Eric Flint: 1634: The Ram Rebellion

Eddie’s eyes widened. “ All of them?”

Noelle gave him a level gaze. “Yes, all of them. Along with maybe one-third of the rest of the Schloss’ staff. The ram is especially strong in the smithy and the stables. The maids… well, that’s harder. They come and go a lot, since most of them don’t have my status.”

“I’m impressed.”

Noelle’s face got a little pinched. “It wasn’t hard. Even by the standards of Franconian Freiherr, Fuchs von Bimbach is a pure son-of-a-bitch.” She nodded toward the kitchen. “He hung one of the cook’s sons two years ago. Along with three other boys. None of them was older than nineteen.”

Eddie grimaced. “Why?”

“Apparently the four of them got drunk one night in a local tavern and started mimicking his Bimboship. Just teenagers being disrespectful, the way teenagers will. But somebody reported them to von Bimbach, and he charged them with ‘petty treason.’ That’s a hanging offense, and he’s got the legal right on his lands to apply capital punishment. Halsgericht they call it-the ‘neck court.’”

“What a bastard.”

“Yup, he sure is. Two years before that, he had one of the blacksmith’s apprentices hung for stealing some copper. His Bimboship jacked up the value of the stolen goods high enough to make it a capital offense, even though it didn’t really come to much. The guy’s mother was sick and he was just trying to get her some medicine. What passes for it, anyway, in the here and now.”

Eddie wiped a thick hand over his face.

“The year before that-”

“Never mind. I understand.” He dropped the hand and looked out of the narrow door onto the kitchen. This time, though, it was a simple and straightforward gaze.

“You’re safe?”

Noelle shrugged. “As safe as you could expect, given that I live in a castle owned by a sociopath.”

He grimaced again. Noelle chuckled.

“Relax, Eddie. It’s really not that bad.” She made a little gesture, indicating her outfit. “It worked just about the way we figured it would. Judith Neideckerin agreed to hire me as one of her maids. His Bimboship doesn’t pay any attention to me at all, when he comes to visit her. Which he doesn’t do all that often, anyway. I get the feeling he forced her to become his mistress more for the bragging rights among his Freiherr buddies, than anything else. Judith’s good-looking, in a zaftig sort of way.”

Eddie seemed to relax still more. Again, Noelle chuckled. “No, that’s not a problem. I’m not having to fend off the lustful advances of the lord of the castle, if that’s what you’re worried about. He’s never spoken so much as a single word to me, in the month I’ve been here. If you put me in a lineup wearing different clothes, I don’t think he’d even recognize me.”

She gestured, a bit impatiently. “And that’s enough about that. What does the ram want now?”

“Pretty much the same you’ve been providing him since you got established here. Information, mostly. The ram shares your opinion that von Bimbach will probably wind up being the key to the whole thing. I can’t say I really understand why the two of you seem so sure of that. From what you’ve told me-and what I’ve heard from others-he’s too arrogant and cocksure to make a very effective political leader.”

“That’s neither here nor there, Eddie. First of all, there isn’t a one of these little lords and knights that I think could win an election in the smallest county in West Virginia. Not for dog catcher. They’re all pretty much cut from the same cloth. The big difference with His Bimboship is pure and simple geography.”

She twisted her head, as if indicating the countryside beyond the walls of the Schloss. “His estates are nestled in among the lands controlled by Margrave Christian of Bayreuth. From a strategic point of view, looking at it from the ram’s side of things, this is what you might call a safe enclave for the counter-revolution. His Bimboship can organize from here, and there’s really not a damn thing the ram can do about it. Neither can Steve Salatto and his people. If they send any troops in-much less if the ram mobilized an army of farmers-the margrave would be almost sure to intervene. Just to keep the peace, if nothing else.”

Eddie scratched his chin. “Well… yes. And he’s an important ally of the USE’s emperor, too, political speaking. So even if Margrave Christian couldn’t handle it, he’d squawk to Gustavus Adolphus loudly enough that the Swedish army would come in. And wouldn’t that be a mess, as unpopular as they are in Franconia?”

“A stinking mess,” Noelle agreed. “Let’s make sure it doesn’t come to that. All right, Eddie, fire up that near-perfect memory of yours. Here’s the latest…”

Chapter 13:

“This Is Simply More Than We Can Tolerate”

Bamberg, June, 1634

“The ram will come today.”

Martha Kronacher looked at the Jaeger who made that comment while paying for a copy of the latest broadside. He was smirking.

“Thank you.” She did not feel called upon to say one word more than that to the man. Checking to see that there were no more customers, she went quickly into the back and notified her mother, not bothering with the codes. She loathed the fact that she was called the “ewe lamb” by the rebellion. She particularly loathed the little jokes and snide comments that came from those who thought that it was clever to pair her up with the ram.

“Mutti,” she said plainly, “Herr Ableidinger will be coming today.”

Martha kept her voice even. She did not like the school teacher from Frankenwinheim. She appreciated, she hoped, his organizational ability. His ability to take a set of diffused grievances and turn the people who held them into an orderly group which might accomplish something.

She was glad that he was going to be talking to the Bamberg apprentices, whose increasing unruliness was part of the reason that Mama would no longer let her walk the streets, even go to market, unless she had one of her brothers to accompany her.

But she didn’t like him. She thought that he was too loud; she thought that his speaking style was bombastic. She especially didn’t like the fact that he was a widower, which tended to bring that speculative gleam into her mother’s eye. Mutti was beginning to think that Martha was old enough to get married. Herr Ableidinger taught not far from where Papa had grown up, in the Frankenwald . The school furnished him with a residence. From Mutti’s perspective, he was eligible.

Martha, however, had no desire to spend the rest of her life with a man who made that much noise; just by existing, Constantin Ableidinger made a lot of noise. Whatever Mutti thought, and however much anyone smirked about the ram and the ewe lamb.

Message delivered, she went back into the front shop.

* * *

Frau Else Kronacher sent a couple of apprentices out to deliver messages; then picked up her latest campaign speech. She wanted Herr Ableidinger to review it. She just could not understand why Martha did not like him. He was such an invigorating man.

* * *

There weren’t any customers in the print shop at the moment. Martha started singing to herself. “Jerusalem, Thou City Fair and High.” No, she did not want to marry the ram, no more than she wanted to marry the third son of the master of the Bamberg printer’s guild. The world held a better husband for her than either of them. She was quite sure of it.

Hasslach Valley, Franconia, late June, 1634

“Vince,” Johnnie F. said, “I don’t think that you’ve been up here before.”

“I haven’t, no. My duties keep me pretty locked in to Bamberg most of the time. Stew Hawker has mentioned the place. So did Scott Blackwell, once, when he was up to Bamberg for a briefing, but…”