****
Meister Reinhard Steinmetz, MPWT, was annoyed. Very annoyed. Since the duke had finally announced his project—in Reinhard's opinion much too late—members of all the other factions of the Parliament had appeared in his shop.
Superintendent Götzius had been first, like nearly always, with his young Substitut Caspar Rebhan in tow. He had babbled something of foreign invasions into the project, especially from the Catholics and Calvinists. Reinhard was too polite to call him the words that had entered his mind at that moment. Instead, he had tried to explain the concept of external consultants to him.
The fact that Frau von Pasqualini had used her Grantville connections to get a master mason into the project, a mason who already had two years of experience in building with concrete, not only saved them the money and the time to take courses in Grantville. It also enabled the Eisenach masters to get their journeymen and apprentices the same education, free of charge.
After this project, they would be the only ones, apart from Grantville and perhaps Magdeburg, with such knowhow.
Moreover, these specialists were far from being the leading craftsmen. Frau von Pasqualini had emphasized that they didn't have the authority to give orders to any of the other masters or their journeymen, apart from their specialist field. Directing the casting of a concrete pillar, yes. Telling the masters when to appear on site, no.
And the fact that Ande, Xaver and Jörg were extremely likeable guys added an enormous amount to their reputation. When they appeared with their wagons, their families and—especially—a barrel of Eisenacher Bräu to celebrate their debuts, everything was clear. And their women's involvement in the chronically shorthanded kitchen had pushed the lunch variety in the small village to new zeniths.
Whether they were Catholics, Calvinists, Jews, or Turks had no meaning on a construction site.
So why should Reinhard support a law to forbid something the duke didn't even intend? All the other untitled MPWTs Reinhard had contacted in the meantime supported him wholeheartedly.
He had no choice but to let Götzius talk, and shared an uneasy smile with Caspar Rebhan.
****
Soon afterward the burgrave of Kirchberg made his appearance. He was the one who had contracted craftsmen from Hesse for the rebuilding of his water castle in Farrenroda. Back then, he had rejected the Eisenachers as "too expensive," but Reinhard heard that one of the new walls had already collapsed, when the water around the castle had risen too much in early spring.
So why should Reinhard support this arrogant noble? Even if the duke intended a new tax. And that was not likely. Reinhard had delivered his cost estimate for a barrel vault and the outcome was that the new building method would take only a fraction of the time and the necessary people, even if the materials might be much more expensive compared to piling up stones.
Since the Catholic monastery in Gerode funded the new factory for producing Eichsfeld-Zement with money from the prince-archbishop of Mainz, the calculated prices for concrete dropped substantially. Even with the additional cost of building a cast-iron-coated wooden horse-railway from the lime quarry of Deuna to the factory and to Eisenach.
At the moment, Reinhard had no intention of worsening the connections to the Catholics. As long as Xaver did not force the others to make the sign of a cross after the grace—and that was really not likely—Reinhard could bear his unintelligible dialect. And his occasional temper tantrums.
Reinhard had to smile. The word "Saupreiss" had entered the common vocabulary of all craftsmen at the Wartburg immediately.
The times were changing, but nobles didn't change. Most of them at least. And von Kirchberg was a role model for this. Reinhard had needed much more self-restraint to stay polite than with Götzius. In the end, he had started to recapitulate the drying times for concrete pillars in dependency of the ambient temperature and the dimensions, while the burgrave was still speaking of the new absolutism Duke Johann Ernst was bringing into his realm.
And as Reinhard now saw these two Saupreissn approach him from different directions, his good mood rapidly deteriorated. Only the bell can save me now—Gottseidank!
Exactly that happened. The big bell rang. The meeting was about to begin.
****
After all MPWTs and guests had taken seats, the bell rang for the second time. Everybody rose, and Philip Berck and his two assessors appeared in the side entrance. The former chancellor of the duke's government had been appointed president of the Parliament, and he and the two old lawyers who had already worked with him in the negotiations of the duchy split in 1596, made their slow way to their elevated places.
The standing orders of the Parliament commanded everybody in the room to stand in complete silence until the president allowed them to take seats. Some of the younger MPWTs already wanted to change that, but the others had no problem to be given one or two—or more, depending on the current state of Berck's gout—minutes to gather themselves.
When the old men had reached their places, Berck nodded into the direction of Götzius. The Superintendent walked two steps into the middle and turned.
"In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Oh Lord, we ask for wisdom and . . ."
After more rogations came the relieving "Amen," and finally Berck's sign to be seated.
The old sage cleared his throat. "Gentlemen—and ladies in the visitors' rows—welcome to the opening meeting of the fifth regular session of the first Parliament of the County of West Thuringia.
"Since you all attend today on the basis of the invitation the hereditary governor sent out last month, it will pose no surprise to you that today's meeting will be in its total reserved for the presentation and discussion of the Wartburg project."
Berck cleared his throat again. "I have been informed that the presentation itself will take about one hour. We will have a short break afterward, and then the first round of questions and answers reserved for the members of Parliament. The lunch break will be at noon, and we shall meet again at two in the afternoon. We will then have, at most, three more hours for the visitors to ask questions. These must be formulated, written, and delivered to the Parliament's servants during the break before the respective hour.
"I," the old man raised his professional voice, "will immediately expel any visitor who starts an argument or behaves inappropriately during the meeting. Furthermore, I want to remind the members that I'm allowed to do the same to them for excessively annoying behavior. So I hereby declare that continuing argument after the first official warning will be considered as excessively annoying behavior today.
"Your Excellency, you may begin."
Johann Ernst, Herzog von Sachsen-Eisenach und Jülich-Kleve-Berg, Erbgouverneur des Kreises West-Thüringen im Land Thüringen-Franken der Vereinigten Staaten von Europa, rose and walked at a measured step to the speaker's desk in front of Berck's raised seat.
He put down the sheets of paper he had held and laboriously put on his reading spectacles. Looking over the rim, he turned. "Mr. President," turned back and smiled, "Members of the Parliament, ladies and gentlemen. I'm proud to present a project this world has not seen since the erection of the pyramids."
He nodded to the main entrance. Both wings of the door were opened by the servants, and then a large table appeared soundlessly, as if drawn by an invisible hand. A big white sheet covered the table and all the contraptions it contained.
Johann could not suppress a grin while the table made its way to the center of the room. They had worked the whole of the last two weeks on that surprise. Fortunately, Xaver had owned four original up-time rubber furniture rollers, which could be put under the table's legs to make it move noiselessly. And Jörg had installed an electric motor and a big wet cell to power it. They practiced the whole day long before they managed to move it straight. Some vases in the long corridor of the Stadtschloss had been in enormous danger.
Nearly every person in the room, the twenty-five members of the Parliament,
the seventy-five visitors, and most of the servants at the entrances craned their necks. Some envoys of the archbishop of Mainz even made the sign of the cross. Then, grinning, Jörg appeared in his best Sunday suit, holding a box before his belly, strapped around his neck, with several large buttons in different colors on it.
The people in the first rows, who could see the floor between the table and Jörg, were able to notice a bundle of wires connecting his box to the table. But to the others it appeared as a wonder.
When the table eventually reached the free space in front of the speaker's desk, Jörg pushed a button and it stopped. Four servants approached and positioned themselves to the four corners of the table. Then, on a new nod from the governor, they lifted the white sheet and pulled it away.
They revealed a wooden model of the Wartburg, ten feet long, and three feet across.
"This," Johann continued. "Is the appearance of the Wartburg in summer 1632, before Eisenach was attacked by the Spaniards, and the Americans had to lure them into the Wartburg."
He waited, until every person in this room had taken seat again.
"Then the night came." Someone switched off all electric lights in the assembly hall. "And with the dawn came the fire." Johann took a deep breath and delivered a quick silent prayer. In two of the fifty tries they had made, this effect had failed.
In the darkness, Jörg pushed a button and an electric spark ignited a fuse cord. It took only a couple of seconds, then with a whoosh, the whole castle burnt with a single flame.
The nitrocellulose from Brennerei und Chemiefabrik Schwarza had not been cheap, but the company had accepted it as a challenge to provide it in time for the presentation. They had used more pulp to suppress the explosion and deliver only a fast flame.
And it worked. Despite their appearance, the roofs and upper parts of most of the model's buildings had been made from thin brown paper and not from wood. They had glued gunpowder to the outer walls of the buildings, which now also burned and blackened them.
When the lights went on again, all the spectators could see the wreckage. Most of the buildings were completely or partially damaged; only the southern tower stood uninjured. Some servants appeared with small bellows and brooms to push the smoke and ash away.
"What we can see now," Johann grinned relieved, "is the condition the up-timers call a write-off. Nearly all newer buildings were made of half-timber and completely burnt. The only standing parts are the Bergfried—"
Jörg now had a long thin rod in his hand and pointed to the mentioned buildings.
"—and the Palas, both burnt, and only the walls standing, and the southern tower, totally spared by the inferno.
"If we wanted to erect another medieval castle, the damage would not be total. The castles back then were occasionally burnt and the three old buildings that withstood this fire here have been the core for a rebuild of the Wartburg several times.
"Aber wir brauchen keine Burg." Johann thundered each word of the sentence "But we don't need a castle," slowly over the heads of the audience.
Loudly he continued: "USE General Frank Jackson is quoted with the words 'A castle is a castle is a castle. Just a robbers' den, far as I'm concerned.' I would not subscribe to this in regard to the Wartburg but, all things considered, he is right. From a soldier's point of view, especially from a Spaniard's, castles have turned from safe shelter to deadly mousetraps."
Then softer to Jörg: "No, we don't want to demonstrate this. Leave the poor mouse in its box."
The audience, which had been caught off-guard by the loud sentence, now burst into laughter. Johann had rehearsed his speech with Peter Altmann, the professional speaker, several times.
Peter had said: "This is the moment you have to catch them all. After the big boom, they will start to whisper. Show your dominance, and then make a joke. They will laugh and then concentrate on you."
"Castles are a reminder of the Middle Ages. Every merchant had to fear being robbed by the Ritter next door. That is what a stronghold stands for. We don't need them."
And then Johann started the next section. "So what else do we need? Do it as they did up-time with their hills, putting ugly radio masts on it? Or even cannons and rockets like our descendants would have done in the twentieth century? I don't think so."
Johann paused, drank a sip of water, rummaged a little in his papers and finally continued.
"Germany today is definitely no united country, but a patchwork of tiny parts of principalities. So let's begin to forge a single Germany out of the Germanies. And my contribution to this, and I hope, your contribution, too, will be a cultural center, and not a technical or military one.
"Many of the great German philosophers, composers, authors, painters of the now blasted old future come from Thuringia, so what we'll have to do is to give them a fertile soil to grow and bring fruit once they are born. And this we'll start here." He pointed to the model.
"Count to twenty now, slowly," Peter had said. "Look them in the eyes. Slowly from right to left and back again. Let it sink in. Give them time to contemplate! And then back to action."
"And this is how we'll do it: We have already removed the remnants of the Middle Ages." Jörg pulled the models of the two towers out of their foundation.
"We have already removed the wreckage of the new time." Now all other buildings apart from the Palas were pulled out.
"We have already removed the wall that separates the Wartburg from the world." One after one the sections of the wall were pulled out. Now only the lower part of the Palas was standing.
"And we make room for the technological needs of the new time." The last part to remove was the largest. A third of the ground space opened one level deep.
"Our masons are learning, at this moment, how to use the new liquid stone called 'concrete.' They practice building pillars for the cellar, and then put big square blocks on them until the pillars break, so they can learn how much weight they will bear. Sooner or later—and for the sake of my coffers, I hope sooner—" He waited until the laughter died.
"—the quality will be good enough to build the cellar." Jörg put several pillars into the opened space and covered them with a large wooden tile.
****
And so they continued for fifty-five minutes according to the large clock over the entrance.
"And now," Johann said smiling, "everybody here certainly waits for the break. But before that, we want to show you one last thing.
"Imagine the darkest night of the year." He nodded again to one of the servants and the light went out again.
His voice filled the darkness. "Imagine the night before Easter. Somewhere in Thuringia. Midnight. Darkness. And then you see—" Five seconds silence.
Jörg pushed the last buttons and the model began to shine. It had not been cheap and easy to wheedle that chain of lights from a Grantviller, but it was now in a much more important action than to light a Christmas tree. From the bottom to the top, the lights went on, and finally the big single bulb on the top of the tower model flared.
"—the light of a new time. The Light of Hope in the war. The Light."
****
Johannes Götzius was pleased. Very pleased. When Parliament had reassembled after the break, von Kirchberg had asked the first question. It was the one Götzius himself had asked too.
"What about the funding of this 'project of the century'? How much new tax do you plan to squeeze out of the people of West Thuringia, Hoheit?"
The governor rose from his chair and answered: "Nothing."
Berck needed his hammer to steady the people. Several times.
After the assembly had come to order, Johann Ernst continued. "It's nothing we can offload onto the shoulders of this county alone. We have to spread it much farther. We want to activate the whole of the Germanies for this project, so everybody can do his share.
"We thought about a collection from all the parishes, cities, and noble families, not only the Lutheran, but also the Calvinist and Catho
lic ones."
"And you will organize this?" It was obvious that von Kirchberg didn't completely trust the governor in this.
"Oh, no," Johann Ernst replied. "I'm sixty-eight now. It's an important task, and we need someone who is young enough to undertake the burden of traveling through Germany and experienced enough to talk to all the notable people—"
Götzius thought that he was perhaps the right man to do this.
"—and he has to be a reputable member of the Lutheran church—"
Götzius thought that he was certainly the right man to do this.
"—so with all the preparations of the last weeks I didn't have the opportunity to ask him, but I thought that General Superintendent Johannes Götzius would be the right man to do this."
Götzius was stunned. He hadn't had a very good relationship with the duke since he had taken the office after Nikolaus Rebhan had died in 1626. But now he had to admit, grudgingly, that the duke obviously held him in high esteem. So it was more automatic than conscious that he rose and said. "Hoheit, it would be a great honor for me."
****
Georg Burggraf von Kirchberg was still annoyed. Even more than at the beginning of this meeting. How could he gain his reputation back? He had argued over the recent weeks that the governor's new tax had to be stopped. And now Johann Ernst had officially stated that he didn't intend a new tax.
Scheiße!
****
Meister Reinhard Steinmetz had his good mood back. It had been a very good line of attack against Götzius to get him by his self-assessment as—at sixty-one—a still young enough, but experienced negotiator and kick him upstairs.
Now that he had accepted the new job—chief public relations officer would be printed on his shiny business card—the cooperation with the county's Lutheran church would certainly improve significantly.
Johann Wagner, MPWT—the duke's court chaplain, and twenty years younger than Götzius—would become General Superintendent soon, and young Caspar would be Götzius' successor in the Parliament.
"Three at one blow," like the little valiant tailor would have said in the American book of fairytales Reinhard had used to learn English.