whom His right hand will, if you desire it, preserve,
to the consolation of the faithful and the wreck of the
faithless.
His just hand, perhaps, rather than His right hand? Gerecht, in a way, could mean either.
So abandon all fear; do not let the time slip by
and God will reveal to all the world that the enemy’s
treachery and pride are nothing but shame and disgrace.
Meineid. Perjury, perhaps, rather than treachery? But no, Weckherlin’s poem was well known, but for the ram’s purposes, it was worse than useless. Patriotic gore. Meyfarth examined his fingernails while the margrave and Weckherlin talked.
* * *
“The up-timers call it ‘sheep stealing’,” Meyfarth said. “You have heard, I am sure, that many different religious groups share the same town.”
Margrave Christian nodded.
“They have worked out rules-not laws, but informal understandings, generally shared-that permit them to live in harmony, most of the time. One of these prohibits ‘sheep stealing.’ One minister is not to raid the flock of another, taking away his members. A kind of ‘live and let live.’ I am not sure, myself, how it works. It is not, certainly, a universal principle. It is not uncommon, when a man and a woman of two different of these ‘denominations’ marry, for one to change.”
Margrave Christian cocked his head inquiringly. “There are no laws about whether it is the man or woman who changes? There are no laws requiring one of them to change, or prohibiting it?”
“No. It is regarded as a purely personal decision. One often leading to family dissension, to be sure, but still personal. And sometimes leading to odd results. The Catholic priest now has a member of his flock, such a convert, whose given name actually is ‘Calvin’.”
Weckherlin snorted his beer up his nose, spraying it on the table; Meyfarth pounded on his back, a little anxiously.
* * *
“What,” the margrave asked, “does this religious ‘sheep stealing’ have to do with the oaths that the up-timers are accepting from the Franconians who are subjects of the imperial knights and petty lords, first to the constitution of the New United States and now to their State of Thuringia-Franconia?”
Meyfarth looked a little uncomfortable. “Partly, I think, it was a joke when we started talking about it. The term ‘flock.’ The peasants’ use of the ram, Brillo they call him, as their emblem.” He paused. “Have you read the Brillo material that I obtained for you, Your Grace? The up-time Brillo, not the broadsides written in Franconia?”
It was Weckherlin who answered. “With great interest. Remarkable really. An entirely new set of fables such as the ones Aesop collected, developing before our very eyes.”
Margrave Christian smiled. “I very much enjoyed the newest one I’ve seen. The Three Brillo Rams Gruff, it’s called.”
Into the silence that followed, he added: “That one that mentioned railroads. I would be very interested in discussing railroads with someone from Grantville.”
“Anse Hatfield,” Weckherlin suggested. “The man who was commander in Suhl during the, ah, incident there. Or, perhaps, Captain Pitre herself? I’ll see to it.”
Margrave Christian nodded his thanks. Meyfarth continued with the topic he’d been discussing. “We thought about it. Decided to do it. Steal some sheep. Not, at first, in Franconia. Originally, as in Coburg, only those who were currently without a shepherd. To make them citizens, not subjects.”
“According to the petition,” Margrave Christian said, “it would appear that Herr Salatto and his subordinates have gone far beyond that.”
“I still say that the administration in Franconia has not rustled the sheep, not poached them, not stolen them from their owners. Unlike sheep with four feet, men do have free will. In secular matters,” Meyfarth said precisely, “if not in regard to the salvation of their souls, which is of course entirely dependent upon divine grace.”
Weckherlin laughed. “It would appear that this Brillo, four feet or not, is a creature of free will.”
“Which is, of course, why the up-timers like him so well. They believe greatly in free will. Often, I suspect, more strongly than they believe in God. So. The followers of the ram made the right of all Franconians to vote in the election one of their Twelve Points. It was their initiative, to which the administration only responded.”
“You are arguing, then,” Margrave Christian said, “that the issue is, properly, not one between the nobility of Franconia and the USE’s administration there, but between the nobility of Franconia and their subjects, who first proposed the action that has become a point of contention.”
Neither Meyfarth nor Weckherlin had thought of this approach. They were, however, more than willing to listen to the margrave’s idea. A face-saving diplomatic out was a face-saving diplomatic out, no matter who thought of it first.
“Which would mean…” The margrave was starting to speculate in the subjunctive. “Would mean that it would not really be a matter in which the emperor should intervene directly, much less something that anyone could rightly interpret as providing sufficient grounds for changing the administration… Local, merely local, between each of two hundred minor lords and his subjects.”
He smiled. “Not something that I should be expected to do anything about, either.”
“No,” Weckherlin agreed, “not at all.”
Meyfarth nodded solemnly.
“But possibly,” Margrave Christian continued, “something that might be applicable in Bayreuth if…”
* * *
“I don’t think,” Weckherlin said, “that you were authorized to say those things.”
“I was asked,” Meyfarth answered, “to see if things could be so arranged that a small truce will ensue in Franconia in our time. I am carrying the margrave’s declaration that he will remain neutral in the dispute between the lords and knights of Franconia and its administration. I do not see that I could have been expected to obtain more than that.”
“You are also carrying,” Weckherlin pointed out, “knowledge of something that neither of us should know.”
“Ah. Then we do not know it. Or will soon have forgotten it.”
“If neither of us knows it, then how will the ram find out?”
“Somehow, the ram will learn. In Franconia, now, the ram soon knows everything. It is unlikely that he will miss this. Margrave Christian, I am sure, will somehow let it be known that he would be willing to accept oaths of allegiance from sheep belonging to the flocks of the imperial knights and petty lords whose lands lie within Bayreuth and Ansbach. And that he would be willing to grant a substantial number of the Twelve Points if the ram proved cooperative in the project of mediatizing the lower nobility. Should such a project occur, of course.”
“Surely, the good Lutheran margrave would never be guilty of stealing sheep,” Weckherlin said.
“Perish the very thought,” Meyfarth answered. “No more than the good Lutheran dukes of your Wuerttemberg were, once upon a time.”
For several minutes, Weckherlin did not reply. Then he asked, “What does the margrave intend to do with these oaths? If he should accept them?”
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, Herr Weckherlin. Tomorrow will have troubles of its own. Perhaps we should also ask what the farmers intend to do with them.”
Bamberg, mid-April, 1634.
“Good morning, Stew,” Janie Kacere said. “Sit down and chat.”
“No time.” He leaned one elbow on her pedestal desk. “The boss arrived in town yesterday evening late.”
“I didn’t know that Johnnie F. was due.”