Cora didn't usually make the City Hall Cafe off limits to anyone, but she finally made an exception for Veda Mae Haggerty. Again. Much to the old hag's indignation, of course.
Veda Mae was extremely indignant. She was forced to go grovel to Lois Carson and apologize for what she said about that overaged spoiled baby who was Lois' son Matt.
At least she still had a place to eat lunch.
Pastor Ludwig Kastenmayer looked at the up-timer standing in his study.
"It said so on the radio," Jarvis Beasley said. "In one of the stories about Wes Jenkins and that woman he married over in Fulda. Or, maybe, didn't marry over in Fulda. That you're in charge of fixing this sort of problem now."
That wasn't quite the way that Pastor Kastenmayer would have described service on a marriage court.
"The story said you wrote a book about it. It's no skin off my nose, you know. I'm free to come and go. But Judge Tito told Hedy to stay inside the Ring of Fire, so she can't go to church any more. She's likely to have the baby any day now. If she can't bring it to church, she can't get it baptized. She's afraid that if it isn't baptized and then it dies, it will go to hell. Can you do something? She thinks that she's being more trouble to me than she's worth."
Jarvis frowned, a vaguely disturbed look on his face. "She's not, really. Too much trouble, I mean. Hedy's good. Works hard. Doesn't talk all the time. Doesn't drink much. Doesn't flirt with other guys. Makes good stew, even if she does use a lot more mutton than I'm used to eating. Doesn't waste money. That's why we eat so much mutton."
Pastor Kastenmayer stroked his goatee, thinking. The man's effort to catalog the merits of his concubine-she was clearly a wife under Grantville's civil law, so perhaps it would be more prudent to refer to her as his wife in this conversation-had clearly strained his analytical ability.
Jarvis went on. "Vesta, that's my boss."
"Yes?"
"She says that if you came over into town, we could have the kid baptized the way Hedy wants it at the laundry. There's always plenty of water in a laundry. Walpurga, the girl who's got her eye on Mitch Hobbs who's the manager now, says she would be a godmother. Hedy thinks the baby will need one."
"And what tasks do you perform at this laundry? For your boss, this Vesta. Her name is?"
"Vesta Rawls. She was Vesta Eberly before she married Chuck Rawls. Well, I'm the maintenance man. Not for the machines. I sweep up. If someone breaks out a pane of glass, I put in a new one. I carry things around, or if they're too heavy for that, I push them on the dolly. Stuff. It's a good job. Regular. Not like picking up odd jobs."
Not an uncommon type, Kastenmayer thought. Designed by God, in the hierarchy of being, to live and die as a day laborer. In a way, it was comforting to know that the up-timers had those also. That not everyone among them was brilliant and understood the miracles of "technology."
The man's job was regular. His employer's suggestion was irregular. Highly irregular. However, no baby should remain unbaptized longer than necessary.
"Let me know," Pastor Kastenmayer said, "as soon as the baby is born. As for the other…" He sighed. "Sorting out matrimonial problems always takes time. Usually a lot of time. Judge Tito was probably right. Tell your, uh, wife, to stay right in Grantville. I'll start arranging for collection of the affidavits and depositions. I served parishes in Saxony until I received my first appointment in Gleichen about twenty years ago. I know something of the ecclesiastical ordinances in force there, but I'll have to review them."
Jarvis nodded. He had no idea what affidavits and depositions might be, much less an ecclesiastical ordinance, but it did seem like this guy was willing to try to help Hedy. Which meant that he was probably okay. Which meant that Buster might have the right of it, some of the things he'd been trying to tell him lately.
"I'll tell Hedy to stay in Grantville." Then he said. "Um. If you come downtown and baptize the baby, could I invite a couple of people? My grandma died last fall and Gramps is taking it kind of hard. It might cheer him up a little."
Pastor Kastenmayer thought that caution was in order. "Which of the Grantville churches does your grandfather attend?"
"He ain't a church member. Never has been. None of us are."
"Very well." A third of them are heathen. "Let me get all the information I need to start. Could you spell your name, please?"
Jarvis spelled his name. He spelled Hedy's name. The recollection of a newspaper article about a brawl and an attempted beating rose vaguely to the top of Pastor Kastenmayer's mind.
"Ah. Beasley. Are you any, um, connection of Denise? Denise Beasley." He remembered Denise well. She had been to church at Christmas with Gerry Stone and Minnie Hugelmair. The girl was unusual, but not hostile. "Or of Kenneth Beasley? Of the 250 Club?"
"Denise's dad is my cousin."
That was all right.
"Ken's my dad."
Pastor Kastenmayer sighed deeply. What was the phrase that Jonas had picked up from that extraordinary woman who worked for Herr Piazza? Liz, her name was. Liz Carstairs. "We do not have problems. We have challenges and opportunities."
He would have to include thankfulness to God for so many challenges and opportunities in his morning prayers. In his evening prayers. If he repeated often enough that he was sincerely grateful, he might come to feel gratitude more sincerely, as a habitude. The catechism was correct, of course. "We should fear and love God, that. .." Sometimes the tasks to which God set his servants could be truly fearsome. While baptizing a grandchild of the owner of the 250 Club might not be equivalent to standing in defiance before the Holy Roman Emperor at the Diet of Worms, as Martin Luther had done, still… it might be an interesting event.
There was another of the up-time proverbs that Jonas had collected. "May you live in interesting times." They considered it to be a curse, Jonas said. They might have a point.
Chapter 36
Grantville
"What you are," Denise said, "is a dumb, filthy-minded old bitch, to say any such thing."
"And you are Buster Beasley's little bastard."
Cora Ennis was not happy. Gossip was one thing. A direct physical confrontation in her cafe was something else. Right now, it looked like Denise Beasley and Benny Pierce's Minnie were about to attack Veda Mae Haggerty with their fists and fingernails. Which, if it happened, would be about as one-sided a contest as she could imagine. Veda Mae's viciousness did not extend to fisticuffs-and both Denise and Minnie could physically handle most boys their own age.
"They have published the papers about their marriage, Frau Haggerty," Minnie Hugelmair said. "The affidavits. The expert opinions. It was legal."
"Forged documents!" Veda Mae sputtered. "Poppycock."
"Pastor Kastenmayer at St. Martin's has published a pamphlet explaining that even when the marriage and the church blessing happen at the same service, it is the couple themselves who exchange vows. It is consent that causes a marriage to take place, not something that someone else does. The part that goes, 'I, Somebody, take you, Somebody Else' in English. If they don't do that, having somebody official pronounce them man and wife has no effect at all. Mayor Dreeson can't walk up to any two unmarried people walking down the street together and pronounce them man and wife. Or, I suppose, he could, but it wouldn't mean anything. Gerry Stone sent Denise a copy that he bought at the bookstore in Rudolstadt. If you have not learned German, I will be happy to stand here and read it to you in English. Every word."
Minnie's voice was very calm, and her tone of voice remained even. "Then you will apologize to the Reverends Jones for what you said."
Joe Pallavicino had heard that tone in Minnie's voice many times in the past couple of years and recognized it as the start of trouble. He started to slide out of the booth where he was sitting.