"Mrs. Prickett is a good heretic," Ottilia yelled.
"Dennis was right to start with. They're dead. Dead and buried and in the ground." Dom whistled a note and chanted, "The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout."
"What's pinochle," Jacqueline asked.
Father Nick drew a very deep breath.
****
Easter finally came. Sometimes, this year, it seemed like it never would. It seemed like Lent went on forever. But the church calendar said that Easter would show up on April 8, and it did, right on schedule.
"Is it wrong to celebrate," Dom asked Father Nick as he robed for early mass. "Is it wrong to celebrate when so many horrible things have been going on?"
"Never," Father Nick said. "Never, when you think about what we are celebrating. Terrible things happened in the days before the resurrection also, but they did not stop Jesus from rising from the grave. What we celebrate is that man's sin cannot prevent his salvation, so great is God's love for us."
****
The next morning, the VOA early news announced the arrest in Wurzburg of a man named Hans Andreas Weihrauch who was alleged by the authorities to have been one of the masterminds behind the attack on the Grantville synagogue.
Dom and Dennis felt a lot better.
Tony Adducci Sr. spent the afternoon writing a long letter to his son Tony Jr. in Basel.
****
On the first day of school after Easter vacation, Blaise put the French translation of "Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy, Gopher Guts" into general circulation, thereby winning a lot of bets.
****
Tony Jr., after he finished reading his father's letter, made a final decision in a matter he had been contemplating for nearly two years and wrote a long letter to "Father Larry, Your Eminence."
****
In Magdeburg, after he read it, Cardinal Mazzare lifted up his head and looked at Friedrich von Spee. "He'll make a good priest, and he comes to it with enough diplomatic and political experience that he won't be surprised by anything he sees."
"Why?" Spee asked. Meaning, of course, whence comes his vocation?
"He says that it's because the up-timers, the ones who have stayed behind at St. Mary's in Grantville, really need someone who knows where they are coming from and how they think. Not all the down-time priests do. Having men with down-time attitudes there, English or German, just isn't going to cut it, not in the long run."
Spee raised his eyebrows.
"They all have the highest respect for Nicholas Smithson, but . . ."
Spee waited.
"According to the boys-something that bothered them so much that they didn't even want to think about it, much less talk about it or deal with it, and that Tony Sr. held back from the police-Father Bissel, in the confessional, did not counsel Weihrauch against his plans to attack the synagogue."
"And Herr Adducci felt justified in withholding this information from the police because . . .?"
"Bissel didn't instigate the action. He didn't apparently, even encourage it. He just . . . omitted to discourage it strongly. There was nothing the police could have done with the information if they had it. So Adducci advised the boys to omit that from their narrative. Father Kircher will be counseling with Father Bissel. Plus, there were other complications."
"Aren't there always?"
"Preston Richards is a Baptist." Mazzare paused. "According to Tony Sr., there are stresses developing within the Baptist church in Grantville. Tony did not want to burden Press' conscience unduly in his dealings with Deacon Underwood, who is, among other things, not a lover of Catholics, whom he considers to be idolaters and drunkards among other undesirable personal characteristics. So . . ."
"What about the boys?"
"Press Richards told Tony that since the police managed to find other evidence linking Weihrauch to the attack, once they knew where to look, he'll try to set it up so they don't have to testify. No point in making them targets for the fanatics if it's not absolutely necessary."
Spee nodded.
"Charlotte and Nora checked with Dennis Grady, too-he being the boys' uncle and as tough a cop as they come. Basically, he said that you avoid unnecessary risks and try to minimize necessary risks, but there's no such thing as a risk-free life. And if you try to make yourself one, you're setting it up to let the bad guys win. So they both have said that they will testify if they have to and their parents have agreed-no matter how reluctantly. Not one of them wants to see Weihrauch wriggle out of a conviction."
Spee meditated briefly on the nature of a sinful world, so awry and askew that the deeds of adult men forced children to contemplate multiple shades of gray before they had even achieved a firm grasp on the distinction between black and white. "If the younger Tony is to become a priest, then you will need a seminary to form him, Your Eminence. Here in Magdeburg, among the heretics, for they will be going out into a world full of heretics and will need to accustom themselves to . . ." Spee paused, searching his memory for the up-time word, since there was no precise German or Latin equivalent. "Accustom themselves to interacting with them. Moreover, if you wish to form the priests it produces in your own image rather than as down-timers, then you must find time in your schedule-somewhere-to teach a significant number of its courses. Specifically, I would recommend, those in moral philosophy."
****
"What d'you think? If a guy swallowed a lighted grenade . . ."
Dennis whapped Dom on the shoulder. "I don't think that would work. A grenade's probably too big to swallow."
"Ja," Thilo Scharfenberg agreed. "Remember when Cunz Kloss tried to swallow a whole hard-boiled egg and it got stuck on the way down? They had to take him to Leahy to get it up again."
"Yeah, but if a guy did manage to swallow a lighted grenade . . ."
"His stomach acid would probably put the fuse out."
Dom was persistent. "All right then. If he did manage to swallow a lighted grenade, and his stomach acid didn't put the fuse out, and it exploded, how far do you think his body parts would fly? Would it be gruesomely gory?"
All of them looked at Blaise, who folded his arms, closed his eyes, and started to do mental calculations in regard to the geometrical implications of flying body parts. The variables were interesting. There would be some nice and hard like vertebrae and some soft and squishy like intestines. Soft and squishy like great green gobs of greasy, grimy, gopher guts.
****
Saint George Does It Again!
June 1635, Grantville
Svetlana Anderovna was caught up in a most delightful dream. Yesterday she'd married the man she loved and they'd spent the night making love. She snuggled up to her lover.
Suddenly she was totally awake. Yes there was a naked body in bed with her, but it wasn't, couldn't be, Jabe McDougal. Terrified of what she'd see she slipped gently away from the warm naked male body she'd been all but wrapped around. From six feet away, with one hand on her dressing table and the other grasping her hair brush as a weapon, she was able to identify the man-John Felix Trelli.
The same John Trelli who'd been her escort to Jabe's wedding. The same John Trelli she'd been trailing along behind for months while he helped sell war bonds. The same John Trelli who'd never even tried to flirt with her. She dressed quickly and retreated to the door, her eyes never moving from the pulse she could see beating at his throat at less than a third of her own heart beat. He had to still be sleeping. Nobody could fake that low heart rate. In the near silence of the room she could hear the gentle rumble of a cat purring. But that was impossible. There was no cat in the room, just the slumbering form of John Trelli, known to some as Puss.