Minnie Hugelmair had received her promotion from sixth grade to seventh the day before Thanksgiving break started. She was determined to have that eighth grade diploma by next spring. She didn't see any reason why she couldn't finish the other two grades of middle school in six months. School stuff wasn't exactly hard. All she had to do was read the books, fill out the assignments, and turn them in.
She owed Benny. She ate her Thanksgiving dinner with the Pierce and Coffman families like a proper lady, as Louise would put it.
Then she went up to the storage lot. Denise's dad had faith in her and she owed him for it, too. Denise had gone off somewhere, flying in a plane with those losers Lannie Yost and Keenan Murphy, chasing after defectors. Which had to be hard on Buster and Christin, not having their daughter here on a big, important, up-timer holiday.
So she ate Thanksgiving dinner again.
Rudolstadt
Count Ludwig Guenther of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, aged fifty-three, looked proudly on the son he had never, during his long bachelorhood, expected to have.
Countess Emelie, aged twenty, smiled up at him, beatifically exalted in the realization of a job well done, a duty superbly performed, and having made her kindly husband possibly, at this moment, the happiest man in the USE. In addition to which, of course, she had a baby. The most wonderful baby ever born.
"What are you going to call him?" his widowed sister-in-law asked.
"Albrecht, I think, for our father. And Karl, for my brother."
Anna Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst smiled. She was the widow of the late Count Karl Guenther. "And, of course, naming him for your father will also provide a suitable opportunity to reach out to the Crown Loyalists by inviting Duke Albrecht of Saxe-Weimar to lift him from the font. An excellent choice of godfather, by the way."
"No Ludwig?" Emelie asked. Then with a little laugh, "No Guenther to join the forty or more previous Guenthers who have been counts in Schwarzburg?"
He smiled again. "Not this time, I think. God willing, there will be other sons to bear those names." He leaned over and placed the baby back in her arms. "But, I think, it is an opportune moment for a little 'cultural borrowing,' as they call it. I shall proclaim that this day of the year will henceforth be a Dankfest in Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, too."
PART FIVE
December 1634
Hovering on wing under the cope of hell
Chapter 30
Frankfurt am Main
"The anti-vaccination pamphlets are excellent. Perhaps we should make the effort to find out who Mauger's informant is. He appears to have some talent." Fortunat Deneau was actually smiling.
"The increased virulence of the criticism of Stearns and his allies by the Crown Loyalists is also opening up marvelous propaganda opportunities. Splendid ones." Ancelin was also smiling as he read the paper. "How opportune of those Grantvillers to defect to Austria at this time."
"How are Vincenz Weitz's contacts developing?" asked Locquifier.
"He will be able to provide us with sufficient practical assistance," Deneau answered. "He will continue to explore his various contacts until he has, I hope, a few hundred people who are willing to conduct demonstrations and start minor riots whenever and wherever he tells them to. Once he has reached that point, and actually conducted some preliminary agitation in other Thuringian towns-Arnstadt, Badenburg, Stadtilm, Ilmenau-not villages, but small cities-I will be in a position to set up the attack in Grantville itself."
"March fourth, you realize. Coordination is important. It must be the fourth of March, precisely. Weitz is very insistent on that point."
"Yes, Guillaume," Ancelin said. "I know."
Locquifier frowned. There would necessarily be so many people involved in the synagogue attack that there was an extremely high danger of leaks. Still, there were some measures that they could take in advance. It was not as if Weitz were the only anti-Semite in the Germanies. Someone else had written the pamphlets directed against Rebecca Abrabanel. Someone else was producing the worst of the slanders against Francisco Nasi. They were not coming out of Frankfurt. So…
"Robert."
Ouvrard looked up from the newspaper.
"You need to write several pamphlets, short ones, in the style of those attacking the wife of Stearns and the spymaster. Those pamphlets will…" He slowed down a little, thinking on his feet. "… at least make some references, not direct threats but references, to those Jews who have settled within the State of Thuringia-Franconia, even within the Ring of Fire itself, and think themselves secure there. Thus, if there are some leaks from among the people Deneau and Weitz are recruiting, there will be several false leads already out in public. That will divert attention from us."
"What about Antoine and Michel? They might not like us doing that."
Ancelin interrupted before Locquifier could continue. "Don't say anything about strategy or policy, purposes or goals. Nothing about us. You will be writing in the name of others, making comments that purport to come from others. Antoine can't complain about that. Well, he can, I suppose, being Antoine. If he finds out. But I don't see any reason to tell him. If we are lucky, he'll never need to know that we are the source of these little diversions."
Deneau, who liked to have all of his ducks in a row when he was organizing a riot, asked, "What about the hospital?"
"Mauger has assured de Ron that his agent feels confident of organizing a demonstration against the hospital that, if you give it a couple of hours of advance time, will be large enough draw away the Grantville police-almost all of the police force-before the attack on the synagogue begins."
Switzerland
Henri de Rohan felt pretty good about the perceptiveness and intelligence of his agent on the scene in Grantville. Although, as he remarked in his next letter to his wife, that does tend to be the reaction when someone agrees with you-especially when that person has been reared in your own household. It only confirmed his belief that talent should be cultivated to its fullest, even when it blossomed in the humblest of worldly circumstances.
Jacques-Pierre Dumais' father was among the poorest. He still earned his living as a bootblack in La Rochelle; the boy's mother had worked as a fishmonger on the docks. A Walloon refugee had brought the talented child to the attention of the Rohan family.
To Dumais, he sent an alarm and a warning.
I am preparing to withdraw from my present location-probably to Geneva, but possibly to Besancon-not feeling myself secure any longer in either the Grisons or Sondrio. Richelieu is of a suspicious nature and wary of my enduring friendship with Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar. In spite of the repeated entreaties of the duchess, he refuses absolutely to permit me to return to Venice. Still, never doubting the justice of the Protestant cause, I continue to act in the assured belief that God has predestined me to save his churches, wherefore I will not lose my composure in the face of the greatest adversity.
Have a care. Michel Ducos is a dangerous man and I am having you play a dangerous game for us. Do not become overconfident. Always prepare for a fall when fortune puffs you up, for it is then that peril comes closest.
For the time being, you can reach me through Soubise in Frankfurt; should you hear that he has left the city, through de Ron.
Chapter 31
Grantville, December 1634
"I hadn't expected Lannie to crash the damned plane."
Victor Saluzzo, elbows on his desk, steepled his fingers. That was pretty much a picture-book perfect Concerned Principal's pose.
"Well, I hadn't. This time it's not my fault that I missed a bunch of school." Denise Beasley stuck her chin out and looked at her father Buster for support.
She hated parent-teacher conferences. Especially when they involved the principal. And the guidance counselor. And…