The Stone brothers left the city the next day. Mathurin Brillard and Robert Ouvrard made one last effort to persuade Guillaume Locquifier to allow them to go in pursuit. But Locquifier was adamant.
Michel has given us no such instructions!
It was enough to drive a man insane. Michel Ducos was far distant-they had no idea where, precisely-so how could his "instructions" possibly cover any eventuality that might develop?
Brillard and Ouvrard did not share Locquifier's adulation of Michel Ducos. Both men thought Ducos' grasp on reality was shaky, in fact. Still, they were not prepared to wage an outright rebellion. True, Ducos' "authority" was mostly a matter of prestige, nothing formal. Insofar as the organization of Huguenot zealots had an officially recognized leader, it was Antoine Delerue and not Ducos. But Ducos' force of personality was such that any dispute with him almost invariably became ferocious.
As much as Mathurin and Robert would have enjoyed getting their revenge on the Stone brothers, they didn't feel strongly enough about the issue to risk getting into a brawl with Ducos. So, off the brothers went. Not touched, not even pursued.
On the Reichsstrasse between Frankfurt and Hanau
"Philipp Milkau is being blackmailed," said Artemisia Gentileschi.
The part of the Reichsstrasse they were following this morning was headed generally uphill, a steeper grade than a person would think unless he looked back to see what he'd already climbed, so they were going slowly to spare the horses. That gave them plenty of time to talk, but the sentence that she'd just dropped on him wasn't Artemisia's ordinary horse-riding conversation.
"He is?" Ron hoped that he didn't sound too dumb.
"By some Huguenot extremist group."
Ron groaned inwardly. The last time that he'd met a Huguenot extremist, it had been at the hearing for Galileo. He didn't really want to meet any more of them.
"Why's he being blackmailed?" If the man turned out to be a pedophile or something, he definitely didn't want to get involved.
"Something involving real estate. Buying an estate called Stockau. It's over near Ingolstadt, somewhere. In Pfalz-Neuburg."
"Didn't that belong to the abominable Wolfgang Wilhelm? Before he got himself killed in the Essen War last summer?"
"That's the one. If you can think of a triangle between Augsburg, Munich, and Augsburg, it's in there."
"The south side of the river?"
Artemisia nodded. "It's noble land. So it's tax exempt, for all practical purposes. Plus being a way for Milkau to lever his family up into the nobility, if he played his cards right. But somewhere along the way, he bribed the wrong person, or didn't bribe the right person, or… something."
"Like he maybe told Wolfgang Wilhelm something that amounted to treason to get him to approve the sale?"
"You are young to be so suspicious, my friend Ron. The problem, I think, is that the purchase would have made him landsassig to an ally of Bavaria. It's a bit moot, now that General Baner has occupied Pfalz-Neuburg south of the Danube for Gustav Adolf and it's in the USE, or soon will be. But in any case, whatever the specifics, during the negotiations it was enemy territory. If the Frankfurt council finds out what he did, or was prepared to do, he will be tossed out of the city, bank and all. These…"
" 'Fanatics' is probably the right word."
"Fanatics. Yes. Zeloti. These zealots are using their knowledge to force him to finance their projects. Whatever their projects are. He is not sure. But he believes that he is probably not alone. That they are extorting money from other prominent members of the Calvinist diaspora."
"And I need to know this… why?"
"Your father is important. And rich. Therefore, you have ties to influential men in the State of Thuringia-Franconia, and through them into the highest circles of the USE. He thought that you might be able to bring the problem to the attention of the appropriate persons. Discreetly, of course. Naming no names, since you are a friend of his future son-in-law. But letting someone know of the existence of the zealots. That they have established themselves in Frankfurt."
Ron had never thought of himself as having ties into the highest circles of the USE. But if Frank could get married in the Sistine Chapel… The only important man he knew was Mr. Piazza. That was because Mr. Piazza used to be the high school principal, so everybody in Grantville knew him, pretty much. But he did know him, and Piazza was as thick as thieves with Mike Stearns. Whom he'd also actually met. Once. In a bunch of other people at the Thuringen Gardens. Everybody knew that Francisco Nasi worked for Stearns.
"I'll see what I can do."
Chapter 11
Frankfurt am Main
Nathan Prickett figured he'd done his duty to common courtesy already by looking up the other Grantvillers in Frankfurt and saying hi, letting them know where he was staying. He hadn't expected that he'd have much in common with them, except for being from Grantville, and he didn't.
Jason Waters was a newspaperman. He was here to establish an American-style newspaper. If he could get permission from the city council, that was. And from Magdeburg, since the guy who was publishing the big paper in Frankfurt now had a kind of grandfathered-in imperial monopoly that went back to the days before the Ring of Fire.
The USE parliament hadn't gotten around to abolishing monopolies yet. They probably would, but the country had only existed for less than a year and a good portion of that time, there'd been a war on. It looked like there'd be a war on a good portion of next year, too, if Gustav decided to take on Saxony and Brandenburg.
Waters was from Charlestown and only settled down in Grantville to start with because he'd married Serena Trelli. Nathan had no idea why he'd brought Ernest Haggerty with him, unless to be a gofer.
Wayne Higgenbottom was studying the post office system. Wayne was here because the Grantville post office had sent him. None of them were likely to stay long. It wasn't as if Nathan had ever gone to school with any of them. Haggerty did belong to the same church-Methodist-but he was married to Bobbie Jean Sienkiewicz, who was Catholic, and didn't attend regularly. Ernest was some kind of a cousin of Gary Haggerty and them, but not close.
Odd, but by now, after all the time he'd lived in Suhl, Nathan had more in common with Ruben Blumroder than he did with some of the guys from back home.
He picked up his pen.
Dear Don Francisco,
He didn't have a lot to report. He'd only been here a week. But he owed the don a letter.
Johann Wilhelm Dilich, who is in charge of Frankfurt's fortifications, knows a lot more about city defenses than I do, or probably ever will.
I expect you already know that way back before Grantville arrived, the father of the guy who's the landgrave of Hesse now put Dilich's father in jail. And, I sort of think from what I've been picking up, it was for unfair reasons. As soon as the father got out in 1623, he went to work for the elector of Saxony. That's John George. He's still working there, and he's famous.
I guess that worked out fine in the world we came from, because Frankfurt and Hesse and Saxony were all on the side of Gustavus Adolphus.
Well, sort of, at least. Seems like John George was always a bit iffy, to put the best face possible on it.
What with the war coming up next spring, though, I thought I'd at least better remind you that the guy in charge of the fortifications at Frankfurt, which is a really important city (province, I guess, since the Congress of Copenhagen) for the USE and smack on the Main River, is the son of the guy who's in charge of the fortifications for John George.
Just in case.
The militia captain told me all this. He's an old friend of a gunsmith named Heinrich Dilles. He-Dilles, that is-has been dead for almost ten years, but Blumroder used to know him pretty well and said that the captain could tell me a lot. Blumroder gave me a few other names of men to look up beyond the ones I've already talked to on my sales trips over here. Kolb and Mohr. Hung and Rephun. And Schmidt. I don't exactly have high hopes of finding the right person named Schmidt. It's a good-sized town and they don't have street numbers.