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FICTION

Mail Stop

by Virginia DeMarce

 

Home, Sweet Home
Frankfurt am Main, March 1633

Martin Wackernagel drew up his horse, first looking back at the route he had just completed and then forward toward the walls of Frankfurt am Main.

Via regia. Die Reichsstraße. There would never be anything to equal the Imperial Road. Sure, if you wanted to be prosaic, it was just one more trade route, a commercial connection between the great cities of Frankfurt and Leipzig and their fairs. It had been for centuries.

But it was more than that. He hoped that it always would be. Merchants, teamsters, journeymen looking for a new place to demonstrate their existing skills and acquire new ones. Crowned heads, princes of the church, pilgrims on their way to the great shrine of St. James of Compostella, Santiago, in Spain. Victorious soldiers who had triumphed and beaten soldiers in retreat. Unemployed soldiers looking for work, entertainers looking for audiences, peddlers, and beggars. Sometimes it was hard to tell them apart, but they all used the road.

Martin loved the road. He had been riding it as a private messenger for fifteen years, ever since he finished the apprenticeship that his father had forced on him and refused to go ahead and become a journeyman in the trade. Not that he had anything against Uncle Reichhard. He had been a good master, but he was a belt-maker. Belts were necessary, of course, but not very interesting.

So, then and now, he carried messages from Frankfurt to Erfurt via Hanau, Langenselbold, Gelnhausen, Wächtersbach, Soden and Salmünster, Steinau an der Straße, Schlüchtern, Neuhof, Fulda, Hünfeld, Vacha, Eisenach, and Gotha to Erfurt; then back again. Sometimes he had covered the further stretch to Weimar, Naumburg and Leipzig if there was no one available in Erfurt to pick up the rest of the run, but Frankfurt to Erfurt was his regular route. Or had been, until he started adding the leg that took him to the new city of Grantville, which sent out a truly amazing amount of correspondence.

He knew that all of this caused his mother a lot of distress. She recited with some frequency—every time he got back to Frankfurt, in fact—a lament that she was beginning to wonder if he would ever settle down and get married.

It wasn't as if, being a widow, she needed him to marry and make a home for her. She lived very comfortably with his older sister Merga and her husband Crispin Neumann. She just wanted him to settle down and marry. No special need for it—just a want.

She just could not understand why he loved the road so much.

Good Lord, Mutti, he thought. Do you suppose you could let it go just this once?

 

Mechanical Ingenuity
Bonn, Archdiocese of Cologne, March 1633

Arno Vignelli had something to sell. Of course. He was an Italian engineer. Most engineers were Italian. They made incredibly ingenious machines in Italy. Italians produced clever devices and then crudely set out to make their fortunes by selling them to that portion of Europe's population that lived north of the Alps.

Evrard Holmann's job, at the moment, included investment in new technology on behalf of Duke Ferdinand of Bavaria, Archbishop of Cologne. He shuffled through the papers on his desk. The man now standing in his office was the student of someone famous. Holman shuffled again. He had the information here somewhere, he was sure. He moved the pile in front of him to the side and snagged another one which should have the letter of introduction. Vignelli had also been to Grantville. He had built this particular device on the basis of something he had observed there.

Vignelli ignored Holman's paper shuffling and went on running through his spiel. "Then, at this 'museum,' I saw the machines which lie at the basis of my new invention."

"Museum?" Holmann raised his eyebrows at the unfamiliar term.

"It is, ah, like a cabinet of curiosities, but the size of a building. It is devoted to the history of the region where this Grantville came from. And since it was a region where people used many various and different technical devices, it is full of them. That is where I saw the 'mimeograph.'"

"They let you come and examine this freely, with no restrictions?"

"Well, not freely. There is a charge to visit the 'museum,' but it is really a quite small one. I could afford to return for several days in a row. They had a placard posted that indicated the costs. The fee is reduced for visits by groups of school children. Otherwise, as to 'with no restrictions,' yes. There were guards, but to prevent damage and theft. Not to prevent visitors from examining the exhibits closely."

"Very well. Go on."

"I saw this 'mimeograph.' It is not a press. It works on a very different basis, using 'stencils.' I thought that I could make one. With enough time and money and workmen. It would be difficult and very expensive to make, with much hand-fitting of metal parts, especially teeth, and the need for several springs, but it could be done."

"Expensive?"

"If I had tried to copy the 'mimeograph.' There was a lever to partly open the 'drum' so that it could grasp the 'stencil' for example. If the grasping foot did not come together precisely, the stencil would be torn loose and ruined. Many other complications. But I did not copy it. There was another machine, a 'hectograph' it was called. Much simpler, but calling for more complicated inks. I thought—if there were some way to combine these. That was when I saw the 'washing machine.' More precisely, when I saw the 'wringer' attached to the washing machine." Vignelli smiled.

"Wringer?"

"Two wooden rollers, fastened together and cranked by gears. The laundress feeds the wet clothing through them. The movement of the turning rollers moves the cloth through them; the pressure of the two rollers forces the water out of the cloth much more effectively than it can be wrung out by hand."

Holmann nodded. He could visualize how that worked.

"So," Vignelli beamed. "I thought. Take a tray, like the 'hectograph.' Run it through two rollers, one above and one below, as if feeding the cloth. But how to ink it? One more day, two more days, I came back and looked at them again and again. Then, on the third day, when I came in, I looked at the counter where the girl who took the fee I paid was standing. She gave me a receipt. She 'stamped' the date on it, with a mechanical device. It is quite delightful, and simple. I will have to make one some time."

"You are wandering from the point."

"Not really. To get the ink on the stamp, which transferred it to the receipt, she had a little tray, with a pad in it. Not something alchemical. Just a cloth pad inside the little metal tray, soaked with ordinary printer's ink. Boiled linseed oil and carbon black. She had that in a bottle. There was a hinged lid, so the pad could be closed at night so the ink did not dry out. When I asked her, she showed me how to ink the pad, just using a swab and letting it sink in. And then I knew. The hectograph tray, the inked pad—a thin silk covering is best, but fine linen such as is woven for ladies' handkerchiefs and collars will do—the stencil, the piece of paper on top of the stencil, another waxed sheet to protect the rollers from becoming inky, the whole thing moving back and forth between the two rollers of the 'wringer' until the paper is inked. Simple. Cheap. Anyone could make one—any decent craftsman, at least. It was like a divine revelation."

"Show me," Holmann said. "Archbishop Ferdinand invests in results, not concepts."

"See," Vignelli said after he had finished the first demonstration. "The operator can release or tighten the tension on the rollers. He can make a second pass if the ink is getting dry and the paper does not become dark enough the first time."

"I don't think that I believed you," Holmann said. "But it is clear. How many of these machines do you have available?"

"I have already completed ten. At least, my shop had completed ten at the time I began this journey and that was several weeks ago. I have five more almost finished and my assistants are in the workshop even as I talk to you here. I sold two—well, received orders for two—in Frankfurt on my way to Cologne. The eight available, I can deliver as fast as the parts can be transported, unless, of course, my head assistant, who left for Vienna the same day that I started north, has received orders there."

"Tell me about the 'stencils.'"

"They are not durable. You cannot print a large number of copies from a single stencil. The best ones that I have made, waxed silk, allow a hundred pages, perhaps. With good fortune, if the stencil does not wrinkle. Waxed paper will not make more than twenty-five copies, usually, before it begins to deteriorate."

"That doesn't sound good," Holmann complained.

Vignelli suspected that a skilled operator could get many more copies from a stencil—perhaps as many as a hundred from a paper stencil and a thousand from a silk one. But not all operators were skilled and presenting inflated claims to the dukes of Bavaria tended to have permanently fatal consequences for the businessman who presented them. The archbishop was a younger brother of Duke Maximilian. Much better that he should perhaps receive a happy surprise rather than an unhappy one.

"But think. They are simple, even if not durable. Once a traditional print shop somewhere—such as in Cologne—has created the form for cutting the stencil, it can make as many stencils as may be needed. If the shop producing the pamphlet or placard will need to make five hundred copies, then make five stencils. Make a couple to spare. They aren't that expensive. If you want the item copied in ten different towns, if it should be the case that the archbishop has bought ten of these copying devices, then make ten stencils. They are lightweight and easy to distribute. Why, they can even be sent through the mail, properly protected and packed."

"Better, but . . ."

"At need, it is even possible to make a stencil without a print shop. Just to copy words from a manuscript."

"How?"

"It is best done for large placards, but this way." Vignelli opened a box and tumbled a batch of multi-colored letters on the table. "The up-timers use the Latin letter forms as we prefer them in Italy, not the German Fraktur. These, I understand, were for children in their earliest years, so they are large. Such a treasure, but possibly not surprising. I was highly gratified to discover how many Italians reside in this Grantville. The letters had magnets in the back and could be arranged and rearranged on a magnetic board. I have removed the magnets, of course, for safe-keeping. They are in my shop."

"Which is where?"

"I have established myself in Bolzano. Bozen, you may call it, in the Tirol. The duchess has created a very favorable business climate."

"No wonder. The regent, Duke Leopold's widow, is a Medici," Holmann griped. "Damned family of Italian pawnbrokers, even if they have clawed their way up to Grand Dukes of Tuscany and given two queens to France."

"Not to mention a couple of popes," Vignelli answered mildly. "Let me show you how to use these letters to make a stencil. Of course, any craftsman can make such letters from thin wood. There is no need for them to be of this up-time material."

"You just carry them around to impress potential customers, then?"

"Of course. Now. First draw around them on the piece of paper you intend for your stencil. Then cut them out with a razor blade, quite carefully. Only then wax the paper. Otherwise, no matter how careful a craftsman may be, the wax cracks and the ink seeps through. If the wax does not coat the stencil completely, the paper remains permeable to the ink. We are experimenting with hand-stenciling smaller letters by pricking the paper with a needle, but . . ."

Holmann had made up his mind. "Hold that for my workman," he said. "You can explain the rest of it to him. The archbishop will take four of your machines. Is it possible to deliver them, ah, inconspicuously?"

"Certainly," Vignelli said. "They are easy to assemble and I have prepared a sheet of directions. When they are disassembled, no guard at a town gate will give them a second glance. If there were a need for easier passage through tolls and customs or other inspections, the parts can even be shipped separately."

"A need?"

"If, for example, there were some need for the archbishop to ensure the preparation of literature in such a city as Magdeburg, or if a partisan of the emperor who is residing in Nuernberg might need discreet access to a way to provide information to the people. I call it," Vignelli said proudly, "a 'duplicating machine.'"

 

News of the Day
Frankfurt am Main, March 1633

Martin delivered the bags he was carrying, saw to the stabling of his horse, and picked up the latest newspaper, fresh off the presses. Originally it had appeared weekly, but it came out twice a week now. You could buy it in every post office in Europe, of course, even those outside the CPE, but you got it first in Frankfurt, since that was where it was printed.

He stood there, looking absent-mindedly at the sales rack.

There were a lot of other newspapers, of course. You could buy those at the Frankfurt post office, too. Nuernberg, Augsburg, and Leipzig. Berlin, even. Since the beginning, since the day a baby avisa grew up to be a regularly circulated commercial newsletter, post offices and newspapers had gone together. Before the war, there had been four or five real newspapers—not just occasional broadsides—in the Germanies, all weeklies. Five years ago, there were a dozen. Before the war, all of them together had printed perhaps five hundred copies per week. Five years ago, perhaps five thousand copies per week. Now, since the Ring of Fire—especially since the main theater of war with its plundering and marauding armies had moved away from the central cities of the Germanies—there were probably two dozen weekly papers and a half dozen that appeared more than once a week. Twelve thousand issues per week, perhaps.

The rumor was that the new paper in Magdeburg might try to publish daily. He had picked up that gossip, as well as a newspaper, in Erfurt. Gossip was still usually a bit ahead of the printed news, especially when it came to things that might affect your job, so he dropped it into his conversation with Max Leimbacher who ran the newspaper concession. Someday, Max would return the favor. Then he headed for home.

* * *

Martin tossed the local paper on the table in his brother-in-law's print shop. "Saved you a trip," he said to the general direction of the back room and sang out a vendor's call. "All the latest news, guaranteed fresh. Notice, relation, and timely information concerning what has happened and occurred in Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, England, France, Hungary, Austria, Sweden, Poland, and Silesia, with items from Rome, Venice, and Vienna. Antwerp, Amsterdam, Cologne, Frankfort, Prague, and Linz, et cetera." He tossed the Erfurt paper, and any others he had collected on his route, onto the table after it. The men sitting around picked them up. That was the way it went with newspapers. They went to city councils, to monasteries, to subscription clubs in small towns, and even to village taverns. Well, occasionally to village pastors who tempted their parishioners to more diligent attendance at the weekly sermon by the bribe of getting to read the newspaper afterwards, but more often to village taverns. And, of course, to schools and libraries. Most Latin schools expected their students to keep up with the current news.

One of the men started to read the items in the Frankfurt paper aloud. Not that the others couldn't read, of course, but if someone read aloud, everyone else could join in the discussion.

The Frankfurt paper, as was now usual in the CPE, had the Roman god Mercury in the woodcut in the header. Personally, Martin preferred it to the Thurn and Taxis logo, which showed a regular courier from the imperial postal system, wearing an armband, riding a well-fed horse which he could change at each post-house, blowing a horn and overhauling a hang-dog private messenger on a worn-out nag.

Martin thought defensively that he was not hang-dog and he took good care of his horse. One of the up-timers in Fulda, the young soldier named Garand whom he had met at Barracktown while turning over some things to Sergeant Hartke's formidable wife, the Dane named Dagmar, had explained a joke to him, caused by a person saying, "I resemble that statement" rather than "I resent that statement." Martin felt strongly that he did not resemble the Thurn and Taxis statement about private couriers.

Merga, who doubled as the saleslady, came thumping forward from behind the counter to hug him. Merga was not only settled down but settling down. Much of the settling was landing on her thighs, which, as she laughed, were safely hidden under her skirts and petticoats, but some of it was also arriving in the vicinity of her chin and waistline. Crispin had been a good provider and she was starting to show it.

"Go upstairs and talk to Mutti," she said as she let loose of him. "Her rheumatism has been bad. She hasn't been down in the shop for a week."

Martin groaned. If Mutti had been sitting upstairs by herself for a week, thinking, rather than down in the shop working, where things happened that distracted her, he was going to get the whole drama, from prologue to epilogue.

No use putting it off.

* * *

After a few days home in Frankfurt, Martin started to realize that he might be forced to settle down whether he wanted to or not. Now wouldn't that make Mutti happy. The minute he did, she would start on the marriage end of the theme.

"I never wanted to be a mail carrier for the imperial postal system," he said to Crispin. As if Crispin didn't already know, but sometimes it was a comfort to be able to complain. "I don't want to be a courier for the Swedes. Or for the CPE, the way things are developing."

"Why don't you just keep riding on your own, then?"

"I'm not sure that I can. It will be one thing if they let the private messenger system die out naturally. It will be a lot different if the reformed CPE post offices attack the private couriers, physically, by force, they way they attacked the municipal messengers who worked for the city of Cologne, back when the Thurn and Taxis post office was set up there."

"Yes," Crispin agreed. "If the new CPE post office system turns out to be anything like the way the Thurn and Taxis run the imperial post, it won't appreciate competition. A monopoly is a monopoly, after all."

"If I have to work for the postmaster, being nothing but one little cog on a huge set of gears grinding away to move the mail all over the CPE, what kind of a job is that? What would be the joy in that?" Martin lamented to Crispin. "Riding back and forth, at top speed, over the same stretch of road, day in and day out? Never seeing anything but the inside of the postal station. If that happens, I might as well have stayed in Frankfurt and made belts for Uncle Reichhard."

"You don't have to ride a short route. Frankfurt is certainly one of the largest officia in the Germanies, if it isn't the biggest of all by now. It's not just a station for changing horses; it receives the mail, re-sorts it, distributes it out to a half-dozen different routes. If you could get on here, in central . . . ?"

"I don't want to, Crispin. I just don't. I want to be on the road. A man might as well be stuck in Frankfurt making belts as stuck in Frankfurt sorting mail."

* * *

That evening Martin sat on his bed. No use wasting the candle; he blew it out.

Thinking. Reminding himself of all the reasons why he didn't want to do what Crispin so clearly thought was the sensible thing.

For a century, already, the imperial postal system had emphasized speed and efficiency. "Public, regular, reliable, and rapid" as the advertisements read. Most post routes ran once a week—a few of the busier ones twice. The ideal span from one post stop to the next—from the perspective of a horse, at least—was from eight to ten miles (a mile being, of course, a quite variable concept from place to place). In the real world, where budgets were a factor, the routes of the imperial post, governed by the terms of a 1597 imperial proclamation, had post houses every fifteen miles or so where the rider handed the bags over to a new messenger and fresh horse. The rider stayed there overnight, picked up a set of bags that came in from somewhere else, and went back where he came from.

This distance was so set that people referred to it as "una posta." The main route from Rome to Brussels had ninety-six post stations; the one from Antwerp to Nürnberg not quite so many. Customers could buy printed schedules and maps of the routes, as well as fee schedules, at any post office. They were posted on placards in the offices, as well.

The point was that the businessmen in any town could rely on the regular arrival of the postal courier, blowing his horn to announce that he was there. It was scheduled. "Mail day" structured the life of the towns that had post offices. Learned men, merchants, bureaucrats, clergy, and ordinary people had all become accustomed to being able to send out their correspondence on time, carried by someone whose actual job was to get it where it was supposed to go.

The imperial post and the Swedish field post were built on the assumption that horses and riders could maintain the desired speed for only a limited distance without damaging their future usefulness. Wearing out a horse was fine for emergencies, when speed was of the essence. The military field post that van den Birghden ran out of Frankfurt for the Swedes now could get a message from Frankfurt to Hamburg in five days. Reliably. On the Imperial Road as far as Eisenach. Five days for two hundred fifty miles; twenty post stops where the letter was passed off from one horse and rider pair to the next. And a lot of tenacious negotiation between the postmaster and the rulers of all the various territories along the way to get the routes established and the stations set up, but now the mail left each city regularly, twice a week, in addition to the special letters that were carried by Swedish dragoons. Der Postschwede, people called those men. The "mail Swede."

That was an amazing achievement. Martin could see why a Swedish general might want to get a message from Frankfurt to Hamburg fast. Once it got to Hamburg, after all, it could go out to Stockholm by boat. Although now, with the famous up-timer radio, maybe they could transmit the essence of the matter that way and let the post riders proceed at a more reasonable pace. But a lot of urgent things still had to be on paper—documents with signatures and seals, bank drafts, commissions for military officers.

If there wasn't any emergency, however, it was a bad idea to wear out a good horse. Martin admitted that changing horses at a postal station was all right. A fresh horse was a good thing for any courier. But changing riders did not appeal to him. He wanted to keep going.

* * *

"Oh well," he said to Crispin over breakfast, "I'm riding out again this morning, so I won't have to worry about it for a couple of weeks."

"Do I need to smile nicely at your future bride while you're gone?" Merga asked.

Martin shook his head. "I'm escaping free and clear one more time. Mutti had a little list, but I managed to avoid meeting any of her candidates."

He jogged off toward the livery stable. Merga shook her head as she watched him go. Marty was nearly thirty-five, after all. It was time for him to think of settling down.

 

On the Road Again
Gelnhausen, late March 1633

Martin Wackernagel's mother had often predicted that the boy's curiosity would be the death of him. She had predicted it regularly, frequently, all the years that he was growing up. She still predicted it.

So far, it hadn't been. It was still with him, though. It caused him to try to learn everything he could find out about the towns and cities through which he rode along the Imperial Road.

Coming up from the valley of the Main River, through Hanau and Isenburg territory, he reached Gelnhausen. According to the histories, in another world—a world in which Gustavus Adolphus had been killed in November 1632—Gelnhausen, in the summer of 1634, had been so devastated and destroyed by raiding Croats sent by the imperials, that it became uninhabitable and uninhabited for a time.

In this spring of 1633, with the king of Sweden alive, the town sat here, safely tucked within the well-defended borders of the Confederated Principalities of Europe—the CPE. Martin's mouth quirked. Ambitious name, that—Confederated Medium and Small Principalities of North and Central Germany would be more accurate. Nonetheless, the trial Croat raid sent toward the miraculously arrived city of Grantville the previous fall had been so effectively turned back by the king of Sweden that it now seemed unlikely that the emperor's commanders would try any such large-scale razzia into the valleys of the Werra, the Main, and the Kinzig, even if they could place their light cavalry in a position to begin one. Martin wondered if any of Gelnhausen's city fathers had studied the up-timers' records and realized their good fortune.

In that other world, there had been a boy of eleven or twelve years old whose name was Johann Jakob Christoffel Grimmelshausen. He had grown up to write a novel, perhaps the most famous one written about these wars. Martin had asked, unobtrusively. Yes, the boy was here. What would he write now, if not the Adventures of Simplicius Simplicissimus? Would he write anything? It was as if all the foundations of the world were melting under him, Martin thought sometimes, and he could not predict the shape they would take when they became solid again.

One thing that he could still rely on in Gelnhausen was that David Kronberg would be hanging around the post office. David had been hanging around the post office for the past ten years—maybe a bit more. Whenever the mail came in, no matter what frantic efforts his parents made to keep him away, he managed to elude them. David did not care if it was a Thurn and Taxis imperial post rider or a Swedish dragoon or a private courier such as Martin himself. He loved the post office. He wanted to know what was in the news; he wanted to know the gossip.

Kronberg. Or Kronenberger, depending upon the mood of the clerk recording the event in question. Or David ben Abraham. He was a son of parents who were prominent members of the Jewish community in this small imperial city. It wasn't a ghetto, really—not a separate miniature town within a town such as existed in Frankfurt. A neighborhood. Distinctive, but a neighborhood.

Martin, curious as always, had asked questions. There had been a Jewish synagogue in Gelnhausen for at least three hundred years. The current building was fairly new, built only thirty or so years ago. David's uncle, a man named Meier, had worked on it. He was now a builder in Frankfurt. Curious, Martin had looked him up; had even gotten to know him, in a way. It was easier for him than it would be for most Gentiles. His brother-in-law Crispin's grandfather had been a convert. Convert, as the Lutherans saw it; apostate, as the Jews saw it. But Crispin still knew people in Frankfurt's ghetto—he had been able to direct Martin to Meier Kronberg, Meir zum Schwan.

Unlike Meier, David's parents had not left Gelnhausen for the big city of Frankfurt. They would not leave Gelnhausen; would not think about having their son leave Gelnhausen. They definitely did not want to think about their son becoming a postal courier. Even in the atmosphere of the new CPE, Aberlin Kronberg, otherwise known as Aberlin ben Naphtali and Aberlin zur Lilie, and his wife Bessle Zons were having a lot of trouble thinking new thoughts about employment opportunities for their son.

Martin had offered to talk to them; to tell them about the wonderful world of the Imperial Road and all of its possibilities. David had said rather glumly that he did not think it would do much good for a Gentile to talk to them. It might even make things worse.

Today, David was even more melancholy than usual. He was being fenced in, he protested. His parents were arranging for him to marry. They were friendly with the bride's parents. Samuel Wohl—Samuel ben Aron, Samuel zur Leuchte—and Hindle Kalman had contributed a lot of money for the beautiful interior furnishings of the synagogue, the splendid, modern, baroque cabinet in which the Torah was kept. They had contributed, like the Kronbergs, to the purchase of the land where the community had its cemetery.

They were, unfortunately, just exactly the kind of people whom David's parents hoped that his parents-in-law would be. And the Wohls would never, never, never accept his wish to become a postal courier. They would never even understand it.

"I'm doomed," David said.

"Married?" Martin Wackernagel asked. "You aren't old enough to get married. You can't even be twenty yet."

"For us," David said, "that's old enough. Old enough for our parents to bind us so tightly that we will never get away."

 

Up and Down
The Imperial Road, early April 1633

After going past the Fulda enclave of Salmuenster, Martin had stopped in Steinau for a couple of days. He usually did. Then, past Schluechtern, he looked up at the Drasenberg, which was one of the main causes of what the Grantvillers called "traffic jams" on the Imperial Road. A rider could climb it easily enough, although, if he was considerate, he would get off his horse and walk. Freight wagons, though, had to pause and let the local teamsters attach a Vorspann, an additional team or horses, to the vehicle. Single teams could not master the steep rise.

The first thing that travelers coming from Frankfurt learned about Fulda was that the abbey's teamsters, who provided the extra horses and collected the "escort fees," had a very crude vocabulary. So did the Hanau teamsters who often accompanied commercial wagons this far. The counts of Hanau thought that their employees had a right to bring the wagons across as far as Flieden, or at the very least up as far as the Landwehr, a border fortress that was protected by ditches, a wall, and impassible thorn hedges. Fulda's teamsters, at least when there were enough of them on the spot at the foot of the Drachenberg, disputed that. The constant arguments about just who had a right to pull freight wagons up this steep spot in the road were pretty typical of what went on at any territorial crossing in the Germanies. The Grantvillers planned to get rid of this in the CPE, someone had told him. He wished them luck. No matter how many lawyers tried to negotiate complicated treaties, in daily practice the issue was decided by the number of heads, the boldness of the local men, and their bodily strength. Even in the presence of high-born lords, teamsters rarely hesitated to enter into physical contests.

Oh, well. Up the hill, finally. Across some cattle meadows and into the forest. Past the dark ravine called the "murder grave"—Martin wasn't sure why. He had asked, but had only gotten legends. Top of the hill at the thorn field. Stop while a few wagons changed teams again. Across the "ass bridge" over Flieden Creek, past Neuhof following the old military road, and then climbing through forests again. Finally the view into the valley opened up. The road led down, crossed the Fulda River near Bronnzell, and led into the city on the right side of the river.

Martin had ridden this way so many times that he knew almost every rock in the road bed. Past Fulda, he came up to Vacha—one more crossing that was a bone of contention, this one protected by a castle and this time between the abbots and the landgraves of Hesse-Kassel. To get there from Fulda, a rider rode uphill and downhill to Huenfeld, with its walls, towers, establishment of secular canons, and a Gothic fortified church. Then up the Haune Valley to the top of the pass between Huebelsberg and Stallberg (extra teams required once more) and down to Rasdorf, where wagons traded the Geleitsknechte of their Fulda escort for a bunch of Hessians. Down hill to Geisa. Buttlar, and then up the valley of the Ulster. This was so steep that anyone could see the scrapes on the stony roadbed made by the skidding wheels of braking wagons and carriages. Then, following the little Suenna River, travellers crossed the Werra.

By the time he got to Vacha, he was really glad to see it. He stopped for a couple of nights. He didn't have any urgent deliveries this time. The same for Erfurt. Nobody had any deliveries for the new Grantville leg of the trip, so he turned around and headed back to Mutti and her complaints.

 

Round and Round
Fulda Barracks, late April 1633

Derek Utt, the military administrator for Stift Fulda, the abbey of Fulda and its subject territories, who had been installed by the government of the New United States, or NUS, when it assumed the administration of Catholic Franconia under the aegis of Gustavus Adolphus the previous fall, looked up from his consultation with Sergeant Helmuth Hartke. They were sitting on a picnic bench under a tree, just inside the gateway to the Fulda Barracks. He was thinking what on earth? The voice sounded like Nashville, Tennessee, but the rider certainly was not a veteran of the Grand Old Opry.

 
I've got heartaches by the dozen
Troubles by the score,
Every day you love me less,
Each day I love you more

 

"It's the courier," Hartke said. "He comes back and forth through here every couple of weeks. He'll be on his way back toward Frankfurt now."

He waved, shouting, "Anything for us?"

Martin Wackernagel turned his horse off the road. "Not a thing." He grinned. "Your paymasters use the official post office, but I can tell you that the payroll arrived safely and has been deposited with your Herr Stull in Fulda. I have newspapers from Grantville and Erfurt for those willing to pay. If you will just give me a few minutes to tether the nag and get him some water, I would not say no to a beer."

Sergeant Hartke performed the introductions.

Wackernagel had learned the song "from an old fiddler I met in Erfurt." Who had to be Bennie Pierce, Derek thought; there weren't any other old fiddlers from Grantville wandering around central Thuringia as far as he know. Wackernagel had been happily spreading it throughout the intervening towns and villages. Up-time, Derek thought, any politically correct anthropologist would have charged him with acutely negligent cultural contamination, at a minimum. Where would Grimm's Fairy Tales come from if, before someone like the Grimm Brothers got around to collecting them in the towns of the Kinzig Valley, they had been replaced by Hank Williams?

 

Frankfurt am Main

"How's business?" Martin asked.

Crispin came in from the work room, tossing a batch of pamphlets and placards onto the table next to the newspaper. "Wretched, wretched. One cat that gave birth to a two-headed kitten; two political satires in verse, both short; a new hymn; six advertising flyers, and a 'wanted' poster. How to make your own back-yard sundial. That's all the new orders that have come in since you left. The gossip is all about the new 'duplicating machines' that the Italian sold. Escher already has his running and Freytag is assembling the one he ordered.

"A lot of the guildsmen would like to see the 'duplicating machines' prohibited, of course." Crispin started to thumb through the packets that his brother-in-law had brought in. "But if you ask me, that's hopeless."

"Why?"

"They're simply too small. Even smaller than a normal press, and that can be loaded onto a wagon easily enough. What weighs us down as printers, if we need to move from one place to another, is transporting the lead type to set up a new shop—all the different fonts and different sizes; storage bins, everything. With these stencils, you can have the little machine anywhere and if a printer somewhere else makes the stencil and sends it to you, you don't need the type in your shop. Myself, if I could get hold of one, I'd develop a sideline in producing the stencils and selling them. It's a lot less weight when you ship one out than a bale of pamphlets or placards. Let the shop at the destination pay the freight for bringing in the paper and ink."

"They still need paper, don't they?" Martin asked.

Crispin gave him the same kind of look he would give a two-headed cat. "Of course, but paper is no problem. You can get paper anywhere. Just about every town in the Germanies has a paper mill. Think how much paper is just carried through the mail, for goodness sake. And used for newspapers."

 

Bonn, Archdiocese of Cologne

"Here are the stencils for your pamphlet and placard. I have drawn boxes where the woodcuts go, in the proper size. The woodcuts are separate; each one will have to be stamped into each copy separately. I couldn't get good enough resolution when I tried to include them in the stencils. That will take more time than all the remainder of the production put together. Each box that I have drawn is numbered. Each wood block is numbered. If your contact in Fulda messes up the production, that is his fault and not mine."

Cornelis van Beekx, formerly of Antwerp, forger of magnificently authentic documents and maker of extraordinarily filthy etchings, was now, at the request of Felix Gruyard, expanding into the production of stencils. It had taken him a couple of weeks to master the stencil technique in full, even with Vignatelli's personal guidance, but he was now confident that his print shop could produce as many as anyone chose to order from him in a quite timely fashion.

Gruyard smiled.

* * *

"You are sure the machine will be there in time?" Gruyard asked.

"As well as one can every predict anything," Holmann said. He pulled out his copy of the most recent edition of Aitzinger's Itinerarium Orbis Christiani, which visualized the European road system for people who planned to travel. For the past half-century, nearly everyone had recognized the Cologne reporter's atlas as a very handy book, especially when it was paired with his week-by-week summaries of current events. In a lot of ways, these had been predecessors of the modern newspaper of the 1630's. From Aitzinger until the present day, Cologne had become a center for the publication of aid-books for travelers, which meant regular employment for a lot of full-time map makers. The most popular travel guides were those which laid out the routes followed by the imperial post riders and the couriers employed by the imperial cities and various territorial rulers. By taking these as far as possible, as close to one's actual goal as they ran, a traveler could be sure of a comparatively well-guarded route, even in the middle of all the disruptions of war.

Drawing his finger along one of the routes, Holmann indicated the path that the duplicating machine could be expected to travel from Tirol to Fulda. "At the moment, there are no major obstacles to commerce. Through Switzerland as far as Basel; then down the Rhine as far as Mainz; then up the Imperial Road to Fulda. He shrugged. "If the machine is delayed, then the pamphlet will appear a couple weeks later than planned. Otherwise, fortune has been with us."

Gruyard nodded. "It was truly fortuitous that Hoheneck received the feelers extended by von Schlitz when he did. The connection with Menig at the paper mill is good. The one thing that I worried about, that might allow the authorities of the New United States in the Stift to trace the pamphlet to its origins, was the need for anyone who was to use the duplicating machine to purchase so much paper. How many people other than printers buy more than a quire at a time? But where is there naturally more paper than in a paper mill? They will tear apart every printing shop in Fulda searching for the plates or indications that the plates were there."

He smiled.

"So don't worry about your stencils." Holman waved his hand. "I have contracted with a private courier with a good reputation for their delivery. That will be more discreet than entrusting them to the Swedish-run postal system. His name is Martin Wackernagel."

 

Youthful Restlessness
Gelnhausen, late April 1633

"David Kronberg," Jachant Wohl said, "looks like a rabbit."

Her younger sister Feyel looked at her. "That's a horrible thing to say. You are probably his future wife, at least if our parents and his have anything to say about it."

"He does look like a rabbit, though." The third Wohl sister, Emelin, at ten, was young enough to announce that the emperor had no clothes on and still get away with it. "He would still look like a rabbit even if Jachant liked him."

"I've never seen a rabbit with black hair," Feyel pointed out. She was determined to play the part of a fair and impartial witness. She was even more determined to do this since her own marriage was already satisfactorily arranged and her betrothed husband did not resemble a rabbit in the least.

Emelin was not going to give up. "His nose is long. His cheeks twitch when he chews. He is short and round and has big ears."

"There aren't all that many people available for you to marry, Jachant," Feyel pointed out practically. "If the Kronbergs aren't rich, they are far from poor, and David will inherit from his uncles as well, since neither has children. 'Der dicke Meier' has to have quite a bit of money. He is master builder for the whole Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt."

Jachant rested her chin on her hand. "Fat Meier looks like a rabbit, too. It runs in the family. I doubt that our parents would want me to marry a man who looks like a rabbit if his parents were poor. David Kronberg would give me children who look like rabbits."

"Papa and Mama are concerned about your well-being," Feyel said. "There is nothing wrong with David Kronberg."

"He wants to be a postal courier. Who ever heard of a Jewish postal courier?" Emelin asked.

"Everyone in Gelnhausen has heard of the idea, at least, since he said that he wants to be one. Don't worry, Jachant. His parents will make him give it up." Feyel patted her sister's shoulder.

"They can make him give up doing it. Can they make him give up wanting to do it?"

Feyel frowned. "Jews do travel around. Think of famous families, like the Nasis. Or the Abrabanels."

"Sephardim. They don't count." Jachant tossed her head.

"Even if David ben Abraham Kronberg doesn't become a mailman," Emelin said, "he'll still look like a rabbit."

 

Barracktown bei Fulda, late April 1633

Derek Utt was doing his best to sound wise and fatherly. This was something of a trick, since he certainly wasn't old enough to be Jeffrey Garand's father. Maybe he could try the older brother ploy instead. However, he was the senior NUS military man in Fulda as far as rank went, and . . .

Maybe he could get Gus Szymanski, the EMT, to have the fatherly chat.

Cowardice in the face of . . . he thought.

Maybe the direct approach would be best. Straight to the point.

"What in hell do you think you are doing boinking Sergeant Hartke's daughter?"

"Gertrud?" Jeffie looked at him.

"Does he have any others?"

"Not alive. Gertrud had a sister, but she died when she was a kid."

Derek winced, remembering the little girl he had left up-time. Hannah had just started to toddle a few days before the Sunday afternoon he drove over to Grantville to go to the sport shop with his sister Lisa's husband Allan Dailey.

Jeffie hadn't stopped talking. "Well, about a month ago I was sitting on the table at the Hartkes' one evening. Sitting on the table, with my boots on the bench, spinning yarns, and Gertrud was sitting down on the bench. I looked down and I could sort of see into her cleavage, that white thing they all wear, she had it pretty low. And she was looking up. Her eyes were about the level of my knee and she kept on looking the length of my leg and on up to where my codpiece would be, that is if Americans wore the things and even most Germans don't any more, just the most old-fashioned old men, and the idea sort of occurred to me that she might not object, so the next chance I got, we wandered off and one thing led to another."

"If you get her pregnant," Derek said, "you are a married man. Trust me on this, Jeffie. She's not a whore and she's the daughter of one of the other sergeants in the regiment."

"Hartke hasn't said anything to me."

"Damn it, Jeffie, that's because he's assuming that if you get the girl pregnant, you'll marry her. It's the way it seems to work around here with respectable people, and what's more, if they have something like an age of consent, Gertrud can't be over it by much. I'm involved because in spite of the fact that you work with Hartke and have ever since he joined our forces after the fight at Badenburg, you haven't made much of a try at figuring out things like that—about how things work with the down-timers. And Hartke hasn't made much effort to figure out how they work with up-timers. But Dagmar damned well has and she gave me an alert on this. I can't afford to have you tick Hartke off. He's too important in keeping discipline among the down-time troops."

"Oh," Jeffie said. "Dagmar."

Sergeant Hartke was a Pomeranian. His wife—his second wife, actually—Dagmar was a Dane and had been the widow of a Dane when she married the sergeant. She regularly pointed out that when she got involved in all of this, the Danes were the glorious champions of the Protestant cause in this mess and the Swedes were nowhere in sight. Her first husband had been killed in the Danish defeat at Lutter am Barenburg in 1626.

In the five years between that and her marriage to Sergeant Hartke in 1631, Dagmar had survived five manless years in the train of various Protestant armies, fairly intact, by not missing a thing. She definitely had not missed the Garand-Gertrud connection. She had been very verbose about it, as Derek recalled.

"Errr," Jeffie said. "I know that Gertrud isn't a whore. She's living at home with her family. Actually, we haven't quite gotten to the point yet where I could get her pregnant. Almost. I'm working on it, so to speak, but there's not a lot of privacy going around. That first time we wandered outside, once we got there, I was wearing an overcoat and she was wearing a cape. We both had on hats and boots. I was wearing long johns; she had on six woolen petticoats. About all we managed to do was pull off our gloves and poke our fingers at some of each other's more interesting parts, so to speak, before we headed back in to the fireplace."

"Maybe," Derek said, "It will be a long winter." He could always hope.

"The ground is still pretty cold. There's still snow under the bushes. Not to mention that the leaves aren't fully out. When the weather gets a bit warmer and the bushes get bushier—then I'll get my hopes up. Other things are already up every time I see Gertrud."

Derek looked at him. Jeffie's grin was totally unrepentant. But . . .

"In that case," Derek said firmly, "I hereby order you to have a talk with Gus Szymanski tomorrow, if you haven't had one yet. Maybe he has some ideas about down-time techniques for delaying the probably inevitable."

Jeffie jumped up.

"I did not say 'dismissed.'"

"Sorry, Derek. I mean, sorry, Major Utt."

Derek sighed. Being military administrator in Fulda tended to be short on spit and polish. It was hard to impress a subordinate who somewhere deep down thought that you really were and really always would be just the little brother of one of his high school teachers.

 

Gelnhausen, May 1633

Riffa, daughter of Simon zur Sichel, looked out of the window. There was no especially beautiful scenery to keep her anchored there, but the view included David Kronberg, who was sitting on a bench and looking at the clouds.

She sighed. Some people said that David Kronberg was very odd. Most of the Jews in Gelnhausen said that David Kronberg was very odd. Riffa didn't think he was odd. Different, in an interesting sort of way, but not odd. If you had a husband who was a postal courier, he would come home bringing a lot of news.

Emelin Wohl, last week, said that he looked like a rabbit.

Riffa sighed. Objectively she had to agree that he looked sort of like a rabbit, but it was a really cute rabbit. The kind you wanted to take in your arms and cuddle, stroke its fur, feel its long silky ears. Snuggle it up to your bosom, where its little pink nose and whiskers could tickle your . . .

She pulled her thoughts back into order. Everyone knew that his parents and Jachant Wohl's parents were trying to make a match. Talk about having all the luck. Jachant would get to marry him, without even trying.

Not that there was the slightest chance that Riffa could ever marry him. There was no point in having impossible dreams. Her parents, Simon ben Itzig also called Simon zur Sichel and his wife, did not move in the same social circle as the Kronberg family. After all, Papa was just an itinerant peddler. It was the generosity of the Jewish community that allowed Mama and her to stay in Gelnhausen when he was traveling. They didn't really belong here. Or anywhere.

Often, she wondered if she would ever marry at all. Who would offer for her but some smelly, childless, old man who was hoping for better luck with a young, healthy, second wife?

* * *

David was looking at the clouds with one eye, visualizing pictures as they floated across the sky. With the other one, he kept monitoring the little cottage marked by a sickle over its front door. If he was really lucky, Riffa might come out to go to the well, or run an errand for her mother, or something. If she did, he could watch her until she turned the corner. Maybe he could even watch her come back.

For years, he had thought that the Thurn and Taxis postal station was the most interesting thing in Gelnhausen. For the past few months, the cottage with the sickle had given it competition.

Someday, perhaps, he would do a great and daring deed. Something heroic. After that, Riffa zur Sichel would smile at him. Would smile down at him. She was about two inches taller than he was.

Preferably, that would happen before his parents married him off to Jachant Wohl, because if it did not, it would not be proper for him to smile back.

* * *

It occurred to Riffa that if she offered to do the marketing, the route would take her past the bench where David Kronberg was sitting. Maybe he would look at her.

"Mama," she said.

He looked at her. Not directly, of course, but she could feel him looking at her.

He would be the father of such adorable babies, like plump, fluffy little bunnies. She could feel even now how delightful it would be to hold them in her arms.

Just before she turned the corner toward the marketplace, she managed to wiggle a little as she walked along carrying her basket. She hoped that he was still looking, but she could scarcely turn around and check.

 

Fulda, May 1633

Jodocus Menig looked up from his work, irritated. Someone was pounding on the door and he was not expecting any customers. His paper mill was on a stream about a half-mile outside the Fulda city walls. Most people with whom he did business had no reason to come out here; he met them in town to take orders and such. He made his own arrangements with a teamster to haul the deliveries and he knew that he did not have any scheduled for today.

Wiping his hands on his apron, he ran to the front. It was the courier—Wackernagel was his name—with the large envelope he had been told to expect. Menig signed for it himself. His wife was dead. As he signed, he thought that he would have to do something about remarrying. It was nearly impossible for a man to carry on a business if he didn't have a wife.

He didn't want a Catholic wife, though, and most of the marriageable women here in and around the city of Fulda were Catholic.

Jodocus Menig came from Schlitz. He had moved his business down to Fulda when the up-timers took over, because the Ritter, Herr Karl von Schlitz, had offered to invest some money if he would make the move. Schlitz thought it would be a good idea to have a man in Fulda who could keep an eye out on developments for him, now that the up-timers had opened the city to Protestants again. The Ritter had considered Menig a good choice. Fulda didn't have a paper manufacturers guild, so all he had needed to do was lease the site and get the permits to erect the buildings.

He'd ask the Ritter's steward. Bonifacius Bodamer would probably be able to think of some healthy, practical, widow from Schlitz, a good housekeeper with not too many children from her first marriage. Still of child-bearing age.

More children wouldn't be a bad idea. When Kaethe had died, she had left him with just the one boy. You couldn't rely on just one child to care for you in your old age. Not the way that things were these days. However clever a child might be, he could get sick and die. Here today, gone tomorrow. That was the way of children, even when they seemed perfectly healthy.

Menig suddenly realized one horrible thing. Now that the stencils had arrived, he would have to figure out how to use the duplicating machine.

At least, his son Emrich had already put the machine together. Emrich was just barely fourteen. He was only starting to learn the art of making paper. But with these new devices that were appearing all over the place, all the time it seemed, he was better than his father.

Emrich had figured out how to put the machine together.

Maybe Emrich could figure out how to use it.

Jodocus certainly hoped Emrich could figure out how to use the stencils. He was expected to produce several hundred placards and pamphlets within the next two weeks.

He was not a printer. He had never planned to be a printer. He had never asked for a duplicating machine. He had never asked to be involved in his lord's politics.

"Put not your trust in princes." He should have known that when the Ritter offered to invest in expanding the business, he would be calling in favors.

* * *

If the Ritter wanted pamphlets and placards, he would get them. Jodocus and Bonifacius agreed on this principle solemnly. They sat in the front Stube of the paper mill, drinking beer and discussing eligible widows. They solemnly assured one another that they were much too old dogs to be expected to learn new tricks, either of them.

* * *

"There has to be something that I just don't understand," Emrich Menig complained. "Every single time I run the tray through the rollers, to transfer the ink through the stencil to the paper, I get some ink coming through onto the top roller. Not a lot, but enough to make smears on the back of the next copy."

"You didn't complain when we were running off the placards." Liesel Bodamer, just two months older than Emrich, stopped cranking the rollers and came round to the other side of the duplicating machine.

"It didn't make any difference when we were doing the placards. They are just one-sided, to be tacked up to doors and posts and things. It doesn't matter if they have some ink smears on the back. But for the pamphlets, we're supposed to run the paper through on one side, let the ink dry, and then run it through on the other side. So if there are smears on the back of the first run, people won't be able to read the printing we put there during the second run."

"Let me look at the manual."

"If I have to release the top roller and clean it for every single sheet of paper we run, we'll never get these done on time."

"Give me the manual, Emrich!" Liesel swatted his arm. "Hand it over. Now."

"It doesn't say anything."

"Something has to be wrong with the instructions. They must have left something out."

Emrich stared at her, shocked to the core of his faith. "The manual for putting together the duplicating machine was exactly right."

"Maybe two different people wrote them. Maybe the printer just left a line out when he was setting type. There's all sorts of things that could go wrong. We just have to think."

"All right. I'll clean the top roller again while you're looking."

"While you're cleaning, think. If they really haven't told us how to fix this problem, you're going to have to figure out a way to fix it yourself."

* * *

"In this illustration, the picture of the duplicating machine doesn't match the text." Liesel handed the manual back to Emrich.

"Yeah." Emrich sat there for a while, staring at the duplicating machine.

"Are you expecting it to talk to you?"

"Sort of. Did we take everything out of the envelope that the stencils came in?"

"No. I've been taking them out one at a time, so we don't mix them up."

"Take a look, will you. Are there any extra sheets of the waxed paper, without any stencil holes in them?"

"No."

"I think we need a solid waxed sheet, on top of the paper we're printing, to protect the roller."

Liesel looked. "I don't know if that's what the picture was supposed to show, but I think it would work. It's not as if you have a paper shortage around here. Do you have any wax?"

"Some candle stubs, probably. Wherever Vati puts them to give back to the candlemaker when we buy more."

"Let's look in the kitchen."

Emrich didn't know his way around the kitchen very well. It took quite a while to find a flat baking pan with edges high enough to melt a layer of wax in it. They never did find one large enough to lay a whole piece of paper flat.

"We'll have to do it part at a time," Liesel said. "Where's your fire-starter? I need to melt the candle stubs."

Two hours later, they determined that putting the extra sheet of waxed paper on top of the tray did keep the roller clean.

They were also getting hungry.

Their fathers were getting drunk. More precisely, had already gotten there.

"Do you have anything to eat, here?" Liesel asked.

"Bread, but it's a little moldy. Sausage, kind of dried out. And Papa won't like it if we eat it up and don't leave any for him."

"Well, ratzen-fratzen-snatzen-matzen to him. Here." Liesel dug into her pocket. "I have a couple of Heller. Run over to Barracktown and ask Sergeant Hartke's wife if we can have some eggs. She has three laying hens as well as the pullets, I know, because she bought them from Bachmann's widow. We already started the fire to melt the candle wax. I'll cut up the sausage and soften it in boiling water while you're gone and try to scrape the mold off the bread and toast it over the fire. I can make an omelet with sausage and toast cubes in it."

* * *

"What do you suppose those children are doing?" Dagmar asked a few evenings later. "Emrich Menig has been over here every noon for the past four days asking to buy something to eat. Doesn't Menig feed him? And why is Liesel there?"

"Bodamer is there, too," Jeffie Garand answered. "I've seen him around. Menig must have a big order on hand. They're probably too busy to pay any attention to the kids."

He looked at Gertrud and winked.

"Perhaps we should go outside and take a stroll up in the direction of the paper mill, just to check that they are okay."

They got all the way up there, knocked on the door, and were admitted by Liesel, who said that everything was all right, thank you. She seemed to be telling the truth, so they went back at a leisurely pace that included a couple of detours.

* * *

"I think," Liesel said, "that it would be better to stamp the woodcuts into the squares before we fold the pages of the pamphlets and sew them together."

"Sew them together?"

"Just in and out with the needle and then knot the thread on the outside. It doesn't have to be fancy. That's what keeps pamphlets from falling apart."

"How do you know?"

"Lorenz Mangold, the councilman from Fulda, gave my Papa another pamphlet while he was in Fulda yesterday. He brought it back and was showing it to your Papa. Mangold got it from somewhere else. It's printed, I think, but he wants your Papa to make stencils and make more copies of it for him. It's sewed together like that. I can't think of any other way to keep the pages from falling apart. Mangold is coming out here tomorrow, Papa said."

"No," Emrich groaned. "No. Papa isn't going to make stencils. Papa isn't going to make pamphlets for Mangold. Liesel, we—you and me—are going to be cranking this duplicating machine until the day we die."

"Well, clean it up now. We can stop cranking until we finish stamping this batch. And pull the tray out. We'll have to use the ink pad in it for stamping the woodcuts, because they didn't think to send us a separate one."

* * *

"Emrich?" Liesel sounded a little doubtful. She was a country girl and quite familiar with the way that animals mated.

"Umm?"

"What the snake with the forked tongue is doing there, in the woodcut showing the woman Clara and the nun named Salome and the abbot. Is that possible?"

Emrich took stock of his limited knowledge of male anatomy, both human and serpentine. "I don't think so. I'm pretty sure not, even."

"That's what I thought. Is there any more of the sauerkraut left?"

 

Gelnhausen, June 1633

"It's not doing any good, Uncle Meier. Honestly. Thank you for coming, but it isn't helping."

"David," his father said, "it is not your place to be talking. The family is consulting about your future."

His uncle Salman ben Aron, called Samuel zur Krone, frowned a little and started to speak. His wife, Aunt Daertze, not just Aunt Daertze because she had married his uncle but because she was Daertze Zons, his mother's sister, put her hand on his arm to hush him.

"He has a right to some voice in his own future," Uncle Meier said.

"Not when the future he wants is so unimaginably and incomprehensibly wrong-headed." Samuel Wohl was sitting next to David's father. "The very idea that you would even consider letting him apply to become a postal courier is ridiculous."

Then Jachant Wohl was sitting there. Then her mother. Her mother and his mother, who was next, had their arms linked together.

They were all agreeing.

Jachant opened her mouth. "I refuse to even consider having a husband who would spend so much time as a vagrant."

"A postal courier is not a vagrant," David protested.

"David," his father said. "It is not your place to be talking."

"A postal courier is not a vagrant," someone else said. That was Zorline Neumark, his Uncle Meier's wife. "And they make reasonably good money. I know that Crispin's brother-in-law does."

The row of people on the other side of the table glared at her. Crispin, the grandson of the apostate. His grandfather had changed his name from Neumark to Neumann. How could Zorline admit that she still spoke with that branch of the family?

They all thought it. Hindle Kalman, Jachant's mother, said it.

Der dicke Meier defended his wife.

Jachant opened her mouth again. "You look like a rabbit, Meier ben Aron. And so does David Kronberg."

Her parents stared at her.

"It's true."

Everyone stared at her.

Except David, who took the chance to leave the room.

* * *

"He's leaving," Zorline Neumark told Hindle Kalman. Zivka, the wife of Simon zur Sichel, stood quietly in the back of the shop, listening. "David. Today. He says that he is going before he has an irretrievable fight with his parents. Meier suggested that he should come to Frankfurt with us, but he refuses to become another point of contention between brothers. He says that he is going to Fulda. So that is what your daughter Jachant and her runaway tongue have accomplished for us."

"To the up-timers?"

"He says that according to their 'constitution,' a religious test for holding public office is forbidden. He is going to apply to work as a postal courier there, somewhere in the New United States. Just walk in and apply, without even a letter of introduction."

Zivka had not missed the direction in which her daughter Riffa's eyes sometimes wandered. She went home.

"Oh," Riffa said. "I think that's the bravest and most daring thing that I ever heard of any man doing."

"I," Zivka said, "am going for water. After that, I may visit the bath. I certainly will not be back for two hours at least; possibly three."

* * *

"Riffa," David said. "Why are you here? Outside of the walls?"

He had never been so close her. He dreamed about her, but he had never approached her, because he knew that his parents would never agree that he could have her honorably, under the canopy. So he should not look. Even though he had looked, of course.

"I wanted to say something to you before you left."

"What do we have to say to each other?"

"I wanted you to know that I would be proud to be married to you. Even if Jachant Wohl will not. I just thought that I would like you to know that before you went away."

Now he looked up.

"Jachant Wohl won't take you, you know. Not if you leave. Her parents won't let you have her, either. Have you thought what you are doing? She's the best match in Gelnhausen. Pretty. Rich."

"You're prettier." The tone of David's voice carried full conviction.

Riffa had been about to say something else. Her mouth had been open. After a few seconds, she closed it, trying to remember what she had planned to say.

"Not richer. Is it true that you are going to the New United States?"

"To Fulda, yes. To talk the up-timers there. I'm pretty sure that I can't get a job with the municipal couriers here in Gelnhausen. The messengers are all one another's relatives. They look out for each other. But I've spent enough time watching, all these years. I know as much about what they do as anyone could who hasn't actually done it."

"All by yourself, someone said. Without even a letter of introduction."

"I'm not quite that foolhardy, no matter what some people think. Martin Wackernagel, the courier, gave me a recommendation to a Major Derek Utt. Wackernagel is acquainted with some of the people there."

"There's no Jewish community in Fulda."

"I know."

"How will you live, then?"

"Without one, I guess."

"Have you ever talked to my father?"

"No. Should I have?"

"He's a peddler, you know. That's why families like yours look down on him. After the Jews were expelled from Hanau in 1592, my grandfather went peddling. Unvergleidet, without a charter of protection from any Christian lord. My father did, too. When the duke let the Jews come back in 1603, my grandfather and father didn't come back. They kept peddling, from Denmark to Switzerland. Not far east, but sometimes west into Alsace. I was born on the road. There was no mikvah for my mother to cleanse herself in forty days. Not for over a year. I don't remember it well. I was eight when he obtained permission for my mother and me to stay in Gelnhausen when he is traveling. You could have asked him, some time when he was here. Asked him what it will be like for you now."

David looked at her. "Even if you don't remember it, you must have heard them talking. Would you live that way?"

"If I were with you," Riffa said. "If I could go to Fulda with you. . . . In the New United States, I have heard, we do not need to be vergleidet. Or, we are vergleidet by their 'constitution' itself, and not by any prince."

David looked at her with some surprise.

"My father brings home newspapers."

"When I get a job there, as soon as I can, I will come back for you. What will your parents do when you go with me?"

Riffa shook her head. "I don't know. Come with us, perhaps."

"That would be nice."

She smiled down at him. Then she went back home to the cottage marked with the sickle and he went to Fulda, invisible fireworks bursting within his head.

 

Ups and Downs
June 1633
Schlitz

Bonifacius Bodamer was standing outside his grist mill, waiting for the mail.

It was Martin Wackernagel's opinion that Bodamer was usually standing outside his mill waiting for something, while his men did the heavy work inside. Maybe he had worked harder at an earlier stage of his life, when he was a mill hand rather than a mill owner. In any case, he also served as steward of the Ritter, Karl von Schlitz, along this part of the route. To get from Eisenach to Fulda, a person went through Schlitz. That was just how the road ran.

This morning, Bodamer had other men with him.

Wackernagel perceived signs of rank. Just as a precaution, rather than simply handing the packet over to Bodamer, he pulled up his horse, dismounted, and bowed with what he hoped was the appropriate amount of respect for whomever they might be.

The two older men ignored him. The two younger men gave him a look which said that they were willing to ignore him now that he had made a reasonably appropriate obeisance, but would not have ignored him if he had failed to do so.

There were a lot of people like that around.

The two older, unidentified, men were chuckling to one another. Bodamer chuckled with them, obsequiously. He forgot to take the packet of mail that Wackernagel was still offering to him.

Liesel, Bodamer's daughter, came out of the mill and took the packet.

"May I water your horse?" she asked.

Wackernagel was still dismounted. "I would be grateful, ordinarily, but this monster is a bit frisky. I'm afraid that the millrace coming out of the pond is likely to spook him, so he will have to wait for a while."

"We have a barrel and leather bucket, right in the back of the building."

"Angel of mercy." He bowed to the girl with a flourish. "Show me where your barrel is, if you would be so kind, and I will lead him around."

"Who is with your father?" he asked once they were safely out of sight.

"Herr von Schlitz, our ruler, with his two sons."

That explained the arrogance.

"The other man, the one in green, is Lorenz Mangold. He is a city councilman in Fulda. He has been here several times, lately, talking to my father."

The chuckling that had been going on in front of the mill expanded into uproarious laughter.

"Something's funny."

"It's a pamphlet," Liesel said. "A satire. They are enjoying it a lot."

By the time they were done with the horse, the knight and his two sons were gone. Mangold was still standing there, waving some pieces of paper at Bodamer.

There was no reason for Wackernagel to go back and talk to them. The only words he heard were, "I wrote this one myself and I am very proud of it. I'll be happy to cover the costs, given how reasonable they are turning out to be."

 

Barracktown bei Fulda

At supper time, Martin turned in to the Hartke cottage. Dagmar the Dane always picked up anything he had for Barracktown when he came by. She always fed him, too.

A certain scurrilous pamphlet was the topic of the day.

"I tell you," Dagmar was saying. "According to my husband, Mr. Wesley Jenkins, the civilian administrator, was truly furious. He ordered all the placards torn down and sent soldiers to Neuenburg to bring the members of the Special Commission back to Fulda."

"Why so angry?"

"It showed one of his staff in a scandalous position with the abbot of Fulda. And named her."

"Ah," Wackernagel said. "Yes, I can see that. Was a military escort really warranted, though?"

"Maybe not. Even probably not. Most of the time, the roads here are fairly safe now. Although, just yesterday, Helmuth's daughter Gertrud went into Fulda itself and was accosted by the older son of Ritter von Schlitz."

Wackernagel frowned. He had seen that man just this morning, up at Bodamer's. "Were his father and brother with him?"

"In Fulda? I do not know. Not, certainly, at the time when he called Gertrud a slut and soldier's whore and pointed to the placards saying that the same fate waited for her. Other people in Fulda started pointing at her and calling her the 'up-timer's whore' too."

"Then?"

"Then Captain Wiegand came along with some of the Fulda militia and took her into the Ratshaus," Jeffie Garand said. He had his arm around Gertrud's shoulders. "She stayed there until the day was over and came back home with her father. According to Wiegand, von Schlitz was angry—tried to draw his sword on the captain. But the militia had other more urgent assignments, so they couldn't stop to deal with him the way he really deserved."

"Exactly what," Wackernagel asked, "was this placard about?"

Dagmar produced one. She had several. The soldiers had obeyed the orders to tear them down, which did not mean that they had destroyed such entertaining reading matter. And, in any case, they could be used to paper the walls of the cottages. The more layers of paper a woman pasted up on the wall, the fewer drafts would come through in the winter.

She had several copies of the pamphlet, too. She gave Martin a couple. He tucked them into his saddlebags.

* * *

They were about to start eating. Whether Sergeant Hartke was home yet or not, a meal could be kept warm only so long. A minor riot appeared to break out by the entrance to the compound. Jeffie jumped up and ran out; then came back with Hartke.

"I finally threw that sutler out," the older man was saying. "He's been trying for weeks to overcharge really drastically on the thread and notions for making the rest of the new uniforms and I've already warned him three times. Tell everyone tomorrow, Dagmar. He's not to be allowed back. Have some of the women take everything out of his cottage and throw it on the ground just outside the entrance. If he wants it, he can come and haul it away. If he doesn't bother, then it's free pickings."

The conversation meandered back to the scandalous pamphlet and stayed there all through the rest of the meal.

Wackernagel headed back down the road. There would still be a couple of hours of daylight and he didn't want to waste it.

* * *

Gertrud Hartke and Jeffie Garand wandered out of the compound, up in the direction of Menig's paper mill. They had discovered a rather nice stand of bushes there a couple of weeks before.

"Jeffie," Gertrud asked. "Can men really do all the things that those woodcuts in the pamphlet showed?"

"Not, um, precisely. No."

She didn't say anything.

"If you would really like to know what we can do, I'd be glad to demonstrate the whole procedure, so to speak. Think of it as a lesson in up-time scientific method. The hands-on experimental approach to finding out."

Gertrud thought about it. Up till now, she had really sort of been teasing Jeffie. He had made it so plain what he wanted from her, but at the same time he had been so unbelievably well-mannered about it, that she couldn't resist teasing a little. But. . . . If all those people in Fulda already thought that she was a soldier's whore, why shouldn't she be one? Especially his?

"Okay," she said.

* * *

"Gertrud," Jeffie said. "You know what?"

She shook her head no. It was too dark to see, but he felt her hair move against his chin.

"Last winter, Derek—Major Utt, that is—said something. He said that if I got you pregnant, I was a married man."

"Oh."

"I'm not as forgetful as people sometimes think I am."

Gertrud snuggled in. She wouldn't have minded being a soldier's whore. Not really a lot, at least if Jeffie was the soldier. There were plenty of them in Barracktown. But a soldier's wife would be better. She wondered how long it would take for her to become a married woman.

 

Gelnhausen

Martin Wackernagel found it odd to pull into the post station in Gelnhausen and not see David Kronberg waiting. He finished his business and prepared to start out.

There was a young woman standing outside.

"You are Wackernagel?"

"Yes, that's me."

"Have you seen David Kronberg?"

"I passed him at Neuhof. He was heading for Fulda, just as he planned."

She smiled. "Do you know where he will be staying, in case my father might wish to find him?"

"I told him to stop at Barracktown. Sergeant Hartke just threw out one of the sutlers, so there's a cottage standing empty. I expect he can stay there a few days until he finds a job. If David's already gone when your father gets there, tell him to ask for Dagmar. That's the sergeant's wife. She'll know where he is."

Riffa went home and talked to her mother. A sutler thrown out. A cottage. Zivka went to bed thinking. Could she afford to wait for her husband to come home? A sutlery. A permanent business for an honest man. A home, perhaps.

 

Hanau

"Ask him in person," Meier zum Schwan had requested. "I've written a letter for you to take, explaining the details. But please deliver it in person and tell him how urgent it is for me."

So here he was, talking to a rabbi. Martin Wackernagel smiled to himself. At least he knew the history. Jews had settled in the county of Hanau long ago. About four hundred years ago, probably. They had been expelled not long ago, in 1592. Then Count Philipp Ludwig II came into power in 1603 and he changed it again. He invited Jews back to his capital city—only wealthy Jews, to be sure, but Jews. He let them build a synagogue; he issued a charter defining their legal status and protecting them. The community had grown steadily. From ten persons in 1603 almost fifty families now.

Including the rabbi. Der dicke Meier wanted him to come to Gelnhausen to arbitrate the dispute within the Kronberg family.

"Isn't it a bit late?" Martin had asked.

"No. That's why David left when he did. Before it became too late; before someone said something that could not be retracted. Though Jachant Wohl came perilously close with her words about vagrants."

* * *

"Yes," Menahem ben Elnathan said. "Yes, I will go to Gelnhausen."

Wackernagel looked at the man. He wasn't young. He did not look particularly strong, either. "If it can wait for a week," he offered, "I will stop here on my next trip outbound and go with you to Gelnhausen. David Kronberg isn't there in any case. He has gone to Fulda."

"I would not refuse your offer," the rabbi answered. "It will still be necessary to deal with all the others involved in the debacle."

"I brought your newspaper, too," Wackernagel said.

The rabbi picked it up and shook his head. "Useful, but so predictable. It's been the same pattern for years. Almost everything concerning the Ottoman Empire comes through Venice. Vienna sends news about Hungary, the Balkans, and the Turkish wars. Nearly all the articles with information about the Spanish possessions in southern Italy, Spain itself, Africa, Latin America, and the Philippines comes through the imperial post office in Rome. If it pertains to England or France, it probably came through Antwerp although, possibly, now that the Swedes have a post office there, through Hamburg. Cologne gathers the news from the northern Netherlands and from the Germanies themselves, although that is now somewhat counterbalanced by the efforts of the postmaster in Frankfurt itself. A person has to read every story with an eye to who provided the information and how it is slanted."

He looked up hopefully. "Do you have unofficial gossip?"

Wackernagel offered a summary of the scurrilous pamphlet that had recently been circulated in Fulda.

"That is an unusually specific attack. Much of the material that has been sent to me recently is more generic in nature." Menahem ben Elnathan showed Wackernagel some examples of the anti-Semitic pamphlets that had been circulating in the CPE.

"Look," Wackernagel said. "Most of the pamphlets that you have bear no resemblance to the one in Fulda. But these two have a similar typeface and illustration style. I don't think that I have ever seen this typeface before."

"They are similar in another way," ben Elnathan observed. "Most of the pamphlets are general attacks. But you say that the two women mentioned in the Fulda exemplar are real." He picked up one of the other pamphlets. "As Rebecca Abrabanel, the wife of Michael Stearns, is quite real."

"I've never seen her," Wackernagel said, "Rebecca Abrabanel, that is. Or either of the Fulda women, but the up-timers in Fulda say that the face on the image of Clara Bachmeierin was a quite good likeness."

"Nor have I seen Rebecca Abrabanel. But something concerns me. The typology of Rebecca as the deceiver, deceiving Isaac into extending the blessing to Jacob rather than Esau, would not, I think, be the first thing that would spring into a Gentile's mind."

"If I could borrow that," Martin said, "I could show it to my brother-in-law. He's a printer; he might see something in it that we don't."

"You can borrow several. I'm not likely to run out."

 

Once More, with Feeling
Frankfurt am Main, June 1633

"What do you think of them, Crispin?" Martin asked.

His brother-in-law looked down at the pamphlets.

"You want to know if I think they're nasty? Loathsome? Fetid?"

"I want to know if you recognize anything about them. There's no printer's logo of any kind; not even an imaginary location and forged name of a printing house. No date of publication. I can tell that much for myself, but I'm not a specialist. You are."

"Let me look at them in the morning. In the daylight."

* * *

"I don't think they were printed."

"Crispin, they're lying on the table right in front of you. Of course they were printed."

"Umm, um. Look at this. It's printed. I printed it right here."

It was a neat pamphlet, full of illustrations, advising an expectant father how to build nursery furniture in his spare time. Self-improvement was the bread and butter of the small printer.

"Now, this one. Escher put it out last week. How to Make Beer at Home."

Martin picked it up.

"And this one. It's from Freytag. Sample Letters to Government Officials. Both of these have the place and printer identified. They're trying to make money, after all. But just compare the pages."

Martin did not have much luck. Crispin patiently showed him the difference, point by point.

"I think these pamphlets you brought, both the Abrabanel one, which you say that according to ben Elnathan came from Magdeburg, and the one that showed up in Fulda, were produced on these new 'duplicating machines.'"

"That means?"

"I tell you, Martin, these new stencil systems will be running small printers out of business. If I don't manage to get hold of one of these 'duplicating machines' pretty soon, my own business is going to fold. It's not as if I make my money printing large editions of thick academic books. And Escher so far hasn't even let slip the name of the man he bought it from."

"Put an ad in the paper," Martin suggested.

"For what?" Merga asked. "Crispin isn't trying to sell something."

"Say you want to buy one. Escher and Freytag may not want to tell the rest of you where they bought them, but I'd say it's pretty likely that the maker would like to sell more."

The expression of Merga's face became quite predatory. "I'm going down to the post office right now." Which she did.

"While she's gone . . ." Crispin said.

Martin looked up. It wasn't like Crispin to sound so hesitant.

"This pamphlet that the Gelnhausen rabbi loaned to you . . . the one naming Rebecca Abrabanel . . ."

"Yes."

"I don't even like to suggest it. Jews get enough trouble in this world without my adding to it. But the way that it is written. I can't help but wonder about the possibility of an apostate—a convert—writing it. First generation—one born and educated in Judaism. That pamphlet, and some of the others the rabbi had collected. They rely quite a lot upon Talmudic tropes. If not an apostate, then perhaps a university-educated Hebracist."

"Either possibility is less desirable than the other."

"You might just mention them to the rabbi, though. Rabbis are trained to think their way through unpleasant possibilities. That's part of what they do."

* * *

He couldn't leave without going upstairs and saying goodbye to his mother. Or he could, but he would regret it later.

"About settling down," she was saying.

"Look, Mutti," he said patiently. At least he made the effort to sound as if he were saying it patiently.

"It isn't just that I like being on the road, though I do like being on the road. I like it a lot. But working as a private messenger is a lot less subject to political vicissitudes than working for the imperial postal system used to be. Or, for that matter, than working for the Swedish postal system is now."

She looked skeptical.

"I wasn't dependent upon Johann van den Birghden's favor to get my job, which is just as well. I sort of doubt that van den Birghden would have hired the son of a man who worked for his main rival."

That was true enough—something that his mother couldn't argue with. Van den Birghden was not only the postmaster but also the newspaper publisher. It was the Frankfurter Post-Avisen. The only one, now. Martin's late father had worked as an itinerant salesman for Egenolph Emmel, a bookseller and van den Birghden's rival newspaperman. He had started the Frankfurter Journal in 1615.

Then van den Birghden had come to Frankfurt to run its newly established central post office for the Thurn und Taxis in Brussels. In 1617 he had founded the other paper. Emmel sued. In the course of the litigation, Birghden asserted that postmasters had a legal right to a monopoly on publishing newspapers.

"I've stayed out of the postmaster's way," Martin continued. "Van den Birghden is a busy man. Reminding him that my father ever worked for Emmel would not be a clever move. Even as a private courier, I have to work with the post offices, but it's not hard for me to avoid him. An ordinary person hardly ever has any reason to encounter the head of the postal system, especially not now that he is so busy establishing new routes. He's speeding up the field post system for the Swedish army. He's setting up alliances with the other postmasters working for the Swedes such as Wechlen in Leipzig and Stenglin in Augsburg. He's trying to speed up the links from Mainz to Hamburg and from there to Stockholm."

"Every one of those," his mother answered, "offers an opportunity for a man who is ready to settle down."

She looked at him.

"But," she said, "if you will not, perhaps you will not. Nonetheless, you could get married even if you continued to ride the Imperial Road. It is not likely, now, that Crispin and Merga will ever have children. I want to be a grandmother before I die."

He fled down the stairs. Mutti's new thought could be dangerous. Never, never before, had she separated the ideas of "getting married" and "settling down." Always before, one had gone with the other.

 

The Wheels of the Gods
July 1633
Gelnhausen

It wasn't pleasant, Zorline Neumark thought. The community had not just split since David Kronberg left. It had shattered into a dozen pieces. It wasn't clear that it could ever be put back together. The only people who didn't seem to be involved, one way or another, were Zivka zur Sichel and her daughter, who had kept completely out of it.

Though they would probably be drawn in once Zivka's husband Simon came back from his current trip. Whenever he was in Gelnhausen, he made up part of the minyan.

Now, though, the Wohls were not speaking to her husband. Salman and Daertze were trying to keep the peace between Meier and Abelin. Some of the Zons in-laws weren't speaking to any of them. The parents of Feyel Wohl's betrothed were said to be having second thoughts after Jachant's very unsuitable statements. Feyel and her betrothed, who really did want to marry one another, now blamed Jachant. Hindle was shrewish.

Zorline was very glad to see the arrival of Menahem ben Elnathan. In a way, she was glad to see him riding with the Gentile courier. It sent a signal that Samuel Wohl, parnas or not, would not have things all his way. The president of a Jewish community was not a dictator.

* * *

"He's back," Riffa reported to her mother. "The courier. He brought the Hanauer rabbi, then went to the post office again."

"Get your basket, then. I have hired the teamster to come for the rest of it the day after we have left. He has the key to the lock. The current rent we have paid for the cottage with the sickle expires the day after that. We will follow the rider to Fulda."

 

Barracktown bei Fulda

"Can you believe it?" David Kronberg asked earnestly. "It was a competition, but still. Only forty-two hours from Berlin to Hamburg. They say that the Brandenburg messengers are regularly covering Königsberg-Berlin in four days, now; Berlin-Cleves in six days when there aren't any armies in the way."

Three or four other post riders were gathered at the table, talking shop.

Not that David was a post rider, exactly, although he did have a job. He had happened to arrive in Fulda in the middle of a dispute between the NUS administration, the Swedes, and the city fathers over whether the city gates would be opened to allow passage of post riders in the night, since the main road led right through the city and the post office and change station with the remounts were inside the walls.

Since the city fathers would not budge from their stance that any proper set of gates remained closed from sunset to sunrise, the Swedes and the NUS moved the post office to Barracktown and surfaced a riding path around the city walls. David had ended up as a postal clerk, accepting, sorting, bagging, and routing the mail.

Since the up-timers had made this suggestion right after his first attempt to ride a horse a diligence for the whole length of a fifteen-mile posta, he seemed to be settling in happily enough. He still got to hang around a post office. That had been his real ambition.

Martin Wackernagel listened to the riders unhappily. None of the men sitting around the table seemed to have any doubts about the glories of riding short-distance posta lengths. None of them seemed to have any doubts about the wisdom of enforcing a government monopoly on mail handling.

Except Veit Huss. He was a teamster, not a post rider. Visions of stagecoaches danced in his head. Post chaises. Based on a novel, of all things, telling about life in England two hundred years in the future. A world in which the roads were so good that the mails were transported by coaches that also carried passengers.

"It will be decades before the roads permit anything like that," one of the riders said. "Especially in the Rhoen region. Can you imagine trying to take one of those 'post chaises' at any speed from Huenfeld to Kassel by way of Hersfeld. Or from Fulda to Wuerzburg? Just along that old heights-road that follows the Doellbach upwards to Motten . . ." He started drawing a map with his finger in the moisture that the beer steins had dripped onto the table. "I've talked to some of the Frammersbach teamsters and they say . . ."

"Except, maybe, right around that Grantville place." Another man picked up his stein. "I've actually seen the roads they brought back in time. Even the down-time roads they are improving would carry coaches easily most of the year."

"My cousin Hans . . ." Huss began.

"Is a road contractor," the rider retorted. "He has visions that the New United States will pay him money to make the roads around Fulda look like the roads around Grantville. Fat chance."

"It wouldn't have to be all the roads. They could just start by improving the main mail routes to that standard . . . Some are already fairly good. Think about that comfortable stretch from the monastery of Thulba as far as Hammelburg on the Franconian Saale out at the edge of the Abbey's lands."

Martin's thoughts wandered.

Maybe, now that the king of Sweden and his new up-timer allies wanted more than just a field post system for the army, van den Birghden would become a consultant to many of the king of Sweden's allies. Maybe, the post office would need many more civilian carriers who would do for the CPE what the Thurn and Taxis did for the Holy Roman Empire

Unless politics got in the way. There were advantages to being an independent courier. Sometimes, it was better not to work for the government. Martin had kept right on riding the Imperial Road in 1627 when the fortunes of war and pressures of politics had forced van den Birghden out as postmaster in Frankfurt.

Van den Birghden was a Protestant. Before the war started, it had been acceptable for a Protestant to hold an important job in the imperial system. Van den Birghden had enemies. The charge was that he had been spying for the Protestants—telling them what was in confidential letters that important imperial officials and commanders sent through the postal system. He had fought being fired, of course. It had taken them several months and several hearings to get rid of him. Ferdinand II replaced him with a Catholic, even though a lot of influential people from the archbishop-elector of Mainz to General Tilly himself had advised the emperor to keep him on.

Martin had kept on riding the Imperial Road when the king of Sweden's forces swept through in the fall of 1631 and reinstated van den Birghden.

While it was all going on, while the politicians fought over control of the postal system, Martin had kept riding. He might not be as fast, but his customers knew him and trusted him. Riding this route was a lot more than a living. Riding this route was his life.

"Across the top of that pass before you get to Speicherz . . ."

"Over another mountain in order to reach the Schondra . . ."

"Additional teams needed at Brueckenau . . ."

"New bridge across the Sinn . . ."

The voices ran over and into one another.

"David," he said. "I hate to interrupt this thrilling conversation, but there's something you may want to know."

"My father has changed his mind?"

"Not exactly. Zivka zur Sichel and her daughter Riffa are at the Hartkes."

David Kronberg practically flew out of his seat.

* * *

Martin had deliberately built enough time into this run that he could stop and talk to Veit Huss and his cousin. Mail coaches would not be practical for a long time, Veit admitted, so what alternative was there to a mail monopoly? A regular freight wagon, such as Veit himself drove, was not suitable for the mails. It was simply too slow. The roads would not be ready for post chaises for a long time.

He kept thinking. The imperial cities had tried to hang onto their own messenger systems. It hadn't worked, because of the pressure that the grant of an imperial monopoly to Thurn and Taxis had placed on them.

Some of the territorial rulers still ran their own messenger services. Brandenburg, on the eastern edge of the CPE with interests far to the east in Prussia, outside the Holy Roman Empire, had its own good-sized office with over two dozen riders. Even inside the CPE, the electors of Brandenburg felt safer sending important correspondence between the branches of the Hohenzollerns in Berlin and those in Franconia by way of people whom they paid themselves. Not everyone was entirely sure that van den Birghen had been innocent of those charges of spying, after all.

But working for Brandenburg would take him off his beloved Imperial Road. If necessary, maybe things could be managed, but he would rather not.

Or maybe he could hire on with a freight line. The official postal system carried letters, sometimes whole sealed bags full of letters, but it didn't carry packages. If he located a long-haul line that carried from Frankfurt to Erfurt, he would move back and forth along the road more slowly, but at least he would move.

What would customers pay for the transport of light packages? Light enough that a man on horseback could carry several? Packages that did not really need a wagon and team, but were too bulky for a mail bag? Urgent packages?

Martin laughed, imagining a woodcut that depicted him on a horse with ten or a dozen lightweight packages tied to his back and his saddle, sticking out in all different directions. One hanging from his ear, perhaps. For a lot of horses, that would take some getting used to. A man would need the right kind of horse, steady and reliable.

What kind of customer would want a small or light package, too big for the mail bags but not heavy or bulky enough to require a freight wagon, taken somewhere fast? Who would want it enough to pay a tenth or twelfth of the cost of running the route and still leave the rider a decent profit?

Maybe there wouldn't be a new post office monopoly. The king of Sweden might not object to establishing one, but the Grantvillers were very enthusiastic about what they called "free enterprise."

Something to think about. Some way to keep riding the Imperial Road.

 

End of the Road?
Gelnhausen, August 1633

Simon zur Sichel came into Gelnhausen from a resupply stop in Frankfurt as he made his rounds. He found that Zivka and Riffa were gone and nobody in the community knew where.

When, they could guess, Zorline Neumark told him.

She and Meier zum Schwan were going back to Frankfurt. That was the general gossip. Meier had a business to run and there did not seem to be any sign that the feud in the Kronberg family would abate any time soon.

Samuel Wohl and Hindle Kalman had sent their daughter Jachant to cousins in Worms. The parents of Feyel's fiancé had made that a condition of continuing the betrothal.

When he found out that a teamster had emptied the cottage under the sign of the sickle out neatly and driven away with the goods, Simon started to feel much better.

No one in the community knew who the teamster had been.

He asked at the post office. "Veit Huss," the postmaster said. "He drives from Fulda to Frankfurt. He was on his way to Fulda when he drove out that day."

Simon zur Sichel decided to head for Fulda. If Zivka had gone there, she would have had a good reason.

"If you are going," the Hanauer rabbi said, "may I accompany you? I would like to observe the changes that the up-timers have made in Fulda for myself."

 

Barracktown bei Fulda, September 1633

The Barracktown Council agreed to accept Simon zur Sichel as one of the approved resident sutlers. He requested permission to throw out the front of the cottage by about ten feet to make the front room into a "general store." After some discussion of the concept, the council, chaired by Dagmar, agreed to the proposition.

Menahem ben Elnathan and Simon zur Sichel discussed the heavy responsibilities of matrimony with David Kronberg, who said that he would be quite ecstatic to assume them, thank you. At least, he qualified, if they involved Riffa zur Sichel.

Then he asked Simon what name he intended to carry now that his family was no longer living in the sickle cottage in Gelnhausen. This proved to be such a successful distraction that it spared him from further embarrassment for all the rest of the evening.

Zivka did the same for Riffa, who indicated a high degree of reciprocal enthusiasm.

David said that he did not think that his parents would agree. The rabbi said that if they were patient, he would see to it, so they all relaxed.

Martin Wackernagel and the rabbi continued their discussion of stencils and duplicating machines. Both of them talked to Sergeant Hartke and his wife Dagmar about pamphlets. Dagmar recalled the Menig-Bodamer connection. Wackernagel recalled the Bodamer-Schlitz-Mangold chuckling convention. Gertrud Hartke and Jeffie Garand recalled the odd-looking contraption that was on the stand at Menig's paper mill the evening they had walked up to check if Emrich and Liesel were okay. They hadn't thought about the room being full of stacks of paper at the time, Jeffie admitted, since a person really expected to see stacks of paper in a paper mill. Then someone remembered seeing Mangold at Menig's.

Jeffie said that he thought he had better tell Derek—Major Utt, that was.

Major Utt got them an appointment with the NUS administrator, Wesley Jenkins. Not "one of these days," but first thing on his calendar the very next morning, even though the whole day was scheduled for a big celebration of the up-timers' first down-time "airplane."

 

Fulda, September 1633

The NUS authorities arrested a lot of people, of course. First Jodocus Menig, who identified Karl von Schlitz as the person who paid for the import of the duplicating machine and stencils. They could not arrest him, of course, or his sons, since Schlitz, although in the CPE, was not in the NUS.

Captain Wiegand felt considerable relief that the miscreant had not been someone from Fulda. That lasted until Emrich Menig said that, by the way, they had just been getting ready to run off another set of stencils. He and Liesel Bodamer had made them, he reported proudly. They had followed the instructions in the manual and been entirely successful. These stencils had been brought to them by Lorenz Mangold.

Wiegand's apprehension lasted until someone read the manuscript, which proved to contain not anti-Semitic tracts but rather some of the worst heroic poetry ever written. Andrea Hill made some rather biting comments on the probable impact of "duplicating machines" on vanity publishing in the seventeenth century.

Wiegand's relief lasted until a search of Mangold's house, authorized before anybody got around to reading the manuscript found at Menig's, turned up several crates of pamphlets that were virulently anti-Semitic. And some more which advocated the resumption of witchcraft trials. Plus quite a few which were just weird. Nothing indecent, though. Mangold appeared to be downright prudish.

To the great disappointment of almost everybody else, Wes Jenkins refused to authorize the use of torture, even under these circumstances. Even though they pointed out that it was perfectly legal under the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, which remained the law of the CPE because nobody had ever gotten around to repealing it. Wes said it wasn't legal under American law and that was that. And, moreover, it wasn't a capital offense anyway, as far as he knew, just to own the things.

All of which was terribly unsatisfactory.

 

Magdeburg, September 1633

"It's because we were thinking presses," Mike Stearns said. "Thinking inside the box. That's why we haven't been able to identify the bastards who are producing this filth. Even the Committees of Correspondence were thinking presses. Small presses; those are what they are distributing to their local organizations. That is what the Venice Committee of Correspondence is going to get. Improved small presses, but still presses using movable type. Because for copiers, we were thinking high-tech. We knew that the down-timers did have presses and that they did not have copiers."

He slapped his hand on the table, turning to Don Francisco Nasi. "How many of these duplicating machines are there now, Francisco? Inside the USE, spewing out this poison. Is there any way to make an estimate?"

Francisco Nasi shook his head. "I have people trying to find out how many Vignelli has shipped from Bozen. Some of the pamphlets are printed on presses, of course. We may still be able to trace those. But the duplicating machines are so simple that there is no way Vignelli can possibly maintain a monopoly on them. Any decent craftsman who sees one can copy it. Successfully, I must add."

"So these things, these libels, whether they are specifically anti-Semitic or not, will just continue to proliferate. Anywhere, essentially undetectable. Unless we open every large envelope in the postal system—which, I emphasize, we most certainly will not do—the stencils will travel for no more than the normal porto, anywhere east of a line running from Sweden's Baltic provinces to Hungary."

This time, Don Francisco nodded. "They do not even need to send the stencils. That is clear from the statements made by the young boy and girl in the Fulda case. They only need to send one copy of a pamphlet, or a manuscript. Anyone who has a duplicating machine can prepare a stencil. Some will be better than others, but then some printing presses turn out much better quality copy than others. It depends on the skill of the operator, the quality of the paper, the quality of the ink. For longer books, I expect, printing will continue to be the preferred method."

"Yeah, that was true up-time, too."

"So unless you wish to duplicate the Porte, examining everyone's mail for possibly dissenting literature . . ."

Mike shook his head. "No. No, of course not. We are not going to stop the mail and inspect every item. That would be against every principle of intellectual freedom, freedom of the press, that we are trying to introduce. It's just so . . ."

"Loathsome," Don Francisco suggested.

"'Loathsome' is a very inadequate word."

 

Hanau, November 1633

"It's a personal thank-you letter," Martin Wackernagel said. "From Prime Minister Stearns."

Menahem ben Elnathan took it. "I am honored."

"And one from Don Francisco Nasi."

"Perhaps I should be apprehensive."

"From all that I hear, they are sincerely grateful for your contributions. Not to a solution of the problem of these scurrilous pamphlets, since perhaps there is none, but for assisting in defining it."

"No one among us did anything remarkable," the rabbi said. "But, then, most large events are the result of many small ones coming together."

"Exactly what do you intend to do to solve David and Riffa's problems? Perhaps I shouldn't ask, but I'm curious."

"It is well under way. There was no prospect that Abelin Kronberg and Bessle Zons would consent to young David's new job and proposed marriage. They have too much pride invested in preventing him from joining the post office and in arranging the Wohl marriage. I suggested that they should release their parental rights in regard to this son who has caused them so much trouble and heartache, so that he may be adopted as heir by his uncle Meier and Zorline Neumark. Once that is completed, then the new parents can—and will—consent to the marriage. I have correspondence for you to carry to Frankfurt today. If all goes well, you should be able to bring me the completed legal papers on your return trip."

Martin looked at the rabbi for a few minutes. Then, in the up-time manner, he saluted him.

 

Frankfurt am Main, November 1633

"Where did you get it?" Crispin asked suspiciously.

"The administrator in Fulda for the New United States said that he owed me a favor. So I said that he could do me one, since they had confiscated it as evidence. It's the duplicating machine that Menig had at his paper mill, producing those scandalous pamphlets. It's yours legally. I have receipts."

Crispin looked at it with distaste. "Do you have an exorcist to get the evil spirits out of it?"

"Not exactly. But you'll be paying for it for several years, so don't feel that you got something for nothing."

"How?"

"I brought Menig's son to apprentice with you. He's at my rooms. No fee."

"I thought he was the one who actually ran the machine."

"He is, but the up-timers think he is not old enough to be held, as the woman named Mrs. Hill put it, 'criminally responsible.' I offered you and Merga as an alternative, which Mr. Wesley Jenkins accepted. He is, from what I have observed so far, an incredibly ingenious boy who will occupy a great deal of your time."

Merga looked at her husband.

"All right," he said. "We'll take it. Him. Both of them. The machine and the boy."

"What about the girl?" Merga asked. "Bodamer's daughter. Liesel. What have they done to her?"

"Gone to her mother's people, for the time being, at least. Bodamer is one of Schlitz's subjects and the Ritter's lawyers asserted jurisdiction on his behalf, even though he is under arrest himself. Mrs. Hill was very angry about it."

"Beyond that," Martin asked after a while, "How's business?"

"I'm developing a new line," Crispin said. "Merga's idea. We haven't heard from the merchant selling the duplicating machines, yet, but then he is certainly not in Frankfurt. These things take time. I am creating a new small newspaper to circulate locally and present advertisements for things that people want. There must be many people in Frankfurt who want some item, and other people who have it but no longer want it, but who do not know one another. With the duplicating machine, now, the cost of production for these 'want ads' will be reduced a lot . . ."

* * *

"Stop delaying, Martin," Merga said. "You have to go upstairs and say hello to Mutti."

When Wackernagel came back down the stairs, he moaned. "You've got to do something, Merga. You absolutely have to get her off this 'settle down and get married.' Find her an avocation. A 'hobby' as the up-timers say. Some other interest."

She looked up from the stand where she was watching Emrich Menig piece the duplicating machine together. "Getting you married and settled down more than an avocation. It is her vocation, her calling."

"Merga, you have got to do something." Martin's desperation was clear from the tone of his voice. "I can't settle down. Not here, not anywhere."

"Why on earth not, Marty?"

"Because I am married. In Erfurt. Well, in a village right outside the city. And in Vacha. And in Steinau. With calling of the banns and everything. They were all such darling girls when I met them. I couldn't bear to disappoint them, so I told the local pastors that I was an orphan from Breslau. And if any one of them finds out . . . ever. Or the church! There are a lot of really good reasons that I love the Imperial Road."

"How many reasons?" Merga asked. She put as much "foreboding" into the tone of her voice as she could possibly squeeze through her vocal cords.

"Besides my girls? Eight, right now."

Merga gasped.

Her brother gave her the grin he had used—in his older sister's opinion, with an unreasonable degree of success—to get out from under impending disciplinary measures since he was three years old. "But Maria is expecting again."

 

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