She had not said, "St. Vincent de Paul." Did she think that Larry Mazzare would not have shared the original name of Grantville's parish with his assistants?
Her next question confused him. "Have you read any of Simon Jones' detective stories?" He assured her that he had read several.
"There was-is-a series that I love. An elderly nun who was a detective. Sister Mary Theresa Dempsey. I can lend you a couple of the books, if you might possibly have time to read them. I mostly borrowed them from the library, when I was working in Pittsburgh, but I bought a few in paperback that the library never got in."
Kircher noted the wryness of her smile. She was continuing. "There was one young nun in that house, among the elderly women. In one book of the series, she remarked that when she entered the order, one of her relatives had commented that she was 'climbing aboard a sinking ship.' The women's religious orders in the United States were a sinking ship. It happened in a half century, between when that was published,"-she gestured at the book in his hand-"and the time the Ring of Fire happened."
He maintained his silence. After a pause, she continued.
"Do you want to know why?"
He nodded.
"I can't answer for everyone. In part, probably, it was that there were other opportunities-the same reason that fewer women were going into elementary school teaching and nursing. But. I entered the order wanting to give a hundred percent of what I was capable, or more. By the early 1980s, though, so few young women were entering that the superiors seemed to be afraid of frightening them away. They never seemed to require more than eighty-five percent. Oh, I might have found it somewhere else. I could have asked for a transfer. In Calcutta, I am sure, Mother Teresa could have found a sufficiently strenuous job for me. But I was American; it was selfish, perhaps, but I didn't want to go so far from my family. So, what did I do? I left the order and went into social work. In social work, I assure you, Father Kircher, a person can give more than a hundred ten percent for a lifetime and still see a gaping black hole of unmet needs before her."
Kircher wondered idly what a "black hole" might be. A pit, perhaps? An abyss? Miss Adducci appeared to have said all that she intended to say. Miss Mastroianni gestured, an understandable request for permission to speak. He had noticed that many of his students used the same one and she was a teacher, a woman about thirty. He nodded.
"We've never had a house of sisters in Grantville, Father Kircher. The town could use one, now. Not the kind you're used to; women enclosed inside walls. Not contemplative. The active kind that Bernadette is talking about. All we're asking is that you think about it. If you could look at the book-see what sisters did? There's so much that we could do."
Kircher's fingers met one another. He placed his chin on them. "And the three of you are doing nothing now?"
One of the other women rose. Miss Constantinault; just appointed the chief of staff of the state court system for all of the state of Thuringia-Franconia, trained as an administrator and, to some limited extent, in the law. She looked at him sharply and said, "Not as a group-not as a unit. And not," she pointed to the "AMDG" motto on the wall of his office, "to the greater glory of God. That's why I came along. Because that is why we should be doing things."
"I will," he heard himself saying, "look at your book. Carefully."
The three women rose. "We know that you have a lot to do today," Bernadette Adducci said. "That is all we ask. Shall we plan to meet again after Easter?"
"There is no reason why I should not go now. There are many reasons that I should go now." Veronica Dreeson looked at her husband. Not mulishly. She did not want to look stubborn. She wished to look calmly determined. She wanted an expression of serene dignity. Her prematurely wizened face strained with the effort of assuming one.
All her life, at need, Veronica Schusterin, verw. Richter, verh. Dreeson, had been willing to argue with others when it was needed. Last fall, in Magdeburg, the Abbess of Quedlinburg's approach to life had struck her as a blinding revelation-the elegance of it. The Abbess almost never argued with anyone, because she simply assumed that no one would contradict her wishes and acted upon that assumption. Even amid the sorrow of her grandson Hans' death, Veronica had filed away in her mind the general usefulness of this approach to getting one's own way. If one could manage it.
Another tactic. "I have a letter of recommendation from the king of Sweden himself. Or," she added conscientiously, "at least one with his signature on it, though that may have been added by one of his secretaries. It introduces me to his regent in the Upper Palatinate. It requests him to assist me in obtaining a resolution of our just claims to Johann Stephan's property. So, clearly, I should go while the regent whom he named is still holding the office."
Then, to clinch the deal. "We need the money." She sat quietly. Henry could not argue with that.
Henry was doing what he called "cogitating." Ronnie let him cogitate. He knew the truth as well as she did. His salary as mayor was not large; before the Ring of Fire, when it had been only what they called a "part time" job, his salary had not existed at all. He once had a pension, a Social Security; it was gone. Fortunately he had saved money for his retirement; like any city councilman down-time, his civic service had been premised on having sufficient income to "get away from the office" and serve the public good.
The savings had come through the Ring of Fire, but they were gone. Oh, if there had been only the two of them, with his salary, her business, and the little coming in here and there from the real estate, there would have been plenty.
There were far more than two of them. Gretchen, amazingly enough, was famous now. But fame, especially fame gained by giving speeches urging other people to revolt against their superiors, did not pay many bills. At the beginning, Jeff and his friends had helped. But Jeff, Gretchen, and, presumably, Jeff's pay from the army, were now in Amsterdam, far away in the Netherlands. If Jeff's pay was not arriving in Amsterdam via letter of credit, Veronica did not have the slightest idea how the two of them were paying for their food, and rooms, and replacing shoes that wore out, and all the other necessities that came with prolonged travel, but it wasn't something that she could do anything about.
Jimmy was in Amsterdam too, presumably with his pay also arriving there. Eddie was a captive in Denmark; she didn't know where his pay was. Not in the Dreesons' bank account, certainly. She hoped that the navy bookkeepers in Magdeburg were saving it for him. Larry and Hans-she blinked quickly-had died bravely. But they weren't being paid any more. Neither of them had had legal dependents.
The other children, from Annalise on down, were still in school. She felt her face tightening into a slightly grimmer expression, in spite of her efforts to remain tranquil. What was more, Annalise would stay in school. Annalise, no matter how much she protested the matter, was going to college. She would be a member of the first class of the new women's college at Quedlinburg. And her grandmother would, somewhere, find the money to pay for it. Veronica had learned a lot, these last months, about the cost of tuition at such a school for the daughters of the elite and wealthy, the patricians, the great merchants, and the nobles. It was only reasonable that her dead husband Johann Stephan's property, if anything were left of it, should pay for his granddaughter's education.
The question of who would pay for the education of the other children as they grew older, and how, could rest for the moment. If Gretchen and Jeff returned from Amsterdam-that was an if; she would not delude herself that it was no more than a when -then she could give that problem back to them. If they did not return…