It was hard to tell which of them was more shocked by the suggestion that Marco’s presence might matter. But it was Leo who spoke up. “Marco is completely trustworthy, Karl. How can you doubt it?”
“I don’t, Your Grace. It’s more a matter of good practice. It’s what the up-timers call the ‘need to know principle.’ The question isn’t whether someone is trustworthy, because anyone can slip. The question is: do they need to know? If they don’t need to know private information, it’s better if they don’t know. If, after our talk, you decide Marco needs to know, then by all means tell him. This way you have the choice, that’s all.”
“Well, you’ve certainly made it all seem most mysterious,” Leo said, sounding intrigued.
“I didn’t intend to, Your Grace,” Karl said, thinking of a talk he had had with Melissa Mailey and Prince Vladimir of Russia on the subject of serfs, slaves and espionage. Mary Bowser had been Miss Mailey’s prime example, Ivan Susanin had been Vladimir’s. Karl had found himself in the middle and seeing both sides, yet less able to persuade anyone of his point of view, because he was convinced that they were both right and wrong. Servants were, in Karl’s experience, in the main loyal to their employer and that was the larger part of the trust that members of the nobility had in their servants. On the other hand, there was an unthinking assumption that the lower classes lacked the wit to engage in the sort of subtle subterfuge necessary for betrayal. The attitude was all mixed together with a belief that the nobles were treating their servants quite well and so there was no reason for the servants to be disloyal.
Karl had no idea how he was going to make clear in an afternoon’s chat what had taken him three years in Grantville to learn. But he didn’t say anything and waited. After a few moments, Leo shrugged a little and gave a little wave. Marco left the room with no objection.
“So, what is this so private of private talks, Karl? If it’s about the Wendell girl, Marco might as well have stayed. He was there when she attacked me.”
This wasn’t shaping up to be an enjoyable interview, Karl thought. “Do you think that Sarah agreed to a morganatic marriage because she accepts our notions of rank?”
“Why else?”
“She accepted it because she doesn’t care. No, not even just that. It’s because she is condescendingly willing to allow us our barbaric beliefs as long as we don’t spit in the soup or piss on the sofa. You have no idea how arrogant up-timers are. To Sarah, marrying a court prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire isn’t marrying up. It’s marrying down. Different in no important way from David Bartley’s mother marrying a minor burgher from Badenburg or any of the up-timer women who have married peasants.”
Leo blinked in shock, then actually seemed to consider what Karl was saying. “So when the Emerson girl asked the Fortney girl how she liked life among the peasants, it wasn’t a translation problem at all. That’s what they really think of us.”
Karl winced. “Not exactly. Else there would have been no consideration of marrying me at all. It isn’t that they consider us inherently less than them, just. . poorly brought up.
“Let me ask you, Leo. What would you have done if Marco had handled Cecilia Renata as you handled Judy Wendell? What would you have done if the man handling her had been a peasant you didn’t know well?”
Leo went pale.
Karl shrugged. “She didn’t react that way, did she? Instead she reacted the way you would have expected Cecilia Renata-or more likely, Maria Anna-to act if a person of our own class had handled her that way.”
Leo winced, but then said, “However, Judy Wendell is not Cecilia Renata or Maria Anna, whatever she may think.”
“Isn’t she, Leo? Is it me or Sarah that Moses Abrabanel wanted here?”
They talked some more, but Archduke Leopold wasn’t convinced.
Race Track City
Two weeks later at the brewery in Race Track City, Hans Fischer finished unloading a barge of barley for the brewery. He loaded up on casks of the lager beer which had become a specialty of the brewery with the introduction of refrigeration by the up-timers.
Once the barley was unloaded and the beer loaded, Hans was due one and a half cologne marks of silver, or the equivalent in paper money. In the office Hans had a stein of cold beer while Schwarz counted out his money. The beer came down and Hans spoke. “Wait, Wolfgang. I want barbies.”
“Why?”
Hans was caught without a good reason but he was a quick thinking fellow. “They give interest,” he said, trying to sound virtuous and frugal. Hans wasn’t an overly frugal fellow, so it wasn’t an easy sell.
Wolfgang looked at him doubtfully but started digging through his cash box. “That’s odd,” Wolfgang said.
“What?”
“Being right here next to Race Track City, we usually have a lot of barbies. But I only have two judies and no haylies at all. I have three vickies, and a dozen gabbies, but not one trudi and not all that many millies.”
“Don’t take all his money, Hans. I’ve got to get paid yet,” shouted another man.
Wolfgang made a rude gesture. “I have plenty of reich money. It’s just the barbies I’m short on.”
“That’s not what you said when we were bargaining,” said another merchant.
Wolfgang made another rude gesture. No one paid that much attention to which bills were in short supply. They just noted that barbies were hard to come by. Harder than reich money, and reich money was none too easy to get.
The truth was that Hans’ hadn’t wanted the barbies for any reason of frugality or long-term planning. No, Hans wanted barbies so that a few miles upriver he could show his friends a judi and say “That’s her. That’s the girl who kneed Archduke Leopold in the balls and got away with it.” He wanted to be able to show them a hayli and say, “She’s the one who has been living out at Race Track City for over a year.” He wanted to show them a trudi and explain that “she’s the down-time Barbie.” He didn’t have that many specifics about the other barbies, but he wanted those, too-just to fill out the set. And he wanted extras, because he figured that his friends would want their own Barbie money.
Liechtenstein Tower Construction Site, Vienna
Back at the Liechtenstein Tower, a steam-powered water pump was pumping out the wells by now, and digging had resumed. Millicent Anne Barnes, escorted by a squad of mercenary soldiers, parked her armored wagon by the work site and directed the soldiers in setting up her pay table. Then she waited for the whistle to blow. She had boxes of money in the wagon and a book with the names of all the workers. Each worker would come up, show her his ID, collect his pay, and sign the book. Millicent was good with names, but there were over two hundred workmen at the site.
The first payday they had ended up paying most of the men in reich money. The workers weren’t entirely sure they trusted barbies, and the Barbies didn’t insist, though they always offered barbies first. That first week it had been only the most desperate and least assertive men who had taken barbies. Even at that, some of those men had shown up over the week asking for reich money because their landlord or food seller wouldn’t take the barbies. Policy was to always take the barbies at face value and exchange with no trouble.
The second week had actually been worse. They had paid the men almost entirely in reich money, but things had evened out. A lot of the workers spent quite a bit of their money out at Race Track City, which had become the Coney Island of Vienna. And it was common knowledge that the businesses at Race Track City took barbies, even before the first shovel had touched dirt at Liechtenstein Tower. And the fact that the Abrabanel clan-and therefore most Jewish money lenders-would take barbies at face value hadn’t hurt at all. So for the first month of work at Liechtenstein Tower, they had ended up going about half barbies and half reich money.