She blurted it out. In English. A language she had just assumed—without ever asking—would be completely foreign to the cook.
"Avigail, do you speak English?"
The cook hesitated for a moment. Then, her face a bit stiff, replied in heavily accented but quite understandable English: "Yes, gracious lady. I do."
Judith suddenly realized that the normally-bustling and busy kitchen had fallen very quiet. She scanned the room and saw that all five of the cooks and helpers present were staring at her. All of them with that same, slightly stiff expression.
"Do all of you speak English?"
Again, that hesitation. Then, again, nodding heads.
For a moment, Judith wavered between anger and . . .
Well . . .
She burst out laughing. "Does every servant in this house speak English?"
Nods. A bit hastily, Avigail said: "Young Jacob upstairs, not so well." She pointed with a ladle at a teenage girl standing in a corner near the pantry. "And little Rifka over there, even worse. Lazy youngsters, they don't do their studies like they should."
Judith had to fight to bring her laughter under control. "Their 'studies,' no less!"
She shook her head, grinning. "They must have scoured the ghetto to find this many English-speakers. Avigail, if you have any questions—or if the rabbis do—you need only ask. I really have no secrets. Neither does my husband."
There didn't seem anything else to say. Still grinning, she left the room.
* * *
After she was gone, Avigail and the three women who'd been employed since the first days after the Roths arrived, turned their heads to regard Rifka. The young woman was new to the household, having only started working there the week before. Their expressions were identical: that of older women finally and fully vindicated in front of skeptical and callow striplings.
"You see?" demanded Avigail. "Did we not tell you?"
"I will study harder," Rifka said meekly.
"That's not what I meant!" snapped Avigail. "And you know it perfectly well."
She sniffed, turned away, and went back to work with her ladle. It had a very long handle, because the hearth was large and the fire was hot. But the ladle in Avigail's mind had just grown shorter still. By now, it was not much longer than a spoon.
2
The first thing Morris saw when he entered the community center—the first thing he really noticed, at least, because of his nervousness—was the rabbi standing next to Jason and another young man.
He assumed he was a rabbi, at least. Partly from the clothing the man was wearing, but mostly from certain indefinable things about the way he carried himself—and the very evident respect with which Jason and the other youngster were listening to what he had to say.
Morris found himself almost gritting his teeth. He had a better knowledge of history, in general, than most residents of Grantville. And because he'd always been especially interested in Jewish history, he had a particularly good knowledge of that subject. He felt like shouting at the three of them: Your damn rabbinate didn't start running the show until not much more than a thousand years ago! Those old men in Babylon who started throwing their weight around after the destruction of the Second Temple. Our history goes back at least two thousand years earlier than that. Ask David and Solomon—or Abraham and Moshe—if they kowtowed to a bunch of old men with long beards and stupid hats!
But, he didn't. It would have been unfairly one-sided, as well as rude and pointless. And, besides . . .
Well, the fact was that the rabbi in question was not particularly old. In fact, he looked to be younger than Morris himself.
Nothing for it, then. Morris took a deep breath and marched over.
Seeing him come, Jason smiled widely. It was the biggest smile Jason had given Morris in at least two months, and Morris felt himself warming. As Judith had said, since the Ring of Fire Morris had come to look upon young Gotkin as something of an adopted son. The estrangement that had grown between them since their arrival in Prague had been painful.
The rabbi turned his head and regarded Morris. He obviously knew who he was, even though they'd never met. Morris was not surprised. This was not the first time, by any means, that Morris had entered the ghetto. He'd made a number of trips—right into the center of the Josefov—to meet with Dunash and his people. And, every time, although people had not been rude about it, Morris had been quite aware that he'd been carefully and closely observed everywhere he went. And was just as sure that the people who watched him passed on their observations to their rabbis.
As he neared, the rabbi smiled politely and addressed him. "Good morning, Don Morris. Since I have never had the opportunity, let me take it now to thank you for your generosity in providing for this center. And your many other generosities."
The rabbi's German was excellent, if oddly accented to Morris' ear. By now, Morris' own German was almost fluent. What he found more interesting, though, was the way the rabbi had addressed him. Don Morris—as if Morris were a Sephardic hidalgo. True, it made a certain sense, because most court Jews in the first half of the seventeenth century were still Sephardic rather than Ashkenazi. Still . . .
Morris decided it was a workable compromise, for him as much as the rabbi. Although there were some differences in the way Sephardim and Ashkenazim observed their faith, which resulted in friction and even occasional clashes, neither one of the branches of Judaism considered the other to be heretics. Not to mention that Italian Jews, in this day and age, constituted something of a third tradition of their own.
Truth be told, the friction between Ashkenazim and Sephardim was due more to social factors than religious ones. Sephardim, as a rule, were more comfortable with cultural accommodation to gentile society—and, as a rule, considerably wealthier than most Ashkenazim. So, they tended to look down on Ashkenazim as the equivalent of "country rubes"—a disdain which the Ashkenazim returned in kind, much as Morris' hillbilly neighbors made wisecracks about city slickers. But, since he'd arrived in his new universe, Morris had discovered that the interaction between the two—and with the Judaeo-Italians—was quite a bit more extensive than his study of history had led him to suspect.
Besides, the man was being courteous. Whatever his underlying attitudes, Morris had never found it possible to be rude to someone who was not being rude to him.
He nodded. Graciously, he hoped. "My pleasure, rabbi. Ah—"
"This is Rabbi Spira," Jason said promptly, almost eagerly.
So. This is the one.
Morris had to fight down a momentary surge of jealousy. Although Jason had been veiled about it, Morris was well aware that the young man had come to develop a deep admiration for Mordechai Spira—and something that bordered on filial respect.
Now that Morris had finally met the man, he could understand that better. As much as Morris was inclined to dislike zealots—and he considered all Orthodox rabbis to be zealots, by their nature—he couldn't miss the intelligence in Spira's eyes. Nor the quite evident warmth and kindliness in them, either. Jason had told him, more than once, that even when Rabbi Spira corrected him for his errors, he invariably did so with good humor. Even wit.
For Morris Roth, "witty Orthodox rabbi" had always been something of an oxymoron. Unlike Jason, who'd lived in Israel for a year as a student, Morris and Judith had never done more than visit the country for a couple of weeks at a time. Morris had not had much contact with Orthodox Judaism in the United States he'd come from, since his area of the country was dominated by Reform Judaism. So his main personal impression of Orthodox rabbis came from what he'd seen in Israel—which, to him, had been their constant interference in Israel's politics, their narrow-minded obsessions, the readiness with which they threw their political weight around. He'd been particularly angry at their refusal—well, some of them—to allow their adherents to serve in Israel's armed forces, at the same time that they demanded those armed forces be used to carry out policies they wanted.
 
; He had to remind himself—as Judith reminded him constantly—that they'd left that world behind. There was no Israel in this universe. Not yet, at least; and not for some time to come, if ever. The rabbinate that existed here was one that had been shaped by the life of Jews in central and eastern Europe's ghettos and shtetls. It simply wasn't fair for Morris Roth to pile atop Mordechai Spira's head all the sins of a rabbinate in a different time, in a different universe.
He began to say some words that would have been simply friendly. But he'd barely begun before he heard noises coming from the entrance. The sounds were very faint, seeming to come from a great distance, but Morris thought he recognized them.
Gunshots. Then, a moment later—
Lots of gunshots.
"It's starting," he said. "Finally."
3
Ellie leaned back in the chair before the console, and took a deep breath.
"Well, Duke, there it is. Finished. Finally."
Wallenstein examined the telephone center, his eyes bright with interest. "And you have the people trained to operate it, yes?"
Ellie nodded. "Three, so far. Enough to keep shifts going round the clock—for a while, anyway. You'll need to give them some time off, though, now and then."
Wallenstein was frowning a little, as he often did listening to Ellie's idiosyncratic blend of German and English. Belatedly, she realized that the expression "round the clock" wouldn't have meant much to him. True, they had clocks in the seventeenth century. But the devices were rare and expensive, too much so for their habits to have entered popular idiom yet.
Wallenstein shrugged irritably. "I see no problem." He jerked his head toward a door. "They will sleep here, anyway."
The new telephone center, at Wallenstein's insistence, had been built directly adjoining his personal suite in the palace. He'd even had living quarters connected to it prepared for the eventual telephone operators. Ellie thought that was an odd arrangement. But, given Wallenstein's shaky health—not to mention the terrible wounds that Julie Mackay had inflicted upon him at the Alte Veste, which he would never fully recover from even with the help of American medical care—she could understand it. Wallenstein had to spend a lot of his time, now, resting in his bed. But with a telephone literally at his fingertips, he would have the wherewithal to continue managing the empire he intended to build for himself. Ellie and Len had already built and put in place a direct phone connection between Wallenstein's bed in his private room and the telephone center itself.
By now, Ellie had gotten to know Wallenstein well enough not to be afraid to contradict him. The Duke of Friedland was insistent upon his privileges, and had a very harsh way with anyone who was impolite to him. But he did not bridle at being opposed over a matter of substance, as long as it was done respectfully and not too insistently. And, fortunately, he cut more slack for Ellie than he did for just about anyone else except his wife Isabella and his nurse, Edith Wild. And Pappenheim, of course.
Ellie shook her head. "Duke, this is not that simple a system to operate. It takes a lot of mental alertness—at least, assuming you wind up using it as often as you think you will. What I mean is—"
There was an interruption at the door. More precisely, in the large room beyond that served Wallenstein's private suite as an entry salon. A man was pushing his way in, overriding the protests of the guard stationed at the entrance to the suite. There seemed to be several men standing in the corridor beyond, as well.
Ellie recognized him. It was Eugen Rossbach—Ritter Rossbach, as he insisted on being called—one of the mercenary captains who had attached himself to Wallenstein's service. Wallenstein was rather partial to the man. Ellie despised him, herself—but then, admittedly, Ellie despised most of the mercenaries who surrounded the Duke of Friedland. Perhaps oddly, Pappenheim—in some ways the most frightening of them all—was the one she disliked the least.
Wallenstein, now frowning fiercely, stepped out of the small telephone center into the main salon. "What is it, Rossbach? I am occupied at the moment."
Rossbach, still fending off the protesting guard with one hand, waved a document with the other. "Yes, my apologies—but you must see this immediately! It's from the emperor!"
Ellie rose and came to the doorway. Wallenstein took a step forward to take the message, which Rossbach extended toward him.
It suddenly dawned on Ellie that the three men with Rossbach were coming into the main salon, now that the guard was distracted. Why?
One of them—then the other two—reached for their swords. Without thinking, Ellie grabbed Wallenstein by his collar and yanked him backward.
The Duke cried out in protest. Rossbach snarled. Then—Ellie never saw the stabbing itself—the guard suddenly screamed and staggered forward. Behind him, as he fell to his knees, she could see one of Rossbach's companions with his sword now in his hand. The tip of it was covered in blood.
Wallenstein cried out again. A curse of some sort, Ellie thought. Rossbach shouted something, dropped the document and drew his own sword.
Ellie hauled Wallenstein back into the telephone room. He stumbled on the way and fell backward, landing on his rump. She just had time to slam the door shut in Rossbach's face.
Then, fumbled to find the lock which—
Didn't exist.
Goddamit! There'd been no reason, after all, to put a lock on that door. In fact, Wallenstein would have been furious if they'd done so. It was his telephone center, not that of the men who would be operating it for him.
She heard Rossbach's fist slamming the door. Then, a moment later, a much heavier wham as his boot slammed into it.
Ellie's fear and fury were, for a moment, penetrated by an absurd impulse to cackle with laughter. That idiot Rossbach thinks the door IS locked.
But it probably wouldn't take him long to figure it out. And besides—another wham—even if he didn't, that door wasn't really that solid. He'd be able to kick it in easily enough.
Wallenstein was now rising to his feet. Unfortunately, in his own personal suite, the Duke wasn't carrying his sword. They were both unarmed.
"Bullshit!" Ellie snarled. She stooped over and rummaged through the big tool chest that had been in the room for weeks now. An instant later, she came up with a modern Crescent wrench—Len's 12-incher—as well as the two-foot cheater pipe he used for extra leverage when he needed it.
She tossed the pipe to Wallenstein and hefted the wrench. It wasn't much, but it would have to do.
Wham!
Wham!—and the door came off the hinges. Rossbach and another man started pushing through the doorway, their swords level.
WHAM! WHAM!
Both of them sailed through the opening, as if shot from a cannon, their swords flying out of their hands. Wallenstein clubbed Rossbach down, but Ellie missed the other man. Her swing had been wild, accompanied by a shriek of fear as she dodged the sword sailing ahead of him. Now it was her turn to fall on her ass.
It didn't matter, though. The swing had been more of a reflex than anything else. She'd seen the erupting exit wound on the man's belly. That WHAM had been a gunshot.
She stared through the open, shattered doorway. She could see Edith Wild standing in the salon, now. The big woman's face was contorted with anger and she was holding a modern-style revolver in both hands. The two remaining assassins were out of Ellie's range of view. But she could just imagine how astonished they were. Ellie was astonished herself.
WHAM! WHAM!
Now that Ellie wasn't completely overwhelmed by adrenalin, the sound of the gunshots seemed ten times louder. Edith must have been nearly deafened. Each shot from the short-barreled revolver was accompanied by a bright yellow muzzle flash. The gun bucked in Edith's big hands—so badly that Ellie was pretty sure the second shot had gone wild.
But Edith didn't seemed fazed at all. The snarl stayed on her face and she brought the gun back into line.
"The Tatar," indeed. Don't fuck with Nurse Ratchett.
Ellie heard a
man shout something. A protest of some kind, perhaps, or a plea for mercy.
Fat lot of good it did him. WHAM!
* * *
Ellie shook her head to clear it. When she looked up again, Edith was no longer in sight. Hearing some sort of noise—she couldn't really tell what it was, her ears were ringing so badly—Ellie scrambled over on her hands and knees and stuck her head out the door.
Edith's last shot had gone a little wild too, it seemed. The man had only been wounded in the shoulder—from what Ellie could tell, nothing more than a flesh wound—and Edith's gun was out of ammunition.
Fat lot of good it did him. Don't fuck with Nurse Ratchett. Edith had wrestled him to the floor and was now clubbing his head with her revolver.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Wallenstein stuck his own head out the door, crouched a little higher than Ellie. "Rossbach is dead," he announced.
He studied Edith at her work for a moment, then straightened and helped Ellie to her feet. When she looked at him again, to her surprise, Wallenstein was smiling thinly and stroking his badly scarred jaw.
"A pity there are so few American women," he announced. "If I had an army of you mad creatures, I could conquer the world."
Pappenheim charged into the salon, his sword in his hand. Behind him came at least half a dozen soldiers. When he saw Wallenstein, obviously unhurt, the relief on his face was almost comic. It was odd, really—not for the first time, the thought came to Ellie—how much devotion a man like Wallenstein could get from a man like Pappenheim. She didn't think she'd ever really understand it.
But, she didn't need to. The fact itself was enough. Wallenstein was still alive and kicking and now Pappenheim was on the scene. Which meant that—finally—all hell was about to break loose.
"Best stop her, Gottfried," said Wallenstein, pointing to Edith. The nurse was still clubbing the would-be assassin, though he was now completely limp and lying on the floor. "It would help if we could get him to talk."
Even ferocious Pappenheim seemed a little daunted by the project. After a moment's hesitation, he sheathed his word and walked over, taking care to remain outside of Edith's reach.