that might've been good. There's like a little tube thingie that runs to a man's thing. They close that off, and a guy can't have no kids. Ronnie didn't want 'em. Said one woman trapped him that way, and it wasn't going to happen again."

"I see. Your surgeons truly are skilled if they can do such a thing," said Artemisia. The water was now boiling; she turned off the hot plate and poured two cups. She set a strainer in each to let the tea steep. "That would be difficult, if a man knew for certain he couldn't have children."

"I've thought about getting rid of it. But… I don't know."

"Abortions are so easy to get here?" Artemisia asked, surprised.

"Doc Adams'll do them if you're not too far along. Or the Jew doctor, Becky Stearns' dad."

Artemisia couldn't help goggling a little. This woman-obviously lower class-could speak casually of going to a doctor of such renowned reputation as Balthazar Abrabanel? Artemisia didn't know Balthazar personally, but she was acquainted with several members of the Abrabanel clan's Italian branch, and they spoke highly of Balthazar's medical skills. Artemisia had suspected her daughter's reports of Grantville's wealth and radical notions of equality were exaggerated. Now she knew they weren't.

"Dotto Adams certainly seemed knowledgeable. And Dotto Abrabanel's skills are widely praised. An abortion from either one should be safe I would think."

A quick check of the tea showed it had steeped long enough. Artemisia gave a cup to Sherry and took a careful sip from her own. Sherry just held her tea, watching the steam rise off the cup.

"I've thought about it. But I'm thirty-four. I probably won't have a chance to have another one, especially if I end up trying to patch things up with Ronnie. I always thought I was okay with not having kids, but now…" Sherry trailed off.

"It's not an easy decision." Artemisia paused for a moment, as she decided whether or not to go on. "I have two daughters, you know."

"Well, I kinda figured the girl going with Jabe McDougal was yours."

"When I found myself expecting my younger daughter, Constantia, I was faced with a similar decision. I was pretty sure she was my husband's, but not certain. We had been living apart for several years by then but were trying to reconcile. He wasn't the only man sharing my bed at the time. In the end, I decided to have Constantia."

"That's not the only reason you're helping me," said Sherry rather sharply. It was almost as if she were issuing a challenge.

Artemisia was not offended. She smiled at Sherry. "You are quite right, Signora Murray. It is not. But that is a story best left for another time. Drink your tea, and then it will be time to sleep. You need your rest."

"You should call me Sherry. If we're going to be roomies, I don't want you calling me 'senyora.' "

"Of course."

"Can I ask you another question, Artemisia?" She nodded. "Did you ever regret it? Having your little girl, I mean?"

Artemisia smiled. "Not for one moment, Sherry. Not a single moment."

On Monday morning, September twenty-ninth-two days after the incident at the Club 250-the first order of business for Officers Tipton and Neubert was to pay a visit to Wes Jenkins. Head of the civilian administrative office in Fulda until recently, Wes had accepted an appointment to head up the State of Thuringia-Franconia Consular Service and had moved back to Grantville with his new wife, Clara. He had been at his post less than a month. Wes and Marvin chatted while one of staff looked for a list of Roman embassy personnel. Marvin briefly recounted the events of Saturday night. Wes groaned theatrically.

"You know, after everything that happened this summer, I was hoping I could just come back here, relax a little and enjoy married life. No rest for the weary, I guess."

"Are you?" asked Marvin.

"Am I what?"

"Enjoying married life?"

Wes couldn't resist a grin. "We're managing to enjoy it just fine."

"Well, congratulations, Wes. Really."

"Thanks. Congratulations yourself, by the way, on Sarah. Clara was telling me the news the other day-don't ask me where she heard about it. Maybe I'll join you at the Gardens."

"Sure. If I ever get the chance."

The assistant came in with a copy of the list and handed it to Marvin.

"Thanks. Thanks again, Wes. This is someone else's headache now."

"Thank goodness," Wes said. "Tonight at the Gardens, then?"

"Sure. As long as no Italian artists pull a knife on any white trash drunks, we're on."

A cart carrying the Gentileschis pulled up to the front gate of the Grantville Army base. They'd come to pick up Jabe on their way to the railroad station. They were due to leave for Halle on the afternoon train and from there travel to Magdeburg by riverboat. The girls waited while Artemisia went to get Jabe; she wanted to see where the young man worked. After the sentry placed a quick call to the press office, she was let through.

When she expressed doubts about Jabe being a soldier, Artemisia had assumed that the Americans, like everyone else, let their mercenaries run wild throughout the countryside or in garrison towns unless they were needed for battle. She saw how wrong she was. Even one such as her, not familiar on a personal basis with military procedure, could tell at a glance the people in this camp were orderly and disciplined. No one bothered her as she walked; in fact, one young man was kind enough to escort her to the press office when she got lost.

When Artemisia arrived at the press office, she found Jabe in the middle of a group as unruly as any Neapolitan mob she'd ever seen. He nodded when he saw her and began fighting his way toward her, handing out sheets of paper and shouting "No comment!" the whole way. When he finally reached her side, the young man looked as harried as a woman with three young children.

"You're a sight for sore eyes, Artemisia."

Artemisia understood the intended, if not the literal, meaning of the expression from the obvious relief in Jabe's voice.

"Do you have to deal with such savage behavior every day, Gia'?"

Jabe laughed. "No, thank goodness."

"Then what were you handing out that those people were eager for?"

"A press release. I'll tell you more about it later. It's about Sherry Murray, so it might end up concerning you anyway, at least partly."

Artemisia nodded. "If they want any information out of me, they had best be more polite about it."

Jabe chuckled. "If not, can I get you to pull a knife on them? Maybe it'll improve their manners."

They continued chatting on the way to the train station. Artemisia was nervous about traveling in such an outlandish device. Talking with Jabe was taking her mind off things, and after the scene she'd witnessed, she was interested in hearing more about his job.

"Most of the time things aren't that crazy," Jabe said. He went on to explain that Grantville itself had four newspapers: the Times, the Free Press (which published a German edition as the Freie Presse), the Daily News and a relatively new weekly, Freiheit!, which was published by the Grantville Freedom Arches and which hewed to the Committee of Correspondence line on the issues of the day.

That paper's opposite number was a weekly out of Rudolstadt called Die Wochliche Krone, known as The Weekly Crown to its English-speaking readership. The Weekly Crown was modeled on up-time news and commentary magazines and was firmly in the Crown Loyalist camp. Rudolstadt's newspaper, the Rudolstadt Taggeblatt-or Rudolstadt Daily Times (though it did well to come out three times a week)-was more neutral than the weekly, though it generally tended to be skeptical of Prime Minister Stearns and his policies. In addition, Jabe explained, the papers from Saalfeld, Suhl and occasionally Jena sent correspondents to the Grantville office, and there were freelancers who wrote dispatches for the Thurn und Taxis imperial couriers to distribute along their route. By the time he was done explaining all this, Artemisia was convinced that Jabe showed more bravery by facing these "journalists" than if he'd been fighting alongside the Swede in his military campaigns.

She could hardly believe it when they arrived in Magdeburg. For all her initial nervousness, Artemisia decided she quite liked traveling by rail. It was far faster and much more comfortable than carriage travel. She didn't even feel exhausted, as she usually did after even a relatively short carriage ride.

If Artemisia was happy to reach Magdeburg, her daughter was ecstatic. She'd never seen Prudentia so excited, and she couldn't blame her daughter. She remembered the first time she'd completed a commission for an important client. In the years since, she'd painted for people even more important than Grand Duke Cosimo II Medici, but even working for King Philip or the holy father didn't quite match the pride and excitement she'd felt when she'd delivered that first painting to His Grace. She knew Prudentia would be feeling the same thing when she presented her painting to Princess Kristina in just a few days. But even as Artemisia applauded her daughter in a ceremony at Hans Richter Square, she couldn't help wondering what was going on with Sherry.

Back in Grantville, the police went over the list supplied by Consular Affairs. There was only one person on the list with a name close to what Sherry thought her attacker's name was: Marine Lance Corporal Dietrich Linn. Marvin Tipton wasn't the only one who sensed this was trouble. Just because John Simpson's political campaign was in the past didn't mean that the divisions it attempted to exploit were completely forgotten. No one wanted anything to do with this case and kept trying pass the buck to a higher authority.

Police Chief Preston Richards didn't know for certain who had jurisdiction over military personnel. Grantville hadn't been near any military bases before the Ring of Fire, so it wasn't a problem the police department had ever had to deal with. He forwarded Neubert's and Tipton's report to Ed Piazza's office. Preston figured this was why Ed was president.

Ed viewed it as a matter for USE military command to handle and kicked it up to Magdeburg to General Torstensson and his staff. Torstensson's adjutant made inquiries and found that the civilian authorities had jurisdiction. Just to cover themselves, however, the general staff kicked the matter to the prime minister's office. By all reports, Mike had a fit and told Ed Piazza what needed to be done in no uncertain terms.

The Chief Justice of the State of Thuringia-Franconia poured two fingers of scotch for his father. He had a very big favor to ask, and he was dipping into his last bottle of eighteen-year-old Oban to "grease the wheels," so to speak. Chuck had gotten a taste for the brand on a trip to the Hebrides back before the Ring of Fire, and it became one of the former small-town lawyer's few indulgences.

"This must be serious, son," said Thomas Price Riddle. "I know how you've been hoarding this ever since the Ring of Fire." He sipped the scotch, smiling in appreciation.

Chuck locked the Oban away and sipped his own glass. "Alex and Julie have standing instructions for bringing some good stuff back with them. When I told Alex what I was ready to pay, he thought I was nuts."

"You're changing the subject, son," the older man said. "If this is some sticky legal problem you need your old man's help on, you didn't need to break into the secret stash. Not that I don't appreciate it."

"It is a sticky legal problem, Dad, but it's not your opinion I need. It's you." Chuck handed his father the memo.

Tom read it and frowned. "Judge in Extraordinary?"

"The official paperwork's on its way over from Ed's office even as we speak," said Chuck. "He wants you to preside over this trial." Chuck summarized the facts of the case for his father.

"But why me?" Thomas asked.

"Two reasons. The first is that Maurice Tito has more than he can handle on his docket as it is in the Grantville courts. This trial may take weeks, and everything else would grind to a halt." Chuck made a mental note to stay on the state congress's case about appointing more judges to help Maurice handle his increasing caseload. "Second, you're about the only person with a solid working knowledge of up-time military law."

"I thought you said this was being handled by the civilian authorities?"

"I did. But you never know what will be relevant these days. Ed said, and I agree, that the judge should have experience in military as well as civilian legal procedure."

"I should be defending the kid, not presiding over his trial!"

"You're expected to appoint a lawyer, and I'm sure you'll find a good one. And I'm also sure you'll school them in the basics of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to the extent that it will be relevant to the case."

"That's irregular as hell, and you know it!" Thomas said. "Talk about conflict of interest! That's bad enough, but how can this kid get a fair trial if his lawyer only has a crash course in military law?"

Chuck sighed. He loved his father and respected him as a lawyer. But the old man could be real difficult sometimes.

"Corporal Linn's in Rome, and it's going to take at least a month for him to even get back here. Not ideal, but more than enough time for you to school trained lawyers in the relevant areas of law and make sure that the young man has a competent defense." Chuck took another sip of his scotch. "Besides, you'll have help. Maurice will be available to advise on an informal basis if you need him, and Jesse Wood will be observing the proceedings as well."

"I suppose I don't have a choice, do I?" Chuck shook his head. Tom continued, "Maurice should be running this circus, but I appreciate his help. But why Jesse? I'd have thought Admiral Simpson would have made more sense."

"For starters, Simpson can't be spared from Magdeburg. Jesse's about the only member of the general staff who still spends much time here in Grantville, and from what I understand, he won't be able to do much flying this time of year anyway. More than that, though, Jesse's very popular among the down-time Germans. His presence is a statement to our German citizens that one of their own is going to get a fair trial. That there won't be any railroading or lynch mobs."

"I'll need the file. And I'll need a printer to print up my copy of the UCMJ and the relevant case law, for everyone concerned."

"Done and done. The official file's on its way with your appointment paperwork, and my office will pay for the book printing."

The two men finished their scotch in silent salute. They shook hands, and Thomas left. Chuck knew that his father would want to get to work immediately.

Tom Riddle moved quickly to prepare for the coming trial. At Maurice Tito's suggestion, John Bradshaw, the junior assistant district attorney for Grantville, was appointed lead prosecutor for the case. John had fled England, one step ahead of King Charles's agents. His crime? In another universe-the universe in which Tom Riddle had been born-he had been Lord President of the trial that had found Charles guilty of tyranny and sentenced him to death by beheading.

"Cornelius Fricke is a fine lawyer," Maurice said of his senior ADA, "but he's busy enough right now. John's got one of the best legal minds I've ever come across, and the fact that he's neither an up-timer nor German can't hurt. It's time for him to have a high profile case, and there'll be no appearance of bias."

Tom's other mandate, to find a good defense lawyer for Dietrich Linn, ended up solving itself. Johann Selfisch, a junior partner in the Hardegg, Selfisch and Krapp law firm, contacted Tom and offered to take the case pro bono. Johann headed up his firm's Rudolstadt office and was a familiar figure in Grantville-area legal circles. He was notorious, in fact; the man had a mania for watching taped episodes of Ally McBeal, The Practice and the entire Law amp; Order family whenever business brought him to Grantville. He'd even watched most of the O.J. Simpson trial, though no up-timer would admit to having taped it. Johann Selfisch was enamored with the up-time concept of the "celebrity lawyer" and wanted badly to become one himself.

If Tom found that aspect of Selfisch's personality distasteful, he couldn't deny that the man was a competent attorney. More than competent, in fact. Johann Selfisch was quite good. If Dietrich Linn wanted another lawyer once he arrived in Grantville, that was his affair; until then, though, Tom couldn't turn down Selfisch's offer of representation. Not surprisingly, the man wasn't happy when Tom issued a gag order in the case.

"First of all, Sherry Murray's reputation is not going to be dragged through the mud!" he had told Selfisch when defense counsel argued against the order. "Second, I will not have Corporal Linn trying to flee if word of this gets out. He doesn't know why he's being called back-the warrant will be served when he arrives-but you know how quickly the couriers will spread the newspapers and dispatches. If he goes to ground, I will hold you responsible and do my damndest to see you're convicted as an accessory after the fact. Is that understood?" It was, but it didn't stop Selfisch from doing what a good defense attorney should: swamp the prosecution in paper. Nearly every single motion was denied, but that didn't stop him; John Bradshaw was heard to mutter darkly about preferring a cell in the Tower to dealing with Selfisch's innumerable motions.

The mood in town was getting ugly, and it only got worse by the end of October when Dietrich Linn arrived in Grantville and was formally arrested for the rape of Sherry Murray. Most people sympathized with Sherry; she was viewed as a fundamentally decent person, if unwise in her choice of men. But there was a vocal minority making a lot of noise about "dirty krauts raping our women," as well as a group who figured that if Sherry was going to get drunk and party with strange men, she shouldn't then cry rape. More than a few fistfights had broken out. The press coverage wasn't helping; even the relatively restrained Grantville papers were covering the so-called "trial of the century" from all possible angles.

Sherry clung to Artemisia for support. The two women formed an unlikely friendship, and when Artemisia moved out of the Higgins Hotel into more permanent lodgings, Sherry moved in with the Gentileschis. It wasn't as if Sherry was entirely alone; she was getting counseling from Henny DeVries. It wasn't as if her family was shunning her; Slater and Phyllis Dobbs blamed Ronnie for what happened more than they blamed her and supported Sherry's decision to have the baby.

Artemisia, though, always seemed to know the right things to say and when not to say anything at all. Most important to Sherry, though, was the fact that Artemisia always made time for her whenever Sherry needed her, no questions asked. She'd always suspected Artemisia had more reason for taking an interest in her than the Italian artist had said. But it wasn't until the eve of the trial that Sherry fully understood why this was.

The night before the trial was set to begin, Sherry's parents invited her to dinner. The pastor of her parents' church, Reverend Chalker, would be there too and wanted to say a prayer over her. Sherry had never been much into church, but at this point she would take all the help she could get.

Her parents didn't object when she insisted on bringing Artemisia with her. A month ago Sherry would have thought twice about bringing a famous artist to dinner at Dobbs Hollow. But as she got to know Artemisia, Sherry learned she was a lot closer to blue collar than Sherry would have thought. Her picture of what a "famous artist" was like was formed by that guy who'd painted soup cans-she couldn't remember his name-who was almost more famous for being famous than for being an artist. Artemisia, she found out, had only learned to read and write in her late teens and had very little formal education. She'd had to work hard to make a living, and she'd had a few patrons who were always trying to stiff her. In addition to being stuck-up rich snots, European nobility could also be a bunch of cheap S.O.B.s. If nothing else, Sherry knew, the fact that her self-appointed protector and new friend had pulled a knife on Ronnie would make Artemisia okay with Slater and Phyllis.

Dinner went well enough. Reverend Chalker said a blessing, and if he had any opinions about Artemisia crossing herself after the prayer, he kept them to himself. After they were finished, Sherry's father finally asked the question they all had been wondering about.

"Why are you doing this? Not that we're not grateful for the kindness you've shown Sherry, but why do you care?"

Sherry felt her friend take her hand and give it a squeeze. She'd gotten used to Artemisia being the strong one in their friendship, but now Sherry sensed that the comforter needed comforting.

"Your daughter asked me the same question the night we met, Signor Dobbs. I told her then that it was a story for another time."

"And now?"

"Now is the time."

It all came out, pouring out to these people who, with the exception of Sherry, were strangers. Sherry was amazed. She knew that Artemisia had great strength, kindness and compassion; she'd experienced that firsthand. But Sherry also sensed that her friend had a part of herself-a large part-that she kept closed off.

Now, though, Artemisia opened herself completely. She told them about growing up and following in her father's footsteps, how she tried to learn everything she could about painting from her father, his students and his friends. She told them about one of those friends, Agostino Tassi.

"He was friends with my father, and he became obsessed with me. It seemed like I couldn't go anywhere without seeing him. At church, at home, on the street-everywhere. It made me feel uneasy. But I will admit that a part of me, a small part, enjoyed the attention. He isn't a bad looking man, Tassi, and he has some talent."

Sherry felt Artemisia squeeze her hand even tighter. "What I didn't know is that he was working with a woman who I thought was my friend. Tuzia. She rented rooms from us. She let him into my bedroom. I was asleep when I heard him come in…"

Artemisia was never quite sure why she bared her soul to these people. She'd always intended to tell Sherry, but the other people were strangers to her. But she couldn't evade an honest answer to Signor Dobbs's direct question, and once she began telling the story, she couldn't stop.

In her mind, it was twenty-four years ago. She was facing not Sherry Murray, Slater and Phyllis Dobbs and Reverend Chalker, but a magistrate, his notary and other Curia officials. She was swearing out her deposition all over again.

"He put his hands all over me. He put his knees between my legs… I felt a strong burning, and it hurt very much. I tried to scream as best I could. I scratched his face and pulled his hair. I even scratched him down there, but it didn't bother him at all. He continued to do his business."

For a time, all Artemisia could do was cry as she hadn't done in a quarter-century. Even the tears she'd shed when she got news of her father's death were a trickle in comparison with what flooded out now. But leaving her with those tears was a poison that had been corroding her soul all these years, and she wouldn't have stopped crying even if she had been capable.

It was inevitable that the trial of Dietrich Linn would become a circus. But Thomas Price Riddle at least kept it a small circus, rather than a huge, three ring, Barnum amp; Bailey affair. Riddle eased his gag order once Corporal Linn was in custody, and Johann Selfisch was in front of the press and on the radio at every opportunity, playing up his client's humble origins-he was the illegitimate son of a baker from Krefeld-and the Marine's spotless record. And while he stuck to the letter of Judge Riddle's order not to malign Sherry Murray, it didn't stop Selfisch from making veiled remarks about her reputation.

For Artemisia the trial was a revelation. Unlike her experience with the court officials from the Vatican, Sherry's trial was held in the open, for the public to attend. Judge Riddle did not allow testimony relating to Sherry's past behavior. Artemisia knew Sherry did not have it easy, but no one-at least not in open court-was calling her a shameless flirt and a whore.

The trial took two weeks. John Bradshaw did his best to try a case that was anything but airtight. Sherry's claims were bolstered by the fact that she'd consistently told the same story since she came forward a few months ago. The nurse who had counseled her, Henny DeVries, testified that, in her expert opinion, Sherry had suffered psychological trauma.

The defense had good arguments of its own. Dr. Adams testified that by the time he actually examined Sherry, there was no way to tell whether nonconsensual sex had occurred. And although prosecutor Bradshaw had objected, Riddle allowed testimony from several witnesses at the party who stated that Sherry was quite drunk. By the time the case went to the jury, no one was willing to make a guess as to the verdict. Nearly everyone felt that it could go either way.

The evening the defense rested, Artemisia spent some time with Sherry at her parents' house. Sherry was splitting her time between Dobbs Hollow and Artemisia's townhouse in Grantville; Ronnie was telling her he wanted her back, she said, but she wasn't ready to move back in with her husband quite yet. Artemisia had come to feel great warmth for Slater and Phyllis, and Reverend Chalker too. It had been a long time-too long-since she had allowed herself to be that vulnerable in front of anyone.

That warmth was dispelled when she arrived home and found Jabe and Prudentia arguing. Her daughter had confessed to her that the two had had some problems talking to each other as their relationship had gotten more serious but that they'd mostly solved that problem. Perhaps, thought Artemisia as Jabe stalked off past her with barely a nod, this problem wasn't as solved as her daughter thought.

All she could get from Prudentia that night was that her daughter thought Jabe was being a pig because he thought Corporal Linn was innocent when clearly the man was guilty. She knew better than to try to reason with her daughter right then; she recognized the righteous anger and black-and-white view she herself had had when she was Prudentia's age.

As they waited for a verdict, Artemisia had Sherry read the dispatches Jabe and the Joint Armed Services Press Division had issued. Though she could speak English quite well now, Artemisia couldn't really read it. She was trying to learn, but it was very difficult. The releases were actually quite neutral; there was a lot about Linn being "innocent until proven guilty," which Sherry explained was a principle up-timers held particularly dear, but nothing which claimed the Marine corporal was innocent of the crime of which he was accused.

"It's pretty standard stuff," said Sherry with a shrug after she'd read the statements. "They're not attacking me; they're only saying the military will respect the verdict of the civilian court, and they want the trial to be fair."

"Which means my daughter is being a little ridiculous."

"She's a teenager," said Sherry with a snort. "It comes with the territory."

Indeed, after a few days went by with no sign of Jabe, Prudentia came to her in tears. Artemisia tried not to smile when her daughter asked her what she could do to apologize to her young man. Artemisia comforted her daughter and was glad she'd been talking to people who knew Jabe and his family over the past few months. Even as she dried her daughter's tears, she began mentally planning her wedding.

A week went by with no verdict. Just as Artemisia had predicted to herself, Jabe McDougal called one night after dinner. He carried some papers and a small box.

"Is Prudentia here?" he asked.

"She's painting right now. Do you wish to see her?"

"Um, maybe in a bit. If she wants to talk to me. But I want to talk to you first, alone."

"Of course, Gia." Artemisia knew why Jabe wanted to talk to her, but a part of her was enjoying his discomfort. It is rather endearing, she thought.

"I want to marry your daughter." He handed her the papers he'd brought with him. "Those are my discharge papers. As soon as the verdict comes in, I'm done with my military commitment. I don't quite know what kind of job I'm going to get, but I'm sure I'll find something. I've finally sold my book, so I've got some money from that to start us off. It's nothing special, just people talking about their memories of the Ring of Fire, but I hope it will do okay. And I know Prudentia has saved a lot from the paintings she's sold. We can probably get by till I find something."

She hugged Jabe. "Giacomo, I decided some time ago that I would agree to this-if Prudentia agrees, and I think she will. We will talk of your employment prospects after you've spoken to her."

Artemisia went to summon her oldest daughter and found that Constantia had already done so. Prudentia looked both anxious and hopeful as she left with Jabe. She was neither alarmed nor upset by the fact that Prudentia didn't come back until the next morning. Her brother would have had a fit, but "honor" was a lot of male foolishness. Artemisia knew Jabe was not one to make a false marriage pledge.

Prudentia could hardly contain herself, showing off the engagement token Gia had given her. If the diamond ring her daughter wore was any indication, her future son-in-law was either wealthier than he let on or very frugal. As soon as she saw it, she got an idea for a possible career for Jabe McDougal.

Two weeks went by with no verdict. Between her advancing pregnancy and the stress of waiting, Sherry felt tired and irritable all the time. She was at Artemisia's house when the call from the prosecutor's office finally came. They went to the courthouse as quickly as they could.

The jury trooped in, and the foreman (forewoman, in this case) handed a slip of paper to the bailiff, who in turn handed it to Judge Riddle. He nodded gravely and turned to address the jury.

"Madame Forewoman," he said, "are you quite certain you cannot come to an agreement?"

"Yes, Euer Gn-, I mean, Your Honor."

"And you swear that you have made your best faith efforts to reach a verdict?"

"Your honor, we are, I believe the correct expression is 'hopelessly deadlocked.' "

"Very well. Given the fact we have a hung jury I have no choice but to declare a mistrial. I would like to see counsel in chambers, along with the defendant and his accuser." Riddle banged his gavel.

Sherry brought Artemisia with her into Judge Riddle's chambers. No one questioned it; the Italian woman was by now Sherry's most visible supporter. They sat down in front of Judge Riddle.

"I had a feeling this might happen. I had the jury polled yesterday, and they were split down the middle. I'm getting too old for this, and I want to propose the following solution. Mr. Bradshaw, if you would please?"

In his quiet, Cheshire-accented voice, John Bradshaw offered a plea bargain: Corporal Linn would plead guilty to a Class A misdemeanor assault charge and be given a suspended sentence. In exchange, he would be put under bastardy bond; he would acknowledge Sherry's baby, assuming it was born alive; and he would continue to support the child financially until it turned eighteen. Finally, Corporal Linn would not be disciplined by the military for this incident.

"If you agree to this," Riddle said, "you will be held strictly to it. If you try to evade your obligations, young man, your sentence will be reinstated and you will serve every single day of it, I promise you."

Johann Selfisch conferred with his client. "We accept this offer, Your Honor."

"Is this acceptable to you, Ms. Murray?"

"I can't go through this again, Your Honor." Sherry said.

"Are you sure you want to give up so easily, Sherry?" Artemisia asked. "It doesn't seem like enough for what happened."

"It's more than I would get if another jury let him off the hook. I agree to this, Your Honor."

Sherry spent the next few days with her family. Artemisia understood; she had family things she needed to take care of as well. She had to speak to her daughter's fiance about his future employment.

"Gia, I have a proposal for you. It may, I think, offer you a job you will find rewarding."

"Sure. What is it?"

"Lieutenant von Kessel spoke very highly of your skills in working with people and said that you have excellent manners. You always treat others with respect, even when they don't deserve it. He also told me that you are utterly reliable. He was quite sorry, in fact, that you did not plan to reenlist."

Jabe just flushed and stammered. Artemisia smiled and continued: "I have seen for myself that you are good at coordinating things. Prudentia and I will need someone reliable to represent our interests, meet with patrons and see that work is delivered and paid for. This is something family does, and you are now family. It would afford you the opportunity to meet important people and see a little of the world."

For just a brief moment Jabe looked trapped, but then he nodded. "I can do that. I think I'd like that. I haven't been anywhere much except Grantville and Magdeburg, except for a trip up to Luebeck a few months ago."

"It is settled then."

"Yeah, except…"

"Yes?"

"I'll need some help. And I just had a good idea."

A part of Sherry didn't want to pick up the things she'd left at Artemisia's home. She hoped they would stay friends, but she expected now that the trial was over, just about everybody would forget her. She was surprised when she found not only Artemisia, but also her two daughters and Jabe McDougal waiting for her. She noticed the ring on Prudentia's finger.

"Congratulations," she said to the young woman. Atemisia's daughter glowed with happiness.

"You know you and the child are always welcome wherever I am," Artemesia said. "But I wish to offer you a job."

"What can I do for you? I can't even draw stick figures."

"I need… what is the term?… a personal assistant." Artemisia looked to Jabe and he nodded. "Someone I can trust. My soon-to-be son-in-law suggested you, and I can think of no one better. It won't pay well at first, but I think I can provide a living for you if you are willing to learn some needed skills. Please say yes."

Sherry found she couldn't say yes. She was too choked up. She could only nod.

"Good," said Artemisia, beaming with delight. "Your first job will be to help me plan a wedding."

The Chase

Iver P. Cooper

Grantville High School

July 1633

"Are you ready to play?" Gabrielle Ugolini asked, tennis racket in hand.

"Hang on a sec, my hands are cracking. Let me get some lotion." Heather Mason reached into her school daypack. One of the geeks at school had nicknamed it the "magic bag of holding" because there was enough stuff in it to fill a pocket universe. Her hand emerged, triumphantly, with a plastic bottle. The up-time lotion was long gone, but it had been carefully filled with Doctor Gribbleflotz's "Celestial Dew of Mount Sapo." She squeezed out a bit of "dew," and rubbed her hands together.

"Okay," she yelled across the net, "What's the holdup? Serve!"

The Barbie Consortium had staged yet another takeover. This time, it wasn't financial. There were three tennis courts at the high school, and they were playing on all of them. Hayley Fortney and Susan Logsden were playing singles on one, Judy Wendell and Vicky Emerson on the second. There was a doubles game on the final court, Heather and Gabrielle on one side, Millicent Anne Barnes and Kelsey Mason on the other. Kelsey wasn't actually a member of the Barbie Consortium, but she was Heather's older sister, and a good athlete.

The main road was on an embankment, looking down at the tennis courts. William Cavendish, the third earl of Devonshire, stood there, watching the game. He was on his "grand tour" of Europe, a rite of passage for young British noblemen. He had traveled through France and Italy and across the Alps with his governor, Thomas Hobbes. On this fine summer morning, he was just three months shy of sixteen years of age.

"Geoffrey, what game are they playing?" Geoffrey Watson was one of the three lesser servants he had brought with him to Grantville.

"I couldn't say, sir."

"They're hitting the ball about with rackets. And there's a net to separate them. It's almost tennis. But there are no walls. It can't be tennis without playing shots off the walls and rooftops. And those balls-look how bouncy they are!"

"Fifteen-love!" shouted one of the girls.

William snapped his fingers. "This is some kind of tennis. No way the same crazy scoring system would appear, by chance, in an unrelated game."

William had been left to his own devices because he had interrupted Hobbes one time too many as the tutor tore through the Grantville Public Library. The last straw had been when William had brought Hobbes a comic book, saying, "Mister Hobbes, look at this, it has your name on it." Hobbes had taken a quick look at The Complete Calvin and Hobbes and then suggested that William go find the local gymnasium and converse with other gentlemen his age. With Geoffrey to watch over him, of course.

"Don't look now, but cute stranger at four o'clock," said Heather.

Gabrielle looked, of course, although she tried to turn her head as little as possible. "Since when are you interested in boys?"

Heather didn't deign to answer. "You think he's some kind of nobleman?"

"Duh? Dressed like that, he has to be. Guy next to him is obviously a servant."

"Perhaps he's a prince?"

"I hope not. Can't do much of a curtsey in tennis whites."

"He only has one servant. Maybe he's just a duke."

"With blond curls like those, even a mere earl would be acceptable."

"So, do we talk to him?"

Heather sighed. "No, he'd probably think we were forward."

"You could pretend to sprain your ankle."

"Real smart. Then I'd have to limp along the rest of the day, or he'd know I faked it. And why."

Millicent, waiting on the other side of the net, was dancing around, impatient. "Have you gotten tired of tennis?"

"Give us five minutes," Gabrielle shouted back. She turned back to Heather. "I suppose 'Hey! Don't I know you from somewhere?' would sound kinda lame."

"Ver-ree lame."

"Hey, I have the solution." Gabrielle turned and shouted, "John!" Gabrielle's brother John and Heather's older brother Derrick were nearby, playing one-on-one.

Heather was appalled. "But I don't want anyone to know."

"Everything's under control, Heather." Gabrielle raised her voice. "John, you moron, get your ass over here."

"Gabe, you made me miss the shot!"

"Big deal." She glared at him, arms akimbo.

"I'm coming. Jeesh." John walked over, while Derrick stayed behind, practicing layups.

"What's the problem, Gabe? Need a tennis lesson?"

"Stop dribbling the basketball with your head; it's affecting your brain. I need you to introduce yourself to that young man over there." She jerked her head, ever so slightly, in William's direction.

"Where is there?"

"I am not going to point, you idiot, I am trying to be subtle. S-U-uh-B-T-L-E. The one with the fancy doublet and the feathered cap. With the servant in black, behind him. Ask him if he is interested in sports, where he's from, how long he'll be in town, that kind of thing. Can you handle it?"

"Hey, you aren't interested in this guy, are you?"

"No, no, this is a public service announcement. Heather's making eyes at him. Or thinking about it."

"Heather?"

"Not a word to anyone about it, or I'll squash you like a bug."

"What about Kelsey? Or Derrick?"

"Definitely not Derrick."

Derrick had belatedly followed John. "What don't you want to tell me?"

The jig was up. "Keep your eyes where they are, but Heather's interested in that guy, the nobleman up on the road."

Derrick strained his peripheral vision. "Heather, you don't know anything about him. And you know what most of the down-timers think about girls."

"When I want you to protect me, I'll let you know. In the meantime, stay out of my life."

"But-"

"But would you like me to tell everyone about the swimming hole incident?"

Derrick blushed a deep red. "John, I'll wait for you at the basket." And off he ran.

"I hope you haven't done permanent damage to his psyche," John said. "Unless it will throw off his shooting."

"Well, what about the down-timer? We don't have all day."

"Get back to the game. I'll watch you play for a few minutes, then check him out. Is that S-U-B-T-L-E enough for you?"

Kelsey and Millicent were sitting on their side of the court, gabbing.

"What are you waiting for?" yelled Gabrielle. "Let's play!"

Heather tried two serves, both of which went into the net. It wasn't easy to keep her eyes on the ball and on the mysterious stranger at the same time.

After a few centuries had passed, John strolled over to William.

"New to Grantville?" They spoke for several minutes.

Heather was getting impatient. She waved Gabrielle over for further consultation. "I told him to introduce himself, not recite the Gettysburg Address."

"Just keep your mind on the game, okay? We're putting on a show for him, y'know."

At long last, John returned. "He's British, name's William Cavendish, he's the earl of Devonshire." Heather and Gabrielle laughed. "Have you girls gone nuts? What's so funny about Devonshire?" They laughed again.

"Anyway, he's done the grand tour through France and Italy and now he and his tutor are in beautiful downtown Grantville."

"Tell him that if he hasn't tired of Italian food, he can join us at the pizza parlor for lunch."

Hobbes had given Geoffrey clear instructions. "Remember, you are supposed to keep Lord Devonshire out of trouble. No buying of supposedly ancient artifacts. No attempted descents into volcanoes. And most importantly, no playing chess with courtesans." All references to William's past escapades.

Well, there were no ancient artifacts here, just futuristic ones. There were no volcanoes, just chimneys here and there. And, while these ladies certainly were showing a lot of leg, Geoffrey was quite sure they weren't courtesans.

In fact, Geoffrey was pretty sure they were upper class. Whoever heard of servants wearing spotless white outfits, outdoors?

So there was no reason for intervention on Geoffrey's part, none at all.

Anyway, Geoffrey was enjoying the view.

Grantville Public Library

July 1633

"Excuse me, but the guard tells me that your name is Thomas Hobbes. Is that right?"

Hobbes frowned at the woman who had just accosted him. "Yes, I am. Mister Thomas Hobbes, a bachelor of Oxford University, and tutor to the third earl of Devonshire."

"Well, that's great. I read your book."

"My book? You mean my translation of Thucydides? I hadn't expected that anyone in Grantville would have heard of it."

"Thucydides?"

"Yes, Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War."

"No, no. Leviathan."

"Leviathan?"

"Oh, yes, I had to read it in school." She put her hand to her mouth. "I forgot. You might not have written it yet."

It had not even occurred to Hobbes that his name would be remembered, and his writings read, four centuries in the future.

"Is Leviathan about my contributions to geometry? Did I publish my method of squaring the circle? Am I a famous mathematician of your past?"

"Um, Leviathan is about politics. The 'Leviathan' is the government and, uh, that's all I remember."

That was even more of a surprise. Since he had not written anything about political philosophy yet.

"Is there anywhere I can find a copy of this Leviathan?" Hobbes was a firm believer in predestination, but this was getting ridiculous.

"We have a copy here, and there should be stuff about you in the encyclopedias."

"About me?"

"Just don't weird out when you read the date you died. The Ring of Fire changed history. And even little changes, like who was where on a particular day, can add up to become big ones. Anyway, gotta run."

Hobbes sighed. If the library lady knew about him, it was certain that others did, too. Half the down-timers in the Grantville Public Library were probably there as spies for someone else. Hobbes realized that he had best find out what the books of the future had to say about him.

As if he didn't already have enough to worry about. He had, as instructed, looked up various members of the Cavendish family. The entry for one of the William's uncles, the earl of Newcastle, mentioned that he had been a royalist commander during the English Civil War, and later a member of the privy council of Charles II.

This led to the discovery that in the original time line, in 1649, King Charles' head was chopped off. Hobbes' friend, the king's physician, William Harvey, had visited Grantville in early 1632, and Hobbes suspected that this bit of history was what had prompted Harvey's hasty return to London.

The encyclopedias also revealed that the Cavendishes were forced into exile during the era of parliamentary rule. So they, too, would want to know who became a roundhead, and who, a cavalier.

Surprisingly, during the Restoration, the unwed William's yet-to-be-born son had become a leader of the opposition to the pro-Catholic policies of Charles II and James II. Indeed, a leader of the Glorious Revolution that unseated the last Stuart king. Leading naturally to the question, did King Charles know that, and would it create a political problem for the Cavendish family?

All right, then, let's see what the Encyclopedia Britannica has to say about me.

When he finished reading, he sighed. He was happy enough with the conclusion: "he has gradually been accorded recognition as one of the greatest English political thinkers." Hobbes was less happy to discover that, "unfortunately, Hobbes antagonized both parties in the current constitutional struggle."

The Encyclopedia Americana wasn't any more comforting: "he was suspected of atheism, and his attack upon ecclesiastical authority enraged both Anglicans and French Catholics… As late as 1683 Hobbes' books were publicly burned at Oxford."

Perhaps it was time to do some job hunting in Magdeburg?

Marcantonio's Pizza Parlor, Grantville

July 1633

John made the introductions as they walked over to the pizza parlor. "Here in Grantville, we tend to go by first names. I hope you don't mind. William, meet Gabrielle, Heather, Millicent, Vicky, Judy, and Heather's brother Derrick, and sister Kelsey. They're all nice, except for my sister Gabrielle of course." She stuck out her tongue at him.

"This is Marcantonio's. I hope you like their pizza."

William watched the cook slide a giant metal spatula into a brick oven, and pull out a large round bread, covered with melted cheese and vegetables. "Is that the pizza?"

John Ugolini frowned. "Yeah. Didn't you say you were just in Italy? How come you don't know what pizza is?"

Gabrielle came to William's rescue. "John, you moron, we're in the seventeenth century, remember? The Italians haven't invented pizza yet. I thought everybody knew that."

They were seated at a large round table. Which meant that William could see all of them at one time. His rescuer, Gabrielle, had the classic Mediterranean look: brown eyes, olive skin, and coffee brown hair. Her tennis partner, Heather, had matching hair and eyes, but pale skin. Millicent, Kelsey and Vicky were blondes, and Judy was a redhead. Auburn, not coppery. Height-wise, Millicent was tiny, and Vicky taller than the two guys present, John and Derrick. Geoffrey had been offered a seat, but declined. But he was happily munching on a slice of pizza at a small table nearby.

Gabrielle nudged Heather. Heather said nothing.

"So, William, what did you think of our game of tennis?" asked Gabrielle.

"It was interesting to see how it differed from real tennis."

Vicky challenged this statement. "So what do we play, 'pretend' tennis?"

Gabrielle wasn't amused. "Oh, give him a break, Vicky."

William put his hand over his heart, turned to Vicky, and inclined his head. "Forgive my poor choice of words, mademoiselle." The girls tittered. "I suppose we can call it 'royal tennis.'

"Imagine putting half a cloister inside a high-walled building. A cloister's a garden, surrounded on all four sides by a roofed gallery.

"There is a cord strung between two poles, to separate the two teams. The players have rackets, with which they hit the ball, back and forth, across the line.

"The players make the game less predictable by serving the ball so that it bounces at least once on the penthouse to their left-"

"Wait. What penthouse?" asked Millicent.

"That's the sloped roof of the gallery."

"Monks with Penthouses, huh? What about Playboys?" said John.

"Shut up, idiot." Gabrielle looked at her friends. "Has anyone ever noticed that 'brother' is just one letter away from 'bother'?"

Heather nodded. "I always thought that the Russians were clever, because their word for 'brother' is brat." Derrick saluted her, and then converted the movement into a quick grab for her slice of pizza.

"Owww!" Heather had slapped Derrick's hand away. He held it up, bent at the wrist, and acted as if it had been maimed for life.

"Do I need to operate, Derrick?" said his other sister, Kelsey. She was in EMT training. "I recommend decapitation; then you won't notice the pain."

William grinned. His own brother, Charles, had been twelve when William left England. Such an endearing age. Decapitation, defenestration, and drowning had all appealed to William at one time or another.

"If, after the served ball comes down, it's volleyed back, or it bounces in a marked area on the receiver's side, it's a good serve. From then on, you can strike the ball so it bounces off a wall, to try to trick your opponent. You can try to hit a winning opening in the galleries. And if the ball bounces twice on the server's side, or in the receiver's forecourt, or it lands in one of the other openings, it sets up a chase."

"What's that?"

"If a second bounce is anywhere on the server's side of the net, or in the front part of the receiver's side, a chase is marked at that position. Then, before the game ends, we play off the chase. We switch sides, and the new server, to win the point, either has to cause the ball to take its second bounce closer to the far wall than the mark, or get the ball into a winning opening."

"I guess that means you want to get distance on your shots."

"That's right. Otherwise, your opponent will just let the ball bounce a second time, close to the net, and then win an easy chase."

Vicky groaned. "I've heard enough about tennis. Anyone who wants to continue to talking about it-" She mimed swinging a tennis racket, two-handed. Her imaginary ball sailed out the window of the pizza parlor "-can go outside."

They told William about the twentieth century, the Ring of Fire, and the Croat raid. William spoke about his travels. The highlights, so far as the Americans were concerned, were that he had met Galileo and walked across the Alps.

William also described his home, Chatsworth Hall. Even though he was the earl of Devonshire, his estates were actually mostly in Derbyshire. Chatsworth lay between the Derbyshire River and the moors, and it was a Tudor dwelling in the grand style: square turrets at the corners, a gateway (complete with a portcullis), a great hall worthy of the name, and an inner garden. It had already achieved some notoriety, he noted, as the elegant prison of Mary, Queen of Scots.

"Sounds a bit like Pemberley," Heather said. "Wait, let me find it." She rummaged in the infamous magic bag of holding for a moment, and emerged triumphantly with a well-thumbed copy of Pride and Prejudice.

"This is from a novel written in 1813 by Jane Austen. Hold on a moment." She skimmed it rapidly.

"Aha! Listen to this: 'the eye was instantly caught by Pemberley House, situated on the opposite side of a valley, into which the road with some abruptness wound. It was a large, handsome, stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills-and in front, a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance.' And Pemberley was in Derbyshire!"

"Your 'Pemberley' does sound quite a bit like Chatsworth," William said.

"So that means-" Heather's eyes widened "-you're Darcy."

"Who's Darcy?"

"Uh, never mind." Heather fidgeted. "My Aunt Gayle's in England, now. She's with Miss Mailey, and Tom and Rita Simpson, and the rest of our embassy to King Charles."

"I hope to have the honor of meeting her and her colleagues, when I return to London. This Tom Simpson is the head of your delegation?"

Judy Wendell shook her head. "No, the official head is Rita Simpson, Mike's sister. Because Mike's President, and down-timers think he's some kind of king."

"And who, then, is the real head?"

"That would be Melissa Mailey."

William didn't comment. Vicky took issue with his silence. "You don't think a woman can handle the job?"

William held up his hands. "Please. It is only thirty years since the death of Queen Elizabeth. And if you ever met my lady mother…" He rolled his eyes.

"Sounds like my mother," said Millicent. "Always bossing me around."

"Where are you staying, William?" asked Heather.

"At the Higgins Hotel."

"Good for you," said Judy. "It shows you have excellent taste."

"Judy is at the Higgins, too." said Vicky.

William looked at Judy. "I thought you were a native of Grantville."

"I am," Judy said, "but my parents are working in Magdeburg, for the government. I stayed here since I wanted to finish high school. Delia Higgins is looking after me, so… the hotel is my home away from home."

John caught William's eye. "If I had known you could afford a room there, I would have made you pay for the whole pizza." Heather elbowed him.

"Do you know about our movies?" asked Judy.

"Movies? Some sort of race?" The up-timers laughed, and told him that movies were a form of entertainment, a bit like a play, but recorded and then looked at later, like a painting or a book. William wasn't sure he quite understood, but admitted he would like to see one.

Judy smiled. "We're all going to the Friday night movie at the Higgins Hotel. You should join us. Since you're a guest, you can get in for free."

"Yes, please do that, William," said Heather.

William was at the library, doing some research of his own.

"Hah!" The librarian shushed him.

William strode over to Hobbes' table. "Look at this. It says here that in 1638, Athanasius Kircher had himself lowered into the crater of Vesuvius. That's what I wanted to do, only you wouldn't let me. I could have done something that would have made me famous, like Kircher."

"It could also have made you dead, like poor Francis Bacon." Hobbes was referring to the infamous experiment in which Bacon, his mentor, had sought to prove that a chicken stuffed with snow would not decompose, and had instead contracted a fatal bronchitis.

Clearly, there was not a meeting of the minds here. William changed the subject. "There is a 'movie' being shown at the Higgins Hotel tonight. Are you going?"

"No, Lord Devonshire. I found out that one of the residents has a copy of an up-time book of great interest to me. But he is leaving town tomorrow, so I must either see him tonight, or wait several weeks until he returns.

"Enjoy this movie you speak of. Make sure you bring one of the servants with you; it would be beneath your dignity to go unattended."

William had somehow neglected to mention to Hobbes that he was meeting some young ladies at the Higgins Hotel movie theater. The hotel was brand-new, and only part of it was in operation.

The operational half was a mid-rise, which held shops, the hotel lobby, the restaurant, a lounge, and the movie theater. There was also a conference center, with both conference rooms and hospitality suites.

You passed through the lobby to enter the rectangular inner courtyard, which led to "the tower." This would be a "high-rise." Right now, it was still under construction. And the courtyard wouldn't be landscaped until the tower was done.

Still, the conference center was in business. Not only did people meet there, the hospitality suites were rented out at outrageous prices to visitors, like William, who wanted to make an impression. Once the tower was in operation, guests would stay there, instead.

The hotel also made money off the restaurant and the movie theater. The latter was equipped with a VCR and a large projection TV; the hotel charged admission and split the profits with the TV owner. Movie admission was free to hotel guests, but they had to sign in, so they could be accounted for.

Judy's informal guardian in loco parentis, Delia Higgins, owned the hotel. That meant Judy could see a movie pretty much whenever she wanted, which was usually at least once a week. Her fellow Barbie Consortium members often came, too. There weren't a lot of entertainment choices, after dark.

Vicky was the first to arrive. She sat next to Judy. Then Heather showed up.

Judy, who was watching the crowd, was the first to spot her. What she saw was so astounding, her brain had trouble processing what her eyes were telling her. "Heather's wearing a dress."

Vicky turned her head so quickly, it was amazing she didn't suffer whiplash. "You're right! She always wears pants. What's going on?"

"I think William is what's going on."

"Uh-huh. This will be an interesting evening."

It was. When William arrived, which was while Heather was off in the powder room, he sat down next to Judy. Heather came back, gave Judy a suspicious look, then hurriedly took a seat on William's other side. Gabrielle arrived, and sat next to Heather, and Millicent flanked Vicky. William looked like a sultan having a night out with his harem.

Judy squirmed a bit. She liked William, but she wasn't interested in William. Not like Heather. Who Judy was probably going to be hearing from, before the night was over.

It was obvious what Heather saw in William. He could pass, in the right clothing, for a rock-and-roll idol. He was reasonably well educated, for a seventeenth-century nobleman. He was athletic.

But, hey, what kind of long-term relationship could they have? The men of his class didn't marry for love; their marriages were more like corporate mergers.

Heather was usually practical. What was wrong with her?

Oh, that. Judy hoped not.

Sybill Johnson was very apologetic.

"I am sorry, Mister Hobbes. TJ isn't feeling well, you can't come in."

"Can you fetch me the book? It's Hibbert's Cavaliers and Roundheads. I'll take good care of it."

"His library is a mess, I don't know how he finds anything."

"Perhaps… you could just ask him, and then find it yourself?"

"I'm so sorry, but he's sleeping, and I'm not going to wake him up. But I'll ask him tomorrow, and you can pick up the book tomorrow night." She shut the door.

Hobbes decided he might as well see what a movie was like.

It wasn't easy spotting William in the darkened room. Hobbes hunched over so as not to block the view, and shuffled along until he found his charge. There he was.

Girls to the left of him. Girls to the right of him. A coincidence? Hobbes wasn't a big believer in coincidences.

William had obviously enjoyed more of a social life in Grantville than he had been letting on.

Hobbes decided that it was high time to get William away from his female admirers. Even if that meant forsaking the Grantville Public Library for a while.

As soon as the lights were turned on, Hobbes walked over. "Ladies, I am Mister Thomas Hobbes, Lord Devonshire's governor. Do you mind if I speak privately with him for a moment?"

Hobbes pulled William into a corner, then looked back. Sure enough, several of the girls were watching them. That confirmed Hobbes' suspicions. "Lord Devonshire, you remember how anxious you were to see Magdeburg? Now that it is an imperial city?"

"Yes… But I'm learning a lot here."

"I am sure you are. But you are destined for a political life, and that means you need to go where the emperor is. Magdeburg."

"I suppose a little visit might be nice."

"Actually, Lord Devonshire, I thought we might spend a month or so there."

William bit his lip.

Hobbes decided to sweeten the deal. "We'll see the Swedish Army at drill, and the Navy yard building new ships, and much else of interest. And Halle's on the way; we can play at the tennis court there."

William nodded, slowly. "That sounds good. When do we leave?"

"Next Friday. I need a few days to complete my research here." Hobbes didn't mention that his research would now include background checks on the girls sitting next to William.

"So, are you going to introduce me to these young ladies?"

After all the moviegoers had gone home, or to their hotel rooms, William went to the hotel lobby to use the telephone. He called Judy.

"William? What's up?"

"There's been a change of plans. Mister Hobbes says we're going to Madgeburg. Next Friday."

"That's pretty sudden."

"Yeah."

There was a long silence.

"Y'know, my parents are living in Madgeburg now. That's why I'm staying with Delia. She's a friend of the family. Mom and Dad usually come back once a month to visit me, but it might be fun to go see them instead.

"I could ask them if we could travel up with you and Mister Hobbes. If that's okay."

"That would be great! Uh, who's 'we'?"

"My girlfriends. I'm sure Heather would like to go; she's never been to Magdeburg. Perhaps some of our brothers. And I suppose we'd have to hire guards, or our parents would have conniptions."

William took a quick look across the lobby. No sign of his tutor. "Mister Hobbes told me that there's a real tennis court in Halle. That's on the way to Magdeburg. I could teach you all how to play."

"It's a date. I mean, that sounds like fun."

Judy called Heather. "William's going to Magdeburg. For at least a month."

Heather started wailing.

"Take it easy. I have it all worked out," Judy said. "We'll travel along, let him show us his royal tennis in Halle, maybe do some sightseeing together in Magdeburg. It'll give you a chance to make more of an impression on him, and of course I'll get to see my folks."

"Thanks, Judy. Wait, you aren't interested in him yourself, are you?"

"Honestly, Heather, I have no ambition to be the 'Mistress of Pemberley.' Do you know how often I have to shoo off worthless young noblemen who hear that I'm rich?"

"But William isn't worthless."

Judy thought it just as well that Heather couldn't see her expression at the moment. "That's not what I meant."

"And I think he likes you."

"What do you want me to do, Heather? Walk around with a paper bag over my head? Come along, talk to him, play some tennis, and see how it goes."

"Okay. But what will our parents say? We can't go without adult supervision, that's for sure."

"Hmm. Mister Hobbes is going, he's perfect. If he can get William safely across France, Italy and the Alps, he can get us from Grantville to Magdeburg.

"And we can say it's like a social studies field trip, going with this great political philosopher."

Heather pondered this. "They might think that his loyalties are to William."

"Right. Like he and William are going to carry us to their castle, like in some Gothic novel. Well, that's what the guards are for. So Hobbes can't hit us over the head with a copy of Leviathan."

When there wasn't any military traffic, personal messages could be sent, via radio, between Grantville and Magdeburg.

Judy sent her parents a radiotelegram:

WOULD LIKE TO VISIT YOU IN MAGDEBURG STOP

IF LEAVE THIS FRIDAY, CAN TRAVEL WITH PARTY OF THOMAS HOBBES, FAMOUS BRITISH PHILOSOPHER STOP

WOULD LIKE TO INVITE VICKY, MILLICENT, GABRIELLE, JOHN, HEATHER, KELSEY AND DERRICK TO JOIN ME STOP

Judy hadn't mentioned Hayley or Susan, because she knew they couldn't go.

DO YOU HAVE PREFERENCE AS TO WHICH GUARDS TO HIRE? STOP

CAN YOU ARRANGE LODGING FOR FRIENDS? STOP

This was the sales technique known as the "assumed close," that is, the questions were about guards and lodging, not about whether to go at all.

She soon received a reply:

DELIA CHOOSE GUARDS STOP

FELLOW STUDENTS STAY HERE STOP

HOW OLD THOMAS HOBBES? STOP

How lame, thought Judy. She composed a reply and handed it to the radio operator.

FORTY-FIVE STOP

JEESH STOP

HOBBES PHILOSOPHER, INFLUENCED AMERICAN DECLARATION INDEPENDENCE STOP

LIKE HAVING GUEST LECTURER IN SOCIAL STUDIES CLASS STOP

"Wait," Judy said. The operator handed the form back to her.

Is that a good reason for my parents to like the idea? Yes. Are they going to think it's my reason? No. So what will they do? They will keep hunting for my real motive. So what will satisfy their curiosity?

She thought a bit longer, and then scribbled an addendum:

HOBBES KNOWS WEALTHY ENGLISH FAMILIES, POSSIBLE INVESTORS GRANTVILLE BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES STOP

TRIP CHANCE TO PICK HIS BRAINS STOP

There. That fitted in perfectly with her 'Judy the Barracudy' rep. And it was true. Just not all the truth.

They were at the train station, which was the old B amp;O depot, waiting for the train to head out. William and the girls were chattering a mile a minute. All of Judy's invitees, save Millicent, had successfully reasoned, wheedled, screamed or otherwise buffaloed their parents into agreeing to "the field trip."

Hobbes was not happy. The point of going to Magdeburg was to get away from the girls. Not to escort them to the big city and teach them how to play royal tennis, to boot.

Not that Hobbes had any problem with teaching women. He had long been of the view that all humans are naturally equal, which implied that women are equal to men.

The problem was that if William got into any foreign romantic entanglements, his mother Christian would certainly blame Hobbes.

Upon interrogation, William had confessed that Judith Wendell had invited him to the movie. And then invited herself and her buddies along on this trip to Magdeburg.

It was small consolation that this Judith Wendell was, in some respects, a suitable match. She was the daughter of Fletcher Wendell, who was the "Secretary of the Treasury." As near as Hobbes could figure out, the equivalent British position was the "Chancellor of the Exchequer." The chancellor of the exchequer was almost always a nobleman; the present title holder was a baron, Francis Cottington. So it was safe to assume that this Fletcher Wendell was a nobleman, too.

Yes, yes, Hobbes had been told that the Americans didn't have a noble class. As a historian, Hobbes was familiar with several governments which were republican in name, but run by a small group of families. The Most Serene Republic, for example. Hobbes assumed that Grantville had a similar system.

The thought of William marrying Judy was amusing, in one respect. William had no idea how much Judy looked like William's mother Christian, when she was sixteen. Both pretty, redheaded wenches, accustomed to getting their own way.

The rail line from Grantville to Halle, when completed, would be almost ninety miles long. The track crossed "the ring," and then followed the west bank of the Saale as it leisurely wound its way through the forested limestone hills of Thuringia.

The train was powered by what the girls called a "pickup truck," and it drew three wooden cars on metal-topped wooden rails. The rails were not unfamiliar to Hobbes; there were similar structures serving a few British collieries. The "pickup truck," however, was a source of great amazement.

The train traveled at the astounding speed of ten miles per hour, without rest. William was quite excited, but Hobbes caught the quickly concealed smiles on the part of the up-timers. This is slow, by their standards, he thought.

Their parties occupied much of one rail car. The five in the Cavendish party of course, Judy and some of her friends, and two hired guards. This amused Hobbes a bit. He suspected that they were present to protect the girls from William as much as from bandits. Whereas Hobbes was intent on protecting William from the girls.

The first stop was at Rudolstadt, just outside the Ring of Fire. About three hours later, they pulled into the station serving the university town of Jena. Some students came onboard their car. One, more courageous than the others, spoke briefly to Heather, who was sitting nearest to them. She spoke to the young scholar with great animation, but occasionally glanced at William. To see if he is getting jealous? Hobbes wondered.

An hour and a half later, they were in Naumburg. This was the end of the line for now, so they hired coaches and continued on to Halle, where they would spend the night.

They had reserved the following day for seeing the sights, and playing tennis. The next morning, they would board the barge to Magdeburg, another fifty-odd miles away. It would be slow, even though they were traveling with the current, but the girls weren't accustomed to riding long distances.

"This place is really gloomy looking," Vicky said. The walls and ceiling of the tennis court were painted a solid black. Nor did the flagstone floor do much to cheer up the look. "Is this a home for Goths?"

Hobbes looked puzzled. "The Goths? Well, they are a Germanic tribe, and we are in Germany, but I don't think they played tennis. At least, I don't recall any reference to it in Jordanes' Getica."

"She means, why all the black?" said Gabrielle.

"Oh. To make it easier to see the ball, which is white."

"Why not whitewash the walls, and use a black ball?"

"They do that in Spain, but nowhere else in Europe."

"They don't have very good architects here in Halle, do they?"

"Why do you say that?"

"There's a kink in that wall, the one without the penthouses."

"That's the tambour, the 'drum.' You see how at the kink, there's an angled face? If the ball hits that, it's 'pinball time.' "

William suggested that they watch others play first, then take their turn.

Two young gentlemen did some practice volleying, and then began the game in earnest. The server cried "tenez!", and his opponent responded "Oui!"

"So that's where tennis gets its name," said Heather. "But what does 'tenez' mean?"

William smiled. "It means, 'take this!' " The girls laughed.

They were seated in the dedans, the gallery behind the service side of the court. William had told them that it was one of the three winning openings. The first serve sailed up into the air, and skipped several times along the service penthouse. Were that not enough, it rounded the corner, striking the penthouse behind the receiver, before it finally landed. The ball was returned after the first bounce.

"Was that a good serve?"

"Oh, yes. The receiving player has to just wait patiently for it to come down. The Spanish even have a saying, aun esta la pelota en el tejado, 'the ball is still on the roof.' They say it when something is not yet decided."

Suddenly, the receiver swatted the ball over the net and into the main wall. It bounced off and flew straight toward the girls in the dedans. They flinched involuntarily, but the ball was caught by the net hung in front of them.

The impact rang a bell. "Fifteen-love," the marker intoned.

"So if this dedans is the winning opening for the receiver, where's the one for the server?"

"There are two, actually. If you look at the far wall, behind the receiver, you see that it's blank except for a small hole on our right."

"I see it."

"That's the grille. In the old monasteries, the monks went to that opening to talk to outsiders."

"To order a hamburger?" asked John.

Derrick offered John a high five. "Good one!"

Gabrielle tapped the side of her head with a finger. "I'm glad someone thinks John's funny."

"Besides the grille, the server can also score outright by placing a shot into the 'winning gallery.' That's the last of the eight openings under the service side penthouse, the farthest one from us."

"What happens if you hit the ball into one of the other seven?"

"That creates a chase, just as if you had a double bounce on the parallel part of the floor."

Eventually, the players finished their four-game set, waved to the spectators, and walked off.

William approached the marker, who happily accepted the fee for two hours of court time, and supplied William with rackets and balls. However, when the girls came onto the playing floor, he balked. Until William produced more money, which magically vanished into the marker's clothing.

Judy had watched the negotiation. "It's kinda annoying that you can't play this game without a referee to mark the chases."

William shrugged. "Before they used markers, there were many fights."

William had them first just hit the ball back and forth. They needed to get used to the balls and rackets, both different from the modern ones. He encouraged them to cut under the ball, so it would drop sharply at the end of its trajectory.

Then he had them try different kinds of serves. While this was going on, the master of the court, the ballmeister, arrived.

"What's going on here? Why are there women on my court?"

Their marker rose to the defense-of himself. "Women? Here?" He turned to Hobbes. "I am shocked, shocked, that you would bring women here. You dressed them in men's clothing to trick me. I am most disturbed."

"I'm willing to pay a suitable fee for the privilege of playing here with these gentlewomen," said William.

This offer didn't diminish the ballmeister's agitation. "This is a house for the royal game of tennis, not for the entertainment of doxies!"

William bristled. Hobbes carefully stepped on his foot. "I don't understand your objection, my dear ballmeister," said Hobbes. "Women play in Udine, the chief town of the Friuli. And in Ferrara."

"Well, let them go to Udine, or Ferrara, then, but they shall not, no, they shall not, play here." He shook his tennis racket in a threatening manner.

Hobbes decided to try a different tack. "They are the guests of this young gentleman, who is the earl of Devonshire. What you would call a count. That makes him one of the British Hochadel. Do you really wish to offend him?"

"You and he are welcome to play. Just not the women."

"I won't play if you won't allow my friends to play," William said. "And consider this: The father of one of the young ladies is the Secretary of the Treasury of the CPE, and a confidante of Gustavus Adolphus."

"I care not a fig. Get out, or I will have you dragged out."

William put his hand to his hip, reaching for the sword that wasn't there.

Judy saw the gesture. "It's too hot to play, anyway. Let's get some fresh air." She looked at the other girls. They took their cue, and agreed with her.

Once they were outside, of course, they were quick to vent their spleen. "I can't believe that in Halle, which gets so much business from Grantville, someone could be so obtuse."

"Don't forget that this kind of tennis isn't known to any up-timers, save us. The creep probably doesn't have much contact with people from Grantville."

Judy looked at William. "Are you disappointed? You said that tennis courts were rare in this part of Europe."

William shrugged. "As Vicky said, it was too gloomy in there. Don't worry about it."

"I wish there was a royal tennis court in Grantville. That would serve him right."

The barge ride down to Magdeburg was picturesque, Judy supposed. Meaning, boring after the first hour. With the day a balmy one, Judy dozed off. And found herself dreaming about William. More specifically, dreaming about kissing William.

She awoke with a guilty start, and saw Hobbes and William playing a game of chess, with Heather watching.

Good thing Heather doesn't have telepathic powers, Judy thought. Or I might be swimming right now.

Judy had thought that she just wanted a guy who was smart, and could make her laugh, she didn't care how handsome he was. Okay, now she had to admit, looking like a young Brad Pitt was a plus.

William had stood up for the girls in Halle, even though, let's face it, he'd never heard of women's lib. Of course, from what Judy had heard about his mom, he probably thought there was more of a need for men's lib. But still, Judy had been pleased by his actions.

And he did have, for lack of a better term, a curious turn of mind. Judy wouldn't have thought of descending by rope into Mount Vesuvius, that's for sure. Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, Judy hadn't decided.

Okay, she admitted, maybe she was interested in William. And Heather had had a fair shot at him.

But Judy wasn't sixteen yet. And her parents had set sixteen as the rockbottom minimum dating age. Which Judy wouldn't reach until next year. By which time William would be back in England, for sure.

It wasn't the sort of thing Judy could renegotiate. If she tried, her older sister Sarah would side with her parents. Because Sarah had to wait.

At least it was an equal playing field. Heather was also fifteen and her parents would make her put off dating, too.

Of course, the definition of a "date" could be pretty elastic. Judy would just have to think about how to stretch it.

Imperial Palace, Magdeburg

July 1633

"A distinguished visitor? From England? Can't you fob him off on someone else? Isn't that what my staff is for? I have a war to win." Gustavus Adolphus was not really into the ceremonial aspects of royal office.

"If you insist, Your Imperial Majesty, but I think you should make the time. He is a young man, the earl of Devonshire. They are one of the wealthiest noble families in England, and he is at an impressionable age. If you will excuse my saying so, you do intend to inspire hero worship in such youths. That may come in handy when he is a bit older.

"And, sir, he is accompanied by a Mister Thomas Hobbes."

"That name sounds vaguely familiar."

"In the old time line, he became a famous political philosopher, a defender of monarchy. And yet his writings were influential in the development of the American political system."

"Yes, yes, I think someone showed me something about his book Leviathan. You think he could be useful to us?"

"He is quite a forceful writer."

"All right. Fifteen minutes."

Hobbes and William were ushered into the august presence of Gustavus Adolphus, Lion of the North, King of Sweden, Emperor of the Confederated Principalities of Europe, and Captain-General of the State of Thuringia-Franconia. Unfortunately for the royal schedule, the conversation drifted to the subject of tennis.

"Tennis, you say? I adore the game. I learned it when I traveled in France, as 'Captain Gars.' "

"We played it in France and Italy," William said. "And, after we crossed the Alps, in Augsburg and Nurnberg."

"Nurnberg, yes. I was there last year, dealing with Wallenstein's army. Somehow never had the time to play tennis.

"Now, earlier in the war, when I was outside Ingolstadt, I wanted to play at the ballhouse there. With my officers."

"They wouldn't let you?" asked William.

"No. And I made them a very reasonable offer. I promised to leave my army outside, and to allow food carts to enter the city for the entire day."

Hobbes raised his eyebrows. "Oh. You wanted to play tennis in a city which you had under siege."

"That's right. It was very unchivalrous of them to refuse."

An hour later, Gustavus Adolphus was still rattling on about his tennis triumphs. His aide had to force him to go on to the next meeting.

Wendell Residence, Magdeburg

August 1633

"So, how was your trip?" asked Judy the Elder. "And would you like more salad?"

"No more, thank you," said Judy the Younger. She finished off the last leaf of lettuce and drank some weak beer. In Magdeburg, it was much safer than water. "The trip was fine, Mom. We even got to play a new kind of tennis in Halle."

"Who taught you?"

"We learned from Mister Hobbes. He's not just a philosopher, he plays tennis. Now that's something I bet Ms. Mailey didn't know.

"Anyway, we went to this gigantic tennis court, and they showed us how to play what they call 'royal tennis' in England. You play indoors, in kind of an enclosed monastery courtyard, and you serve onto a ten-foot-tall rooftop so it bounces on the other side, and then both players can bounce it off the walls, and there are goals you can sink the ball into to score a point, and-

"Who's 'they'?"

"Hobbes and his student."

"Somehow, I don't remember your mentioning him traveling with a student."

"Oh, yes, that's how come Hobbes was in Grantville in the first place. He was guiding one of the Cavendishes around Europe."

Momma raised an eyebrow. "One of the male Cavendishes?"

Fletcher Wendell, who had been paying more attention to the food than to the conversation, heard the magic word "male" and came alert. But he let his wife continue to examine the defendant.

"Yes."

"A fellow middle-aged philosopher?"

"Not exactly. William is around my age. Actually, younger than me."

Fletcher finally intervened. "You do remember our dating rule, young lady."

"Oh yes. But we weren't alone at the tennis court, there were a half-dozen of my friends there. Plus Mister Hobbes, who's an adult, and William's servants. So it was an adult-supervised group activity. Not a date."

"Servants, plural? Just what is William's rank?"

"He's the earl of Devonshire. And very rich."

"I hope you aren't planning to take advantage of him." Fletcher reddened. "I mean, economically."

"I haven't anything to sell to him right now. We're still waiting for the printers to finish the brochures for our South Sea Trading Company."

"Very funny."

"Our slogan will be 'Send Your Money South.' "

Magdeburg

August 1633

Heather was not, she admitted to herself, the sort of person who let her emotions hang out. In fact, she looked down on those who did.

But when you were interested in a guy, all those inhibitions kind of got in the way.

She had traveled all the way from Grantville to Magdeburg, and she wasn't even sure that William knew that she liked him.

Anyway, she had been happy when Judy had excused herself to spend a quiet evening with her family. Judy was a great friend and all, but she was just a little too pretty for Heather's peace of mind. When William was around, that is.

So, she and Kelsey were walking arm and arm in the market square, with Derrick and William behind them. "You know what to do," she whispered to her sister.

"Oh, look at that," Kelsey said, pointing to one of the stalls. "Isn't that darling? Derrick, come with me. I think I might need your help."

"What?"

"Come… now."

That left Heather alone with William. She was searching for the right way to start, when he spoke up.

"So how long have you known Judy?"

Arrgh, she thought. "For years."

Her little tryst went rapidly downhill from there. He wanted to know all about Judy's likes and dislikes. And was she betrothed to anyone.

Arrgh.

Kelsey and Derrick emerged. Kelsey took one look at Heather, and her smile died stillborn.

"The weather has suddenly gotten chilly," Heather said. "I want to go back to the inn. Now."

By the end of the week, when it was time to head back to Grantville, Heather had more or less forgiven Judy. And even William. He probably wouldn't like doo-wop music, after all.

But she was thinking of a few new additions to the Trommler Records song collection. "I'm Henry the Eighth" was one. "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" was another.

Imperial Palace, Magdeburg

August 1633

Hobbes stared perplexedly at the paper in front of him. He had been assured that all applicants for positions with the CPE administration had to fill out this form.

Some of the questions were perfectly reasonable, others… less so.

But the most puzzling point of all was… why did they call it an SF-171?

Grantville

August 1633

Judy and Millicent were lying on the bed in Millicent's room. Millicent's mom had gone ballistic at the first mention of the possibility of a "field trip" to Magdeburg. The two had a big argument, and Millicent had been grounded for the entire week that Judy and the others were away.

Judy had been worried that Millicent would hold this against her, but she didn't. Of course, Millicent insisted on a blow-by-blow account of the whole journey.

That completed, Judy said, "I've been thinking."

"About boys? Mister W, perhaps?"

"About tennis."

Millicent started warbling the love song from the Titanic movie. The DVD had been released some months before the Ring of Fire.

Judy slugged her with a pillow. "All right, about both," she admitted. "But I want to talk about tennis."

"So talk."

"It's getting harder and harder to find balls that are bouncy enough for twentieth-century tennis. Once we open the can, the balls lose their air within weeks. And even in the can, they're only good for two years or so."

"You're thinking about switching to royal tennis?"

"That's right."

"But we can't play in Halle, thanks to that jerk of a ballmeister. And constructing a matching tennis court in Grantville would be real expensive."

"It's a catch twenty-two. We could justify it if we had the players, but we won't have the players until we have the court. Still… tennis used to be a very posh sport. Just the thing to play at the Higgins Hotel."

"Yeah, but there's no way OPM would fund constructing a real tennis court there. Not until the hotel was in full operation and was getting enough down-time visitors who knew the game."

"Yeah." Judy puttered around a bit. "Wait. I was just thinking. About the back courtyard. It's much like a cloisters. And it isn't all that wide."

"You're right! And the walls have sloped roofs, to keep the snow off them."

"It would mean playing tennis like they did it a few centuries ago. I mean, back when they played in monasteries instead of customized courts. But it would be a way to work up interest in the game."

"And if enough people got interested, then maybe OPM would decide it was a good investment."

"William told me that there are almost two thousand tennis courts in Paris. And that when one of the indoor markets burnt down in 1590, it was replaced with a tennis court, because that was more profitable."

"We would need someone to teach the game. Someone that was willing to teach women to play."

"What about William, when he comes back?"

"Well, there would be a lot of snob appeal in having an earl as a teacher. But I don't think he knows how to make the balls and rackets. Perhaps Mister Hobbes, the seventeenth-century know-it-all, does?"

Judy had written to William: "So, if someone were to build a real tennis court in Grantville, what would be the right dimensions?"

When she got his response, she read it aloud to Millicent: "There are no two tennis courts which are exactly alike. They can have different dimensions, different winning openings, and so on."

She looked at Millicent. "That's crazy, don't you think?"

Millicent disagreed. "Crazier than baseball stadiums?"

When she had a chance, Judy stopped by the Grantville Public Library. The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica had plenty to say about "royal tennis," including the typical dimensions of the various parts of the court.

Enough to show that the inner courtyard at the Higgins Hotel was an acceptable match. There would be compromises, of course. No main wall. And the grille side wasn't walled up. But she thought it might work. At least if any exposed windows were covered over. She didn't want to pay for broken glass.

She would ask William, when he got back from Magdeburg, to take a look.

Grantville

September 1633

"Hi, Heather!" William smiled at her. "I just got back last night. Took my time getting up this morning."

Heather picked up her books and hurried off. "Hey, what's the matter?" William said as she retreated.

Derrick Mason was on the other side of the street, and William waved to him. Derrick Mason turned his back.

What has gotten into these people? William thought. He walked over to the public library. Hobbes was already at a desk, with books piled in front of him. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

"Hello, Mister Hobbes."

"Good morning, Lord Devonshire."

"I haven't suddenly acquired leprosy, have I, Mister Hobbes?"

"What on Earth leads you to ask such a question?"

"My American friends haven't been very friendly today."

"Yes, I know why. I found out when I arrived at the library. Fortunately, the librarians didn't hold it against me."

"Hold what against you?"

"Against us. England, Spain and France have formed an alliance, the League of Ostend. The League defeated the Dutch Navy off Dunkirk."

"Good for them. The Dutch deserve it, after torturing our people on Amboina to make false confessions of treason."

"Indeed they do. But no one here believes that the League is arrayed against the Dutch alone. King Charles has transferred the American colonies to France. And the Grantville embassy in London has been imprisoned in the Tower. Do you know who is in that embassy?"

"Melissa Mailley, my friends' teacher."

"That's right. And Rita and Tom Simpson, Friedrich and Nelly Bruch, Darryl McCarthy, and Gayle Mason. All popular people here. I'd stay away from Thuringen Gardens for a few days, unless you have a taste for one-against-many bar brawls."

"So, are we prisoners, too?"

"Not yet, at least. But we do appear to be persona non grata, all of a sudden." Hobbes closed the book in front of him with a snap. "The attitude of the Americans is not our only problem."

"How so?"

"Your license from the Privy Council to 'go beyond the sea' says-" Hobbes changed the pitch of his voice to indicate that he was quoting from memory " '-do not haunt or resort onto the territories or dominions of any foreign prince not being with us in league or amity, nor wittingly keep company with any person or persons evil affected to our State.'

"If you stay, it could be interpreted as treason."

The coach was loaded to capacity. Hobbes and William had acquired so many curiosities in Grantville that if they put on another bag, the horses would just go on strike.

William was feeling sorry for himself. When he asked at the hotel desk that they connect him with Judy, they had told him, "she's out." Again and again. William suspected that she would be "out" until he left town.

William was leaning against the coach, waiting for Mister Hobbes to finish checking the hotel's arithmetic, when Judy appeared.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi, yourself."

William shifted from one foot to another. The silence grew.

"I know it's not your fault. I mean, the Treaty of Ostend. But people I know are going to end up fighting, and maybe dying, over this. Derrick and Kelsey Mason are in the military. And even civilians are at risk-we haven't forgotten the Croat Raid on Grantville."

"I know… But from what Mister Hobbes has taught me, history has a way of flipping things around. Enemies today, allies tomorrow."

"Yeah." Judy blinked, as though she was trying to hold back tears. "But it can be a long time in-between flips."

"Maybe…" William paused, wondering how to say it. "Maybe, someday…"

Judy gave him a little smile. "Yeah. Maybe someday. Write me, okay?"

"I will."

The coach was ready and the men were getting impatient. It was time to go. "Ah…" William wanted to say more but didn't have any words. "Ah…"

Judy leaned forward and gave him a quick kiss. "Maybe next time." She ran off, back into the hotel.

William watched the doors for a moment, but she didn't come back. Instead, Hobbes emerged. "Lord Devonshire, are you ready?"

"Yes, Mister Hobbes. It's time to go."

Hobbes and William stood on the docks of Hamburg. With the ports of Holland under blockade, Hamburg was busier than ever. The servants carried William's baggage, piece by piece, onto the ship that would take him home.

But Hobbes was not going home. He had told William everything that needed to be passed on to his family. It was far too sensitive to set on paper. While Hobbes didn't point it out, he knew that this knowledge would give William a kind of power he had never had before. Hobbes hoped that William would profit from it.

William would also give his mother an explanation of why Hobbes was staying behind. First, to continue his researches into up-time history that could affect Cavendish interests. Secondly, so that he could send word back home of any critical new developments.

Of course, Hobbes had other reasons, too. William knew them.

"Mister Hobbes, are you sure you are going to live in Grantville permanently?"

"The ball is still on the roof, Lord Devonshire."

Hobbes was quite sure that only the Americans would tolerate his views toward religion. While the Cavendishes might protect him from charges of heresy, such protection would probably come at the price of his remaining silent on any matter that could give offense to anyone.

Such silence was a price he had resolved not to pay.

Still, change might come to England, too. Perhaps sooner than the king, or even Doctor Harvey, expected.

William embraced him. "Goodbye, Mister Hobbes. I shan't forget all your lessons. And I will have your things sent to you."

"When you write to me, do not put my name anywhere on the letter. I would like to leave as vague as possible where I am and what I am doing."

"But how will the letter be delivered to you?"

"You must place some token upon it that the people in Grantville would understand, but the censors in England will not. A drawing of a whale to signify Leviathan, perhaps."

Hobbes paced. "Or perhaps not. The king may have sent agents to Grantville, to find every encyclopedia reference to Englishmen of our day, and the whale would surely point to me."

"Mister Hobbes, I promise to try to come up with something better. I have a long sea ride with nothing to do but think."

"Letter for you, Mister Hobbes."

"Thank you." Hobbes ripped it open the letter. It was from William. At least, Hobbes recognized the handwriting. The letter itself was unsigned. It thanked Hobbes for his efforts, and assured the unnamed recipient that he was to consider himself still on the family payroll. Without naming any particular family.

And there was a laundry list of gadgets to collect for William's uncles "if it wouldn't be too much trouble."

Carefully folded inside the main letter was a second one, addressed to Judy. Hobbes didn't open that one. Now that William was outside his custody, it was none of his business.

He decided that he would bring it by the Higgins Hotel and deliver it personally, as Judy might not otherwise realize who it had come from.

The next day, Hobbes spotted the postman as he walked down the street. Hobbes called out through his window. "That letter you gave me. How did you know it was for me?"

"It was obvious, Mister Hobbes." The postman waved and walked off.

Hobbes looked at the address side of the letter again, still puzzled. There was no name on it. No whale, for that matter. Just a drawing of a bipedal orange tiger, wearing a gown and a mortar board cap.

What could that refer to? Then Hobbes remembered the comic strip William had shown him, months before. Calvin… and Hobbes.

Eddie and the King's Daughter

K.D. Wentworth

King Christian IV nodded as the Danish court physician unbandaged what was left of Eddie Cantrell's leg. The monarch was a big, bluff man, narrow on the top and bottom, but wide in the middle. It was late at Rosenborg Castle, but, as Eddie had come to realize since his capture, the king kept idiosyncratic hours.

Lying on his narrow bed, Eddie flinched as his stump was revealed in the flickering candlelight, but the king's homely face took in the scarred flesh, the lack of both ankle and foot, with the utter aplomb of one who is whole himself and has never gotten in the way of an eighteen-pound roundshot in the heat of battle. "A very nice stump, Dr. Belk," he said in German. "Very nice, indeed. You have outdone yourself. Soon he can be fitted for a peg leg."

The doctor, who looked shriveled, as though he'd been freeze-dried at some point, waved a careless hand and replied testily, though Eddie couldn't understand more than a few words. Eddie's Danish was just barely coming along in the weeks since he'd been pulled out of the sea by the Danes, and the blasted doctor steadfastly refused to speak a single word of German to him. King Christian however spoke German like a native and seemed to prefer it. He even had a fair amount of English.

Eddie's room in Rosenborg castle was large and well furnished, with clean linens as well as a fireplace against Denmark's late autumn chill. He might have been an honored guest, but for the everpresent uniformed guard outside his room.

The doctor gestured at his truncated leg again, shrugged, then gathered the discarded bandages.

"What?" Eddie said. His fingers clawed at the bedclothes as he pushed himself up against the headboard. "Are you trying to tell me that it's going to grow back?" Despite of his gladness to be alive, even in this condition, he was tired of being treated like a stick of wood.

King Christian's forehead wrinkled. Fifty-six years old, he liked to dress in bright colors and sported a silly little goatee along with a single braid that stuck out of his dark hair. Tonight, as usual, he smelled of strong drink, but Eddie did not make the mistake of thinking him a fool. He just wished he could remember more of what the history books in Grantville said about Denmark in this era. Not that they'd said much, beyond some good articles in some of the encyclopedias. The problem was that given the rush with which Eddie and Hans Richter and Larry Wild had been sent up to Wismar to try to fend off the Danish fleet approaching it, there just hadn't been time to study anything that hadn't been directly tied to the task at hand. He'd read those encyclopedia articles, once, but simply couldn't remember much from them.

"They can do that?" the king said. "Your people from the future time?" His eyes, the pale-blue of winter ice, studied him shrewdly.

For a moment, Eddie was tempted to say yes. The more the king respected up-timers, the more leverage Eddie would have as a prisoner-of-war, but it just wasn't in him to tell a whopper that big at the moment. Lying took a lot of energy and he was fresh out. "No," he said, then tugged the red and blue quilt back over his stump so he wouldn't have to look at it. "We can't."

"Regrettable," the king said. "I would have liked to see that, but do not be downcast. You are mostly whole, just a little damaged, and it is not Our fault you attacked Our splendid navy in that tiny ship."

The battle flashed again inside Eddie's head-the roar of the Outlaw power boat, his foot exploding in raw, wrenching agony, blood everywhere-

He shuddered and threw an arm over his eyes as though he could blot out the memory. The grisly scene was embedded in his brain, though, and replayed endlessly. It didn't help that when he tried to sleep, he often saw Larry and Bjorn sliced to bloody ribbons by the same roundshot that had taken him out.

Christian patted his shoulder, but the man was so big, it felt more like a good-natured swat. "We have followed your Geneva Convention, and, by all appearances, your people set great store by you, even though you are only a lieutenant. Is your family highly placed?"

Eddie stared at the king's face, stifling an undignified snort at the thought of his old man being respected by anyone.

Christian didn't seem to notice. "Once negotiations are concluded, your people will most likely pay your ransom, and then you can go home to your family."

Eddie flopped back against his pillow. If Christian was pestering Mike Stearns for armaments or technology in return for Eddie's battered carcass, it just wasn't going to happen. He'd already come to terms with that.

He stared up at the fancy decorated ceiling. Besides, what good could he do the folks back in Grantville anyway? He couldn't see that anyone would have much use for a one-legged lieutenant.

"You rest now." The king turned away. "Tomorrow, I mean for you to tell my councilors about this Grantville so we can better understand how to defend against them. Your people are far too clever for my peace of mind."

Great, Eddie thought. Just great, icing on the cake, as his fellow Americans would have said. Now, on top of everything else that had happened to him, the Danes thought he should betray his country. Something to freaking look forward to. Too bad that roundshot hadn't been aimed just a hair higher.

He turned over and buried his face in his pillow as the door clicked shut.

Eddie awoke with a start to find a very pretty teenaged girl with long curly red-gold hair sitting on the stool beside his bed. She regarded him with unblinking blue eyes, her face very solemn for one so young. "Papa says you are feeling better," she said in flawless German.

His mouth sagged open and he could think of nothing to say. He'd kicked the bedclothes off in his sleep and suddenly realized she was leaning forward to examine his stump. Face burning, he covered it with the quilt.

"It is quite all right," the girl said. No more than fourteen or fifteen, she smoothed her skirts with utter aplomb. "I have seen such before. You are fortunate to be alive." The scent of roses drifted toward him.

It was still dark outside, so it had to be either very late or very early. The fire had burned down low in the grate. Shadows lay thick in the little room. Eddie struggled to sit up, clutching the quilts to his chest. "Who are you?"

"Anne Cathrine," she said as though that explained everything. Her hands were folded in her lap and a white lace shawl lay across her shoulders. She was dressed in a well-cut gown of dark-green, which was obviously far too expensive to belong to any sort of serving girl.

"I still don't understand," he said.

"Papa said you were feeling better when he came to tell us good night," she said again, this time speaking very slowly, as though he were brain-damaged, "so I thought I would visit you. I have never seen anyone from the future before."

He ran his fingers through his bedraggled ginger-colored hair, vainly attempting to restore some order. It had grown shaggy since his mishap at Wismar. "Who is your Papa?" Maybe the doctor or one of the court officials? he thought.

"Oh, he is the king." She cocked her head, studying him. "I thought everyone knew that."

His heart thudded and he became acutely aware that he hadn't washed in days. His scalp began to itch and he had to force his hands not to scratch. "Then you are a princess," he said.

"No, my official title is King's Daughter," Anne Cathrine said and picked at a bit on lint on her bodice with slim fingers. "The marriage with my mother was morganatic. Her rank was too far below his, so she was never queen and none of her children can inherit the crown." She sighed. "I did have a fiance once, but Frantz drowned, swimming in the moat. Now Papa will marry me off to another nobleman, probably much older than me. Several have recently petitioned for my hand. I do not care for any of them."

"Gee, sounds like fun," he mumbled in English.

She leaned toward him, eyes bright. They were the same piercing pale blue of her father. "Is that American?" she asked. "If so, I should like to learn. I am very good with languages."

"Won't you get in trouble, if someone finds you here?" he said. "For that matter, won't they be angry with me?"

"Mama was always very cross with us, so now that she's been exiled, Papa lets me do as I please," she said loftily. "At least until I am married. Then I suppose I will have to obey my husband."

"Well, he doesn't give me that kind of freedom," he said. Sweat pooled in the hollow of his back. "I think you had better go before someone finds you here."

"You are telling me to leave?" She blinked in surprise.

Eddie was no expert in royal protocol, but he didn't have trouble visualizing what folks would think if a jailbait-aged princess, king's daughter, whatever, was caught hanging around with a disreputable prisoner-in his bedroom-unchaperoned.

"It's late," he said and turned his face to the wall. Jeez, he hadn't shaved in days either. Suddenly, he itched from head to toe, or at least the toes that he still had. "I am tired. I want to sleep."

Her skirts rustled. "Very well," she said. "I will go-for the sake of your health."

Footsteps, light and precise as a dance figure, crossed the floor. The door opened and closed. He rolled back over and stared at the empty room. Light flickered from the remnants of the fire in the grate and the scent of roses lingered in the air.

The next morning, he asked for hot water and a razor when the maid brought him the usual bowl of warm milk and thick slices of cinnamon bread for breakfast, then did his best to eat all of the food. Most mornings he hadn't bothered. The washing water, when it came in a basin, was tepid, the soap yellow and harsh.

He pulled off his nightshirt, then sat on the edge of his bed and sponged himself down, trying not to look at his stump. In the light flooding in through his window, he could count his ribs. He'd lost a lot of weight since being injured, and he hadn't exactly been sporting any extra pounds in this pre-junk-food world.

He sighed. What he wouldn't give for a bag of Doritos or an egg McMuffin or even one lousy bite of a Hershey bar.

The door creaked open and he made a grab for his lacy bed-shirt, which guys back in Grantville would have snickered at as a nightgown. "Who is it?"

"Anne Cathrine." Her expectant face peered around the edge.

He tugged the shirt over his head, but it caught on his ears. "Go away! I'm not dressed!" he said, struggling to get his arms in the sleeves.

"Good," she said and pushed the door inward. "I have brought new clothes."

"Jeez!" His face flushed. He thrust his right arm through the sleeve, then clutched the covers over his bare legs. "What is it with you people?" he burst out in English. "This isn't a damned bus station, you know!"

Anne Cathrine's arms were full of clothing. One red-gold eyebrow lifted. "Could you say that again in German?"

"It, um, wouldn't translate very well." He could feel his ears burning. "Don't you have a-" He wanted to say "keeper." "A servant to watch after you or something?"

"Yes." She stiffened. "Mistress Sehested, our governess, 'watches,' as you say, after us. Fortunately, she is busy at the moment with my younger sisters. She would most likely beat me if she knew I was here, so we will not tell her."

"But you're a princess," Eddie said, flustered. He dropped the blankets, then managed, finally, to get his left arm through the nightshirt sleeve. "I didn't think princesses were ever beaten. That just doesn't sound right."

"I have told you-I am king's daughter, not a true princess." Her eyes narrowed, as she sorted through the clothing items. "It is very clear you know nothing about court life."

"I didn't mean to offend."

"Anyway," she went on, setting her bundle on his bed, "I thought a man from the future should look distinguished when appearing before Papa's councilors." She had her father's height and would be at least as tall as Eddie, if he were standing. She wore a wine-colored gown this morning, and her red-gold hair had been carefully coifed into elaborate braids pinned about her head. Two bright circles of red appeared in her cheeks. "They are fussy men, most of them old, who never want to let Papa have his way and always they say we do not have enough money! You must impress them so they will back all his wonderful plans."

He looked at the little pile, topped by a pair of gleaming black boots. Two boots. His heart lurched. He wouldn't need but one.

A maid carrying a single crutch appeared in the doorway behind Anne Cathrine. "Oh," the girl said, "and you will need this too." She motioned the servant across the room. "Do you wish help in getting dressed?"

"No!" Eddie blurted and scooted back across the bed out of reach. "I do not!"

She gazed at him with those luminous pale-blue eyes as though he were a three-year-old who'd just spilled catsup on the carpet. "I can assure you that I was not offering to do it myself, Lieutenant Cantrell," she said. "I will, however, send for a manservant if you desire assistance."

"I can dress myself," Eddie said, wishing she would just go away. Was it really possible to die of embarrassment? "Been doing it for years," he added in English.

"They say it is different in Grantville," Anne Cathrine said in a breathtaking change of subject. "For women, that is. They say your women can choose whom they will marry."

"Yes," Eddie said cautiously. Sweat beaded on the back of his neck.

"I should like to see a place like that," Anne Cathrine said. Her fingers fiddled with the white lawn shirt she'd brought, aligning the seams as though it mattered. "Later, after you speak to Papa's councilors, I wish for you to tell me all about this Grantville, with its wonderful clockwork carriages and flying machines."

"Sure, sure," Eddie mumbled. "Just let me get dressed."

"Oh." She nodded. "Very well." She turned to the maid. "Put the crutch where he can reach it, Gudrun."

The maid, a tiny dark-haired girl no older than the king's daughter, scurried forward, leaned the crutch against Eddie's bed, curtsied, then fled. Anne Cathrine followed, skirts rustling, glancing wistfully at him over one shoulder. "Promise you will tell me about the future."

"Yes, whatever!" Eddie said.

The door closed and he collapsed back against his pillows, drenched in nervous sweat. Now he needed to take that darned bath all over again, and he could just bet the water was as cold as the December air outside his window.

He thought of Anne Cathrine's blue eyes, the exact shade of the winter sky, and her supple young figure, then sighed. Maybe a cold bath wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.

The trip down to the king's audience chamber was arduous. Unfortunately, his room was at the top of one of the castle's towers. Eddie hadn't tried walking with a crutch until now. He'd asked for one, for a pair of them, actually, weeks ago, but the doctor had refused, finally saying through a translator that he was too weak. Eddie suspected that the real reason for denying him had been that, with crutches, he would be mobile and harder to confine.

Unfortunately, using one wasn't as easy as he hoped. He had a number of narrow winding staircases to negotiate, and in the end, the male servant sent to fetch him had to practically carry him the last few yards. Eddie was soaked in sweat all over again, despite the day's chill.

Just as they reached the audience chamber, he heard voices inside, arguing in German. "We have lost too many ships already, both at Luebeck and Wismar," one of them was saying. "More warships will cost money that Your Majesty's treasury simply does not have!"

"These future people are very clever," the king's voice said. "Think of all the damage done by one roaring little boat and a single air machine. If we could use this prisoner to get access in trade to armaments built in such a style, we might just achieve the edge we need to hold off the Swedes. And if we have even one of these devices in hand, our artisans might then be able to build our own."

"They will never sell us any of these marvels," someone else said in a froggy bass. "They have allied themselves with that wretch Gustavus Adolphus!"

"They were hasty," the king said calmly. "Alliances can change."

"They have no reason to change!" another voice put in. "After our failure at Wismar, we will be lucky to just to keep what we have. Mark my words, the island of Bornholm is at extreme risk! The Swedes have had their eyes on it for years."

Eddie shook off the servant's arm, straightened his back as best he could, and hobbled through the door. King Christian looked up from his thronelike chair at the head of a vast gleaming wooden table. "You are here, Lieutenant Cantrell! Good!" he boomed with his customary good humor. "Now we can get started."

He recognized the king's heir, Prince Christian, a slight thirty-year-old, standing behind the king. The son had come up to the tower, accompanying the king, several times during Eddie's convalescence, but never spoken to him.

The other seats at the table were filled with eight richly dressed men, some old and some merely middle-aged. Only two were anywhere near as young as the prince, and they stared, one and all, at Eddie as though they had a burr under their saddle.

And there was no chair for him. He hobbled closer on the single crutch, feeling horribly unbalanced. The thought of tripping and putting any weight on that still-healing stump was terrifying. Black dots shivered behind his eyes like the blobs in a lava lamp, merging and merging until he could hardly see. The room seemed to be buzzing. He reeled, then felt strong hands easing him into a chair.

After a moment, his vision cleared and he realized the minister seated closest to the king had surrendered his place to Eddie and was now glaring at him from a few paces away. Embarrassed, he tried to get up, but Christian himself pushed Eddie back as the servants brought another chair for the displaced man.

"No, no," Christian said. The icy eyes were intent. "You have not much strength yet. Americans are not as hardy as Danes. I should have realized."

A servant wearing the black royal livery pressed a goblet of hot mulled wine into Eddie's trembling hands. "Drink!" Christian said heartily, then upended his own golden goblet and clanked it down on the table. Drops of red wine glistened in his beard as a manservant hastened forward to refill the empty cup.

Eddie's dad had been an alcoholic, so on the whole, he avoided the stuff, but he sipped the wine. It was deliciously hot and heady and burned all the way down. After a moment, he did feel a bit better. His heart stopped racing and his hands shook less.

"Now," Christian said, leaning toward Eddie. "Grantville. Tell us how to defeat your navy. How many more of those deadly little boats do you have? How many flying machines?"

The Outlaw power boat, now reduced to fiberglass splinters floating in Wismar Bay, had been a one-off, though Grantville had a few other power boats, none as big. They were building more planes back home, but he wasn't sure how that was going. Parts were of course limited to what had come back through the Ring of Fire with them, and anyway he'd been too busy helping with the construction of the ironclads in the Magdeburg shipyards.

He just wished he could be there when the first ironclad met Christian's navy and blew it out of the water.

"Lieutenant Cantrell!" Christian's florid face with its fussy goatee hovered inches from his nose. "Are you well enough to speak now?"

It would be easier to say no, to plead infirmity and retreat back to his bed, but, dammit, Eddie'd had enough of lying about, staring at the stupid ceiling. He was ready to do something, anything, even if it was just sparring wits with royalty.

"Yes, Your Majesty," he said and took another sip of the heady wine. "I am fine."

"The little boats that dash about in the water, then." The king gazed at him expectantly and Eddie noticed that, despite being bloodshot, those chill eyes were very intelligent. "How many?"

When he'd first been captured, he'd raised the issue of the Geneva Convention, refusing to give more than his name and rank, professing to have forgotten his serial number, though the truth was that he'd never been issued one. That had worked at the time, but now misinformation and misdirection might help Grantville more than his continued silence.

"Twenty," Eddie said off the top of his head and saw the councilors stiffen. A murmur ran through the room. "More or less. How long have I been here?"

"It has been two months since you were plucked out of the sea," Christian said and sat back in his gem-encrusted chair, thinking.

"Oh, then it's probably more," Eddie said and squirmed until he was sitting up straighter. Maybe if he told a big enough lie, they would think twice before attacking American and Swedish forces again. "We, um, build at least"-he was tempted to say "ten" but decided that would make it seem too implausible-"five or six a month."

"I… see." The king's tone was frankly disbelieving.

"We have over three thousand 'engines,' which we use to power machines like speed boats and airplanes, in Grantville," Eddie said. "I'm not sure how many have been allocated to the speed boat program, the airplane program, and other… projects. I'm just a lieutenant. They don't tell me everything."

"Three thousand?" echoed around the table. Chairs shifted uneasily. Startled glances were exchanged.

"We have calculating machines called 'computers' that help in their design," Eddie said. "And we have made some improvements lately in what we call 'software.' The new boats will be faster, and we should have a lot more of them."

"We have sent spies to Grantville," the king said, "and to the shipyards at Magdeburg. As far as we can tell, they are building very large ships with no sails at Magdeburg, nothing else. How can you explain that no one has seen any evidence of more deadly little boats anywhere?"

"They're… ah, in a building, hidden away," Eddie said. A drop of cold sweat rolled down his temple.

"Do you know this secret location?"

"Y-e-s," Eddie said, drawing the word out as he thought furiously.

"If we captured some of these 'engines,' " the king said, "could we build our own deadly little boats as well?"

"It wouldn't do you any good," Eddie said. "They require an energy source that you do not have, and anyway you would need what we would call a 'technician' to build, then service them." He gave the word in English.

The king pushed to his feet and loomed over Eddie. "Are you one of these 'technicians'?"

"No, I was just a pilot,' " Eddie said, "what I guess you would call a helmsman.' " The wine was potent, much stronger than any that he'd ever tried. He could feel it all the way down to his toes, even the ones that weren't there. He gazed morosely at his truncated leg, masked by the lame stocking they'd provided for him to wear under knee-length black trousers. He hoped the guys back in Grantville never got a gander at him dressed like this. "Or at least I was a pilot. Don't imagine I'd be good for much like this."

"You will mark for me a map!" Christian said. "Showing the location where these 'engines' of yours are built, so that we can send an expedition to acquire some for ourselves. And we will need to know more about this mysterious 'energy source.' "

"Sure, sure," Eddie said in English. "Whatever. It will be a waste of time, though. They will have moved the facility by now so that I can't give them away." The room was spinning again. The wine had gone to his head. He should have been more careful in his weakened condition. Well, what the hell. This was the best he'd felt since that terrible day in the bay. He upended the goblet and took another fortifying swig.

The king gave some commands in Danish that Eddie couldn't follow, then the ministers talked to one another in their native language.

At length, just when Eddie's eyelids were growing very heavy, Christian turned back to him and pushed a large map across the table. "Now, show us the location of these 'engines' at the time of your capture."

Eddie tried to make his eyes focus on the crude map of Grantville, with the high school and other major buildings indicated. "Right here," he said, trying not to slur his words. He stabbed his finger on the outskirts of town, pointing to the sketched-in square that he was pretty sure occupied the same space as Grantville's Value Mart in real life. It was a big retail building with a large area in the back for storage that wasn't accessible to customers. That might do the trick, unless the Danes could get a spy into the employees-only area.

An advisor made a careful X.

"And we will need at least one of your 'technicians,' " King Christian said, "who could construct and then operate one of these 'engines.' Give us a list of names."

A cold chill penetrated Eddie's increasingly hazy mind, then shivered down his back. He couldn't give them real names. Dimly, he was aware that he'd screwed up big-time. Jeez, couldn't he do anything right?

"Um, there's…" He tried to cudgel his useless brain to think. "Walt Disney and, ah, Harpo Marx. And Clint Eastwood. They're all pretty-you know-good at what they do."

One of the ministers scribbled down the names, asking Eddie for the details of the spelling. Christian looked satisfied, like an immense cat that had cornered a mouse. "It may not be necessary to actually infiltrate Grantville. Although ransom is usually paid in money, your king seems to value you highly for one of your rank. Perhaps he will be amenable to trading a 'technician' and one of these 'engines' along with its 'energy source' in order to ransom you."

Oh, yeah, Eddie thought as the room swooped around him in lazy circles, that was just so likely to happen.

Back in his room, once his head stopped spinning, Eddie was aghast at his stupidity. Eventually the king was going to find out there was no speed boat construction program. He'd think Eddie had made a fool out of him, and people who incurred the displeasure of monarchs didn't last long in this century. Outside, sleet rattled against the window and he shivered.

Lying on his bed, he folded his arms behind his head and wondered if they did that gruesome "draw and quarter" thing here in Denmark. In the movies, it always looked-

The door opened without preamble. Anne Cathrine peered in, then entered, wine-colored skirts rustling. "My papa was very pleased with your interview this morning."

Eddie struggled up into a sitting position. Even that was hard without two legs to push. "I'll bet," he muttered in English.

"He says, if you will give your parole, you may now have the freedom of the grounds." She stood before the fireplace, studying the guttering flames with a critical eye. "This is disgraceful. I will have it tended immediately."

"My 'parole,' " Eddie said. "What does that mean?"

"That you will not try to escape."

Eddie thought of trying to return to Grantville, one-legged, in the dead of winter, through hostile territory and without a single coin to his name. "Sure," he said, then added, "like I even had a prayer of getting away," in English.

"I so wish to learn your language!" She smiled and he saw that she had dimples. "They say you have books from the future in your city. If I knew this American tongue, I could perhaps read them one day." She pulled up a straight-backed chair and settled on it beside the bed. "It must be very wonderful, this future, with great clockwork birds you can ride through the sky."

"Airplanes," Eddie said and swung his foot over the side of the bed. "We call them airplanes."

Papa, it seemed, approved of Anne Cathrine learning English, or, as she termed it, American. Eddie suspected that she wasn't really supposed to spend time alone with him in his room, but so far no one had objected. Just to be on the safe side, though, he scheduled her language lessons down in the king's library.

Fortunately, she had tons of brothers and sisters so she wasn't exactly the center of attention. She'd explained to him that the king had fathered six children by his first marriage, including her half-brother, Prince Christian, who would inherit someday, and his younger brothers, the princes Frederik and Ulrik, also in line for the throne. Then there were twelve more children by Anne Cathrine's mother, Kirsten Munk, though several of those had been stillborn.

And now the king had a new mistress, some doe-eyed woman, not much older than Anne Cathrine, named Vibeke Kruse. The woman behaved abominably at every opportunity to all of Kirsten Munk's children, but especially to Anne Cathrine. The king, however, seemed infatuated with her.

Court politics were darned convoluted here at Rosenborg, and Eddie didn't think he would ever get all the pedigrees of the royal progeny straight. It was a little like one of those television soap operas his mom had used to watch, he decided, only a lot more complicated.

The ransom letter had been sent to Grantville. Eddie wanted to beat his head against the wall every time he thought about it. How could he have been such an idiot? Even though he doubted it, still there might have been some possibility folks back there could ransom him if he hadn't set up an impossible situation.

The whole thing was insane anyway. When that letter arrived, they were sure to think he'd lost his mind. And maybe he had. Being shut up in this Danish nuthouse, and one-legged on top of that, was enough to make anyone stir-crazy.

As near as he could tell, there was no such thing as a wheelchair around here, and certainly nothing like wheelchair access, even if there had been. The whole castle was full of steps from one end to the other, and most of them narrow winding ones at that. He was more limited by his lack of mobility than he was by his status as a prisoner-of-war.

At least Anne Cathrine was helping him with his Danish, so that every day he could understand just a little more of what was said around him. And since he continued to communicate to everyone else only in German and didn't let on that his command of Danish was improving, he heard more than anyone realized.

King Christian was effusive every time he saw Eddie, soliciting the American's opinion on where to build the royal engine factory, how many Eddie thought they could produce in the first year, and urging him to better explain this mysterious energy source. He also talked endlessly of Grantville's alliances, who was in charge, what sort of men they were, and how they had come to rely on that dastard Gustavus Adolphus. They could do better, Christian seemed to imply. Perhaps some of his fellow residents in Grantville might like to come and work for the Danes, sharing their advanced knowledge. Could Eddie inquire for such people, once he returned home?

Eddie did his best to answer without giving anything important away, working to create the impression that Grantville was a cohesive community with everyone pulling together for the common good. It was difficult, because the king seemed to see through everything he said and divine the truth of the matter, even when Eddie didn't think he was telling it.

One thing was for sure, the king drank even more as the winter progressed. Though he never appeared drunk, he always had a drinking bowl or goblet at hand. That made Eddie wary. Back home, before the Ring of Fire, his old man had known how to put it away too, and he'd been a mean, heavy-handed drunk, prone to smacking his family around.

One morning, when they met for Anne Cathrine's lesson, he asked her, as diplomatically as possible, if her father had always imbibed so much. She thought about it for a moment, her young forehead creased. "Yes, Papa is almost as fond of spirits as he is of young women," she said finally. "How would you say that in American?"

Anne Cathrine was wearing a gown of patterned blue silk today, which set off her eyes. Sometimes, when they were working together, he got lost in that pale gaze and couldn't remember what they were talking about.

"We would say 'he likes to tie one on almost as much as he likes to chase skirts,' " Eddie said.

" 'Tie-one-on'?" Anne Cathrine repeated, her expression intent. Her accent was thick, but improving. She folded her hands on the table and leaned toward him. "I understand the reference to 'skirts,' but the tying part does not make sense. In what regard does 'drinking' involve 'tying'? Perhaps they do it differently in Grantville."

Before Eddie could answer, the king's elderly secretary, Anders Larsen, burst into the library. A great blob of a man tricked up in dark-red velvet, his eyes widened when he saw the two young people seated at one of the tables. "Lieutenant Cantrell! You are summoned to the king's chambers at once. A letter from Grantville has arrived."

"Wonderful!" Anne Cathrine handed Eddie his crutch, then bounded to her feet. "Now Papa will get one of your engines. Then we can build deadly little boats for our navy. We will be able to defend ourselves against wicked King Gustavus Adolphus, and you will go home to your family!"

"Not bloody likely," Eddie muttered in English, forgetting that the princess could understand a great deal of what he said these days.

She halted at the threshold and stared at him. "You think not?"

"I am not important enough for such a trade," he said, then felt a hot flush creep up his neck.

"But you were so brave in the battle," Anne Cathrine said. "Papa told me how you sank one of our ships all by yourself even after you were badly injured. Surely your king values you?"

Eddie ducked his head and followed Larsen's lumbering form to the door and then down all the steps to the first floor. He had a flash of that excruciating day, of the moment when he'd looked behind him and seen his friends bloodied and dead. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He shuddered. Brave. "Yeah, right," he mumbled.

The king looked up from a sheaf of papers when Eddie hobbled into his study. It was a sumptuous room, full of expensive woods, precious ceramic vases and burgundy velvet draperies. Even the blasted ceilings had fancy paintings on them, when you thought to look up, and the andirons in the massive fireplace appeared to be gold. He glanced out the windows and saw it was snowing again. As far as he could tell, that was what it did best in these parts.

"Sit! Sit!" Christian waved a careless hand at a stool and Eddie eased onto it gratefully, laying his crutch on the floor within reach.

The king's hair had its customary wispy little plait, called an "elflock," and a pearl earring gleamed in one ear. His clothing was black and red today, trimmed in black fur. It looked warm.

"I will read for you the letter," the king said and cleared his throat.

"Most gracious King Christian IV,

"We send you greetings. We are of course delighted that Lieutenant Cantrell, serial number 007, has recovered from his injuries sufficiently to be repatriated. We thank you for following the Geneva Convention and the excellent medical attention you have granted him.

"As for your offer to ransom him in exchange for one of our engines and a technician to instruct you in its use, we must regretfully decline. Our entire inventory of engines has been sent to His Majesty Gustavus Adolphus to aid in his preparation for defense in the coming year. None of the three men you mentioned are available, unfortunately. Herr Disney and Herr Marx are much too old to travel, and Herr Eastwood was killed in a duel recently.

"Is there not some other fee to liberate Lieutenant Cantrell that we might mutually agree upon? We send you this viewing instrument as a token of our good faith. It has come to you all the way from the future. Lieutenant Cantrell can instruct you in its use.

"Respectfully,

"Michael Stearns, Prime Minister, United States of Europe"

Prime Minister, Eddie thought, not President. And what was "the United States of Europe"? The last he knew, Grantville and the New United States had been part of the Confederated Principalities of Europe.

So things had changed, and apparently in a major way. He felt a sudden wave of homesickness.

Christian laid down the letter. "So." He frowned. "It seems Our enemy, Sweden, is to have its own fleet of fast little boats powered by these Grantville 'engines.' "

Sweat trickled down Eddie's spine. At least Stearns had understood and was playing along with his ruse. It was to their advantage for Christian to think they had tons of power boats in reserve.

"That does present a dilemma." The royal fingers fiddled with his lacy collar. "We shall have to give the matter careful thought." The king picked up something from the desk behind him and held it out to Eddie. "This is what came with the letter, some sort of far-seeing device, yes?"

It was a pair of binoculars, Boy Scout issue. Eddie'd had a pair of his own years ago. These had been shined up until the metal gleamed, but they were still undersized, obviously meant for a kid, and, by the battered look of them, had done time on any number of camping expeditions.

He took them from the king, turning them over reverently. "Well, Your Majesty," he said carefully, "Prime Minister Stearns certainly spared no expense. These are the finest binoculars I've ever seen."

"Binoculars?" Eddie had expected the Danish king to stumble over the English term, but he had no trouble with it. Belatedly, he realized the word was actually Latin in its origins and Christian, like most educated people in the seventeenth century, had a much better knowledge of the ancient language than any up-timer did.

The king examined the binoculars with interest. "Two telescopes combined, in other words. What is the advantage?"

"Come over to the window and I will show you." Eddie handed the binoculars back to the king and laboriously maneuvered upright on his one foot. He always felt so awkward these days. He'd never been particularly graceful before, but just walking without having to think about every single step seemed like it should have been such a pure joy. He wished he'd paid more attention to how great it was to be whole when he'd still had two feet.

Using his crutch, he hobbled over to the window. The study looked down on the a wide expanse of flower beds and trees, all now rather bare with winter almost arrived.

He put the binoculars to his eyes, made some adjustments, then smiled as the scene below came into focus. A horseman was riding toward the castle and he could even make out the auburn of the man's hair, the green of his jacket. This pair might be well worn, but they still worked just fine. He handed them back to the king. "Look toward the oncoming rider, your Majesty," he said. "If the view is not clear, turn this dial a little." He pointed at the top of the binoculars.

Christian gazed through the lenses, then inhaled explosively. "Magnificent!" he boomed, and Eddie could smell the beer on his breath. "I am familiar with telescopes, but their image is flat. This is like standing next to what you see!"

Eddie hobbled back to his stool and sat down, easing his stump out before him. Whenever he was standing, he was always terrified someone was going to bump into it or knock him into the furniture. Barely healed, it was still very tender.

The king's unsettling light-colored eyes regarded Eddie shrewdly, then he handed off the binoculars to his secretary. Christian reached for a bowl of beer on his desk, upended it and drank noisily. "If our positions were reversed, I would not send an 'engine' to my enemies either," he said, more to himself than anyone in the room. "These Grantville people are not fools." He stared moodily over Eddie's head.

The air crackled with uncertainty. The secretary glared at Eddie as if it were all his fault, while Eddie pictured himself relegated to the dungeon, clapped in irons, fed bread and water, and damned little of that.

Finally, the king sighed. "So what other secrets do these people from the future possess? If I am not to have an 'engine,' then what other wonders can your people provide?"

Eddie's head spun as though he'd drunk too much of that beer himself. What to ask for that wouldn't hurt the war effort? Automatic rifles? A truck? Radios? Down-timers were clever and often just needed a hint of the right direction in order to make use of future technology. He couldn't think of anything that wouldn't come back to bite them in the end.

"Your Majesty, they have rifles that can strike targets from a great distance," the secretary, Larsen, said. "One such weapon nearly killed Wallenstein at Alte Veste last year, and it is so light, they say it was even fired by a woman."

"A woman?" Christian dropped onto his thronelike chair and regarded Eddie. "Is this true, Lieutenant Cantrell?"

"It was Julie Sims. A young woman very gifted at shooting," Eddie said cautiously. "She used a special long-range rifle with sights that let you see faraway, like your gift."

Christian picked up the binoculars again, and turned them over, studying the glass lenses. "Then, perhaps our own gunsmiths could take this device apart and craft such sights."

Eddie was afraid he was right. The technology for grinding that grade of lenses was not out of reach for the tools of this era.

On the other hand, this could keep the Danes busy for a while. The longer King Christian's attention was diverted from attacking the United States of Europe, which included Grantville, the stronger they would be when that attack finally came. Once the ironclads were launched, everything would be different. "Yes, Your Majesty," he said, schooling his expression to polite encouragement.

"In the meantime," Christian said, "we shall write and require one of those rifles as your ransom." He cocked a dark eyebrow at Eddie. "Your life should be worth at least that much, do you not think?" He lounged back in his chair like a great bear, thinking. "They should send us one of your gunsmiths, too, to advise us. Who is the most accomplished among your firearms craftsmen?"

The secretary stared at him with expectant eyes, as did Anne Cathrine and the king. Eddie tried to think. Grantville wasn't going to send anyone here to take his place, no matter who he named. He gazed at his hands, scarred from the wounds he'd taken at the Bay of Wismar. "I think," he said slowly, "Elvis Presley would be your man."

"I shall miss you," Anne Cathrine said the next morning, when they met in the library for her American language lesson. "Once Herr Presley arrives and you are sent back to Grantville." Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. "I wish I could go with you and meet your women! It is so hard to believe that they do as they like!"

"That's how things were in the future," Eddie said, unsettled by her distress. Truth be told, if it weren't for the fact that he knew his claims were bogus and he wouldn't be leaving any time soon, he'd be unhappy himself at not seeing the girl again.

He pulled out a chair at the long table and eased onto it. "What's wrong? Has something happened?"

She dabbed at her eyes with a lacy handkerchief. "Forgive me, Lieutenant. I did not mean to behave so disgracefully. Perhaps we should cancel our lesson today."

She stood to leave and Eddie caught her hand in his before he thought. "No," he said, then flushed as his fingers closed around hers. "Tell me. What's wrong?"

Anne Cathrine sank back into her chair, her posture very straight. "It is that horrid man, Dinesen. He has asked my father for my hand in marriage."

"Dinesen?" Eddie tried to think. "You mean that balding guy with the chicken-neck and bad teeth?"

"He is one of Papa's closest advisors," she said. Her eyes, tinged with red, looked over his shoulder. "And he is not just a nobleman. He owns the largest shipyard in all Denmark. He builds some of Papa's ships and is quite rich."

"Your father hasn't said yes, has he?"

"No, but he will," Anne Cathrine said. "I have already lost one fiance, though it was not my fault that the idiot bet my brothers that he could swim the moat." She sniffed. "Frantz was always a show-off. I liked him, though."

She stopped, though Eddie could tell she had more to say. "Also," she said finally, "my mother was not noble, and she behaved quite badly. Mistress Sehested, my governess, says that I am fortunate that someone such as Dinesen would have me."

Eddie leaned forward. "I don't understand. What did your mother do that was so bad?"

More tears brimmed in the girl's blue eyes. She lowered her voice and spoke slowly in English, evidently not wanting to be overheard. "She had a lot of… gentlemen friends, one in particular. A German cavalry officer. He was quite handsome, and I fear Mama was…" She bit her lip, then switched back to German, evidently lacking the English vocabulary. "Indiscreet."

"Oh." Eddie sat back. His mind whirled. "That's a bummer, but what does it have to do with you, especially now that she's gone?"

"Mistress Sehested says I come from 'bad stock,' that I will be no better than Mama was, like a 'cat in heat.' Already, she says, I spend far too much time with-" She broke off and her cheeks flushed.

"With me," Eddie finished for her. He felt his own cheeks warm. Anger surged through him and he struggled onto his remaining foot, supporting himself against the massive table. What he wouldn't give to punch Mistress Sehested right in the middle of her aristocratic snout!

"But you can't marry an old goat like Dinesen!" He almost lost his balance, then sat down again. "That would be utterly-bogus!"

Anne Cathrine's depthless blue eyes regarded him, then her nose crinkled and she was laughing through her tears. "An 'old goat,' yes!" she exclaimed in German. "That is exactly what he looks like with that stringy little beard!"

"An 'old goat' you are fortunate to have, young lady," a female voice came from the threshold. "And you will not even have that much, if you are heard speaking in such an outrageous fashion."

Eddie turned to see Anne Cathrine's governess, Mistress Sehested, standing in the doorway. Still in her late twenties, she was regarded as a handsome woman throughout the court, though her expression was perpetually severe. Today, she was dressed in turquoise satin, and the cut was fine as any he'd seen in the palace. Her face was tight with anger.

"How can you even think of letting that man paw Anne Cathrine?" he demanded.

"She will do her duty," Mistress Sehested said, "as do we all. But I expect a commoner like you would know nothing about that."

Eddie's hand went to his stump, concealed in a baggy fold of hose. "Now, there you are wrong," he said, holding his head high. "I do know a bit about doing one's duty, however hard it gets."

The woman followed Eddie's gaze down to his truncated leg. "Any peasant can get in the way of a cannon ball. There's nothing noble about that." She stared at Eddie coldly. "Anne Cathrine, your presence is requested by your father." Then she left with a sweep of her full skirts.

"You should not anger her like that." Anne Cathrine's voice was only a whisper. Her fingers wrung the wet lace of her handkerchief. "She never forgets a slight, nor fails to remedy such."

"Neither do I," Eddie said, and was surprised at the steel in his own voice.

Three weeks later, the answer to the king's latest missive arrived from Grantville. Christian summoned him to the royal study.

Anne Cathrine was already present, head bowed, very subdued since the king had accepted Dinesen's petition for her hand in marriage. Her half-brothers, Princes Christian and Frederick, stood at the back of the room.

The King pulled the single sheet of creamy paper out of the envelope and read:

"Most gracious King Christian IV,

"We send you greeting, with renewed good wishes for your health and that of your family.

"Again, we are glad for word of Lieutenant Cantrell's continuing recovery. We hope to see him safe in Grantville in the near future.

"Upon receipt of your letter, we dispatched Herr Presley along with a long-range rifle, complete with telescopic sights, to Denmark, but word has reached us that he fell prey to bandits and the gun was lost. We have sent troops to recover the weapon, and rest assured that when it is found, we will send it promptly to you.

"In the meantime, please accept our regrets for the delay and tell Lieutenant Cantrell that his betrothed, Miss Marilyn Monroe, remains in good health.

"Respectfully,

"Michael Stearns, Prime Minister, United States of Europe"

An involuntary snort escaped Eddie. He tried to muffle it with a faked sneeze. Marilyn Monroe? Mike was really getting into the spirit of things.

"You are betrothed?" King Christian motioned him forward, so Eddie hobbled with his crutch across the inlaid wood floor. He was steadier now than he'd been even a week ago and moved with more assurance. The monarch's cold blue eyes studied him. "She is very beautiful, this Monroe woman?"

Eddie looked at his boot. "Some people think so," he said.

"Then We wish you joy," the king said, "when you return home."

"Uh, thanks," Eddie said.

Anne Cathrine gave him a strange look, then left in a flurry of rustling silk. Eddie's heart gave a lurch. She seemed upset.

"It is unfortunate about the rifle," Christian said, appearing not to notice. "I was looking forward to having it duplicated."

Balanced on his single foot, Eddie sighed. "Bandits have been a problem since we came here from the future." He moved several steps closer. "Have your craftsmen been able to reproduce the lenses from the binoculars yet?"

Christian scowled. "No. I have summoned a lens grinder from Amsterdam. Once he arrives, then We will see."

Mike Stearns had taken a calculated risk in sending the binoculars, Eddie thought. Just because the technology to make such things didn't exist here yet, that didn't mean people of this era weren't smart. With a good example of what could be accomplished, they would figure the process out.

As for himself, he wasn't fooled by that letter. No high-power rifle had been sent to Denmark. There were no bandits. Stearns was stalling. He had something in mind, some plan, even if it was just to put off Christian indefinitely while Gustavus Adolphus built up his forces and moved men and resources into place.

All Eddie could do to help was play along. He would never see Grantville again, never go home, but, so far, it seemed he was the only person in Denmark who knew it.

Anne Cathrine did not come for her language lesson the next day or the next. Finally Eddie sought her out in the apartments she shared with her sisters.

A young maid opened the door, then stared at Eddie, her mouth frozen in an "O."

"Please say that Lieutenant Edward Cantrell is here to see Anne Cathrine," he said in Danish, the words awkward on his tongue.

The door closed in his face and he was left teetering on his one foot and feeling stupid. Voices sounded from within, muffled and unintelligible. Finally, the door opened again. Anne Cathrine stood before him, stiff and proper, as though they hadn't spent hours and hours together.

She inclined her head. As always, her red-gold hair was beautifully braided, but her cheeks were pale, almost as though she'd been sick. Her gown was dark green and very formal with tons of laces and gold and velvet trim. "What's up, dude?" she said carefully in English.

Eddie had to stifle a laugh. "I was worried," he said in Danish. "You did not come for your lessons."

Mistress Sehested's voice spoke sharply behind her in the royal apartments. Anne Cathrine glanced over her shoulder, then edged out into the hallway and closed the heavy oak door. "I am very busy at the moment," she said. "I have fittings for my wedding dress and…" Her voice trailed off and she bit her lip.

"He's really going to make you do it, then," he said, "marry that old goat?"

"Dinesen is quite… zealous on the subject of our union." A tear trailed down her wan cheek. "He asked Papa to move up the wedding date, so I am afraid I have no more time for American lessons."

"You can't marry him!" Eddie said in English. "It just isn't right!"

"But you are to be married too," the girl said and brushed away her tears with the back of her hand. "To this Marilyn Monroe."

"Oh, that." Eddie glanced around, but they were alone in the shadowy hallway. He could hear the wind howling outside. "Prime Minister Stearns doesn't know it yet, but Marilyn and I are calling that off."

Her blue eyes widened. "You are breaking your betrothal?"

"She's, um, in love with someone else," Eddie said, "this guy named John Kennedy. I'm not going to stand in their way. We just haven't announced it yet. In Grantville, we consider it immoral to marry someone you don't love."

"But," she said softly, "what about duty?"

"The pursuit of happiness is a duty," he said. "Marriages made without love and respect don't last. Just look at your mother and father."

"But Papa did love her," Anne Cathrine said. "He was so unhappy when she turned away from him."

Eddie remembered his own mother, who had stayed with an alcoholic husband when good sense would have dictated otherwise. "I will never marry anyone I don't love, and who doesn't love me back," he said. "And neither should you."

"But I have to do as I am bid."

"Not if you lived in Grantville," he said. He thought of Sharon Nichols, Julie Mackay, and Melissa Mailey. They could all explain this so much better than he ever could. "I wish I could take you there."

"As do I." Her blue eyes shone with unshed tears.

Eddie thought for a moment. "Isn't there anything about this Dinesen that would make your father change his mind, some secret, perhaps?"

"He and Papa have been drinking companions for a long time," Anne Cathrine said. "His wife died in childbirth two years ago, and, when we are in the same room, he looks at me as though he could consume me like a hot apple pastry." She shuddered. "I barely know the man, and never wanted to."

"Then we'll have to make something up," Eddie said. "Leave it to me. I've always been good at whoppers. I had to be, growing up in my family."

" 'Whoppers?' " Her eyebrows rose in question.

"Lies," he said in German. He heard footsteps at the other end of the hall. "I'm going to rearrange the truth a little."

She patted at her skirts, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles with trembling hands. "Do you think it will make a difference?"

"I don't know," he said, "but we can at least give it our best shot."

Eddie lay in bed that night and cudgeled his brain for ideas. What would make the king dislike Dinesen so much that he would boot the wretch out of court, much less out of Anne Cathrine's life? He thought back through all the rumors about royal goings-on that he'd heard since being delivered here one-legged and half-dead in October. Anne Cathrine's mother had evidently carried on in a quite scandalous fashion with a German cavalry officer until, three years ago, Christian had banished her from Copenhagen. What if-?

He turned over and huddled beneath the warm quilts, a tiny germ of a plan forming in his mind. Maybe, for once, his dreams would be good.

"Okay," he told Anne Cathrine in the library the next day, "all you have to do is play along."

"But it is not true," Anne Cathrine said. She had dressed in wine-colored silk and it flattered her naturally fair complexion.

"Heck, three quarters of the things I hear every day here aren't true," Eddie said. He breathed in the scent of fine leather and old paper from the surrounding shelves and shelves of books. "That doesn't keep anyone from saying them."

She bit her lip and nodded. Her red-gold hair was coiled low on her neck today and pinned with a silver ornament. She looked so enticing, he found it hard to concentrate.

"Look, this may not work," he said. "I can't promise anything, but it's worth a try."

The flames crackled pleasantly in the fireplace, and they passed the time then conversing in English until a young apple-cheeked maid came in to remove the ashes. Eddie nodded at Anne Cathrine. "You saw Herr Dinesen go off into the stable with Vibeke Kruse?" he said in Danish, very softly, as though he didn't mean to be overheard.

"He had his arm around her waist!" Anne Cathrine glanced over her shoulder, then leaned closer. "He is my intended, so I am sure there was nothing improper going on, but it looked so-so-"

"Shocking?" he supplied.

"Dinesen would never dishonor my father," she said. "It just would not happen."

"Of course not," Eddie said. "He is the king. Everyone respects that."

Startled, the freckled maid dropped the brush with a clatter, then picked it back up and finished her task. Eddie winked at Anne Cathrine.

They abandoned the library and made their way down to the vast castle kitchens to snag some freshly baked cinnamon cakes. Several cooks were working on the king's midday meal, putting crusts on lamb pies. Anne Cathrine broke off a piece of hot cake and handed it to Eddie, who was balancing on his crutch.

"You must be wrong," he said. "Vibeke Kruse would not allow anyone to-"

Anne Cathrine edged closer. "His hand was, well, let us just say where a gentleman's hand would never be!"

Eddie took a bite of the delicious cake. The cinnamon melted in his mouth. "Did she slap him?"

"No," Anne Cathrine said softly. "She laughed!"

"This is a very bold man you are marrying," Eddie said, struggling with his newly acquired Danish. "He should give you interesting children."

"What kind of children do you think Vibeke Kruse will be having?" Anne Cathrine giggled. Obviously, Eddie thought, despite her initial misgivings, she'd warmed to this business like a trooper.

They left the kitchens under the staring eyes of the two cooks, who gave each other a meaningful glance over the young people's heads.

Anne Cathrine and Eddie made a circuit of the entire castle, gossiping in front of servants at every opportunity. The princess gave an Oscar-worthy performance each time, lamenting the lack of respect for her royal father and the unworthiness of her future bridegroom. When they had exhausted all inside possibilities for an audience, they put on warm cloaks and went out through the snow to the royal stable to chat in the hearing of grooms and stable boys.

The air was crisp and clean, filled with the salt tang of the nearby sea. Snow sifted down from a pewter sky, light and feathery. Eddie hadn't been outside much since his arrival, and it was pleasant to leave the castle, even on one leg. His stamina was improving, and even though he had to rest on a bale of hay after they reached the stable, he felt more like his old self than he had since the attack run in Wismar Bay.

Anne Cathrine stopped in front of a stall and stroked a sleek black mare's nose. "This is my horse," she said. "Her name is Laila." She turned and looked at Eddie with those marvelous light-blue eyes. "When the weather is better, we could go riding. Then it would not matter about-" She colored, then pointedly turned her gaze away from Eddie's stump.

Eddie had never been much for horses, but he saw her point. On horseback, he wouldn't be lame like he was now. He could move about freely again. "I would like that," he said.

They carried on with their plan for several days before they saw any results. Servant girls began to give Dinesen strange looks when he visited the castle, ducking their heads and making sure to remain out of reach. Vibeke Kruse's mood, always mercurial, darkened, and more than one of her maids was seen fleeing her chambers, weeping.

Eddie eavesdropped, whenever he had the opportunity. Most servants did not realize he'd learned much Danish, so they were much freer with their comments than they might otherwise have been.

"I heard he went right into her rooms late at night!" a footman said in passing to a middle-aged seamstress on her way to a fitting. "And he did not leave until the next morning!"

Eddie, hobbling past the pair in the hallway on his crutch, pretended not to understand.

"They say a child will be born in the summer," the seamstress said, clutching her bag of pins, thread, and needles. "And it will not resemble the king!"

"Last time, he sent the unfaithful wretch away," the footman said. "And he is not even married to this one."

"It is a bad business." The seamstress's long face creased. "When the king is angry, everyone suffers. We shall all have to keep out of the way."

Eddie rounded the corner before he could hear more, but smiled to himself. It was working.

King Christian sent for Eddie two days later. A male servant delivered the message, then escorted him from his little tower chamber down to the ornate Winter Room, as though he couldn't be trusted to show up. The servant, an older man named Jens, set a brisk pace and wouldn't look at Eddie.

When Eddie entered the richly appointed room, morning sun was streaming through the windows. Anne Cathrine was already there, standing beside the king's massive chair, along with Prince Christian, Dinesen, Vibeke Kruse and a whole raft of people Eddie didn't recognize. The room smelled strongly of spilled wine as though the king had already tied one on. Cold sweat prickled down Eddie's back. This had all the hallmarks of a set-up.

King Christian drank deeply from a golden goblet, then clanged it down on a side table. "My court has been rife with rumors for the last few days," he said in German. "Wicked rumors."

Eddie did his best to stand up straight, even on one foot, and meet Christian's ice-cold gaze.

"Fortunately, none of them could be substantiated," Christian said. "Yet, still it is troubling."

Busted. All the starch left Eddie's spine. He wanted to sink down on a stool and hold his head in his hands. Not only had he gotten himself in deep, but he'd dragged Anne Cathrine in with him. Why hadn't he just kept his big mouth shut? He struggled to hold his head high.

"So I interview and ask questions," King Christian said. He glanced over at Vibeke Kruse who smiled back uncertainly. She was wearing a pale-gray dress cut scandalously low in the bodice. "The rumors say Dinesen has been indiscreet with my beloved Vibeke." He picked up the goblet again and pounded it in time with his words. "But this is not true!" Wine splattered the arm of his chair and floor. Servants hastened to wipe it up.

"Of course it is not, Your Majesty!" Dinesen started forward.

Christian held up a hand, his homely face creased in concentration. "But upon inquiry there were other things to be learned."

Dinesen paled. "Whatever you have heard, Majesty, rest assured I have not gone near-"

"There is the disturbing matter of the commissioning of four galleons by Gustavus Adolphus to replace his magnificent Vasa, which quite fortuitously sank in his own harbor a few years ago, praise be to God." King Christian took another long draft from his goblet, then held it out to be refilled. "Are We to suppose you have not 'gone near' that either?"

"But that-that-that-I-" Dinesen's mouth hung open.

"Was only business?" The king lurched to his feet. "You put money before loyalty to your monarch, and yet you expect the hand of my precious daughter in marriage?" His volume increased with each word until he was roaring. He dashed the remaining contents of the cup in Dinesen's face and red wine soaked into the linen of the shipbuilder's shirt. "From this moment on, Denmark will sell no ships to our sworn enemy, Sweden!" He turned to several uniformed guards waiting in the corner. "Take him away until I can investigate this further!"

They darted forward and seized Dinesen who was too horrified even to struggle. His face was as white as watered milk. "Your Majesty, please!"

King Christian turned to Anne Cathrine. "I had not thought to find you so like your mother, child," he murmured and touched her face with the tips of his fingers. "It seems you have something of her spirit after all."

"I am sorry, Papa," the girl said, catching his hand and pressing her cheek to it.

He glanced at the rest of the spectators and scowled. "Get out!"

Heart thumping, Eddie turned to go, too, but the king shook his head. "No, young scamp. You also will stay."

The room cleared, with Vibeke leaving last of all and giving both young people a venomous glare. The royal mistress's skirts swished through the door, then it closed behind her. Christian sighed. "Your mother was not all bad, you know, especially at the start." He upended his empty goblet, then gazed at it dolefully.

"She loved you then, Papa. I know she did." Anne Cathrine's voice was strained. She took the goblet and filled it again with dark-red wine from the bottle on the sideboard.

"Once," the king said. "But now is another day." He turned to Eddie. "My daughter tells me that you are not betrothed after all."

"No, sir," Eddie said. "Before I left Magdeburg, Marilyn Monroe's affections had settled upon another, and I released her from her promise. Prime Minister Stearns just is not aware of it yet."

"Very wise," the king said. "Once a woman's affections have altered, not all the tides in the world can turn them back." He picked at a ruby embedded on the arm of his lushly ornamented chair. "We received a new letter from Grantville. Perhaps you would care to read it?" He gestured at an envelope on the sideboard.

Anne Cathrine handed it to Eddie. He pulled the letter out, then read:

"Most gracious King Christian IV,

"We send you greetings. The gunsmith you requested, Herr Elvis Presley, is still missing and feared dead, though occasionally we do hear he has been sighted, so all may not be lost. In the meantime, perhaps we might make some other suitable arrangement to have Lieutenant Cantrell returned to us."

"Respectfully,

"Michael Stearns, Prime Minister, United States of Europe"

"I am not so foolish that I cannot recognize-what is that American expression my son Ulrik explained to me? Yes, 'stalling tactics.' " Christian said. "So it seems you will be with us for some time yet. That being so, I suggest you consider your behavior more carefully in the future."

The king shook his head. "Vibeke now quite detests you, and with good reason. You behaved badly and will have to watch out for her. I must warn you that she is well skilled in repaying a wrong. On the other side-" He chuckled. "It does no harm for her to be aware how easily she could lose her position here at court, if she ever did choose to…" His fingers drummed on the arm of his throne. His pale eyes became icy. "Misbehave."

Eddie swayed, and the king waved a careless hand at him. "Sit! Sit, before you fall down and I have to call the royal surgeon to put you back together again. It was hard enough the first time."

Thankful, Eddie limped over to a straight-backed chair by the wall and sank onto it.

"Dinesen is a fool. I knew about the ships for a long time, of course. Business is business. A man must take profit where he can, but I discovered he has been bragging, telling everyone how splendid those other ships will be, better even than the ones he has built for Us, while taking his advancement through marriage to my daughter for granted. He has even been pestering me, seeking favors for his family. I have already grown quite weary of him, and the wedding has yet to take place!

"As for you, daughter." The king turned to Anne Cathrine. "Your willfulness has done you out of a bridegroom, and I have my doubts whether anyone else at court will be willing to take you on after this debacle. Do not think that everyone is as gullible as kitchen helpers and chambermaids."

Flushed, Anne Cathrine stared down and traced the red and gold patterns in the Turkish carpet with the toe of her slipper.

"Still, you are coming of an age when you will have to marry someone. I will need to give thought to the matter again."

The king took a long drink of wine, then wiped the residue out of his beard with the back of one hand. "Now, on the chance that Prime Minister Stearns is telling the truth, we shall send soldiers after this Presley and Our missing long-range rifle." He turned to Eddie. "You will give the captain of my guard a complete description of the rascal's appearance. Especially useful will be anything distinctive about the man."

"Well," Eddie said, seeing a chance not to lie, exactly. "He's very fond of blue suede shoes."

Second Thoughts

Virginia DeMarce

Grantville

October 1634

Noelle Murphy rode into Grantville just before noon. It was well after dusk when she finished the in-box that had been waiting for her. People had started dropping things into it a month earlier, as soon as they found out she was coming back from Franconia. She looked at the note from her mother again. It wasn't very long and was dated right after Judge Tito had decided that Pat Fitzgerald had been married to Dennis Stull all along. Common-law, but married. It was certainly… different… to find out that her parents were married to each other.

Since I'm living with Dennis now, I decided to stop paying rent on the trailer the end of this month and gave your key back to Huddy Colburn's office. We cleaned it out and moved the things that were in your bedroom over to his ma's house, so they'll be there when you get back. Most of the time, he's working in Erfurt. Love.

It was a very "Mom" kind of note, Noelle thought. It brought up an interesting question. She got up and went down the hall to Tony Adducci's office. Normally, a field auditor in the Department of Economic Resources wouldn't just drop in on the Secretary of the Treasury of the State of Thuringia-Franconia, but he was, after all, her godfather. And it was after regular business hours.

"Tony?" she asked. "Ah. Mom's given up the trailer. Where am I supposed to sleep tonight?"

She handed him the note.

Tony looked at it for a while, thinking. "You're welcome to stay with us, of course. I can call Denise and have her put sheets and a blanket on the sofa. But…"

He dialed the phone. To his great gratitude and relief, someone picked up on the other end. Someone else who was working late. "Joe, is that you? Can you come over to my office for a few minutes?"

He and Noelle chatted, mostly about the Ram Rebellion. Then a man came in. Noelle looked up as he entered. Not tall, very thick in the neck and chest. He looked more like a bullfrog than anything else she could think of.

Tony got up. "Noelle, I'd, uh, like to introduce you to Joe Stull. He's, um…"

She stood up and held out her hand. "The Secretary of Transportation for the state. Dennis' brother. My… uncle. I'm… I'm glad to meet you, sir."

Tony looked acutely uncomfortable. "He's got a key to Juliann's house. Where your stuff is. He can take you over there, if you'd rather. It makes more sense, in a way, than having you on our sofa, because you'll be in town for a while and that's where they put your things. But you're welcome to stay with us, of course…" His voice trailed off.

Joe was shaking Noelle's hand, looking at her. The girl didn't much resemble a Stull. Luckily for her. Medium height, maybe five-four, more blonde than anything else. Broader in the shoulders than Pat Fitzgerald. That might be Dennis' contribution to the finished product or it might just be modern sports. Otherwise, he thought, this was Pat's daughter.

"Sure. I'd be glad to take you over there. Show you where it is. Just let me get my coat. There are extra keys on a pegboard in the kitchen, once we get there, so you can come and go. If that's what you want, just let me call Aura Lee over at city hall. We'll need to stop there and pick her up on the way. Since we live to the east, right at the edge of the Ring of Fire, I had our pickup converted to natural gas early on. There's a natural gas furnace in Ma's house, too, so the place will warm up quickly enough."

"That's very kind of you." Noelle voice was a little stiff. She looked at Tony. "That might be better, really. For me to go on over there. I don't have much luggage with me and I'd love to get into some clothes tomorrow that I haven't been wearing for the last several weeks."

"I hate leaving you on your own."

"That's okay. I've gotten pretty much used to being on my own," Noelle answered.

Joe cleared his throat. "I guess it was pretty much a shock to you to hear that Pat and Dennis, ah, got back together this fall."

She smiled at him. "Not as much as you might think." She paused a minute. "I know where the house is. Actually, I've been there."

Both men looked at her in surprise.

"After Mom rented the trailer here in Grantville-after she gave up the house in Fairmont because Maggy and Pauly and Patty were all on their own and we didn't need another room and we did need money if I was going to go to college-I'd…" Her voice trailed off a little. "Well, I'd wonder more about Dennis, sometimes, than I had in Fairmont. And what he had been like. Because, well, because he was…"

"Your father." Joe Stull nodded.

Noelle nodded. "And I'd never met him, of course. Because…"

"Because he left Pat before you were born." Joe didn't really believe in circumlocutions.

She nodded again. "So I heard that house was where his mother lived. It wasn't that far off the route I took when I walked down to the strip mall. I walked by it several times. And finally, one afternoon-it was the semester I didn't have any classes on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and Mom was at work, of course-I just stopped in front of it. And walked up to the door and rang the bell. She came to the door and I said, 'Hi, I'm…' Then I didn't want to say 'Noelle Murphy,' so I just said, 'I'm Noelle.' And she asked me to come in, so I did."

To say that both men were surprised would have been an understatement.

Not that Joe was surprised that Juliann had never mentioned to any of them that Noelle had come. Ma had been able to keep her own counsel.

"Actually, I, ah, went several times. She said that first time that I was welcome to come back, so I did. I didn't think she'd say it unless she meant it."

Joe nodded. "If Ma said it, she meant it."

"And she was the only person who ever sort of explained it all to me. I mean, you know, when Mom took the older girls to see Paul and Maggie Murphy, I had to wait outside. They wouldn't let me in their house, but nobody really bothered to explain how come. Until Keenan told me it was because I was a 'fucking little bastard.' "

Tony looked down at the floor. "Damn Keenan."

"Well, I was about eight then. And he was a teenager. I was sitting in the car out front while Mom took Maggy and Pauly and Patty in to see them. Wondering why I was always left behind in the car. At least he gave me an answer, which was more than anyone else would. Mom sure never did."

Tony and Joe just looked at her again, Tony thinking that there were probably a lot of things none of the rest of them knew about that had gone into the making of Noelle. Reasons that had contributed to making her so unexpectedly… resilient… as a field agent, considering how young she was.

Noelle was looking at Joe again.

"Juliann said that Mom and Dennis, over the years, had hurt each other just about as bad as two people could. More than once. That Dennis hurt Mom when he wouldn't believe her about what was happening when he came back from Viet Nam and then again when he wouldn't stay with her unless she divorced Keenan's dad. And she hurt him when she married Francis in the first place and then again when she wouldn't divorce Francis after she got pregnant with me."

Joe nodded, looking at her carefully.

"But she said, too, that they couldn't have hurt each other so much if it hadn't been that they loved each other so much and for so long. That she didn't think they'd ever be able to stop loving each other. And that she still wouldn't be surprised if they got together again if they ever had an opening. So that's why it wasn't so much a shock to me, when Steve and Anita told me what had happened."

She paused and turned to Tony. "Thanks for your letter, by the way. I didn't get it for a long time. It kept following me around Franconia, from one place to another. It was weeks before it caught up. At that, it got to me before Mom's note did. And it explained a lot more than Mom's note did."

All Tony had written was a summary of what Pat had said as she sat on the floor of the funeral home. If Pat had written even less… "I don't really know what went on between them the first time," he said a little uncomfortably. "I wasn't really old enough to know what was going on."

"Juliann played me a song," Noelle looked at Joe. "She had a lot of nice old 78s and a turntable that still played them. I hope nobody got rid of those."

"They're all still there. We haven't done anything to the house, yet."

Noelle bit her lip. "When you do… if you all wouldn't mind, of course… do you suppose that I could have that record she played for me? As a memento, sort of."

"I don't see why not. What was it?"

"It was on a collection of 'golden oldies' that she'd ordered from a television advertisement." Noelle started to hum.

I've got you under my skin.

I've got you deep in the heart of me.

So deep in my heart,

You're nearly a part of me.

"God damn it," Tony shouted, breaking the mood.

The other two looked at him, startled.

"A song with lyrics to match that one that Ron Koch keeps throwing at me. I've always told him that country music covers everything." He paused. "Never heard that one, though."

Noelle shook her head. "Well, it isn't country music. It's Cole Porter, I think. From some old Broadway musical. Way back in the 1930s."

"Hell," Tony looked disgusted. "Well, I guess a guy can't have everything. It ought to be country music, though. It's got the right spirit."

"It's not getting any earlier," Joe interrupted. "We'd better go pick up Aura Lee."

Aura Lee looked at Joe. "We can't just leave Noelle in that house with nothing to eat. I don't really want pizza. We'd better stop at Cora's for carry-out." She turned to Noelle. "Billy Lee and our Juliann both have things at school this evening. They won't be finished until nine-thirty or so. That's why Joe and I were both working late. Let's stop for something and we'll eat with you after Joe unlocks the house."

"That's fine," Joe opened the door on the driver's side. "You two stay in the truck. I'll go in and get today's adventure in cuisine. Whatever it may be."

"Thanks," Noelle was grateful. Not only grateful for the company, but she had missed lunch. She had been sort of wondering what to do about supper and not looking forward to going out again by herself once Joe Stull had let her into Juliann's house and found her a key to use.

The house was dark when they pulled up. That was no surprise to her.

It was a surprise that after Joe opened the door, it was warm and there were lights on in the rec room at the back of the little hallway and sound from a television.

Joe paused. "Ah. We'll go on into the kitchen and get the table set. You might want to go on back there, Noelle. Dennis and Pat use the house when they're here rather than in Erfurt."

She walked down the hall, pulling off her hat and suspecting that she had been set up by Tony. She paused at the open doorway. Feeling a little betrayed, but maybe it was better that she hadn't been given a chance to duck it.

A man she couldn't remember ever seeing before was lying on the sofa, his feet up. Her mom was lying next to him, her head on his shoulder. The man was rubbing her mom's temples. She had her eyes closed.

"Excuse me." Noelle rested her hand on the doorframe. "I got Mom's note. The one that said my stuff was here. Joe let me in."

Pat's eyes popped open. She sat straight up on the sofa, folding her hands in her lap.

The man got up. Noelle looked at him. He was a couple of inches taller than Joe Stull-maybe about five-nine. Longer in the neck, not quite so burly in the chest. Gray hair, darker than her mom's shade of gray.

Noelle took a couple steps forward. "Joe and Aura Lee are here. In the kitchen. Aura Lee thought they should get carry-out."

The man grinned. "As long as I have known her, and that's over fifteen years now, Aura Lee has been hungry. We hadn't eaten yet, so that's fine." He held his hand out. "I'm Dennis Stull."

Noelle shook it. "I'm glad to meet you." She hoped that she meant it. Then she sat down and put her arm around Pat's shoulders. "It's all right, Mom. I'm not going to make any kind of a scene."

"Well, brother," Dennis put his feet up on the sofa. The women were washing dishes. "I have to say that you took something of a calculated risk."

"How so?"

"There have been quite a few evenings, when I wasn't quite so bushed as tonight, when I was lying there on the sofa watching the news and massaging various parts of Pat's anatomy that are less suitable for public viewing than her forehead."

"I don't think that Noelle is all that easily panicked. Given the reports we got on the way she handled things with von Bimbach and all that."

"Maybe not. But Pat is. I can tell that she's all upset, even this way, that Noelle walked in on us. Of course, she's way more upset about these hearings over at St. Mary's. She would just as soon have had them over before Noelle got back, I think. That's why I came down. I didn't want her sitting through those, all day, and then coming home to an empty house."

"Noelle would have found out everything anyway."

"Sure. But it's not quite the same thing."

"Noelle isn't going to be sitting there listening to the testimony," Joe pointed out. "She does have a full-time job."

"There's that." Dennis put his feet on the floor and leaned forward on his elbows. "Pat was a little worried by the letter that Noelle wrote her last summer, right after she found out about the shooting. The one that asked if Pat was sure that she knew what she was doing. She's afraid that Noelle doesn't approve of us."

Joe looked at Dennis. "Look, brother. That was nearly three months ago. It has to have been a good-sized shock to the girl when it happened and there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then. She's not made any fuss since she got back to Grantville. She didn't make any fuss this evening."

"That's what I'll remind Pat. But it won't help much. It's been pretty clear that quite a few of the wives of my employees up in Erfurt don't quite approve of us. And all of the discussion about bigamy isn't going to help much. The way most of them see it, either she was married to Francis and committed adultery with me or was married to me and committed adultery with Francis. Six of one and a half dozen of the other. Thank god for Amber Lee and Lorrie."

"What am I going to do about it?" Noelle asked.

"I can't see that it's such a problem," Bernadette Adducci answered.

"It is to me. Now that I know Mom wasn't ever married to Francis Murphy. After all the testimony at the hearings at St. Mary's. Even before the Ring of Fire, there were times that I felt awfully self-conscious about calling myself 'Murphy.' Several times, if I'd had the time and money and had been willing to go through all the hassle of changing my transcripts and stuff, I thought about going into court in Fairmont and asking to have it changed to 'Fitzgerald.' Now, with everything that's been going on, I guess that's not appropriate, either. And anyway… Well, I guess we can skip that."

"I can see your point," Tony looked at his wife. "What do you think, Denise?"

"Why not 'Stull'?" she asked.

Noelle shook her head. "Not unless they invite me. It's… Well, I don't want them to think that I'm pushy. It's not as if any of them in that family know me, really. I'd just like to get rid of 'Murphy.' "

Tony scratched his ear. "Let me think about it a bit."

"You could always," Bernadette commented, "get married."

Noelle grinned at her. "Women are keeping their maiden names these days, unless they deliberately ask for a change, so that won't help automatically."

Bernadette shook her head. "Face it, honey. Becoming a nun won't, either. The new order isn't going the 'Sister Mary Anselm' route. If you ever do join up, you'll be stuck with 'Noelle Whoever-you-are' for the rest of your life."

"Even if I did marry and take my husband's name, I still wouldn't want Murphy for a maiden name. There's no one around I want to marry, though."

"Let me think about it a bit," Tony said again.

After Noelle left, Bernadette looked at the other two. "I know the pair of you think I'm being too hard-nosed with her. But did you hear that? 'There's no one around I want to marry, though.' Not, 'I don't want to marry, though.' That there isn't anyone around now is certainly no guarantee that there won't be. She's only twenty-three. I have no intention in the world of letting a situation develop where Noelle is in a religious order when 'anyone' comes along. No matter how firmly I have to put her off. Or how long."

Erfurt

October 1634

"You know what, Dennis?" Amber Lee Barnes looked up from the papers on her desk.

"What?"

"She's triple sharp, that girl of yours. Noelle. We spent all day on accounts. I'm taking her home for supper with me to hash over some more of it, if you and Pat are willing to spare her. I can get the guy downstairs to walk her over to her room when we're done."

"That's fine. Um. She and Pat are having a little trouble finding things to say to each other right now. And it's not as if I really know her."

"Are you going to claim her?" Amber Lee asked.

Dennis looked at her. "What do you mean by that?"

"She's still going by 'Murphy.' Don't you want her to be a Stull? As I said, she's triple sharp."

"I hadn't really thought about it."

"Maybe you ought to," Amber Lee advised.

"She frightens me a little."

"How?"

"When I first saw her standing there in the doorway at Ma's place, I thought she was another Pat. A little taller, a little sturdier, a shade less blonde, but Pat. Until she shook my hand and looked at me with those eyes. Not blue like Pat's. Dark gray. Not judging, exactly. Measuring. Assessing. Evaluating."

Amber Lee examined him. "She's yours, too. Have you ever looked at your eyes in the mirror? Are you going to claim her?"

"The day after the shooting, in the hospital, Joe was wondering if she would be willing to claim me after all these years."

"That's probably what she's evaluating," Amber Lee went back to her paperwork.

"I think we're done." Noelle closed the ledger she had been using. "At least, as done as we can get until we go through some more of the records tomorrow. Bolender, Bell, Cunningham. I knew that I was looking for those names. But with the peculiarities and discrepancies in these requisitions for machine parts, I keep thinking I should add a couple more. Barclay. Myers."

Amber Lee frowned. "Maybe I should talk to my mother about this. I have a feeling that Barclay and Myers have some kind of a family tie, but it escapes me. I don't know either of them, myself. Maybe you ought to ask Scott, too."

Noelle raised her eyebrows.

"Scott Blackwell, my ex. You must have met him when you were down in Franconia."

"Oh. Sure. But why would he know?"

"He and Stan Myers were both in the fire department. And in the National Guard together. So he may know what kind of a person he is. Or I can ask Dennis to do it, if you don't want to. I just feel a little odd about asking Scott myself, now that I've remarried."

"Yeah." Noelle tucked one foot underneath her, making her perch on the high three-legged stool a little precarious. She balanced by leaning one elbow on the podium desk that held the ledger.

"Not that we're on bad terms. We married in '93 and divorced five years later. Married because we were getting to that age and everyone said we were so well suited and every now and then we had sex, which was, errr, nice, because neither of us was having sex with anyone else. And we had known each other a long time and each of us knew that the other one didn't have herpes or genital warts or any of the other nasty STDs to which human flesh is heir. So my parents paid for us to get married with all the usual trimmings. Then after five years and no kids we realized that we bored each other so thoroughly that we could scarcely remember why we got married, so we divorced."

Noelle raised her eyebrows.

"Sorry to disillusion you, kid. Just having a lot in common really doesn't mean that a couple ought to get married. Scott and I tried to make it work. Counseling, various things that were supposed to put the zip back in a marriage like going out on dates, or having getaway weekends. We worked on communication. All that stuff. We bored each other just as much on a date or at a resort as we did at home. We didn't fight. He'd go and find a golf game or head for the library to do homework for his classes and I'd go to the gym and talk to the other aerobics instructors."

Noelle said, "I see." But she didn't.

"I heard he's married again. A German woman. All I know about her is that she works for Veronica Dreeson's schools. I hope he hasn't chosen someone else just because she seems to be suitable. Not again."

"I haven't met her, but she's pregnant, I know. Should be very close to term, by now."

"That's good. But, ah, Sterling still feels a little bad about it all because Scott had a couple years of college and he only has a GED, plus Scott's the top military administrator down in Wurzburg and Sterling's just an ordinary soldier, so sometimes he starts worrying that he's a comedown for me. So I'd rather not ask Scott myself. Especially since Sterling's up north in Wismar and I'm here in Erfurt."

"Is he?" Noelle asked.

"Is who what?"

"Is Sterling a comedown?" Noelle asked.

"You don't beat around the bush, do you, honey?"

"Well, I sort of need to know. I expect they're going to send me back to Franconia. We haven't seen the last of this scam yet. So it's better if I figure out where the pitfalls are, if I'll be working with both of you-with you here and with Scott down in Wurzburg."

Amber Lee looked at her. "Depends on how you look at it, I suppose. Economically, Sterling's something of a comedown from what I had when I was married to Scott, but not all that much. Scott wasn't a top military administrator back then. He was working as a security guard at night and going to college during the day. In any case, I hadn't been married to Scott for a couple of years before the Ring of Fire and I didn't have alimony or anything. I was self-supporting and not all that high-paid. Then when I got caught in the Ring of Fire, I joined the army as a private. Grantville didn't have much use for aerobics instructors in 1631. That's not high-paid, either."

Noelle nodded.

Amber Lee went on. "Sterling's not a comedown from a personal point of view, for sure. I was married to Scott for five years and never wanted to get pregnant. I was on the pill the whole time. Once I started sleeping with Sterling, I never even tried to get hold of birth control, whatever they have here down-time. I wanted to have a baby as soon as I could. By him. Whether he married me or not. He hadn't said anything about marriage in advance. But he hadn't said anything about birth control, either and he sure wasn't using anything, so I figured that I was playing fair enough. And when I told him, he thought about getting married right away. In fact, he said that he'd been trying to get me pregnant so that I might think about getting married to him. He couldn't believe that I would for any other reason."

Noelle giggled. "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments."

"What?"

"It's poetry. One of Shakespeare's sonnets. Whenever I'm in Grantville, I get Father Smithson at St. Mary's to read some Shakespeare out loud to me, so I can hear how it would have sounded at the Globe Theater."

"Poetry always left me cold. No matter how much of it they made me read in English class." Amber Lee smiled. "I just wish they'd send Sterling back so I'd have a chance at getting pregnant again. I'm thirty-four, so I don't want to put it off any longer than I have to. But, I suppose, since I'm still nursing the twins and they're only five months old, my chances wouldn't be all that good."

"Oh." Noelle looked at the playpen behind Amber Lee's desk. "They're so sweet. Jamie and Pel, that is. If you need a babysitter while I'm here in Erfurt…"

"I may take you up on that. But back to what you asked first, about whether Sterling is a 'comedown.' One thing to keep in mind is that the way you feel about a guy doesn't necessarily make sense to anyone else."

"That is one thing that I've never doubted. Considering the way Mom has run her life."

"Which sort of brings us back to your parents." Amber Lee twisted her braid around her index finger. "I scarcely know Pat. I only met her since Dennis brought her up to Erfurt after Maurice Tito dismissed the divorce case. But you do know her-grew up with her. As for him… Actually, Dennis is a very good boss. One of the best I've ever had. Fair and really concerned about his employees. You might want to give him a chance, so to speak. You might get to like him."

"I'm trying." Noelle unwound her feet and stood up. "I'm trying."

"I'd rather," Noelle put her coffee cup down. "Rather have a place of my own than take up a room in Juliann's house, since you and Mom are using it whenever you're in Grantville. And I'm pretty sure that Mom would rather that I did. Have a place of my own, I mean. Uh. It seems to embarrass her a little having me there when the two of you have… ah… taken up with each other again. Even if you both spend most of the time here in Erfurt."

Dennis thought, a little reluctantly, that Noelle was probably right about that. Almost certainly right about that. In Erfurt, Noelle was staying in temporary employee housing, to Pat's obvious relief. His place only had one bedroom. It wasn't as if he had needed more than that before Pat came up, so he had let couples with children have the larger apartments.

"The Casa Verde apartments are nice," Noelle went on. "Not as fancy as Casa Blanca, but nice. Almost as new and a lot more affordable. So I'll rent an efficiency there as soon as I can get the money saved up. That's all I'll need when I spend so much time out of town. I just thought I ought to let you know that I don't intend to perch on your doorstep indefinitely."

"You do have money. Quite a bit of it, as a matter of fact."

Noelle looked at Dennis blankly.

"Part of it's in the bank in Grantville. Part of it's in real estate, though most of that was in Clarksburg and got left behind in the Ring of Fire. Part of it's invested in the business." He looked at his fingernails.

"Where did it come from?"

"Pat wouldn't take child support from me."

"Why on earth not?" Noelle exploded. "God knows, there were plenty of times we could have used it."

"She said that she didn't want to set up a situation where you were better off than the other girls." Dennis sighed. "I told her that would be fine. That she should just use the money for whatever she needed. For all of you. That she didn't have to spend it just on you. But…"

He shook his head. "It was just one more of those eternal head-banging arguments that we used to get into. She didn't want any of the privileges of being a wife, she said, unless she was carrying out the duties." He looked at Noelle with a kind of helpless frustration.

"Never mind. Yeah, I recognize the way Mom thinks. That a wife paid her husband to support her and the kids by letting him have sex whenever he wanted it. And then she apologized to God for having sex by having the kids and needing to change diapers for them and such. Going around in a circle. She learned that was how it was supposed to be. That's what they taught her when she was growing up. She never thought she deserved anything from you because, um, she never felt dutiful about you. You, uh, had maybe better ask Bernadette and Denise about that stuff, not me, if you want to find out more. All I know is what I wasn't supposed to overhear."

"So I just set it aside for you." Dennis thought he would ignore the rest of what she had just said, at least for the time being. "When you were getting ready to start college, when you were eighteen, I wanted to give it to you. So you could pick the school you wanted and not have to scrape and scrimp. But Pat got upset about the other girls again."

Noelle folded her hands on the table in front of her and closed her eyes, trying not to clench her fists. The money had been there. She could have gone to a four-year college for a four-year degree. She could have gone to WVU in Morgantown, like Jen Richards. Could have majored in what she was interested in, instead of making the hard calculations about what field would bring her a living wage as soon as possible. But then she would have probably been left up-time like Jen and Mom would have been here with no one, really. It was hard to count Keenan, and Aunt Suzanne had her own family and was busy. So did Denise. Even if Mom and Dennis had gotten back together, there would still have been a couple of years when Mom was alone.

"That's okay," she said. "Don't worry about it. But the others didn't want to go to college, anyway. Maggy's grades weren't good enough, to start with. They could have been, but she just didn't focus, and she was as happy as a clam working at the riding stables. Pauly got married right out of high school. She and Dillon bought a tow truck together and she drove it from his father's garage for Triple-A. Patty just wasn't interested. She made quite a bit of money waiting tables at the lounge, right away-more than a beginning teacher makes. And she liked to party."

"Anyway." Dennis came back to the topic at hand. "The money's there, in your name. If you'll come down to the bank with me one of these days, when we're both in Grantville, I'll have Coleman Walker put your signature on the account instead of mine. I'll take you to talk to Huddy Colburn so you can find out what's coming in from the real estate that's left in more detail. I've just been having him reinvest it in more when enough built up and checking the quarterly reports. I'll give you those. They already have your name on them and I can have him take mine off. And if you want to draw on the part that's in the business, just give me a couple of months' notice. There's more there, really. It's more profitable than drawing interest in the bank. But what's in the bank should be enough to cover just about anything reasonable that you need right away."

"Okay. Uh. Thanks a lot."

"You're welcome." Dennis didn't want to push things with the girl. He was just glad that he had been able to help her out with this.

When Noelle looked at the papers covering the bank account, she thought that there certainly was enough to cover anything she needed right away. Including the safety deposit and three months' advance rent on an apartment of her own. It was more money than she had ever expected to see at one time in her life.

Of course, that hadn't been much. Her financial expectations had been pretty modest.

Grantville

October 1634

"How did it go in Erfurt, Noelle?" Tony asked.

"I got to know Dennis a little better."

"Did you like him?" Denise asked. She put down saucers with fruit cobbler on the coffee table.

"I'm not sure. Juliann used to talk about him some, and his brothers. She said that he was different from Joe. That when storms came down, Dennis was like a tough old tree with deep roots growing into a cliff side. That he'd bend over before the wind and water and then, when the calm came, manage to stand up straight again. With some scars and gouges, the worse for wear, but stand up again and keep going."

"Interesting." Bernadette put down her cobbler. "What about Joe?"

"That he was like a flint boulder. He wouldn't bend in a storm. He'd just sit there and part the waters. Until they eroded the ground out from under him. Then he'd crash down the cliff and break into a thousand fragments." Noelle put down her empty saucer. "Thanks for having me over, but I really do have to go."

"It's odd." Tony sat down again after seeing her out the door. "When she first came back from Franconia, I was thinking to myself how unexpectedly resilient Noelle had been as a field agent, considering how young she still is. We've mostly still been thinking of her as Pat's. There may be more of Dennis in her than we thought. Maybe Juliann Stull spotted that. Of course, Juliann knew Dennis a lot better than any of us did."

"Noelle's not like Pat." Denise gathered up the cups to take them into the kitchen. "Don't be fooled by her looks. She's been feeling responsible for Pat for the last ten years. Totally responsible for her since Patty finished high school in '95 and moved out."

Bernadette picked up the forks and saucers. "If you ask me, the greatest kindness Dennis could do her is somehow convince her that he'll really take Pat's problems over now, for good, and cut her loose to live a life of her own without that constant worry."

"What do you think, Joe?" Aura Lee asked.

"Hard to tell. Noelle seems friendly enough. A little reserved, I guess, but that's not so surprising under the circumstances. That she's a little hesitant."

"Do you think that she might be a little more… forthcoming… maybe, with someone younger. Maybe if Eden talked to her?"

"We could try it, I guess. But Economic Resources keeps her pretty busy. She doesn't have a lot of time to socialize. They'll probably be sending her back to Franconia one of these days."

Aura Lee looked at him. "Doesn't that tell you that we ought to get a move on?"

Eden Stull decided to leave the dishes for the time being. Supper hadn't gone badly. But it hadn't gone particularly well, either. So far, she hadn't found any opening to bring up the question of whether Noelle would be willing to change her name to Stull. "I was there. When Francis Murphy shot Dennis, I mean. With the babies. My parents were really ticked off that he shot into the parlor of the funeral home with the five of us there. As if we ought to be immune to that sort of thing happening."

She stood up. "Help me get the kids to bed, will you? After that, if there are any questions you want answered, fire away. That's why I asked you over."

"I'm not sure you can answer my main question at all." Noelle got up too. "Considering that you weren't even born back when it was going on and Harlan was just a baby. Why did my mom fall in love with your husband's uncle, who's my father, to start with?"

"Well." Eden started to shoo her sons in the direction of the stairs. "That's a good one. You might as well ask why Julia fell for Tom. Those are Harlan's parents-they were left up-time. Or Aura Lee for Joe. Or why I went nuts over Harlan. Or, for that matter, why Blanche Leek fell for Ben-he's the guys' first cousin, son of Juliann's sister Lula. They're up in Magdeburg. I suppose you don't see any obvious reason or you wouldn't be asking."

"Well, I've never met Harlan or his father," Noelle stopped on the first step. "Or the Leeks. I don't think I ever even heard of the Leeks. And since Tom Stull was left up-time, I'm not likely to meet Harlan's father."

"They're no better looking than Joe and Dennis," Eden smiled. "In fact, Harlan looks more like Joe than he does like Dennis. When it comes to the rating scale, Dennis is the best of the lot. Lucky for you. No girl in her right mind would want to look like Joe or Harlan. It's just lucky that Little Juliann looks more like Aura Lee. I'm really happy that both my kids are boys. It doesn't seem to handicap the Stull boys."

"Okay," Noelle dropped a rubber ducky into the bathtub. "Where did you get the ducky? You didn't have kids before the Ring of Fire."

"It was Aura Lee's. She and Joe could have sold it for a bundle to the dealers who come through looking for up-time collectibles, but she gave it to me, instead. And I'm glad. I want my kids to have a rubber ducky. I know that when I finally get to go join Harlan, out of Grantville, we'll probably have a wood stove and a little round tin tub. I'll sort of miss central heating and a real bathroom, but the rubber ducky goes along. They can still have that and I want them to have that. I want them to have something from… from the real world, if you know what I mean."

"I know. It's odd what we miss." Noelle dipped her fingers into the crock of soft soap and dropped a dollop into the tub. "I miss bananas. That's what I used to have for breakfast. I'd just pick up a banana and run out the door. I've gotten used to a lot less sugar and a lot more fish, but I guess I'd just never imagined a world without bananas."

Eden pulled a couple of washcloths out from under the sink. "Anyway. Back to the Stulls. What really gets to the parents of their wives-at least, what got to my parents-is that they home in on us so early. And my parents didn't know the half of it. I was allowed to start dating when I was sixteen. And I had my first date with Harlan, who's ten years older. They didn't like it a bit."

"Well." Noelle thought a minute. "I mean, I can see why."

"What would really have made them mad," Eden grinned, "is that I'd known for almost three years that he'd call on my sixteenth birthday and ask me out."

"Good Lord!" Noelle exclaimed.

"I was in McDonald's one day, with a batch of other kids. I take after Mom in my looks. That is, I was as tall then as I am now and just as filled out. On top that is, at least when I'm not nursing. I got a bit more hips with the kids. I was leaning against the rail, waiting to order, when Harlan leaned on it from the other side, smiled at me, and asked me who I was. I told him, and who my parents were. He looked at the kids I was with and asked me how old I was. I told him that, too. Thirteen. And he said, 'I was afraid of something of the sort.' Then he asked, 'When are Nat and Twila going to let you date?' I said, 'when I'm sixteen.' He said, 'I'm Harlan Stull. Nat and Twila are in the phone book, so I'll call you then. When's your birthday?' And he did. Right in the middle of my birthday party. He asked me to the movies in Fairmont the next Saturday and I said that I'd go."

"That's… well, that's…" Noelle sputtered.

"Yeah, my parents thought so, too, when he called. So did the Mulroneys when Harlan's dad-Tom, that was-started dating Julia. Though that was just two years difference, not ten. They'd have married sooner than they did except that they were waiting for Julia's sister Barb to turn eighteen so she could marry John Nash without parental permission. And probably the Hudsons, when Joe started eyeing Aura Lee when she was fourteen and kissing her the next year. As for your parents, Dennis is more than four years older than Pat-closer to five years older. She may have run off to him on her eighteenth birthday, but she'd been waiting to run for a year, at least. Willing to run for two or maybe a little more.

"They just sort of… focus… on the girl they want when she's awfully young. Not putting pressure, exactly. Just moving in and occupying all the mental space she has available for thinking about guys. So he's the only guy she ever really thinks about. At least, that's the way it worked for me. I was so preoccupied with waiting for Harlan to call on my sixteenth birthday that I just more or less ignored all the other boys in town."

Eden grinned suddenly. "In a way, I think what makes the parents maddest is that they can't even call the guys pedophiles, because they actually do wait until the girl is of dating age to do something. Joe moved in on Aura Lee earliest, but even then… I suppose a person could say that she sort of provoked him occasionally, from everything I've heard."

Noelle frowned. "But why did it preoccupy you that much? After all…"

"Well, yeah. Probably if it had been anyone else who tried that trick, I'd have forgotten it in a couple of days. But it was Harlan, and if he called, then we'd have a date, and if we had a date, then some day he'd kiss me, and if he kissed me, then eventually… You can sort of see how the train of thought went. Trust me, it was plenty to keep me ignoring all the other guys. Of course, if he hadn't called, I'd have had to restructure my picture of my future life drastically. But he did, and like I said, I never doubted that he would. Honestly, the only thing on earth that my parents had against him was that he was ten years older.

"Plus the fact that I moved in with him on my eighteenth birthday, which was a year before I finished high school. But he wasn't on a 'barefoot and pregnant' kick. He paid for me to finish a two-year degree in laboratory technology and then I worked two years before we got married. I guess we could have gotten married earlier, but there didn't seem to be any real reason to. For that matter, there wasn't any real reason in 1997 more than there had been for the last five and a half years, but we woke up one morning and decided it was time, so we did. We went to the courthouse and had a judge perform the ceremony with Joe and Aura Lee as witnesses and sent my parents a photocopy of the certificate.

"It didn't change the way we lived. I didn't get pregnant the first time until after the Ring of Fire and now I've got two kids. I predict I'll end up with a few more, because birth control down-time isn't what it might be. We've talked around all the angles and Harlan and I aren't likely to give up sex any time soon, thank you.

"Though having him over in Fulda really cuts down on the frequency. Once they get something going over there that doesn't mean that a lab technician is of six times more use to the world in Grantville than in Fulda, I'll be on the first freight wagon out of here. We're lucky that he's the budget officer, so he gets to come back more often than most of the guys in the administration there do. He'll be in town in a week or so. I'll have everyone over for dinner.

"The guys started to make a scrapbook about Juliann, after the visitation got shot up. Joe has it, I think. You'll have to ask him to let you look at it. They put in their favorite 'Ma' stories, so I'm not going to spoil things by telling you any of them."

"But Nat and Twila were with you at the visitation. So you must be getting along now?"

"Oh, that. When I finally had a baby, they couldn't resist. They showed up at the hospital nursery looking wistful, so Harlan told them to come on in and we all had a good cry together and made everything up. And we named the baby Nathan. On the theory that we were likely to have more, given the birth control situation, so we could name kids on down the line Tom for Harlan's dad and a Harlan Junior, maybe. Tom we've already got. He was born last May."

Noelle started to towel off the older boy. "If you ever need a babysitter when I'm in town…"

"My favorite story about Grandma for a scrapbook?" Harlan Stull asked. "God, it has to be the day that Eden moved in with me. June 11, 1992. It was a Thursday." He winked at his wife.

"I think I remember that one. The famous Lady Godiva of Grantville?" Joe grinned at him. "We were living in Fairmont then, but somebody called Aura Lee at work and the story that Eden had been streaking was waiting for me when I got home for supper."

Harlan grinned back. He had always considered his youngest uncle more of a cousin, considering their ages, and never gave him the 'uncle' title.

"One thing sort of led to another," Harlan turned to Noelle. He thought she was looking a little intimidated by her first family dinner with the entire world supply of Stulls all at once.

"Nat and Twila didn't really like it that I started dating Eden when she was sixteen. Considering that I was twenty-six. From the perspective of the parents of a girl, they might have had a point. Although I was very good. Even by their standards. For the first six months or so, at least. I took her all sorts of neutral places, like to historical reenactments up at Prickett's Fort State Park, as if she really wanted to watch eighteenth-century gunsmiths at work, and to the district fair and stuff. Concentrating on Saturday afternoons. Sunday afternoons. Hiking and things like that. Roller skating. Co-ed volleyball in the high school gym."

Eden interrupted. "Until I got a little pissed off and told him that I was perfectly willing to try to cram ten years' worth of growing up into two years or so, since it looked like I'd need to, but he had to give me a fair chance. Introduce me to his own friends and things."

Harlan shrugged. "Well, by that time, the people I'd gone to school with were mostly either married with a kid or two or doing things I didn't want to introduce Eden to, so my 'friends' list got remodeled. Pared down a lot in pretty much of a hurry."

Joe laughed. "Funny how that works."

"Anyhow, one thing led to another. Eden was born at 1:40 in the morning. She looked it up on her birth certificate. So on June 10, I kept her out beyond her weekday curfew so I could stick an engagement ring on her finger at the very instant she turned eighteen in the early a.m. She didn't think Nat and Twila would be happy about it. The Davis household always had breakfast at 6:30 a.m. She asked me to be outside with the car by seven, because it might not go over very well. I called into work first thing in the morning and took the day off too, just in case. But I sure didn't expect what did happen."

"Which was?" Dennis asked. "Remember, Pat and Noelle don't know the story at all."

"Well, Eden came down to breakfast and served herself with toast and scrambled eggs. Nat started in on her about breaking curfew. She put her hand down on the table and showed them the ring. Itty bitty diamond on a very skinny platinum band. Nat told her to take it off. She refused and pointed out that she was of age. He said that either she took it off or he would throw her out. She said, 'then toss me down the steps.' He said that he had paid for everything she had and that none of it would be going with her."

"Oh." Noelle sounded a little surprised.

"Eden just looked at him. Then she got up from the table, went to their little half-bath downstairs, and stripped. Stripped everything, including her underwear and shoes. Took the bobby pins out of her hair. She even left her glasses behind. They were probably the single most expensive thing she had, given her prescription. Walked out the front door, down the steps, down the sidewalk, and got into my car just as bare as the day she was born, except for her engagement ring. With Twila screeching on the porch, by the time she closed the car door."

Dennis reached for the baked beans. "I was over in Clarksburg, then. But about that time of the morning someone called me, too. So I probably heard before Joe and Aura Lee did."

Harlan winked at Eden. "So we drove over to my place. She parted her hair in back so it would hang in front and sort of hunkered down on the seat while I ran in and got one of my shirts. It was a little later by then and more people were up and about in my neighborhood."

Eden tossed her head. "I'd have been willing to walk in just as I was. If that's what it took. But it was nice of him to get the shirt. I had a lot of hair-still do-but not anywhere near as much hair as Lady Godiva is supposed to have had and I really preferred not to show that many people how I was built."

"Ah." Harlan looked at the ceiling. "Having her there, so conveniently undressed, and having the day off, what with being engaged now and all, we spent the next three hours or so very pleasantly. We figured that the way Nat had behaved that morning sort of cancelled all the limits on our behavior that he had imposed in the way of dating rules. Somewhere in the middle of it, the police phoned. Eden talked to them, pointed out that she was eighteen, and told them that she was quite happy to be exactly where she was. When Ralph Onofrio asked where she was, she answered, 'in bed with Harlan,' which made the state of affairs pretty plain. Ralph must have figured out what had Nat and Twila in such a twist, because he just laughed."

Noelle was struggling with a desire to laugh, too. Or, maybe, a desire to cry a little.

"Then we began to think about slightly more practical things. Like getting her some clothes. Without her glasses, Eden couldn't even see to write down a list. I couldn't quite imagine myself over at the Bargain General buying clothes for her. Or trying to, even with a clerk to help me. And I thought that taking her there wearing one of my shirts and no shoes would sort of fuel the gossip that was bound to be going around. Plus, without glasses, she couldn't read the labels and I'd have had to read them out loud to her to get sizes. I could just see myself doing that."

"Yeah," Dennis was looking at the beans again. "I can just picture it."

"So I called Grandma. Mom and Dad were at work. Someone had already phoned her, of course. She came over and took a look at the two of us, Eden blinking at the world through a fog, so to speak, and trying to get the tangles out of her hair with a dinky little six-inch plastic pocket comb." Harlan paused and ran his hand over his scalp. "Well, working at the mine, I kept a crewcut. It was a lot easier to keep clean. Why would I have wanted a brush? Grandma started to laugh so hard that I thought she would never stop. Eventually she did, though. Eden told her the sizes, I took her over to Bargain General, and she asked, 'How much can I spend?' I gave her five twenties. I'd stopped at the bank the day before, sort of expecting that I'd need some cash somewhere along the line. Grandma said that she'd probably never spent that much at once in her life and that she intended to have a good time. She got the practical stuff, toothbrush and hair brush and things. But then she picked out a couple of sets of pretty fancy underwear, a pair of jeans, a tee shirt, a pair of sandals. Said she expected I'd prefer it if she forgot about pajamas."

Joe laughed again. "Ma to the hilt."

"Then she looked at me and grinned. Asked, 'Do you really want to frost Nat and Twila?' By then, I sure did. 'You got any more money?' she asked. I gave her a couple more twenties. She said, 'Then take Eden to First Methodist with you Sunday,' and picked out a sort of rose colored tee with little frilly arms and a skirt with a background the same color and a little ruffle around the hem. And a headband that matched and a pair of little pink pearl earrings. And lipstick and nail polish."

Joe leaned back. "Whodathunkit? I'd scarcely have thought it of Ma."

"Well, I guess with three boys, you two and Dad, she never had a little girl to dress." Harlan grabbed the last of the beans before Dennis finished making up his mind about thirds. "She made the most of it. Then she ordered me to go by Nat and Twila's. She got out. I didn't think she should go up by herself, just in case Nat was still there, so I went with her. Charlene answered the door. Grandma said that they were certainly welcome to give the rest of Eden's things to the Goodwill if it suited them, but she did need her glasses and they wouldn't do anyone else much good if they threw them into the box at the Lions Club."

"Now that I would think of Ma," Dennis inserted into the conversation.

"Charlene went back inside, leaving us standing there on the porch. In about ten minutes, she came back with the glasses. In their case. I thanked her, and she said, 'Could you give me a lift downtown, please?' We did, of course. Didn't know it then, but when she got out at the library, she called Sam Haygood and stayed there until he came over and picked her up. And then they went over to the Davises at supper time and told Nat and Twila that they were getting engaged, too, which sort of distracted them from Eden for a while. A half hour or thereabouts, anyway. As long as Nat and Twila thought the two of them were just getting engaged. But the ten minutes of arguing about whether Eden could have her glasses had been the last straw for Charlene. She told them that she was moving in with Sam, too. Starting that night. They really brought out the big guns. Church of Christ members aren't supposed to behave like that."

Joe pushed his plate back. "Well, if Nat and Twila hadn't kept those girls on such a short leash, they wouldn't have reached the end of it so soon."

"There's that," Dennis admitted.

"Anyway, Grandma and I went back to my place and Eden got dressed. Right after she put her glasses on, she discovered that my refrigerator contained three slices of dried up pepperoni pizza and two cans of beer. She and Grandma took the car keys, extracted some more of my cash, and headed off to Stevenson's Supermarket. And that was when my life really started to change." Harlan grinned. "What with Twila being a home ec teacher and all, Eden had some really distinct views on what it was good for a person to eat. Most of them involving broccoli or fiber-or both. You win some, you lose some." He looked at his wife again. "Overall, though, having Eden move in was a winner."

"You'd better believe it," she answered.

"If you were living together anyway, why did you get married?" Noelle asked.

"We weren't just living together," Eden protested. "We were engaged. I wore the ring and all. Why did we decide to get married? The day we decided to-not the day we actually got married, because it took us a couple of weeks to pull things together and make sure Joe and Aura Lee could take time off from work to be our witnesses-was a little personal anniversary that we celebrated. Not when I moved in with him. That was in June. This was from November, a year and a half before that. When we started dating, Harlan kept taking me places that weren't exactly private."

"Harlan," Eden's husband said of himself, "had a pretty clear idea of how Nat and Twila would react if he deflowered their tenderly cherished virgin daughter. The age of consent might technically be sixteen, which she already was, but given that they weren't likely to see it that way, good old Harlan believed in playing it safe and waiting until the girl was altogether of age and at her own disposal. There were still a couple of years during which Nat Davis could have made dramatic paternal gestures and said things like, 'Never darken the door of our home again, you villain.' "

Eden picked up the story. "So there we were, up in the state park. There was a nature trail, about seven miles or so, and we picked that. It was a nice Sunday afternoon, sunny, not too cold, but not many people were out. Some, mostly families, but it wasn't crowded. We were about halfway along it, talking and holding hands. I kept feeling odder and odder. Finally I stopped. Harlan looked at me and I said, 'I feel really weird.' "

"So I looked at her closely and thought, 'Gee, thank you, Mother Nature. Not only do we have to deal with me wanting to have sex with Eden, now we've got to deal with Eden wanting to have sex with me. Not romantic feelings; plain old physical ones. And she doesn't even know what's bothering her. Time for a little instruction.' So I tugged her off the trail a few feet, backed up against a tree to have a little support, pulled her up against me, and started to kiss her the way I wanted to rather than the way I thought I ought to limit myself to."

"By the time we'd been leaning against the tree a while, kissing like that, with Harlan holding my hips against his, I figured out what the problem was. Which was a considerable relief. I had been starting to wonder if I was getting the flu or something, and I had tests in geometry and world history coming up on Monday."

"Flu?" Aura Lee asked.

"Well," Eden protested a little defensively, "It had been making me feel that wobbly. The health class at school told us something about the mechanics of it all but didn't say a word about the way a person feels while it is going on. At church they just warned us about places like the back seats of cars and the quarry. And the evils of dancing. They sure never said you could start feeling like that while you were hiking along a trail, wearing a down vest and boots, and listening to a guy tell you about improved standards and techniques for air quality measurement."

"About what?" Dennis sounded distinctly startled. "Harlan, you didn't! What a courtship!"

"Well, we had to talk about something. Other than the impact her bosom had on my testosterone, that is." Harlan put his arm around Eden's shoulders. "I was trying to minimize that train of thought about then. And it wasn't exactly courtship. That's when the male bird struts around displaying his plumage and the female tries to decide if she wants him. We had a done deal by that point. We were just working on procedures and implementation."

"It was interesting." The tone of Eden's voice was fiercely protective. "All the stuff Harlan told me about it was one of the reasons that I decided on lab technology when I went to choose a post-secondary course later on."

Dennis grinned at her.

"Anyway, we decided to get married on the seventh anniversary of the day Harlan explained to me the importance of being eighteen, as far as he was concerned. What he said made perfect sense. At the time, though, I wished that it didn't."

"I thought I might as well give her something to look forward to. I also told her that she'd get her engagement ring the instant she was of age and Nat and Twila didn't have to consent. Which she did."

"By the time we decided to go ahead and get married instead of just being engaged, I was twenty-three. Maybe that's why we waited so long. By then, it didn't upset most people so much that Harlan was ten years older. The people at the courthouse didn't ask any questions at all. They just issued the license and the judge married us off. Now that I'm coming up on thirty, it bothers them even less."

Eden stopped talking; then started again. "And I'm sure Noelle has found all of this very entertaining. But hadn't you all better get down to the business of why Aura Lee and I cooked this meal?"

Dennis, Joe, and Harlan glared at her. They would have worked up to the negotiations more gently. Taken an oblique approach.

Pat looked bewildered. The project was going to be a surprise for her, too.

Finally, Aura Lee sighed. Men! "Noelle, they'd like you to think about whether you really want to keep on using the name 'Murphy.' Or if you wouldn't maybe rather be a Stull."

"That could be a question, now that you've been exposed to us." Harlan grinned. "To the unexpurgated version, as they say."

"What the hell are you doing?" Joe asked. "Rooting around in those cabinets? Come on to bed, Aura Lee. It's past midnight."

"I'm looking for the 1997 photo album."

"Why on earth?"

"I just wanted to check something." She closed one door and opened another. "Here they are, in this box. Someday, maybe, we'll get everything unpacked that we brought along when we moved into this house in 1998."

"Check away." Joe knew one thing. The auditor in Aura Lee would not leave her in peace. If she thought something needed to be checked, she would check it. Even if it was midnight and they had to get up as early as ever in the morning.

"I thought so."

"What?"

"Look. These pictures I took the day that Harlan and Eden got married. She was wearing the clothes that Harlan described this evening. The ones your ma bought for her to wear to church the Sunday after she moved in with him. At the time, I thought they weren't what I'd have expected her to pick. She looked pretty in them, but they were definitely a summer outfit and it was almost the end of November."

"Harlan?"

"Umm?"

"At dinner, when you were talking about those clothes your Grandma bought me, I sort of started thinking. You'll still be here in Grantville Sunday, won't you?"

"Yeah. 'Til Tuesday. Maybe longer if a few logjams in the budget discussions don't break up."

"I've gone to First Methodist ever since I went that first Sunday wearing the pink top and the ruffled skirt your grandma picked out. But I've never switched. It's probably time that I did. If it's okay with you, I'll call the Reverends Jones and set it up for this week."

Harlan sat up and looked her over. "You'll make a perfectly gorgeous Methodist."

"What do they think, really, of having the Stulls as members?"

He thought a minute. "Well, they say that everyone has a divine purpose in life. I guess having us in the congregation tends to take the minds of the ultra-righteous off whatever the Jenkinses are doing at the moment. In a way, that probably cuts the Reverends Jones a little more slack than they'd have otherwise."

Eden attacked him with tickling fingers and they both collapsed.

Joe Stull wandered into Tony Adducci's office first thing the next morning. "It was the damnedest thing. Aura Lee said that we wondered if Noelle would be willing to change her name to Stull. Pat crossed her arms on the table, put her head down, and started to sob her eyes out. Dennis picked her up and took her out into the hall. The rest of us stayed sitting there. I guess it was pretty obvious that we wondered what we had done to set her off."

"Ummhmmn," Tony answered.

"Then Noelle said, 'There's nothing wrong. She's crying because you want me, I think.' Then we all just stared at her."

Tony nodded. "How much of it did she tell you?"

"She said, 'There's no way you could know it, but this is the first time I've ever been invited to anyone's family dinner.' That's all."

Tony winced. "I told Carol Koch, a long time ago, that the Fitzgeralds were a bunch of uptight Irish Catholic Puritans. Except Denise, of course. It's not just that Patrick and Mary Liz Murphy wouldn't have her in their house. She's eaten with us and the kids, with Bernadette there sometimes. But she's never even been to Denise's parents' house. Or to Suzanne Trelli's. Because the Fitzgeralds, too, saw her as a child of adultery. So far, the facts that came out at St. Mary's haven't gotten them to change their minds. At least not as far as meeting her goes. That's one reason she keeps so busy at work, I think. And doesn't mind going to Franconia. Let me see if Denise can come downtown for lunch. You maybe ought to talk to her about this. Or maybe Aura Lee could talk to her."

That immediately struck both of them as a brilliant idea, freeing them of further immediate obligations in regard to understanding the female of the species and permitting them to get back to fulfilling their respective public duties.

"When we were retelling the Harlan and Eden episode of the Stull family history, I couldn't tell from her face whether she was going to laugh or cry." Aura Lee held out her mug so Cora could refill it.

"She probably didn't know either," Denise got a refill too. "She's never had a date, so the… freewheeling… approach to it all in Dennis' family may have boggled her mind. The first time she ever went to a party was the staff Christmas party at her job, December before the Ring of Fire happened. She didn't want to face it by herself, but she did, and came through it okay."

"Why no dates? Because of that nun idea she has?" Aura Lee frowned.

"No. The 'nun idea' came up since the Ring of Fire. No dates because she wasn't willing to put out the payback that guys over in Fairmont expected from a girl with her background. From what I've picked up as her godmother. Ah, that was confidential."

"Isn't that a bit overblown?"

"Not when you add Patty's reputation as a party girl on top of Dennis and Pat."

"Oh." Aura Lee decided not to comment on that.

"Noelle told me once that when she was young enough to have dreams, back when she was fifteen or sixteen, she dreamed that some day she would leave Fairmont and go someplace like Denver or Seattle, where no one had ever heard of her family, and meet a nice guy at mass one day. Someone who had grown up in an orphan asylum and done well. That they'd fall in love and when she told him about her family he would say that he didn't care and didn't have any relatives who cared, either, and they would get married and live there and Pat would go visit them, but she'd never have to come back to West Virginia again."

"That is as sad as hell," Aura Lee put her mug down. "Twenty-three and talking about when she was young enough to have dreams."

"She was more like nineteen, then," Denise answered. "Instead of Noelle's getting to go away, Pat brought her to Grantville in search of affordable housing. Where she was even more in the middle of it. Going to mass at St. Vincent's, where Pat's relatives never acknowledged she was there. She finally had to give up her pretty daydreams completely when the Ring of Fire happened and she knew that she'd never be able to get away from people who knew about it all."

She sighed. "But it's one of the reasons that Bernadette doesn't take the 'nun idea' all that seriously. It isn't that Noelle didn't date-doesn't date-because she was never interested in getting married some day. She just doesn't believe that she has any chance of it now. Not with a 'nice guy.' "

Aura Lee frowned. "If you look at the available pool, she may not have much of a chance. I can't think of anyone I'd recommend for her. Not since she takes being Catholic seriously. The nice unmarried men within a reasonable range of her age, like Jim Horton or Danny Tipton, Gene Woodsell, maybe, are either Protestants or don't go to church at all."

"The hell of it is, that neither can we. Tony and I've talked about it some, since we're her godparents. The only Catholic guy anywhere her age who is anywhere near worthy of her in the whole town is Lawrence Quinn, but there's no spark there at all. Not on either side. Bernadette won't have her, though. For the new order they're planning, I mean. She says that Noelle's daydreams may have been of marrying a nice Catholic guy, but Pat came up with Dennis, who didn't make any sense for her at all. Which certainly didn't stop them. She's sure Noelle doesn't have a religious vocation. Especially since she gave us such an enthusiastic description of putting Eden's two little ones to bed."

"I hope it doesn't bother you, Denise, since you're Catholic yourself and all." Aura Lee dropped a couple of bills on the table to cover their coffee and a tip. "But that's a big relief from our point of view, the Stulls being Methodists. I'll mention that to Dennis and Joe, if you don't mind."

Dennis Stull spread some apple butter on his pancake. "If Pat won't give you answers, I will. At least to the best of my ability. Where did I meet her? It was a square dance. The fall of 1962. She was there with a bunch of girls her own age from St. Vincent's. Maureen and Theresa O'Meara, I remember. Pat Scanlon, the other Pat, who married Joe Bonnaro. Jeannette Adducci. Two or three more. I cut her out of the herd, so to speak, and asked her to dance. She was so cute. Just unbelievably cute. About five-two. Blonde ponytail. Blue eyes. Tiny little waist. Every now and then, I'd return her to the bunch, with good intentions of leaving her there, but pretty soon I'd ask her to dance again.

"Then, at the end of the evening, we looked for the others and they were gone. So I told her that I'd give her a ride home. Which was all that I did. Got a stony glare from Mary Liz when I took her to the door, but since it was less than ten minutes after the dance closed down, she didn't have any real grounds for complaint. I told Mary Liz that she'd gotten separated from her friends.

"What happened to the others?"

"Pat found out later that they were ticked off because she was dancing more than any of the rest of them and deliberately went off and left her, sort of hoping she'd get in trouble. She was only fifteen. Didn't turn sixteen until the end of December. Kids that age do things like that. They were all supposed to be dancing with a bunch of boys from St. Vincent's, but the boys weren't that interested in dancing, yet, so the rest of them only got out on the floor a couple of times."

"And then you started dating her?" Noelle asked.

"By taking her home, I learned where she lived. I was twenty, then, in college. I was going on a combination of state scholarship and work study, commuting over to Fairmont. Not a frat boy, by any means. I finished two years of credits in December of '63 and then went into the army. Figured that I might as well. My grades were okay, but not outstanding. Better the second year than they had been the first, but not good enough to guarantee two more years of deferment. I'd have been willing to ask her out, fair and square, but she said that if I did, her parents would send her to a nunnery. Which, after I'd found out a bit about the Fitzgeralds, didn't seem as melodramatic as I thought when she said it the first time."

"It probably wasn't." Noelle picked up her toast and then put it down again, tucking one foot under her as she sat on the bench in the breakfast nook.

"So we sneaked around. There's really no other way to put it. The next summer, she'd go to the drive-in with friends, get out after she got there, and get in my car to cuddle up while the film ran. Things like that. The other kids knew, of course. And since we were sneaking, we spent more time in places that were private than in public. With about the results you would expect.

"I didn't push her into doing anything she didn't want to." He smiled. "Maybe I sometimes coaxed her into going ahead and doing something she did want to. Not before she wanted to, though. It was like that, between the two of us. I waited nearly a year for her to be ready enough that she would ignore her scruples. Not just about having sex outside of marriage, but about having sex outside of marriage with a Methodist who made it plain that he intended to use birth control. Those last two items bothered her a lot more than the first one."

Noelle pursed her lips. "Actually, I can see that. In a way."

"The easiest place for us to go was over to Ma's. It was only a few feet from the driveway to the kitchen door. Our pa was gone by then, so Ma was working two jobs. Tom and Julia had married in August of '62, so he was out of the house and I needed to be home to watch Joe as much as I could, to save Ma from having to pay a sitter. So we'd sit at the kitchen table and do homework, all three of us. Me for college, Pat for high school, and Joe for grade school. Which, I think, is why my grades went up the second year. Playing cards or monopoly with him, sometimes. We sure spent more time doing homework than we did making love. There usually wasn't much time between when we finally persuaded Joe to go to bed and when Pat had to meet curfew on week nights. Sometimes none. Lord, but he was a little night owl. She got to stay out later on Friday and Saturday, though."

"You're telling me that you…? Right there?"

"Yeah, that's what I'm telling you. A couple of times, Ma got home before we came back out of my room. The first time, Pat just froze. I don't know what she expected. I introduced them to each other. Ma said, 'pleased to meet you.' Pat barely managed to nod. When we got into the car, she was trembling like a leaf. And I thought that if she was that afraid of her own parents, it must be some house to live in.

"Once I went into the army, we wrote. That had to be sneaked, too. Our go-between was Jeannette Adducci, Tony's aunt. She was the next-to-the youngest of ten, so her parents didn't watch her so closely that she couldn't mail Pat's letters for her or pick up mine to deliver to Pat. I'd rented a box at the post office in my name, so I addressed the letters to myself. And the end of that year, '64, when she turned eighteen, Pat picked up her courage and caught the bus for Leavenworth."

Dennis got up. "I should have married her then, but I couldn't bring myself to sign those promises to have any kids we had brought up Catholic. I'm sorry if that bothers you, since she brought you up Catholic, but it's the truth. And she didn't think that being married except by a priest was different from not being married at all. You pretty much know the rest of it by now."

"I suppose so." Noelle put the lid back on the butter dish.

"Except, maybe, that I loved her so much that it hurt. After I'd gotten to know her a little, not just look at her, she was so sweet. She still is. She can't stand the thought of hurting her worst enemy. That's what Bernadette says. That her sins have almost all been of omission rather than of commission, the way the Catholics put it. Not being able to bring herself to do what she needed to."

"She tried," Noelle picked up the butter and put it back in the refrigerator. "Most of the time, anyway."

Dennis looked down. "Sometimes, they weren't her sins. I sinned against her, too, the way the Lord's Prayer says. Not the sex thing. I don't regret that for a minute. More important things. When she did try, not having the person listen who should have listened. That first time she came over to Clarksburg, after I got back from 'Nam, I should have kept her there. Or if not the first time she came, the second. Or third, or fourth, or fifth, or sixth. I'll never get over blaming myself that I didn't. She tried to tell me what was going on. I let her down bad. I should never have let her go back to Grantville that spring of '68. I knew in my heart how much she was afraid of them.

"But I thought it would play out the way she promised the last time she left. That on the morning she was supposed to marry Francis, she would get in her car and go over to her classes in Fairmont and call me to say that everything was all right."

"Okay. I got the testimony from the hearing at St. Mary's. I know what happened then." Noelle turned around and looked at him, her gray eyes measuring. Evaluating. Assessing. "Were you as single-minded about Mom as Joe seems to be about Aura Lee or Harlan about Eden?"

Dennis looked back. Not a child. He was meeting this daughter as an adult. A daughter who would have to decide if she wanted to claim him.

"I would have been if I'd had the chance. I was while I was over in 'Nam and she was waiting. The way things turned out… While she was married to Francis, there were seven or eight years when I regularly saw, and slept with, a divorcee over in Clarksburg. Eventually she met a guy who was interested in marrying her, which was the end of that. After Pat wouldn't divorce Francis even though she was expecting you, I was so disillusioned that I slept around for a while. A couple of years. Until I figured out that there was nothing in it for me, so I stopped."

Noelle nodded.

"Nobody Pat ever knew. Nobody she ever heard of, I hope. I tried to make sure of that. Then I dated a couple of other women. Didn't live with either of them. Never wanted to. One moved to Indiana with a job transfer after four years. The other lasted quite a while. The Ring of Fire left her in Clarksburg. That's the chronicle of my misspent years. Abbreviated version more than unexpurgated, but the truth. Not that I'm particularly proud of what I did, either. Of the way I handled things. But if I'd spent all those years thinking about the fact that I couldn't have Pat, it would have driven me crazy."

"Thanks for being honest."

"You're welcome. I'd prefer that nobody ever rub her nose in that."

"Yeah. I guess I can understand where you're coming from. I'd never deliberately do anything to hurt Mom."

"Well," Dennis said a couple of days later. "You could think about it again. That is, since we're going to the bank and putting your name on the records, you could think about what name you want on the papers."

"Yeah. I'll do that. Well, not just think about it. Do it. I told Tony and Denise and Bernadette a couple of weeks ago that I had wanted to get rid of 'Murphy' for a long time. But I wouldn't have asked to use 'Stull' unless you all invited me. I didn't want to be pushy."

Dennis looked at her. It hadn't occurred to him that she might be a little afraid of offending them. Thinking that they were measuring and evaluating her. She always seemed so composed. Reserved. Collected.

"Joe said that you told him and Tony that you had talked to Ma a few times."

"Yeah. I did." She looked away. "I hope you don't mind."

"Not a bit."

"I don't know if Mom has said anything to you about it, but Patrick and Mary Liz Fitzgerald never let me in their house any more than the Murphys did. I never met them. Won't ever meet Patrick, since he's dead now. Probably won't ever meet Mary Liz, given the things she said about you and Mom at the hearing at St. Mary's."

"Pat never said anything."

"She wouldn't. But she thought she ought to take the other girls to see them sometimes. Not as often as she took them to Paul and Maggie's, though. Nowhere near. But maybe that was more so she could see Keenan at Paul and Maggie's." Noelle looked across the table at him. "She feels pretty bad about Keenan, you know."

"She hasn't said anything about that, either."

"She does. She thinks she let him down." Noelle took a sip of coffee. She didn't really like it; hadn't ever acquired a taste for it. But it was there in front of her and fiddling with the handle of the cup gave her something to do with her hands.

"But that's really why I never changed my name to Fitzgerald. I wanted to get rid of Murphy. I had wanted to get rid of Murphy for a long time. But even though it was Mom's maiden name, the Fitzgeralds didn't want me, either. The only ones who did were Denise and Suzanne and they go by their married names."

Dennis realized that she was working up to something, but he wasn't sure what. With employees, the best approach was just to keep his mouth shut and listen, so that was what he did next.

"So she-Juliann-was the only one of my grandparents I ever met."

"Oh."

"The first time I walked up to the door, I called her 'Mrs. Stull.' But she said that no one much called her that."

"Nope. Not even the garbage collector."

"So, for a long while, I didn't call her anything." Noelle started spinning the coffee cup slowly around in its saucer.

Dennis just stayed quiet.

"Toward the end, she asked me to call her 'Grandma.' Like Harlan does."

Dennis nodded.

"I wish I hadn't been off in Franconia for so long before she died."

"Things like that happen."

"Yeah."

"Did you?" Dennis asked.

"What?"

"Call her 'Grandma'?"

Noelle shook her head. "I just couldn't, quite. Maybe, eventually, I could have worked up to it. But not then. I called her Juliann."

"If that's easier for you. So far, you haven't called me anything."

"I could probably manage 'Dennis.' "

"That's better than nothing."

"Okay, then." Noelle shook his hand.

"Changing your name doesn't take a court order anymore. The judges are too busy with more important stuff." The clerk pointed her finger in the general direction of Central Funeral Home. "Just go over to the Bureau of Vital Statistics, tell them what you want, swear an affidavit that you aren't doing it for fraudulent purposes, get it notarized, file it, and Bob's your uncle. There are a couple of notaries working right there in the office."

"Noelle Brigitte Murphy?" the clerk asked in a flat voice.

"Yes," Noelle said.

"Changing to Noelle Brigitte Stull?" The clerk fished a form out from under the counter.

"Yes, that's right."

Noelle looked at Pat and Dennis. " 'Noelle' I can understand, since I was born at Christmas. But where did 'Brigitte' come from?"

Pat turned bright red. "It's for me. In a way. I hope the priest thought it was for a saint, but it's for me."

"How do you get 'Brigitte' from 'Patricia'?"

"Hey there," Jenny Maddox came out of the back office. "Hello, Pat, Dennis, Noelle. Focus. We have forms to fill out, I hear."

"Hi, Jenny," Pat said.

"Did I hear a question? Getting Brigitte from Pat?"

Noelle nodded.

"This I know from my parents." Jenny looked mischievous. "Dad and Mom and Dennis were friends back then-he and Mom were in the same class in school."

"I guess there's no escaping my past," Dennis said.

Jenny barged on. "Noelle, did you ever hear of an actress called Brigitte Bardot?"

"No."

"Well, probably not. She'd stopped making movies long before you were born. Tell her the truth, Dennis," Jenny said.

Dennis looked a little uncomfortable. "When Pat was a teenager, when we were dating, I used to tease her by calling her Brigitte."

"Please," Pat said. "Don't ask." If anything, she turned redder. Her skin was very fair.

So Noelle didn't ask. But she did look the name up later. And blushed as red as Pat by the time she was done with the biographical sketch. Being named, even second-hand, for someone whose life history was summed up under the keywords "erotic French sex kitten" just didn't seem to be the proper image for a would-be nun.

"Um, Bernadette," she asked a couple of days later. "Did you ever hear of Brigitte Bardot?"

"Yep," Bernadette answered tersely.

"When we went in to do the name change. Ah, Dennis says that's what he called Mom when she was a teenager. Brigitte. She gave the name to me when I was baptized. For her. Because Patty was already named Patricia, I guess."

Bernadette looked at her. "Well, keep it in mind when you're thinking about whether or not you want to join a religious order."

"What do you mean?"

"You are Pat's daughter and he probably wasn't calling her that for no reason at all."

"Uh?"

"Look, Noelle." Bernadette tried to keep her voice kind rather than brusque. "Nowhere in all that testimony before Judge Tito and Tom Riddle or at the hearing over at St. Mary's did anybody so much as hint that Dennis and Pat waited until they were out in Leavenworth with his dime-store rings on her finger to start sleeping together."

"Oh." Noelle paused a moment. "Well, I guess that wouldn't have been likely. From what I've learned about Dennis' family so far. Actually, Dennis told me that they didn't wait that long. When I asked him about it. It would have embarrassed Mom if I asked her."

"I'm sure it would," Bernadette agreed. "And if you're even thinking about becoming a nun, Noelle, you might give some consideration to what she was doing then that would embarrass her so much if you asked her about it now."

And after that, Bernadette said to herself, you'd better think again.