Ring of Fire III (53 page)

* * *

The reception was meant to be quite preliminary to the serious negotiations. It proved to be momentous, although nobody but the principal parties noticed. More precisely, the observers didn’t notice it that same evening. In the minds of those principal parties, however, the looming issue of “the bride” was settled almost at once.

Duke Bernhard absentmindedly made etiquette-appropriate chitchat with Dr. Bienner and eyed Claudia de Medici. He expected to found a dynasty. Until tonight, his expectations in regard to what that project might involve had been rather vague. His associates of
Der Kloster
, volubly and vociferously, expected him to found a dynasty. They had hitched their wagons to his star; they expected due rewards, not just now, but for their children and grandchildren.

He had read the briefing papers; here, right in front of him, was a good looking titian-haired widow who in two marriages had successfully given birth to six children, five of whom were alive and flourishing, two of whom were male. She was three months older than he. Both of them were thirty. If she remarried she could—and very probably would—give birth to children for another dozen years.

Five or six children would be plenty, especially if Frau Dunn, the widow of the traitor Horton, could do things to prevent smallpox and plague, reduce fevers, rehydrate cases of infantile dysentery by using a mild saline solution...He had received numerous lectures on the reduction of childhood mortality in the last few months. He had been somewhat annoyed, wishing that the woman would pay more attention to training “medics” for his regiments. Suddenly they seemed relevant.

Why risk his undeniable need for heirs on any of the untried virgins who had been recommended to him as wives when a woman with a truly spectacular track record was standing right in front of him? Not to mention that she clearly understood politics and economics or she would not have proposed the current negotiations. Tyrol held colorable title to significant territories in Swabia, a couple of which he had already annexed. This was—always with the exception of Amalie, of course—the most interesting female that he had ever met.

Well, with the exception of the terrifying, tiny East Indian who was the USE ambassadress in Basel. “Interesting” was a very inadequate term to describe Diane Jackson. However, she was not only married, but well beyond childbearing age. Regrettable.

Not that he had met many women. He had gone from home at thirteen, when his mother died, to the university of Jena under the supervision of a strict tutor, to the army at eighteen. His only sister, born a few months after his father’s death, had died at the age of three. He barely remembered her. Aside from Aunt Anna Sofie, the intelligent, strong-willed widow of Count Ludwig Guenther’s older brother in Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, who was childless, committed to educational reform and social welfare, and Amalie, he had almost never sat down and had a conversation with a female. His recent encounters with Frau Jackson in Basel excepted. Mentally, he shrugged. Women had been in short supply in his life. There had been passing encounters, of course, but he had never kept a mistress. He had no bastards that he knew of.

Everyone told him that the regent of Tyrol was strong-willed and intelligent. Why would a busy man want to bother with any other kind? Bernhard was not averse to strong-willed, intelligent women. Particularly red-haired ones. He squelched that thought firmly and returned his mind to his conversation with Philipp Sattler, who had somehow taken Dr. Bienner’s place while his mind was wandering.

* * *

Claudia, standing on the other side of the room and conversing politely with the abbot of Schwarzach and the mayor of the town, eyed Duke Bernhard. He was a man who was
not
an ex-cardinal. How refreshing. Considering that her father had been an ex-cardinal, her second husband had been an ex-cardinal, and now poor Leopold’s cousin Maria Anna had married another ex-cardinal, she could only consider a man who was neither an ex-cardinal nor one of her subordinates to be an interesting variation in the category “male human being.” It would be interesting to have a man in her life whose official portrait did not depict him in a cassock. She mentally dismissed all consideration of her first husband, the obnoxious duke of Urbino to whom she had been married off when he was fifteen and she was sixteen. Horrible boy. The nicest thing that Federigo Ubaldo della Rovere had ever done for her was die. Not that she was sufficiently deluded or self-centered to believe that the assassins who murdered him had done it to make her life easier, but, still, she made it a point to remember them in her prayers. Leopold had been much nicer, but he had also been nearly twenty years her senior.

Duke Bernhard looked fairly healthy. Athletic. Superb horseman. The briefing papers said something about chronic indigestion, but he had enough sense that he had hired an up-time nurse.

He had already demonstrated that he was one of the best generals of the age. He clearly had ambition. She would not have had any reason to initiate these negotiations if he didn’t. Perhaps, with encouragement, he would help her pry her daughter from her first marriage out of the clutches of her grandparents. Letters from Italy indicated that Vittoria, now almost thirteen, was...not pretty. That, alas, she bore an unfortunate physical resemblance to her late father, the unlamented duke of Urbino. Under the circumstances, she would need her mother’s guidance if she were to achieve a happy future.

She had the absolutely irrational thought that Duke Bernhard was taller than she. How unusual. How...irrelevant. She squelched the thought firmly and returned her attention to making social conversation with the local worthies.

* * *

Five days later, the negotiations came to a satisfactory conclusion in the form of a preliminary prenuptial settlement. The details remained to be worked out, of course. Still, it would be a match firmly based on substantial mutual advantages, not to mention a shared appreciation of the value of real estate.

True, Bernhard was Lutheran, while Claudia was Catholic. Still, as she pointed out, the Vienna Habsburgs could scarcely complain, considering that they had been approaching the point of offering Cecelia Renata as an option. Given the religious situation in the lands they would be governing—in a real sense, the disparity of cult might even be counted as an advantage. As for the children, they would simply follow the normal arrangement—the girls would be baptized in her faith and the boys in his. That made no problems for Tyrol—Claudia’s children by Leopold were the heirs there.

* * *

“Your Grace,” Matt Trelli said. “Marcie and I really think that it would be a good idea for you to leave us—well, me, at least—here in Swabia. From what Tony Adducci says, the main thrust of the plague will come here in the southwest, not in Tyrol. We just—well, after Kronach and everything, I just feel like I need to be part of the prevention team that the Swiss and Duke Bernhard are putting together.”

The regent looked at him. “You work for me and you will return in accordance with your employment contract. You signed it voluntarily.”

Matt backed out of the room.

De Melon hurried after him. “Don’t do anything rash. She intends to place you as the head organizer of the plague fighters in Tyrol. This is something I have heard. It is not unimportant there. Given the heavy, constant, overland commercial traffic, it will be a challenge to maintain the quarantine without damaging the economy.”

“Matt, listen to me,” Marcie said that evening. “Okay, I get it. She didn’t explain her reasons. That’s sort of how people who were born to run things work. They don’t know that they have to explain. Actually, they don’t have to explain. They might get more cooperation if they did, but—honestly, Matt. They’re just not up-timers. You can’t expect a down-time aristocrat to run her bailiwick the same way Steve Salatto managed things in Bamberg. Anyway—think of it as sort of like being in the army. You couldn’t have backed out of that, either, just because you didn’t like some order Cliff Priest gave you.”

Chapter Five

Besançon, late February 1635

The air was crisp. The sky was blue. The Doubs river wended its twisty way below the city. Bernhard looked down from the site of his future, still incomplete citadel. It was here, above the imperial city itself, which was now his capital city—his—not inside the medieval walls, that he would assume his new title. His residence was in the
Palais Granvelle
below. He had requisitioned it. It was a gorgeous palace, much better than anything the Wettins had owned in Weimar. The Granvelle family had gone bankrupt long since, in any case.

Most of his garrison officers were quartered across the river, in the
Quartier Battant
, below the Griffon bastion, in the Champagney mansion, which Nicholas Perrot de Granvelle had built for his widowed mother as her dower seat. Fleetingly, he thought about the latest projected cost estimates that Faulhaber had provided for his new citadel and wondered if constructing the luxurious mansions had contributed to the Granvelle bankruptcy.

Besançon was not just defensible. It was beautiful. Residing here would be a pleasure. There were worse reasons for choosing the site of a national capital.

Bernhard glanced around, thoroughly enjoying the pageantry. Even a general could take a day off, now and then.

* * *

“Grand Duke of the County of Burgundy?” Kanoffski said to Poyntz. “Now, that’s a truly gemlike combination of words.”

“Why not, if it makes him happy? I understand that he set a lot of genealogists to work. It appears that he is legitimately descended from someone named Jean de Nevers who was count of this region a couple of hundred years ago.”

“Ultimately,” Kanoffski answered, “we all descend from Adam. How many other people now alive descend from this Jean de Nevers?”

“Dozens, if not hundreds. What difference does it make? None of the rest of them have a garrison in Besançon.”

“None of them are marrying a Tuscan grand duchess, either. Grand Duchess and Regent of the County of Tyrol. What odds will you give me that he picked it because he wanted to bring a title at least equal to hers into this marriage?”

“I’m putting my money on saying he picked it because it’s more grandiose than his brothers’ titles. A thousand USE dollars, if we can find some actual written evidence of what went into his decision, one way or the other, of course.”

* * *

“The time has come,” Bernhard said that evening. “Considering that one of my brothers is now the prime-minister elect of the USE and another is still Gustavus’ regent in the Upper Palatinate, it seems a propitious moment to see if I can pry an apology out of the old goat and get him to recognize my title and my conquests.”

“Apology? From the emperor?”

“I hear rumors that he apologized to John Hepburn, nearly two years ago. Shrewd move. The encyclopedias say that in the other world, Hepburn was so insulted by what Gustavus said about his Catholic faith that he switched over to the French also. In this world, though, he’s garrisoning Ulm for the USE. If Hepburn can get an apology, then so can I.”

Kanoffski wrote “apology” on the list he was making.

“If I am to concentrate on the challenges coming at me here in the southwest for the time being, which I think that I must, I need a, a
modus vivendi
with the USE.” Bernhard raised a bushy, nearly black eyebrow. “Not that I intend to let Gustavus guess that I need it. The whole matter must be presented as if I were doing him a favor.”

Kanoffski nodded and wrote
modus vivendi
on his list.

“I want de Melon present when we’re working out our offer, since Claudia left him behind to work out the details of our own agreement. I want that finalized—signed, sealed, and delivered—before I show my hand to Magdeburg.

“Then, I think, we need to talk to Sattler again. See if you can get him down here.”

Schwarzach, March 1635

“I can’t see that the assassinations in Grantville will have any direct impact on our concerns,” Bernhard said. “The up-timers I hired were very upset about the deaths, though. They requested permission to hold a memorial service. The chancellor radioed me for approval. I told him to go ahead, and make it a good one. Claudia’s up-time hires are all Catholic—not just Trelli and Abruzzo, whom she brought to Schwarzach, but all the rest—so they did a requiem mass in Bolzen with Urban VIII’s dispensation, but none of mine are Catholics. Still, I have to say that the Papists know how to put on a good show, so I got her to radio to the ‘Cardinal Protector’ in Magdeburg and obtain permission for the chancellor to roust them out in Besançon. The city got into the spirit of things. They produced chants, a procession, cloth of gold vestments, and waving banners for those two old Presbyterians.”

Poyntz snorted.

Moscherosch nodded. “Excellent publicity.”

“Next.”

“Brahe, and the SoTF forces from Fulda, are chasing through the Province of Upper Rhine, in pursuit of Butler, Devereux, Geraldin, McDonnell, and their dragoons. Ferdinand of Bavaria, the archbishop of Cologne, ran out of funds to pay them. Duke Maximilian has hired them for Bavaria, to replace Werth and von Mercy. They have to get across Swabia to reach Bavaria.”

The bushy eyebrow went up higher than usual. “So?”

“Horn has suggested coordination. He doesn’t want to see them reach Max. Neither, I presume, do we.”

“We don’t. Send Raudegen to Horn, with powers of attorney to act on my behalf. Make sure that the powers-that-be in Magdeburg are aware that sweetness and light are overcoming the powers of darkness in this matter.”

Von Rosen smirked.

* * *

“Tyrol insists that the Vorarlberg and other Habsburg possessions of Vorderösterreich are not negotiable. Additionally, at Grand Duke Bernhard’s death, if he and Claudia de Medici do not leave mutual heirs of their bodies, male or female, the Sundgau and Breisgau, now in possession of the County of Burgundy, will revert to her sons by the late Leopold von Habsburg, archduke of Austria and count of Tyrol.”