"The future son-in-law? That," Wettstein said, "I did not know. But it is all to the good. Can you give me a list of these students, and where they are?"
"I don't want to know precisely what you plan to do with it," Buxtorf said. "My position, like that of my father, is delicate enough because our academic specialty more or less requires us to stand as intermediaries between Basel's Jewish community and the council. That introduces a certain element of, shall we say, precariousness into our lives. I was certainly old enough to know what was going on when the council jailed my father for attending the circumcision of the son of one of his linguistic assistants. I do not want to provide it with any more reasons to look at me with doubt, although things have been better these last three years."
"I am sure," Wettstein agreed, "that having the head pastor of the Reformed churches of Basel as your brother-in-law does provide great spiritual support."
Cavriani smiled again. "Though it might have a rather damping effect on the conversations at the family dinner table."
"Oh," Buxtorf said, "Theodor Zwinger is not a difficult man. No older than I am. He came into his office very young after several older pastors died of the plague, one after another. And quite well-traveled you know, Leopold, should you ever need to consult him."
"Need to consult him?"
"In connection with these up-timers," Buxtorf said. "During his student years, he did not just spend time in Heidelberg, Leiden, and Geneva. He went to England."
* * * *
"Herr Wettstein," Mary Simpson said. "How kind of you to pass through the barricades out there to come calling upon us here." She looked out the window. "But was it wise?"
"Probably not," Wettstein admitted. "But I do need to speak with Her Excellency if I may. I consider the matter to be rather urgent."
Mary took him to Diane's office.
"Tony can't sent your messages now," Diane Jackson said. "It is technical. Very complicated. It is about bouncing sound off the sky. Tony says it works like this."
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tiny ball. "Here, I am a radio. The ball is the sound. The ceiling is the sky. I throw the ball to the ceiling. It bounces down to you. At least, if you are in the right place to catch it." She gave the little ball a toss toward the ceiling; Wettstein caught it.
"Me, I do not understand radio. But I believe what they tell me about it, just as religious people have faith in things they do not see. Can you come back just before the sun has set? Will set?"
Wettstein shook his head. "I have to attend a special meeting of the small council." He was examining the little ball carefully and bounced it once or twice on the floor. "Can I just leave the messages here? Can this 'radio' send them without my presence, if I write them down? Or must I be with them, just as I must be in a room to sign a letter?"
"Tony can send them and say that they are from you. But I will ask him questions. Who do they go to? What do they say? And he will tell me. See, I tell you the truth."
Wettstein nodded absentmindedly. "What," he asked, "is this ball made of?"
"Oh," Diane said. "That is rubber. It is not just for toys. Very useful. Lots of things are made of rubber. You can borrow it, if you want. Bounce it at your city council to impress them."
* * * *
"Wettstein sent what?" Mary Simpson asked.
"A half-dozen messages," Tony Adducci said. "The main one was to a guy named Böcler. I put out that to two locations, Duke Ernst's radio in Amberg and General Banér's, if he's still around Ingolstadt. No way to tell which one will reach him first. Just a short message, no outgoing information, so to speak. It was a couple of questions with a list of a dozen or so more men to whom he was to send them on. Same message to Grantville, to be forwarded to Professor Schickard. Him I met before we left Magdeburg this year. Another half-dozen names to send the questions on to. A couple to Amsterdam, to be sent on to guys at the university in Leiden. A couple more to Mainz, to go to the university of Heidelberg. They're to get the answers back here, somehow, preferably by way of any radio set-up they can reach, with copies of everything to General Horn and a plea for him to get himself down to Rheinfelden just as fast as he can scamper. Plus, anybody who can is supposed to notify a guy named Freinsheim—I never heard of him—to get out of France."
* * * *
"I can't go into the USE embassy now," Wettstein said a couple of days later. "Given the position the council is taking, if I went in, it would be interpreted as a declaration that I am changing my allegiance from Basel to Gustav Adolf. I can't do that. I have to stay to organize the defense of Riehen. That is where my duty lies. I have done all that I can to assist the ambassadress."
"The last time I tried to go in," Cavriani said, "the council's guards told me that I was not authorized, because I have no diplomatic credentials."
Johann Buxtorf fingered his beard. "I will see what I can manage."
* * * *
Theodor Zwinger delivered Wettstein's final warning about the city council's intentions. Not even the guards posted by the council itself would turn back Basel's head pastor if he chose to call upon a foreign embassy.
The embassy staff already had armaments in place, even before the warning. The ambassadress herself was occupied; Frau Admiral Simpson received him. He gave her Wettstein's letter. She offered him a cup of the novel "coffee" beverage; he accepted. After his first sip, she mentioned that some people preferred it with cream and sugar. These were on the tray. He accepted again, although he noticed that she drank hers without them.
They discussed potatoes for some time. Zwinger's father had been one of the earliest European scientists to provide a thorough description of this new world plant and its medicinal properties, particularly in the prevention of scurvy. Zwinger had heard that in this "up-time" it had become a staple food, almost as much in use as grains?
The Frau Admiral introduced him to Frau Mayor Dreeson. They discussed the ecclesiastical policies of Duke Maximilian of Bavaria in the Upper Palatinate during the 1620s and found themselves to be of one accord, which was quite gratifying, although he found her frequent use of the phrase "damned Bavarians" somewhat distasteful in a woman.
Thus he stayed long enough to be polite. He did not see the Austrian archduchess, but then he had not expected to. The city council's guards closed their barricades behind him when he left.
Chapter 62
Benedictiones Multiplex
Donaueschingen
"Marc," Susanna whispered. "Marc, wake up." She shook his shoulder. "Marc!"
He turned his face in the other direction.
"Marc, wake up. Wake up now." She looked around the stable loft, spotted an ancient bridle hanging from a peg, and flicked his shoulders with it.
"Whaaaat?"
"Wake up. Now, Marc. Right now."
He sat up.
"Susanna, it's still too dark to start out. What on earth?"
"I had to go downstairs, Marc. To use the latrine, before any of the stablemen come around. Behind. There are more stalls than we saw last night, behind where the ladder comes up here. They have horses in them. One of them is the horse that Bavarian captain was riding when he passed us when we were on the way here, I think. I'm not sure. It was just a sort of ordinary horse."
Marc frowned. "A roan gelding. Very distinctive markings and a nice gait. Old scar on the left shoulder, but no sign of crippling. The way he moved I wouldn't mind riding him myself."
"Well, go and look, then. Maybe you will be surer than I am."
Marc climbed down the ladder sleepily and reluctantly. He climbed back up a lot faster.
"You're right."
"We had better get our stuff and get out of here," Susanna said anxiously.
"That's the last thing we want to do. Let him leave before we do."
Two hours after dawn, the roan horse was still in the stall. Reluctantly, Marc concluded that the captain had business in Donaueschingen. He and Susanna headed for the southern gate.
&nb
sp; * * * *
Raudegen was sitting on a bench that evening, catching his breath as he talked with the last of Donaueschingen's various innkeepers.
He had been asking about the two all day, the man with the curl of black hair falling on his forehead and the nondescript boy. People said that they had been making the rounds of the inns in Donaueschingen just the day before, asking about a man traveling with three women. Two older women and a tall, young, brunette.
Raudegen asked about the party of four also. The answers were still what they had been the first time he came through Donaueschingen. Nobody had seen them. That's what they had told the man and boy, also, everyone said.
The man and boy? No, they had not stayed at any of the inns the night before. It was not likely that they had left the city so close to dark, though, the host at the Silver Star said. It had been nearly dusk when he talked to them.
Raudegen went back to his own inn. Too late to make the rounds of the gates, tonight. He would talk to the guards at each of them tomorrow. Once he knew which way they had gone, he would have some idea. But if the archduchess and her party had not been here, how would they decide how to go?
At supper time, he was cursing himself. His man reported that last night the two had been sleeping in the stable loft behind this inn—the one where they were staying themselves. With the slightest luck, he could have caught them.
* * * *
"This isn't going to be easy walking," Marc warned. "We'll have to cross the high hills of the Black Forest to get into the Wiesental. Then we can just follow the Wiese River down to Basel. They're not like the Alps that you had to climb when you went to Balzano and then to Vienna, but more than enough hills, and some of them steep. The guard I talked to at the gate yesterday told me how to get to Hüfingen. He's worked there, he said. It's belonged to the count von Fürstenberg since 1620 and there's an administrative district headquartered there. We'll be all right that far, and can ask someone there how to go on to Löffingen. Someone is bound to know. It has nearly five hundred people and it belongs to Fürstenberg, too."
"Being anywhere that's in the jurisdiction of the count of Fürstenberg," Susanna said, "does not make me feel better at all. Let's walk fast and try to get out of it."
* * * *
"Yes," the guard said to Raudegen, "I talked to the man yesterday. He was asking about directions to Hüfingen."
* * * *
"We are," Susanna said, "completely and totally lost."
Marc looked around. "Not lost, exactly. Just on the wrong path. It's pretty. Look at all those layers of rock. But there is no way that anyone has ever managed to bridge that gorge in front of us. We'll just have to turn around and go back to the other road."
"How much time have we wasted?"
"Two or three hours coming, I think. So it will be that much again, going back. Most of a day."
The leaves were turning. He reached over, broke off a couple of small branches, put them on her head, and looked at the effect.
"You look good in autumn leaves. Some day, you ought to make yourself a dress that color. If you were a bride in golden yellow and orange-red, you would put all the rest of the girls to shame."
Susanna pulled the twigs out of her hair. There wasn't any point in keeping them. The leaves would turn brown before she could press them. She tossed them down, but first she looked at them carefully, memorizing. She almost never forgot a color. Matching colors, she knew, was one of her strengths as a designer. Even if she went to a store without a swatch, she would return with a length of fabric that perfectly complemented the one left behind at the palace.
* * * *
"That has to be where we made the wrong turn." Susanna started to run. Marc put his hand on her shoulder to hold her back.
She frowned. "What is the matter?"
"I smell iron."
"Iron?"
"Ore. In the ground. Either there are mines, which I have never heard of in this place, or it is close to the surface."
"What difference does it make?"
"We must be coming into the Wiesental, now. That has to be the Feldberg, over there. I don't see how we missed seeing it this morning when we made the wrong turn that ended up next to the ravine. If there is iron here, I need to take notes. For Papa and for Jakob Durre, my master. Where there is a little iron, there may be more. If there is enough to make it worthwhile and if they can get options on the right to open mines... I wonder who this valley belongs to? Who has jurisdiction, that is. I'm sure we're out of the Fürstenberg lands by now."
* * * *
"Todtnau, boy," the old man said. "This village is called Todtnau. We belong to the archdukes of Austria, here. For a long time. Since the time of the grandfather of my father's grandfather. That's as far back as I know. There was a big battle, people say, and after that we were Austrian. Not that a lot of people wouldn't like to turn Swiss." He gave an impudent, if toothless, grin. "Wouldn't mind it myself."
Their talk wandered off onto the topic of iron ore. It was around, the old man said.
"You ought to talk to the smith. He never buys a pig of iron. He works it out of the ground himself, just on the forge. Slower, he says, but cheaper, too. What else does he have to do when he doesn't have any customers?"
The two of them wandered away from the road, in the direction of the smithy. The smith, the old man said, was his niece's husband.
Susanna was getting impatient. She would have liked to talk to the old woman, but she could not understand her accent at all. The people spoke Swabian German around here. Schwäbisch. It was almost a language in itself. She wandered to the side of the house. She was looking at the herb garden when she heard the hoofbeats. She sank down behind the trellises, peeking through.
Apparently the Bavarian captain could not understand the old woman, either. He raised his quirt in a threatening manner. She called into the house; a middle-aged woman came out. She repeated the old woman's answers. Susanna could understand her words.
The two men rode on. Susanna got up and came around to the front of the cottage where the two women were still standing.
"Thank you," she said. "I am very grateful. I do not know why you lied for us, but thank you very much."
"She did not lie," the younger woman said. "She has not seen the young man pass through the village, because he has not passed through. He has gone to the smithy with my husband's father. She has not seen a boy with him, because you are a girl. The man knows that you're a girl. You must have heard him say so later on. But when he asked the question, he asked my mother-in-law if she had seen a boy with the curly-haired man. She has told the precise and exact truth because it is never good when someone on horseback is looking for someone on foot. Especially not when he carries a whip and raises it against old women. We in this village are among those who go through life on foot. Would you like some fresh cheese? We have perry to drink, also."
* * * *
"At least," Marc said, "we are behind them."
"This may not help," the old man said. "He will be asking in every village. In Gschwend; that comes next. Then in Schoenau, which is about five miles from here. In Zell. If they all say that they have not seen you, he may turn around and retrace his steps. Then there you will be, perhaps meeting him on the road. The road through this valley is not so wide that you can easily go to the side of it and hide yourselves."
"We have to get to Basel," Marc said.
"Not today," the younger woman answered. "Spend the night here. My husband has gone south, to find out where the soldiers are. You should wait until he comes back."
Marc looked at Susanna, who was sitting at the rough table, blinking rather slowly. She had not known that she should cut the perry with a lot of water. She was not used to it. Even though there would still be a couple of hours of daylight, maybe they had better stay. Then the word "soldiers" struck him.
"Soldiers?"
"Yes. There are soldiers between here and Basel. My husband has gone to the Amtman
n to find out which ones. If they are friends, that is, if they are in the Austrian service, perhaps things will not go too hard with us. Mostly, they will just take things that they need, as soldiers do. But if they are French or Swedes, the villages along the road will need to move as much as possible up into the hills, because they will burn and kill as well as steal."
The old man frowned. "It is bad having soldiers come in the fall. It is worst when they come after harvest. In the fall they can steal everything after we have done all the work, leaving us to starve through the winter while they feast on our chickens and cabbages."
* * * *
Someone knocked on the door. It was the smith and a younger man whom Marc did not recognize.
The younger woman put her arm around Susanna's shoulders and laid her down on a bench next to the fireplace. Then she put her mother-in-law to bed.
The four men started talking about iron and soldiers; soldiers and iron. The younger woman came back and sat with them at the table.
Her husband had been quite a way to the south. Soldiers, he said. Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar was occupying all the Austrian territories in the Breisgau, or that was the story. Most people had not decided whether or not it was true that he had abandoned the French, but it was quite true that he was here.
There wasn't anything that they could do about the soldiers tonight. The man and wife went to bed. Marc and the smith sat up late, talking about iron. There was some iron here at Todtnau, the smith said, but not a lot. There was far more a few miles to the south, at Hausen.
* * * *
Susanna winced. Her head hurt when she woke up and the sunlight seemed miserably bright. The old woman laughed, gave her a big drink of water and a piece of dry rye bread, told her to keep walking, and advised her not to drink any more perry. "You being such an innocent little thing and all that, which I was not sure of when you first came here wearing those trousers and a boy's shirt."
The smith came with them as they walked south from Todtnau to Hausen. He and Marc talked about iron as they walked, and talked even more about iron after they got there. The smith had trained in Lörrach, a little piece of territory that belonged to the margraves of Baden in between the Austrian lands. The Baden Amtmann there knew that there was iron in these hills; he had sent reports to the margraves. The Amtmann believed in iron. Gold, he said, was pretty and all that, but mankind could not live without iron. Everybody needed iron. If there were mines here, iron would bring wealth to the valley. Even to the farmers, who had a hard time wresting a living from these rocks. Miners would need vegetables. The high pastures supported cattle; miners would need meat and cheese. The forests would provide charcoal.