“But what about getting them into school?” Paul asked.
“If I could home-school them in Wuerzburg, which I did last spring, I can home-school them in Coburg this fall. And I can do more than that. You can deputize me and I can take oaths. Show these folks that a woman can be a citizen as well as a man. Remember what Saunders Wendell said that Johnnie F. figured out, up in Bamberg. You can’t just tell people something. You have to show them. Show them that we mean it.”
“Lynelle,” Reece said, “I’m not going to do that.”
“Why not?” Over the summer, Lynelle had had a little more of Reece Ellis than she could endure gracefully. “Since when are you the only one who decides things? Do you think I’m too weak? Do you think that you can wrap me up in cotton batting and stick me on a shelf somewhere the way you try to do with Anne Marie when it’s not handy for you to have a wife around? Listen to me, Mr. High-and-Mighty-very-old-settler-Protestant-son-of-a-DAR-member-Mr.-Ellis. My grandparents, all four of them, were the first ones born in the U.S. of A. My great-grandparents went through a lot, really a lot, so they could get out of horrible places in the Balkans and come to better places in Pennsylvania and West Virginia so people like you could spend their spare time looking down their noses at them…”
“Lynelle!” Paul said faintly.
“Well, somebody ought to say it. We’ve all thought it often enough.”
The subsequent discussion was rather painful. From Coburg, the front wagon went on to Grantville without Lynelle.
Wuerzburg, Late October 1633
“If they can do it in Coburg,” Johnnie F. asked, “then why can’t we do it here? At least for the people who are living on lands that used to belong directly to the two bishops and the abbot? We’ve taken those over. There’s never any use in leaving one of your opponents the financial resources to mount an opposition. Since we’re here for the NUS, and we’re certainly willing to promise, on its behalf, to protect and shield them… Hell, that’s what we’re down here for. Isn’t it?”
Steve Salatto looked a little doubtful. “I’m not one hundred percent sure what the legal status is. We’re-that is, the NUS-is supposed to be administering Franconia on behalf of Gustavus Adolphus. I’m not so sure that we’re supposed to be incorporating the people into the NUS itself by taking oaths of allegiance from them to our constitution.”
“The suggestion came from Arnold Bellamy, himself,” Scott Blackwell pointed out. “And it’s in writing. We’re covered.”
“Well, at least it came to us under Arnold’s signature.” Steve looked at the letter again. “But there’s something sort of, um, mischievous, about this idea. I just don’t see it as the sort of thing that Arnold would come up with. Now I could suspect Ed Piazza of it, if he had time. But since last spring, when would he have had the time?”
Johnnie F. grinned. “There’s always Noelle Murphy. It’s the sort of thing she would think of and sneak into a memo if she had the chance.”
Anita tended to tire of the tendency of the guys to analyze the underlying significance of their orders endlessly. Or, at any rate, tediously. “The point is, are we going to do it?”
The men looked at her.
“Or not?” she added.
“Do we have any idea what the response would be, out in the countryside?” Steve looked at Johnnie F.
“I’m not sure. I could ask around. One thing is pretty sure, though. It would make the farmers on the estates of the other little lords, the imperial knights and the petty nobles, just as jealous as could be. Not necessarily because the ex-episcopal farmers will want to take the oath. Not even because the other farmers would want to take the oath, necessarily. But because we would be giving them the chance. The grass is always greener, and suchlike. When it comes to the farmers who are subjects of other lords, it would sort of double, maybe triple, the effect of what we did when we abolished the remaining obligations of serfdom on the ex-episcopal estates.”
“What effect?” Anita asked.
“Well, farmers are farmers, pretty much everywhere. We didn’t make the ones who hold leases directly from us significantly happier. That’s because they never wanted to render the obligations of serfdom anyway, so they just think we’ve given them what they properly deserved, which isn’t something they need to be grateful for. However, on the estates of other lords-which are not different great big plantations, remember; a lot of times, three or four lords have tenants living next door to one another in the same village-the farmers still have to pay up. Which they think is grossly unfair; they think that they are put upon and badly done by. The farmers on the estates we’re administering don’t love the boss. But the farmers on the other guys’ estates are nursing a major grudge against the boss right now, by and large. That’s a pretty big difference.”
Johnnie F. leaned back, then forward again.
“To be very un-PC, the natives are restless. Personally, I’d recommend that we ought to take advantage of it. That’s where we started this conversation, I think. But I’d be a bit more at ease if Scott or someone else would come out with me and take a look at things.”
Chapter 4:
“Last Time, It Was A Work Shoe”
Franconia, Late October, 1633
“What’s with the sheep?” Scott Blackwell asked. The NUS’s military administrator for Franconia was frowning down at the village below them. He and Johnnie F. Haun had paused their horses on the crest of a hill, just above a village somewhere out in the back of beyond. Scott had no idea where he was. In spite of his compass, he was utterly lost and quite sure that he would never be able to find his way out of this complex of hills and hollows by himself.
But he was sure he had been to this village before. There was a really odd church tower to confirm his memory. And there had not, last spring, been a huge banner with the head of a sheep on it blowing in the wind from a tall pole where the road ran into the central square.
Johnnie F. had been moving along with his usual complete sense of orientation. Now he looked over and said patiently, “It’s a ram.”
“What’s the difference?” Scott asked.
“Look at the horns. It’s male.”
“It wasn’t here when I went around the villages with you last spring.” Scott was sure of that.
“None of them were.”
“None of what?”
“The rams-head banners. From here on up toward the border, you’ll see a lot of them.”
Scott might not be able to tell a sheep from a ram, but, unlike Johnnie F., he could spot possible flash-points that might require the attention of the military police from a very long distance indeed.
“Nobody reported on these?”
“Well, the guys on ‘hearts and minds’ have noticed them. They’ve told me that they’re all around. Not just here in Wuerzburg. Over in Bamberg, too. Actually, they’re thicker over there. Not very many in Fulda. But they’ve showed up really gradually, and nobody’s been making a fuss about them. They’re just there, on the poles. Nobody’s brought them up in conversation.”
Scott sighed. “Do me a favor, will you? Try to find out why the sheep are up there on those poles.”
* * *
As soon as he got back to Wuerzburg, Scott had a long talk with Saunders Wendell. This was one of those things that the UMWA needed to know about.
Wuerzburg, November, 1633
Johnnie F. brought back a broadside. He had collected it in a remote village at the utter backside of anywhere, up in the Fraenkischer Schweiz.
“Isn’t that,” Scott asked rather cautiously, “on the letterhead of the Grantville League of Women Voters?”
“It was that letterhead. Once upon a time. Now it is more.” Meyfarth leaned over the table. “See, here at the top. There is your Grantville paper. The head of the ram and the slogan:
“’Better to be hung
For a sheep than for a lamb.’”
“That’s your League of Women Voters motto. Then, here, the German version. It’s pretty much the same:
‘Soll man mich denn erhaengen,
So fuer ein’ Schaf’, nicht fuer ein Lamm.’