Ring of Fire III

Chapter One

Bolzen, Tyrol, January 1635

“Those progress reports from the plague physicians we sent to assist Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar last November complete the old business on the agenda.” Wilhelm Bienner, chancellor of the County of Tyrol, closed one folder.

Claudia de Medici inclined her head at the members of her inner council. “The next item on the agenda is unannounced. I wanted to avoid the premature spread of gossip.” Her steely gray eyes fixed on a couple of her advisers, but she forbore to make any additional comment. “For the remainder of the meeting, I will have present additional persons whom I have recently seen fit to add to my staff.”

She signaled to the doorman. He exited into the antechamber, returning with, obvious to anyone who looked at them closely, two up-timers and a down-timer.

“Your Grace, is this…?” The questioner’s voice dwindled away into a mumble.

“Yes,” Claudia said. “It is wise.” She looked around the table. “Does anyone else doubt that it is wise?”

If anyone else did, he found it prudent not to say so.

The regent smiled like a cat. “Gentlemen, may I present to you Don Francesco de Melon, formerly the imperial/Bavarian military commander of the fortress of Kronach in northern Franconia.” She waved.

De Melon bowed.

She waved again.

He took the designated chair.

“Also, from Grantville, in the Ring of Fire, Herr Matthaus Trelli, formerly commander of the State of Thuringia-Franconia’s military forces during the recent siege of Kronach. Prior to the Ring of Fire, he had studied the subject of Medical Lab Technology for two years at Fairmont State University in West Virginia. This study required two more years, but Herr Trelli informs me that because of financial problems, he had left the university and was working at a ‘clinic’ in the same time to earn sufficient money to complete his professional preparation. He is personally acquainted with the famous Professor Thomas Stone who is now lecturing in Padua.” The ritual of waves and chairs followed.

“And Herr Trelli’s wife, whom he married just this past month in Wurzburg, the gentle-lady Frau Laura Marcella Abruzzo.” Claudia’s voice firmed. “Lady Abruzzo, before the Ring of Fire, was also a student at this same Fairmont State University in West Virginia. As you may have heard, if not believed, this ‘co-education’ was common up-time. Lady Abruzzo had completed three years of a four-year course of study in the subject of Civil Engineering Technology. We have been informed that not only nobles but also commoners educated their daughters well.”

Turning to Bienner’s clerk, who was taking minutes, she pointed. “Take a memo. Dr. Bienner is to write yet once more to both Quedlinburg and Prague, asking them about women’s colleges. I will not have Tyrol lose its preeminent economic position because it fails to modernize.”

The clerk made a note.

“As to Lady Abruzzo. Since the Ring of Fire, because this university in Fairmont, West Virginia, was not included within the Ring of Fire, she has spent two years apprenticing to the experienced partners who founded USE Steel in Saalfeld to become certified by them as a fully qualified engineer.”

At the mention of the word “steel,” several of the previously unhappy faces around the table transformed themselves. Their current expressions might be described as mollified.

“I am delighted,” the regent said, “to welcome these up-time fellow Italians as they join the administrative staff of the County of Tyrol.” She waved.

Marcie Abruzzo did not curtsey. Like the men, she bowed. Then she took her seat.

“Begin as you mean to go on,” her Grandma Kovacs always said.

“Fellow-Italians,” Matt said to de Melon. “The Trellis came from somewhere around Venice, I think, but my mom is Irish. Dad’s mom was Irish. Marcie’s dad’s family immigrated from Sicily, but her mom’s Serbian.”

Marcie Abruzzo laughed. “Talk about an exercise in resume inflation. The archduchess certainly has the routine down pat.”

She paused. “She is an archduchess, isn’t she?”

“Her late husband,” de Melon said, “was an archduke. Her father, however, was Grand Duke of Tuscany, so by birth she is a grand duchess. Her first husband was merely a duke.”

“How do those stack up against each other-an Austrian archduke and an Italian grand duke? Is one higher than the other?”

“I am a soldier, not a diplomat. However, I think they would be about equivalent, since the families intermarry and the spouses are considered to be of equal birth.”

“How come she didn’t run through your resume, de Melon?” Matt asked. “The one I got for you when I asked Grantville to send me something was pretty impressive.”

“I am very sorry,” Francesco de Melon said with impeccable courtesy, “but I sincerely believe that your researchers in Grantville were mistaken.” The former imperial/Bavarian military commander of the fortress of Kronach assumed an expression that indicated he felt mildly apologetic.

“Umm,” Matt Trelli, formerly de Melon’s opposite number on behalf of the State of Thuringia-Franconia during the siege of Kronach, asked, “how?”

“Part of this information they sent you…” De Melon picked up a piece of paper. “Part of this is me, I, myself, the person who is sitting here in your presence.”

Matt nodded.

“I believe, though, that most of it belongs to another person with the same name, or a similar name. More precisely, it appears to belong to two or more other persons with the same name, or similar names. One of them was a poet. The other was a count. I am flattered, of course, to have so suddenly acquired both outstanding literary abilities and a rank of high nobility. However…”

De Melon sat there, across the table from Matt. Young. Straight black hair, dark eyes. Not overweight, but a little jowly. Heavy eyebrows, prominent nose, mustache.

“Well,” Matt said. “I guess we at least have to give the folks at the National Research Center credit for trying. It’s not as if anybody in Grantville could speak or read Portuguese before the Ring of Fire. Well, Ms. DiCastro was in Grantville as an exchange teacher. She’s from South America, so maybe she could. She didn’t work for the Research Center, though, so it probably doesn’t make any difference whether she could or not. She was teaching Spanish at the high school.”

Marcie Abruzzo, so recently married to Matt that they still counted as honeymooners, asked, “Why did you ’fess up? When you realized about the mix-up, I mean?”

De Melon smiled. “Not from any outstanding amount of abstract virtue, I assure you. I just felt sure that if I kept that resume after I accepted the regent of Tyrol’s invitation to enter her service, at some time, unavoidably, I would meet someone acquainted with one of the other men.”

“A letter from the emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,” Chancellor Bienner’s clerk said. “It just arrived.”

Claudia snatched it.

She read.

She frowned. “Ferdinand says they are considering the possibility that Vienna might offer the Archduchess Cecelia Renata as a wife for Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, as a means of maintaining the Habsburg interests in Swabia.”

“But he’s Protestant,” Bienner protested.

“It appears,” Claudia answered, “that Leopold’s young cousins in Vienna are-how would Marcie put it? — thinking outside of the box. How would such a move affect the position of my sons? The historically Habsburg lands in Swabia do not belong to Vienna. They belong to Tyrol. Perhaps I should think outside of the box as well, before Ferdinand steals a march on me.”

“If a leak occurs before I am ready for this initiative to become public,” the regent said, “heads will roll.”

No one at the table doubted that she meant this statement in its most literal sense.

“After study of the situation and consultation with Dr. Bienner, taking into account some proposed actions on the part of Our cousins in Vienna, having within the fairly recent past taken advantage of Our commercial connections with the manufacturers of the ‘Monster’ to visit both Venice and Magdeburg, We have concluded…”

Claudia de Medici paused and stood up. She had called this meeting for the specific time in the morning when the sun would come through the windows of the conference room and shine on her titian hair. She had a talent for the dramatic.

“No, no.” She waved as all the others scrambled to push their chairs back. “Retain your seats.”

She had frequently thought that although proper protocol required that the highest-ranking person in a room sit, while all others stood respectfully unless given permission to sit, this was counterintuitive. She was tall, true, but when seated, she could not tower over anyone else. If they sat and she stood, however, she could achieve a more intimidating effect. A truly satisfactory intimidating effect.

It was definitely time for some changes in Tyrol.

“It is Our intention to extend exploratory feelers to the United States of Europe as to what terms We could obtain if We were willing to bring Tyrol, voluntarily, into it.”

“As one of its provinces?” someone asked.

She shook her head decisively. “No. As a ‘state.’ They may say that the status of the State of Thuringia-Franconia, legally, is no different from that of the other provinces, but, still, ‘state’ is a distinguishing term. There are nuances to be considered. The word has connotations tied to its history. A ‘state’ in the English language, I have learned, was not only one of the component units of the ‘United States of America,’ but also could be and was often utilized as synonymous with ‘nation.’ ”

She suddenly grinned impishly, looking a decade younger than her thirty years. “See how useful it is to have up-time advisers. Marcie had a friend at the university who majored in ‘marketing.’ First impressions are always important. ‘State’ is much better than ‘province.’ ”

“ ‘Marketing,’ ” one of her council asked dubiously. “The up-timers went to a university to learn to sell things?”

“I have been talking to young Matthaus,” someone answered. “Their merchants no longer offered traditional apprenticeships. They appear to have paid money, called endowments, to schools of higher education, where would-be young merchants were trained by academics, many of whom had never been traders themselves. The result was called an MBA. A ‘Master of Business Administration.’ ”

The sheer horror of this concept caused a gloomy silence to descend on the conference room.

“You now have heard the essence of what I am proposing. Dr. Bienner has prepared a ‘position paper’ that I want each of you to read. We will reconvene tomorrow. Keep the desirability of a direct connection between your heads and your necks firmly in mind.”

Wilhelm Bienner had discovered bullet points and the Joy of the Executive Summary.

• Both the USE and Venice are seriously interested, for good sound economic and commercial reasons, in having a land bridge between them; while air transport is a boon, it will not dominate the exchange of goods and people for some decades. Tyrol’s entrance into the USE would meet this need (see projections, Appendices I–IV);

• Maximilian of Bavaria isn’t the most stable of next door neighbors to have just at this moment (see retrospective from mid-summer 1634 to the present, Appendix V);

• At a time when Tyrol could really use a strong archbishop in Salzburg, the Holy Spirit in its wisdom has chosen to give Us Paris von Lodron. Even if his publicists represent him as being “as cautious and wise as Pericles,” what that means for Us is that he’s huddling like a turtle in its shell; he may be expected to defend the territories of the archdiocese as strongly as he can, but it is not probable that he will assist Us if Maximilian gives Tyrol problems (see further analysis, Appendix VI);

• Our cousins in Vienna are preoccupied with setting up a new administrative structure for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They cannot ignore developments in Bohemia and the Balkans; Ferdinand feels he must support the Poles if Gustavus should be imprudent enough to push his eastern campaign that far next summer (see further analysis, Appendix VII);

• If the setting up of a USE “Province of Swabia” goes through as it was proposed at the Congress of Copenhagen the previous June, Tyrol will lose many of its current possessions that are scattered all the way through Swabia to the Rhine (see copy of the relevant portion of the proceedings, attached as Appendix VIII);

• If Tyrol comes in voluntarily as a unit, We can probably negotiate much more satisfactory terms.

Essentially, that was it. With footnotes, legal references, and supplements, the position paper ran to sixty-seven closely written pages. That was not counting the appendices.

Matt Trelli read the point about Salzburg and muttered, “Three cheers for the Paraclete.”

De Melon looked at the size of it, calculated the number of clerks who must have been pulled in to make copies for each council member, wondered why the chancery had not yet invested in a Vignelli duplicating machine, and muttered, “If there isn’t a leak before the regent is ready to make this public, I will be a very surprised man.”

Marcie commented, “That capitalization of “We” and “Us” and “Our” always gets to me-really gives me the shivers.”

“I seriously believe,” de Melon told the regency council, “that you can anticipate that the leadership of the USE will respond to such a proposal reasonably. Certainly, my experience with the SoTF officials in their handling of the surrender of Kronach last autumn left me persuaded of the essential rationality of the up-timers. Their provision of assistance to the city and fortress during the plague epidemic even left me persuaded of their essential good will. This was not a conviction that came to me easily.”

“The USE is not the only party of concern,” Chancellor Bienner pointed out. “There is also Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar to consider. The Breisgau. The Sundgau. The Swabian jurisdictional claims of his, ah, new and still developing principality overlap with those of Tyrol in some localities.”

“Our aim,” the regent said, “is to retain all Tyrolese possessions in Swabia as an inheritance for Our sons. Ferdinand Karl is six. Sigmund Franz is barely four. They are not old enough to speak for themselves. We must be tenacious on their behalf.”

She stood up.

Chancellor Bienner winced. He was learning that it was not a good sign when the regent stood up when she was at the head of a table.

“As I think about it,” Claudia said, “I believe that I have urgent reasons to visit Besancon, or, at least, to visit wherever Bernhard has his working headquarters at the moment. There is often much to be gained by a face-to-face meeting of the principal parties involved, rather than leaving discussions to ambassadors and envoys.”

There was no possible disadvantage associated with this project that her advisers left unexplored. Plague. Horn’s regiments. You Name It.

“We shall go,” the regent said. “We will do it. Let the matter be arranged with Bernhard. Let the matter be arranged with the people who fly the ‘Monster.’ Let it be done.”