The fact that the girl's father happened to be the head of the Mainz CoC didn't hurt, of course.
The story was mostly nonsense. So much was obvious to Gretchen just from listening to Tata's version. The relationship the girl had had with the duke had fallen quite a ways short of the legend. There was nothing tawdry about it, if you had reasonable standards concerning such things. It was hardly the first time a charming young nobleman and an attractive town girl had had an affair, after all. Tata had been genuinely fond of Eberhard, and he of her. But most likely they'd have drifted apart, had he lived.
As for the duke's motives, Tata insisted that they had nothing to do with her.
"He was just pissed off, the way the Swedes kept jerking him back and forth. You know how they get with their German subordinates, if they're noblemen. So he got even by dumping a mess in their laps."
A mess it was, too. The prime minister's bureaucrats and emperor's lawyers were already trying to get the duke's will invalidated. The lawyers working for the Fourth of July Party were pushing back just as hard. And no matter which way the legal tussles went, the CoCs in Wurttemberg were having a field day. For once, they could claim to be the party of legitimacy. Their popular support in the southwestern province was growing rapidly.
Here, though, Gretchen thought Tata was actually being too modest. She didn't doubt that the driving force behind Duke Eberhard's decision had been his irritation with the often high-handed methods of Gustav Adolf and his officials. Many German noblemen allied to the Swedish king chafed under his rule.
But, without Tata and the CoC to which she belonged, would his deathbed revenge have taken the form that it did?
Gretchen thought not. For all her hostility toward the aristocracy in general, she thought that the dying Eberhard had been moved, at the end, by a genuinely noble impulse. One that Tata could at least claim to have watered, if not seeded.
If even Gretchen was that well-disposed toward the memory of the young duke, she knew full well how the masses of the Germanies would react. Tata could say whatever she wanted. The CoC legend would roll right over it.
Maybe Esther had acne, too. Who cared?
So. Gretchen had a legend on her hands. The question was, what to do with her?
The answer was obvious. The best way to solve a problem is to apply it to another proiblem.
She waggled her hand in a rising motion. "Come, Tata. I want to introduce you to someone."
Obediently, the girl rose.
Once they left the building, a contingent of CoC activists closed in around them. Others stayed in place, guarding the building.
Looked at from one angle, the level of protection being provided to Gretchen was excessive. Here in the heart of Magdeburg's working class district, no large group of enemies would dare to move in force. Not unless an army had already taken the city, in which case a relative handful of security guards would be a moot point.
But conflict had a psychological as well as a physical component, which Gretchen had come to respect as the struggle continued. Spartacus understood that also, and Gunther Achterhof practically worshipped at the shrine of what he like to call "psyops." He was addicted to such Americanisms.
Partly, Gretchen had come to that understanding on her own. Mostly, though, she'd come to it from years of watching Mike Stearns.
Gretchen had suspicions concerning Stearns. His willingness to compromise with the enemy readily and easily was something that rubbed her the wrong way, and always had. At the same time, as the years had passed since the Ring of Fire and her rise to prominence as a leader of Europe's principal revolutionary organization, she'd become a great deal more sophisticated. The girl whose aspirations toward striking back had once been limited to sliding a knife into the brain of a mercenary thug was now a young woman who'd commanded the defending forces of a major city under siege and had negotiated with two princes-one of them a king now-and an archduchess.
One of the things she'd learned from Stearns was that aggressive negotiating-understanding that "negotiating" was a concept much broader than the formalities involved-could often preclude the need for violence altogether. Or, at the very least, reduce the scope of that violence.
So, when she walked in public, Gretchen's stride was sure and confident. So, too, were the strides of the men guarding her. So, at such times, Gretchen's expression was equally sure and confident. And the expressions of the armed men at her side were downright belligerent.
Who could say? Perhaps when his spies reported, an enemy would be moved to negotiate rather than fight. And perhaps, even if he did choose to fight, he would enter the conflict with his self-confidence already frayed.
What still bothered her about Stearns was that she was not sure when negotiation stopped being a means for the man and became an end in itself. There was an insidious dynamic at work. A ruling class had several ways to maintain its domination. One, of course, was brute force. But another was co-option, absorption, seduction. Offer a rebel-usually a man from the lower classes-a prominent place in society. Offer him status; titles; positions-and, of course, a munificent salary. All the things, in short, which he'd never had and whose absence had been, at least in part, the motive for his rebellion.
How long does such a man remain a revolutionary? In his core, not simply in the trappings and appurtenances?
To be sure, most of Europe's dynasts and noblemen still shook their fists at Mike Stearns and reviled him publicly and privately. But how much did they really fear him, any longer? How much, in their heart of hearts, did they really worry that a man who'd borne the title of a prime minister, bore now the title of a major general, and could easily obtain a loan to buy a mansion for his family, was still their mortal enemy?
The Swedes did not, obviously. The Swedish king Gustav Adolf's relationship with Stearns might be ambivalent, and the Swedish chancellor Oxenstierna might often be downright prickly. So what? They were still willing to let him wield a great deal of power and influence, and never failed to treat him with respect.
So how long would he last? Gretchen simply didn't know. Neither did Spartacus or Gunther Achterhof or any of the central leaders of the Committees of Correspondence. To the lower classes of the Germanies, including those of them who adhered to the CoCs, Mike Stearns was the "prince of Germany." The leadership of the CoCs did not demur publicly. But, more and more, they were beginning to wonder. Might the day come when they would be calling him "the traitor of Germany?"
Gretchen let none of those inner worries show on her face, though, as she moved through the crowded streets of Magdeburg.
"Stop looking nervous," she said quietly to Tata, walking at her side.
The girl grimaced a little. "I've never seen so many people. And it's so crowded."
Actually, it wasn't very crowded-for her and Gretchen. As packed with people as the streets were, on such a fine midsummer day, they gave way for Gretchen and her entourage. Willingly, too, not because they were worried the guards might get rough. Still, even for a girl from a small city like Mainz, Magdeburg would be startling. No city in the Germanies was growing as rapidly as Magdeburg. Its population was still quite a bit less than Paris or London's, but it was already more than twice that of the next largest German city, Hamburg.
"It doesn't matter what the reason is," said Gretchen. "Never look nervous. Our enemies might be watching."
Spartacus and Achterhof were waiting for her in one of the back rooms of the city's central Freedom Arches. This building had served for almost a year as the more-or-less official headquarters for the Committees of Correspondence-everywhere, not simply in Magdeburg. It would no doubt retain that position, even though Gretchen's new apartment building would sometimes double as an informal headquarters.