Eric Flint: Grantville Gazette.Volume IX

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."