May it please God in heaven, to the east; not to the north. Not toward or through his poor Saxony. Not again.
They had best hold most of Holk's troops where they were for the time being. And deal with those increasingly sullen petitions the best they could. Perhaps with just a few companies to make a feint towards Leuchtenberg?
Prague, Bohemia
"One thing I am sure of," Judith Roth said, "is that if Veronica Dreeson says that she's going to Amberg to settle her first husband's estate, then she's going to Amberg to settle her first husband's estate."
She made that pronouncement in the great salon of the mansion that she and her husband Morris owned in Bohemia's capital. Being as Don Morris was one of King Wallenstein's central advisers, the salon was frequently occupied, of an evening, with a significant percentage of Bohemia's movers and shakers.
Everyone else in the room begged to differ.
The grandmother of Hans Richter, the hero of Wismar, would not go on so insignificant a mission.
The grandmother of the revolutionary, Gretchen Richter, would not go on so insignificant a mission.
The wife of the up-time admiral really could not be so concerned about the education of teachers that she would leave the national capital of the USE and devote three months of the year to a trip to a much less significant regional capital.
The speculation continued. There must, certainly, be a deeper underlying significance to this trip. Perhaps it portended a major effort of the USE on behalf of Wallenstein; perhaps it indicated that the USE feared that Wallenstein's situation was precarious and this was an effort to persuade the regent to release Baner's troops for use in Bohemia; perhaps there was to be a coordinated revolutionary uprising in Bavaria and Austria, led by the Committees of Correspondence.
Judith raised her eyebrows and sighed. She thought that she had an advantage over the others. She had actually met both Veronica Dreeson and Mary Simpson. Numerous times, in fact.
"They are," she said, "really quite single-minded. Both of them. Trust me."
The others shook their heads pityingly.
Munich, Bavaria
"Why," Joachim Donnersberger asked, "are they coming? Clearly, it can scarcely be about a bit of property in the Upper Palatinate. There is no way that they can expect us to believe that. The Dreeson woman's first husband had a small printing business, not a great mercantile concern."
Contzen and Vervaux looked at one another. The willingness of the Jesuit Order to draw its recruits from all social classes gave many of them a perspective on property rather different from that of the urban patriciate or the nobility. "It may be," Vervaux suggested, "that the amount is not insignificant to her."
The remainder of the privy counselors sublimely ignored this absurd idea.
"At least," Richel interjected, "we do have observers in place. We will know, as soon as can be, what she really spends her time doing. What both of them spend their time doing. If we can get someone else into the household of the Swede's cousin, we really should. The true intent must be that they are bringing instructions for him. Or for Baner, which amounts to the same thing."
"There is now," Duke Albrecht said, "a concentration of Baner's troops around Ingolstadt. Whatever the instructions the women are bringing, clearly they are so private that the Swede is unwilling to risk the possibility of a disloyal operator of their 'radio.'" Not, he thought, that this was excessive caution on Gustav Adolf's part. There would soon be at least one radio operator in Amberg who was willing to transmit information to Bavaria on the rare occasions that he was alone in the room.
Breaking the codes was another matter altogether.
Duchess Mechthilde had a private conversation with her brother, the landgrave of Leuchtenberg. More accurately she tried to, for Wilhelm Georg's mind was no longer fully reliable. She would have liked to have called in his sons, but one was at Ingolstadt and the other in Vienna. Or should have been in Vienna, if he had not been sent to accompany Ferdinand II's heir on a tour of inspection of fortifications in Hungary.
Although the family had fled from Leuchtenberg and the Swede's regent in the Upper Palatinate was now administering it, this did not mean that a significant portion of the population was not loyal to the landgrave and resentful of the usurper. Mechthilde thought that something ought to be done. Duke Maximilian had clearly lost his edge; Bavaria was being run in his name by the privy council. The privy council had no more nerve than the average committee. If something was to be done in the Upper Palatinate, it would be up to Leuchtenberg, but she had no way to do anything. It was frustrating.
Amberg, Upper Palatinate
The Swede's regent of the Upper Palatinate was equally puzzled. "Why is she coming? Why not?" Duke Ernst asked. He threw up his hands. "Tell me why I should be surprised."
In 1628, Duke Maximilian had demanded that all residents of the Upper Palatinate either become Catholic within six months or leave the country. Just in Amberg, the capital city, about ten percent of the citizens had left.
Duke Ernst continued. "Within the past two years, we have received letters from exiles in Regensburg and Nurnberg. That was to be expected, of course. Those are the nearest major Protestant cities. But there have also been letters from Basel and Geneva, from London and Edinburgh. If the former denizens of Amberg have gotten that far from home within the past five years, why should some of them not have gone to this Grantville?"
Turning toward Bocler, he held out his hands, as if in supplication. "But why does it have to be the wife of their mayor? Why does it have to be Hans Richter's grandmother? Why couldn't it have been some perfectly ordinary person? And why the admiral's wife?"
Bocler had no answer. In his heart, however, he could not have been happier. He could hardly wait for his duties to be over so that he could go back to his own room and insert the outline for a new chapter in his projected historia.
This was going to be much more interesting than the originally announced arrival of a trade delegation to discuss iron mining. Not that the economy wasn't important, of course. But it was hard to narrate economic matters in such a way that they kept the reader's interest. Intrepid ladies, on the other hand, offered fascinating possibilities.
Grafenwohr, Upper Palatinate
Kilian Richter, while not giving a single thought to Mary Simpson, had a pretty clear idea why his sister-in-law Veronica was coming back. The prospect of her return did not make him happy.
During Maximilian of Bavaria's occupation of the Upper Palatinate, Kilian had collaborated, quite enthusiastically, with the Bavarians. Quite remuneratively, too. Part of that remuneration had consisted of the property of his late, and much older, half-brother, Johann Stephan Richter.
Johann Stephan was most certainly dead, after all. He had died long before the war started. It had been a tragedy that his widow, son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren had disappeared without a trace in the turmoil of the war. Truly, a tragedy. Kilian had told everybody so. However, he had pointed out to anyone who would listen, given the nature of mercenary forces, one could only assume the worst, so one could only be grateful for the blessing that they had not died heretics.