Eric Flint: Grantville Gazette.Volume XVI

It was a long conversation, but a little jerky on Mauger's part. Jacques-Pierre suspected that his mind kept drifting back to the sequins, which was a good thing.

"My religion?" Velma asked. Why did Laurent Mauger want to know her religion, of all things? "I'm, uh, Presbyterian." Well, she was. Or had been, once upon a time. When she was baptized. Her mother was definitely Presbyterian. Tina's disastrous funeral had been held in the Presbyterian church. Not that the Reverend Enoch Wiley thought very highly of her, but "Presbyterian" would do.

She was wearing a lemon yellow eyelet blouse with ruffles that nicely accented the deep V-neck. It was a tie style, with no buttons, so the ruffles moved nicely when she breathed. She leaned toward him, breathing. It should be apparent, she thought, that no artificial means of support were present. And she didn't think that the seventeenth century knew about boob jobs.

"Presbyterian." Laurent Mauger sighed with satisfaction.

"Don't you believe, Monsieur Mauger," Velma asked, "that some things are just Meant?"

Mentally, Mauger briefly compared the stiff corsets in which his late wife had encased herself throughout most of their marriage to the delightful flexibility of Velma's upper torso. He reached a decision; some things were indeed Meant. Presuming, of course, that Meant signified predestined. Given the religious whirlwind of this town, that this elegant cousin of Prime Minister Stearns was Calvinist had almost been too much to hope for. It must be Meant, indeed. "Madame, would you do me the honor of accepting my hand in marriage?"

Velma blinked. She had not expected that. The most she had really been hoping for was a bit of non-Spiritual comfort and a few nice gifts. But Jacques-Pierre had dropped the information that Mauger had money. Pots and pots of money, apparently. Pots and pots of money were not to be sneezed at. But if she ever let this old goat anywhere near Enoch Wiley before the knot was tied, the reverend would give him a version of her life story that would scare him off for good.

"Only if you're willing to marry at City Hall," she said. "I don't really hold with church weddings."

Mauger's Counter-Remonstrant heart warmed. A true Calvinist, then. None of this creeping, compromising, semi-Papism. As Calvin himself had written, "Of course marriage is a gift of God. That does not mean that it is within the proper province of the church, any more than are agriculture or shoemaking, which are also gifts of God to humankind." He beamed.

He had taken a comfortable room at the new Higgins hotel. He requested that for the remainder of his stay, it should be expanded to a suite.

Velma sold the trailer. With the way that real estate prices in Grantville had skyrocketed, it brought in quite a bit. She packed a lot of the contents to take with them. It came to several wagonloads of freight, but Laurent didn't mind. He had been fascinated by the lava lamps. Luckily, they were the kind that worked with candles in the base and didn't need to be plugged in, so in their new home in Haarlem, they could sit and watch the lava lamps together when they were not doing other things.

Mauger received the news that his wife would be bringing him a dowry with delight. Jacques-Pierre had not advised him of this bonus in advance. He did not discover it until Velma requested, very properly for a wife, that he take care of the business of switching the bank draft to Haarlem. It was not a large dowry by the standards of the merchant families of the Netherlands, but every source of investment funds helped and it would make it a lot easier to explain his decision to his family.

Last of all, Velma packed her clothes and sent nasty-nice notes to all her relatives. She thought a lot about her wedding dress. Penny Reading managed to open the seams on the mauve faux leather just enough that she could get into it. Old Mittie Barger disguised the little needle holes that ran down under her arms with embroidery and sewed bias tape on the inside of the seams to make them stronger. She had found the matching boots. When she showed up for the wedding, she could tell from Laurent's expression that her choice was a smashing success.

Even Jacques-Pierre had a funny look on his face.

Two weeks after the wedding, Laurent asked rather doubtfully, "Uh, what?"

"I'm having my period." Velma frowned. "You should know about that. I thought you'd been married before. I'm only a little past forty, after all." Well, forty-six last July, if you wanted to be picky about it. Minor details.

Laurent swallowed. He had been married before. He did know about it. He had a feeling that Jacques-Pierre had misled him about Madame Hardesty's age. Which did not mean that he intended to forego the joys and blessings of matrimony. He wouldn't even suggest such a thing to a fine woman who had married him in good faith.

Which was just as well. Velma was deriving a great deal of non-Spiritual comfort from her marriage. Laurent was still pretty lively about it all, fat or not. At the end of the week, they resumed matrimonial relations.

They left for Haarlem shortly thereafter. Velma didn't have her period on the trip. She put it down to all the jostling in the carriage and the disruption of her schedule that travel brought.

"Get out of the goddamned way, Little Ferdie!"

Ferdinand Bader got out of Sergeant Sandler's way as quickly as he could. Not that he was really in the way, but it was typical of Sandler to shout, just as it was typical of Captain Lehrer to look down his rather pointed nose at "Little Ferdie."

"Look at the mouse jump!"

Ferdinand carefully didn't look in Corporal Melman's direction. Melman was just plain mean and looked for excuses to make Ferdinand miserable. The mouse comment was, again, typical. Ferdinand had been hearing comments much like it for most of his life. His voice was high and squeaky, commanding neither obedience nor respect. It never had. Further, by inclination, Ferdinand avoided conflict.

He wouldn't even have been in the Army, if it hadn't been for getting drunk that night in Jena, after Papa cut off his funds for the university. The life of a student had suited him just fine. Thankfully, for once the Army had gotten it right and sent Ferdinand to medic school, where he'd finally found his calling.

Not that the calling was easy work. Especially with a pissed off captain, sergeant and corporal. Which wasn't at all fair. Ferdinand hadn't known that medics were a separate corps, not part of the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines.

"No!" Ferdinand shouted. For the first time in his life, he was obeyed. "Don't try to move him. He may have internal injuries!" The shocking bit was that his voice, as squeaky as ever, had suddenly been obeyed. Or maybe it was that he had given the command in the first place, or that he was running into the middle of a battle. Ferdinand was dealing with a number of shocking occurrences at the moment. Mostly by ignoring them. He had a patient and that was all that he could allow to matter.

He knelt in the mud outside of Luebeck in the spring of 1634, after a sortie against the disintegrating Danish and French armies. With a pair of medical scissors, he cut away the heavy woolen cloth that was worn as much for its ability to slow a musket ball or pike thrust as for its warmth. That it didn't stop musket balls, he had clear evidence. In the form of what was almost a sucking chest wound.

"You!" Ferdinand pointed at one of the men standing around. "Hold him!" He didn't realize until later that the person he was ordering about was his sergeant. "Unless you want him to bleed out into his lung. Keep him still!"