"Who's the boy?" he asked idly.
"Don't think I ever heard his name," the clerk answered.
General Horn's Camp, outside Rheinfelden
"Papa!"
At the sound of this urgent cry, Cavriani turned quickly away from Frau Dreeson and her incessant grumbles. Two young men, escorted by a couple of members of the Riehen militia and followed, or possibly chased, by two of Horn's soldiers, were running toward him. He ran toward them.
"Papa, what luck to find you still here. Herr Wettstein was afraid that you might already have left. I'm completely out of money; I spent the last of it on paper to draw up my report on iron ore in the Wiese river valley. Wettstein's clerk didn't charge a lot for it."
Marc handed his father five neat copies of the iron ore report which he compiled while stuck in the Landvogt 's office in Riehen, but didn't stop talking. "I was almost out of money before I bought that. We had already figured that between where we were when the Bavarian captain started to chase us-that was before, somehow, the Bavarian captain started to chase us again with part of Duke Bernhard's army helping him-and when we got to your factor's house in Basel and could draw an advance, we wouldn't be eating much that we couldn't find growing along the roadside. If we ever had time to stop and eat, that is."
Marc was tanned, dirty, disheveled-and abundantly alive and healthy, totally unharmed. Leopold embraced him heartily, with a kiss on each cheek.
"And, I see, you have found a companion in your mischief." He gestured toward the other young man-boy, really, at closer range.
Marc squared his shoulders. "Ah, yes. Papa, this is Susanna. Susanna Allegretti."
Leopold Cavriani had spent enough time in Grantville to be fully aware of why "A Boy Named Sue" was considered to be a joke. There weren't any boys named Sue. Or Susanna. He turned.
"Frau Dreeson," he called. "Veronica."
Veronica became somewhat distracted from her catalog of grievances. What she said was, "See, I was right. No need for you to write your wife and make her worry. None at all."
Marc was not sure what might be coming next.
"A fascinating tale of adventure. But such a sad absence of chaperones," his father said at dinner, after Marc and Susanna had narrated their way through everything that had happened since Munich, usually in turn, but sometimes in chorus. "Two unrelated young people, boy and girl, scampering every which way through the countryside. Presumably, we should now remedy the situation by marrying you off to each other."
"That's fine," Marc said.
"No," Susanna said at the same time.
Marc looked at her a little reproachfully. In response to Veronica's urgent note, sent back via the Riehen militia and Wettstein, Diane Jackson had checked through her closet for clothes she could spare and sent Tony Adducci across the bridge to Riehen with a package. Wettstein had forwarded it to Horn's camp by courier. Susanna was dressed as a girl again. Sort of. Marc had never seen anything even vaguely like a turquoise satin cheong sam embroidered with red and green dragons before. He had never even imagined that such a garment existed, but he certainly appreciated the effect when Susanna wore it, as she was doing for the evening meal. The cream-colored turtle-neck sweater and the blue jeans embroidered with butterflies on the back pockets were rather nice, too. Diane did not go in for down-time fashions.
"No?" Leopold Cavriani raised an eyebrow.
"No. I like Marc, but I won't be married to him and go to some Calvinist city where everybody wears black broadcloth. Or black gabardine. Maybe with a white linen collar if they are feeling very cheerful. Not even if they would have me! We didn't do anything wrong. We don't have to marry each other. I got this far. Somehow, I can get to the Spanish Netherlands. I will go back to my lady and make beautiful clothing with velvet and satin and brocade and lace…"
"Ah. Professional pride, I see. That is understandable. Certainly, we can see to it that you arrive in the Spanish Netherlands safely. Perhaps Potentiana's cousins in Lyons…"
"At least, girl," Veronica said, after they had told the men good night and gone to find the tent that General Horn had assigned to them and go to bed, "you are thinking about the problems. Which is more than Dorothea and her young man were doing last spring. That only means, of course, that they will have to deal with it after they manage to get married."
She scowled ferociously and added with her usual level of cheer, "If, of course, they managed to get to Grantville. If they were not killed by bandits along the way. If neither of them has died from some ordinary disease. If Dorothea does not die in childbirth-it is her first, and that is always the riskiest one. Indeed, if the two of them did not starve to death during the trip. Mary and I were kidnapped before I could arrange a bank draft for them."
"Who is Dorothea?" Susanna asked.
"My late husband Johann Stephan's idiotic niece. After marriage, it is certain to be more awkward. When they look at one another across the baby's cradle, for example, and then start discussions about whether the baptism will take place in a Catholic or Calvinist church, which, if she does not die and the baby is born alive, they will do before Christmas. You are quite right. It is undoubtedly difficult to yoke a Catholic and a Calvinist together in marriage. Though, of course, Dorothea is such a little fool that she may not have strong opinions about the matter. She may just change over if her husband tells her to."
"I," Susanna said firmly, "would never do that. Not ever."
Veronica smiled, even if somewhat sourly. "Precisely what I thought. Although, child, believe me, having a Calvinist and a Catholic united in one marriage cannot possibly be as awkward as playing host to a Calvinist and a Catholic united together in your own mind, soul, and body. Damned Bavarians. Not that Duke Maximilian was responsible for the fact that I host a Lutheran to keep them company, I admit. The Counts Palatine managed that without his help."
Susanna had never thought about that problem. She looked at Veronica a moment and said so.
Abruptly, Veronica asked, "Since you seem to recognize the problems, why are you even thinking about marriage to the boy? Though at least you did have enough sense to refuse his father's suggestion."
Susanna's eyes flew wide. "Because I want to kiss him. I really do. I've been thinking about kissing him since the first time I saw him. Maybe not quite since the first time I saw him, but even when he was just an ironworker repairing the house next to the English Ladies on Paradise Street, I was thinking… Oh, well, at least, definitely, since the first time I really looked at him. And, well, other stuff."
She blushed. "I have dreamed about it. I never really wanted to do that with any other man I've ever seen in my life. I couldn't even imagine really wanting to do those things when the other seamstresses talked about it. It was just something, I thought, that you had to put up with in order to get married. Then I looked at Marc in the baggage park outside of Munich and I started to think about it all. When I was a boy, it was a very peculiar feeling. But he never gave me a boy's name. When we were alone, he always called me Susanna, and when we were with other people, he never called me anything at all. And he did say, once, that he thinks that the way that all my parts are put together is cute. And he doesn't mind that my eyelashes are short and straight and blond. That's a good sign, don't you think?"
Stop it, she told herself. You are chattering to this dried up prune of an old lady who is part Calvinist. She will not approve of you at all if you say such things.