Eric Flint - Grantville Gazette. Volume 21

Morris made a face. "Well, they did-partway. But then a lot of the ghetto's residents raised a fuss and… Well, I wound up persuading Dunash that he couldn't just do whatever he wanted high-handedly. So now the whole thing's being wrangled out." His tone got gloomier. "That means involving each and every rabbi in the ghetto. And once you do that, 'wrangling' really means wrangling."

He stepped back from the window. "And that's the issue, from my point of view. One of them, anyway." The gloomy tone left his voice, replaced by something a lot more determined. Even grim. "I am bound and determined to smash up those crusted-over ghetto habits and customs and traditions. And the best way I know of to do that-it's worked everywhere in the world, with every race and creed and color-is to give youngsters the opportunity to earn a good wage while learning some valuable skills. And not the same very tightly circumscribed skills that Jews are usually restricted to, in this day and age. I want those kids learning how to make things, dammit."

"Especially things that go 'boom,'" said David, grinning again.

Morris smiled back at him. "Well. Yes. That too."

Bernard was back to rubbing his neck. "You want only Jewish employees?"

"No. In fact, I'd much prefer to have an integrated workforce. But

…" He winced, slightly. "We'll have to see. I'm not sure how many Christian kids will be willing to work for an establishment that has a lot of Jewish employees and refuses to allow any religious discrimination."

Cyril grunted. "I'd say that'll depend mostly on the wages. You pay well enough, there'll be plenty of youngsters willing to thumb their noses at the establishment."

"Well, that's what I'm hoping. We'll see. In the meantime, though, I know for sure I can get as many employees as we need just from the ghetto. If need be."

Seeing Bernard's skeptical look, Morris seemed a bit uncomfortable. "Look. Just 'cause I don't like a lot of those rabbis out there, doesn't mean I dislike all of them. There's a few I get along with, and I've already talked this over with them. They're willing to run interference for me, if I need it."

Cyril spread his hands. "That's your business, the way I figure it." He cocked his head at his brother. "Bernard, are you ready, willing and able to quit dilly-dallying around? Me, I'm for it."

His brother scowled at him. But then, after perhaps three seconds, he nodded. "Yeah, I'm in. What the hell. We'd be crazy not to."

"What I been saying for weeks now." Cyril turned to Pappenheim, who'd remained sitting in his comfortable chair. "I suppose we should get started on the specific requirements you have."

The very tough-looking general's eyes widened. " Me? My requirements are a good horse, a good sword and a pair of good pistols. No, no, no. I am simply here out of curiosity. That, and the curiosity of my employer, even more. You need to talk to those two fellows who came here from Vienna with von Mercy."

The count's Bavarian accent was as pronounced as ever, making him just a bit hard to understand. By now, four years after the Ring of Fire, Cyril's German was quite good. But he'd learned that the German language in this day and age was almost more in the way of a cluster of very closely related languages than what you'd call a single and unitary language with various dialects. He was accustomed to the speech of people from Thuringia and Franconia, mostly. He found Germans from other regions often hard to understand, and sometimes downright impossible.

Pappenheim rose from his seat with the fluid grace you'd expect from a man who was not only a famed general but a famed warrior as well. The thought crossed Cyril Fodor's mind-as it had the minds of hundreds of others before him-that Count Gottfried Heinrich Graf zu Pappenheim was a very dangerous man indeed. The vivid scar on his forehead added to the image, of course.

"And now, I am off." He gave the Fodor brothers a grin that had very little humor in it. "We may say that I am about the king's business, I think."

Cyril wasn't sure what to make of that rather cryptic remark. Probably nothing. He was pretty sure that Pappenheim made cryptic remarks simply as a way of keeping the people around him slightly off-balance. Everything the man did had that flavor about it.

He commented to that effect, after Pappenheim was gone. "He's a little scary, isn't he?"

Morris smiled. "Oddly enough, he's become something in the way of a friend of mine."

All the members of the Fodor family stared at him. Much the way people might stare at a man who claimed to have formed a friendship with a lion. Or a dragon.

Judith Roth chuckled. "It's true, actually. But it doesn't make Pappenheim any less scary. And now, folks, you must all be hungry. Dinner is about to be served."

"I guess we'll have to get used to eating kosher, huh?" asked Joanna Fodor, about halfway through the meal.

Judith glanced at her husband-who was now looking about as grumpy as Bernard Fodor had, earlier in the day-and chuckled. "Depends."

"On what?"

"Where you decide to live, first and foremost," said Judith. "You'll want to live on this side of the river, of course, given where the factory will be located. But you can find a place in Old Town; you don't need to move into the Jewish quarter. After that, on whether you decide to do your own cooking or hire a cook. I'd strongly recommend hiring a cook, myself-given that you're pretty much going to have to home school your kids for the first year or so."

"Can we get a good cook?" Joanna asked. "At rates we can afford?"

"The cook is likely to be better than you are," said Morris Roth, "given the use of local ingredients. And the rates won't be a problem, with what Bernard'll be making. The key thing is that you have to be strong-willed enough to force a local cook and servants to accept up-time sanitary habits."

Morris was still scowling, but he seemed perhaps a bit less grumpy. "I'll say this much for hiring Jews. The only way they know how to cook is kosher, but in the here and now they're likely to have a lot better sanitary habits than Christians. Meaning no offense."

Joanna shook her head ruefully. Her husband chuckled. "No offense taken," Bernard said. "It can get pretty damn gruesome, I admit."

Cyril's wife Willa spoke up. "Will that be a problem for us, Judith? Hiring Jews, I mean."

"No, not with me setting it up for you. By now, I'm… ah… well-established in the community."

Morris burst into laughter. "'Well-established!' Yeah, no kidding. She's the wife of the richest Jew in the city-far and away the richest-and, unlike me, she doesn't have a reputation for being grouchy about religious matters."

David Fodor studied Morris, for a moment, with an intent scrutiny you didn't normally expect to see coming from a boy still shy of his sixteenth birthday. "You're a lot more than just the richest Jew around, Mr. Roth. You're pretty much a hero to these people."

"And what do you know about that?"

David shrugged, uncomfortably. "A fair amount, sir. I studied up on it, back in Grantville, before we made the trip."

"'Studied up'? With who or what?"

"I'm friends with one of the Abrabanel kids, sir. He's in my grade in school." A little shyly, he added: "You're a big hero to him too, you know. 'Cause of the Battle of the Bridge and all."

Morris looked uncomfortable. His wife gazed upon him with an expression that was an odd cross of proud and aggravated at the same time. "I'm afraid my blessed husband still can't wrap his head around all that." She looked at Willa. "But to get back to the point-no, you won't have a problem getting good help, as long as you let me handle it for you. But-to get further back to your question, Joanna-that would mean that, yes, you'd have to be willing to eat kosher. My contacts are mostly in the ghetto, so far."