Eddie nodded. Anna Maria Junius at the Dominican convent in Bamberg was so grateful to Grantville for saving her sister Veronica when those fanatics hauled her into Suhl a couple of years ago that she had really gone out of her way to help the NUS administration.
“Taking Johnnie F. and Willard in and patching them up last fall. Everything. I’d trust Sister Anna Maria with my life.” Noelle grinned. “I do trust her with my political maneuvers. That history of Bamberg during the war that she’s writing has been a lifesaver when it comes to figuring out the various factions and such. Die alte Neideckerin, though. In her heart, I think, she’s afraid that we’ll be putting Judith in a lot more danger if she helps us deal with von Bimbach. After all, they sent her away in the first place in order to keep her safe.”
“If you go,” Eddie said, “I’m going too.”
Noelle shook her head.
“Yes,” Eddie persisted. “I am.” He pulled out his own stack of mail. “I bet you put your letter from Arnold Bellamy on the bottom of your stack, didn’t you?”
“Umm. Yes.”
“Well, I opened mine. He’s written to Steve Salatto and Vince Marcantonio. He can’t rescind your ‘special envoy’ status when it comes from Prime Minister Stearns, but he’s made it clear to them. If you go in there, I go with you. Down-time muscle. Thick of skull and strong of arm, that’s me.”
Noelle leaned back, looking at him. Eddie was better known for brains than brawn, even though he was quite big.
“You think they’d let in someone who looks like a huge hulking bodyguard coming with the new maid that Judith Neidecker’s mother sent her from Bamberg? Me, they won’t even notice.”
Noelle pulled out her letter from Arnold Bellamy and read through it before she answered.
“Okay. It looks like you’re coming. But I don’t like it. You’re just a kid.”
“I’m as old as you are,” Eddie said. “And just as stubborn. I may not be as wrong-headed and snobbish as my father, but I’m just as stubborn as he is. Plus …” He flashed her an impudent grin, “I got my mother’s smarts, too. The combination is unbeatable.”
“Except, maybe, by Otto Kronacher.”
“Well, yeah. There’s always Otto.”
Wuerzburg, mid-March 1634
“The person with whom you are meeting this morning,” Weckherlin said, “is an agent of the Fuchs von Bimbach family. A lawyer and administrator. His name is Dr. Polycarp Lenz. Nicknamed by almost all who know him, I hear, ‘Pestilenz.’ Signifying…”
“Plague,” Steve Salatto interrupted. “Why?”
“Irascible. Irritable. Obnoxious. Obstructionist. Uncooperative. Unreasonable.”
“Got it. Enshrines all the worst qualities presupposed in a Libertarian’s view of the typical bureaucrat.”
“What is a Libertarian?” Weckherlin asked.
“A person who thinks that sort of thing about us-the noble civil servants who give of themselves unstintingly that the citizens of their country may receive their driver’s license renewals in a timely fashion.”
“What is a driver’s license?” Weckherlin had, after all, spent only a week in Grantville and that had mostly been devoted to acquiring a passport from the consular service, a health certificate from the Leahy Medical Center, and other mandatory activities that interfered seriously with getting to know more about life in the twentieth century.
“A permit to drive a motorized vehicle. Did Lenz tell us what he wants?”
“No.”
* * *
Dr. Lenz delivered a petition, signed by over two hundred of the Protestant imperial knights and petty lords of Franconia. All of Franconia, not just the parts included in the SoTF, but also Bayreuth, Ansbach, and the Nuernberg hinterland. In fact, mainly Bayreuth, Ansbach, and the Nuernberg hinterland, since the majority of those inside Wuerzburg, Bamberg, and Fulda were Catholic.
The petition was addressed to Gustavus Adolphus. It requested that he annul the election that took place on February 22, revoke its effects, and remove Franconia from the unnatural administration imposed by the foreign up-timers. That he restore it to its rightful lords, the native-born Protestant nobility. Offering, in a spirit of noble self sacrifice, that they, should the emperor see fit to burden them with the onerous task, would be willing to assume the duty of governing the heretical, rebellious, Catholic principalities.
Dr. Lenz announced that this was the third copy of the signed and sealed petition. The first had been sent to the emperor directly; the second, through one of the administration’s auditors, Herr Johann Friedrich Krausold, to Duke Wilhelm of Saxe-Weimar, who was now using the name Wilhelm Wettin. Lenz’s distaste for the latter version of the name was clear in his voice.
Steve said that he was delighted to hear it.
He didn’t know what Dr. Lenz had been expecting, but it clearly wasn’t that.
Steve really was delighted to get the full list of signers. It was the first really concrete information he had about which of the knights and lords were not going to budge from their objections to what the administration was doing. Not to mention external confirmation that Krausold had not just been griping to Meyfarth but was actively involved in undermining the administration.
Weckherlin saw Dr. Lenz out.
Steve wished he had a buzzer. But he didn’t, so he got up to walk down to the auditors’ office, where once the special commissioners had sat. He looked around. The coast was clear.
“Maydene,” he said. “You may have a little problem in your bailiwick.”
The gals promised to get right on it.
* * *
Within a minute after she stopped by to visit Eddie at Frau Kronacher’s print shop, Noelle was having to fight down laughter.
She wasn’t entirely successful, either-which drew a quick glare at her from Eddie, where he was standing at the front of the little storeroom that served him as an impromptu classroom for the apprentices.
“No, Melchior,” he said, “I know it’s pronounced the same way. But”-here he pointed to a small slate chalkboard propped up against the far wall-“in English, it’s actually spelled women. W-O-M-E-N. Not wimmin.”
“Makes no sense,” protested Melchior’s brother Otto. “That should be pronounced ‘Woe-men.’”
The glare now fell on Otto. “And you think our German doesn’t have plenty of quirks, when it comes to spelling?”
“Not as many as English,” Otto countered stoutly.
Noelle got the sense this was an old and long-running argument. Eddie shook his head, a bit wearily, and went on.
“Never mind. Let’s run through the verses again. Just the first six.”
Obediently, the small group of apprentices began chanting in English:
“Once upon a time there were three Brillo Rams Gruff – a little baby ram lamb, a medium-sized ram lamb, and their great big, sturdy, strong, daddy ram.
“Every day they trotted over to the field where there was sweet green grass and all the wimmin. Sometimes there was a fence, but that wasn’t much of a problem. The daddy Brillo ram would give the fence such a PINCH, and it would tumble over.
“One day, a bridge and a set of tracks were laid on the way to the field with the sweet green grass and plenty of wimmin. That was no problem, because the three Brillo Rams Gruff just made a nice trit-trot sound on the tracks as they went to the field with the sweet green grass and all the wimmin.
“They went to the field with the sweet green grass and all the wimmin every day. Every afternoon, the Flo lady would take them back to their own place. First she would take the daddy Brillo ram, then the medium-sized Brillo ram lamb, and last of all the little baby Brillo ram lamb.