Another message incoming. Reception was fading, but it was short. "Done." Stearns, prime minister, for the emperor; Fernando, king in the Low Countries; Fredrik Hendrik, Stadtholder, for the United Provinces.
King in the Low Countries? Probably not a cardinal. Not any more. Politics. It was none of Tony's business, of course, but he disapproved. The church shouldn't operate that way. He wished he could talk to Larry Mazzare about the stuff that was going on.
The message would have to be short, of course, Tony thought. The window of opportunity would be closing for Amsterdam, too, and they would be trying to get it out to Emperor Gustav Adolf, wherever he was; to Mr. Piazza in Grantville; maybe to Chancellor Oxenstierna in Stockholm before things shut down. He copied out the two notes and handed them to Diane. She read them; then got up and went out into the anteroom where the archduchess, Mrs. Simpson, and Mrs. Dreeson were waiting with Mr. Cavriani.
Not just truce. Peace. At least in one corner of Europe, for the time being, until the Spanish decided what to do about it. And the French, if the French were in a position to do anything about anyone right now, given what Gustav Adolf was doing to them.
It was probably about as good as they were going to get. Tony started packing up the radio gear. There wouldn't be any more news until morning.
* * * *
Maria Anna sat, looking at her copy of the last message from Amsterdam. Somewhere inside her, there was a feeling of quiet satisfaction that she would be marrying a king after all. She noticed this. Pride, certainly; perhaps even arrogance; she would need to mention it at confession.
But she would much rather, she admitted to herself, be married to a king than to a plain duke. She really would. But she would not say so to Mary and Veronica.
Herr Cavriani, she suspected, already knew. And would not be surprised.
Chapter 61
Epistolae Diplomaticae
Basel
As soon as Tony Adducci set up the radio before dawn the next day, the messages started coming in. The most urgent was from Frank Jackson in Magdeburg, via Grantville, to Lee Swiger. "Get Diane and the rest of the staff out of there as soon as you can. Reasons to follow."
Tony looked out the window. He would pass the message on to Swiger, but none of them were going anywhere any time soon. An "honor guard" of Basel municipal guards surrounded the whole building, as it had since the previous evening.
There had been more important information to send out the night before, so he hadn't informed Grantville or Magdeburg about the "honor guard." Now, on his own initiative, he wrote up a short message describing its presence and sent it out.
He was sort of glad that Mike or Mr. Piazza would have to tell Frank. He sure wouldn't want to be the one who did it.
Every now and then, he wondered whether he should really start thinking of these men he had known all his life, friends of his dad's, as Mr. Stearns and Colonel Jackson, now that they were important. Mr. Piazza had always been Mr. Piazza, of course. He was the principal.
* * * *
The archduchess turned up in the radio office. Tony thought that she seemed to be a pleasant, polite, sort of lady, not at all what he would have expected Emperor Ferdinand II's daughter to be like. She had authorization to send messages, signed by Diane. Okay.
The first one went to Amsterdam, to be given to Don Fernando.
"Most honored cousin. Congratulations on new status. What about dispensations? Yours from vows? Mine from Bavarian betrothal? Ours for first cousins to marry? If you have them already, we owe Cardinal Bedmar a favor. Not to mention the pope. Maria Anna."
Tony sent it off. Thanks to his Aunt Bernadette's dinner table conversation, he even pretty much understood it. The archduchess seemed to be a practical sort of lady. In fact, she sort of reminded Tony of Aunt Bernadette. He wondered if Don Fernando knew what he was getting himself into. Pleasant and polite or not, if Tony ever got married, he didn't intend to pick a wife who reminded him of Aunt Bernadette.
The second one went to Amberg, to Duke Ernst.
"Thank you for your kindness to Doña Mencia. Maria Anna Oe."
No problem there.
The third one to Amsterdam again, for Doña Mencia de Mendoza.
"Where is Susanna? Maria Anna."
Tony sent it, wondering who on earth Susanna might be and how she was involved in all of this. Code? None of his business, he told himself sternly.
* * * *
Johann Rudolf Wettstein looked at the gathered city council of Basel and thought, the whole lot of you have gone utterly insane. What he said was, "Gentlemen, I am not persuaded that the course of action suggested by my honored colleague is the most prudent one that the city could adopt. Certainly not without full prior consultation with the other cantons."
Of course, he had notified the council of the arrival of Archduchess Maria Anna and her escort after he had safely seen them inside the walls of the USE embassy. He had not expected—really, really, had not expected—that any member of the city council would suggest holding the archduchess hostage as a pawn in negotiations to obtain Austria's legal recognition of the independence of the Swiss Confederacy from the Habsburgs. Not that independence wasn't a laudable goal. He fully intended to work toward it himself. It was one of the things that, he hoped, could be achieved in any final peace treaty when the current war finally dragged to an exhausted close.
He had expected even less that once the nitwit had suggested interning the archduchess, or at the very least preventing her from leaving Basel, the council would surround the USE embassy. Nor that now, the next morning, the entire small council with both mayors and the two guild chairmen would actually be sitting here, discussing it seriously rather than immediately dropping it into the cesspit of bad ideas where it belonged. The council had been called into session at dawn. Now, at noon, there was a motion on the floor. The fools were considering trying it. They were actually considering trying it.
* * * *
Lee Swiger looked at the special edition of the Basel newspaper. It had what amounted to a glaring black headline by down-time journalistic standards: eighteen point type across two columns of the front page.
Nobody knew who had leaked. Somebody, without the slightest doubt, had leaked. Suspicion lay in the direction of the Basel city council. It simply had too many members for successful secret-keeping.
Archduchess Maria Anna in
USE Embassy in Basel.
Wife of Admiral Simpson and
Wife of Grantville Mayor with Her.
Future Plans Unannounced.
Since the Basel newspaper had it, that meant that every stringer in the city would have sent out a copy of this, plus whatever gossip he could pick up, to his own paper. Which meant that the shit had hit the fan.
The other two columns of the front page had a considerably smaller headline.
Peace Between United States
of Europe and Netherlands.
Don Fernando Becomes King.
Stadtholder To Receive
Position of High Honor.
Diane had issued a press release the night before. Too bad that the treaty had been demoted to second in importance, but naturally the readers in Basel would be more interested in news with a local focus.
* * * *
"I feel," Margrave Friedrich V of Baden-Durlach said rather stiffly the next afternoon, "that in view of my position as a loyal ally of Emperor Gustav Adolf, I should have been provided with this information in a timely manner by the embassy of the United States of Europe. Certainly, I should not have been left to read it in the newspapers."
"We sent a note about the treaty," Diane Jackson answered. "A courier brought it to you yesterday. He got receipt from your doorman. You read it in the paper first only because you read the newspaper before you open your mail."
"And in regard to the archduchess?"
"It was not my news to tell you," Diane said stubbornly. "They did not told me to tell you. Mike did not told me to tell you.
Frank did not tell me. Ed Piazza did not tell me. Nobody telled me to told you."
If the margrave had been polite to her this past summer, Diane thought, she would have been nice to him. She would have spoken French, a language that he knew. However, he had been rude, so she spoke English to remind him that she was an up-timer from Grantville.
In moments of stress, even after all these years, she still tended to lose control over English verb tenses, particularly when the verbs were themselves irregular. At the moment, this was causing the margrave's translator some confusion. She thought that he grasped the gist of the matter.
"The ambassadress had not received instructions, Sire," he said to his employer.
* * * *
Margrave Friedrich was fairly sure that whatever the ambassadress had said, it amounted to more than that. There had been several personal names in her statement.
He cleared his throat. "Ask her," he said, "if she has received instructions from Gustav Adolf in regard to the archduchess."
* * * *
"I have not," Diane said, "seen any."
This was quite true. She had come to the radio room that morning as soon as she heard Tony opening the door, even before he had time to set up the gear. She had been waiting.
The expression on his face as he read the incoming message had been quite horrified. After he had given her a short verbal summary of Frank's latest news from Horn about the placement of Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar's troops and the emperor's belief that Bernhard would attempt to coerce the Basel city council into turning the embassy's "guests" over to him, she said, "I do not wish to see this."
Then: "Send it to Mike now. Ask him what to do. Do not tell Mary. Or anybody. Not Lee Swiger. Nobody. You understand me, Tony? Nobody else at all. When you are done sending to Mike, put it in the box." She pointed to the container where he kept less urgent messages that he would transcribe during the day. "Put it at the bottom. Do not have time to get to it."
Tony understood her. He nodded.
"Do not have time to get to it until Mike sends the answer. Maybe tonight. Maybe tomorrow morning. Not until then."
Now she looked back at the margrave. She had spoken with him very little. She was not sure whether he would be friend or foe. But, surely, if it had nothing to do with the archduchess, he would be told about the troops.
"I did hear from the office of Emperor Gustav Adolf," she said, picking up a message. She handed it to Tony Adducci to read on her behalf.
"Already in June, at the Congress of Copenhagen, Prime Minister Stearns developed a suspicion that Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar was no longer, or no longer only, a mercenary in French employ. We have been watching his operations carefully since then. As of the date of this transmission, Bernhard is bringing the main strength of his army toward Basel. He has left only the smaller part of his infantry in the Franche-Comté. You can expect his full forces to be on the right bank of the Rhine within a week."
Margrave Friedrich nodded. This was good information, so the ambassadress was not trying to mislead him. He had received the same news from other sources.
She was frowning at him. "This I warn you. I tell you that I warn everyone fair. I tell Wettstein, also, for the city council."
"Perhaps," Margrave Friedrich suggested, "I should be the one to contact the council. They are more likely to accept the authenticity of the warning if it comes from the son of one of the Protestant generals than from..."
Diane smiled. "Than from a foreign woman about so high?" She held up her hand. It didn't come far above her seated head. "I say it wrong again? Not I will tell him. I told him already. I told Herr Wettstein. It is done."
She looked at him. "Now we talk about those guards that the city council put around the embassy, no? We talk about 'diplomatic immunity.' If you want to help, I speak French. If not, I speak English."
"Let us," Margrave Friedrich said, "speak French. As a beginning."
* * * *
"They are completely insane," Wettstein said to Cavriani and Buxtorf. "We are facing invasion by a man who is completely ruthless and who..."
"Who," Buxtorf said pragmatically, "can easily overrun Riehen, which is the part of Basel for which you, specifically, are responsible."
"Well, yes. That is why, if you have had a chance to look at the bridge for the past several days, the elderly, the women, the children of Riehen have been crossing it onto this bank. In two more days, I believe, only able-bodied men will be in Riehen. I wish that there would be more able-bodied men in Riehen, but the council refuses to send the militia across. Should Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar appear, they are content to meet him at the river. I am not."
"Have they authorized you to resist him on the right bank?" Cavriani asked.
"I have not asked for authorization," Wettstein admitted. "But that is not what we are talking about. At least, not what I was trying to talk about. Why, in the name of all that is sacred, staring a very real peril in the face, does the council still spend its time talking about this archduchess. If Bernhard comes into the city, believe me, even if they somehow get her into their hands, which I do not believe that they can, she will very rapidly be removed. Bernhard will not care a fig for how she might be used to negotiate the independence of the Swiss Confederacy. He will have his own purposes. There are a half-dozen ways that he could use her as a counter against the Swede or against the Austrians."
"A half dozen?" Buxtorf said. "Surely not that many."
Cavriani started counting on his fingers. "One. Marry her and through the marriage gain a hereditary claim, or some color of a hereditary claim, to the Habsburg territories here in Swabia, where he is trying to build his power base. Two. Turn her over to the Spanish to hold hostage against Don Fernando, in return for Spain's recognition of his position in the Franche-Comté. Three. Turn her over to Gustav Adolf in return for his recognition of Bernhard as an independent ruler in Swabia. Four."
"Never mind," Buxtorf said.
"All of which," Wettstein said, "involve his either persuading the council to violate the grounds of the USE embassy and turn her over to him, or his invading the city and removing her by force."
"Where," Cavriani asked, "is General Horn?"
"I would dearly love to know," Wettstein answered. "Which is why I am here. I am hoping that you can find out."
"The banks are doing all they can," Cavriani assured him.
"I'm an academic. A scholar. Not a politician. Certainly not a soldier," Buxtorf protested.
"I still think you can assist us in finding out," Wettstein said. "You do know Professor Wilhelm Schickard, don't you?"
"Of Tübingen in Württemberg? Well, of Tübingen when the university there was still functioning, before the war closed it down. Yes, of course I do. An excellent mathematician. Also something of a mechanical tinkerer. The late astronomer Kepler used his calculating box in preparing the tables when he published some of his observations. Really, of course, Schickard was professor of Hebrew. His professional association with my father and myself has been in that capacity. We correspond regularly, even though he is Lutheran and I am Reformed. He is in Magdeburg, now, working for..." Buxtorf looked up. "for Duke Hermann of Hesse-Rotenburg, the USE Secretary of State, in regard to the establishment of a mapping service."
Leopold Cavriani inclined his head. "I believe that you also know a young man named Johann Heinrich Böcler?"
Buxtorf thought a little longer. "Yes, or I have heard of him, at least, from Matthaeus Bernegger. Böcler was one of Bernegger's students. Very promising, he said. Böcler is now, umm, the secretary of Duke Ernst of Saxe-Weimar in the Upper Palatinate. I believe that the duke is in Ingolstadt, isn't he, arranging for a new city government?"
Cavriani nodded. "With quite a few soldiers, to the best of my knowledge, although the newspapers predict that General Banér will be moving his main forces now that the siege has been successfully completed. And with a radio."
Buxtorf's mind was going off on an apparent tangent. "Of cours
e, Bernegger is a good friend of Schickard, also. Bernegger translated Galileo's work from the Italian vernacular into Latin, so it would be accessible to scholars, and published it at his own expense. Thus frustrating simultaneously both Galileo's effort at one-upmanship and the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. It was a great service to the scientific community."
"Why is it important that Bernegger is a friend of Schickard?" Wettstein sounded a trifle impatient.
"Your pardon, Councilor Wettstein. I am thinking like a teacher, I am afraid," Buxtorf said. "Bernegger has more former students than just Böcler, you know. Many of them will know of the friendship between the two men. Since Schickard is now in the service of the USE, that might predispose them to cooperate with requests they receive from him. Bernegger maintains close touch with the alumni of his department, you know. Almost, as with young Freinsheim, in a fatherly manner." He smiled. "I believe he has some reason to assume in that particular instance that he may well become the young man's father. Or, at least, his father-in-law. But that is a digression. Although Strassburg is an imperial city, it is, still, in the midst of Alsace. There must be some concern there, in the city council and at the university, about what would happen—just how long it could maintain its independence—if someone with the temperament of Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar governed all the lands surrounding it and if..."
"If what?" Wettstein asked.
"If there were no longer a Holy Roman Empire to be at least the symbol to which it owed its allegiance. If there were no longer a Holy Roman Emperor, which likely there will not be after Ferdinand II dies. Strassburg must be concerned, just as Nürnberg worries whether the city can maintain sovereignty against the State of Thuringia-Franconia and the USE."
"So if the Strassburg council is more alert than that of Basel, you are thinking, they may be taking measures?" Cavriani interjected.
"If not taking measures, at least gathering information." Buxtorf rested the tips of his fingers against one another. "Bernegger's students have been placed in chanceries all over the German states. There is at least one, Freinsheim himself, in the French service."