Eric Flint: The Wallenstein Gambit

Thinking about Wallenstein-and the big ladle Judith had stuffed into one of their trunks-Morris grunted.

"What do you think of him, Uriel?"

Abrabanel had no difficulty understanding the subject. "Wallenstein? Hard to say." He paused for a moment, marshalling his thoughts.

"On the one hand, he is probably the most completely amoral man in the world. I doubt if there is any crime he would shrink from, if he felt it would advance his purposes."

"No kidding." Morris scowled. "He's the stinking bastard who ordered his Croat cavalry to attack our school last year. Tried to slaughter all of our children!"

Uriel nodded. "Indeed. On the other hand… There is a lot to be said for him, as well. It's no accident, you know, that he wound up becoming something of a folk hero in German legend."

He barked a little laugh. "Not an unmixed admiration, of course! Still, what I can tell of reading your books from the future, the Germans came to grudgingly admire the man in the decades and centuries after his death, much as the French never stopped grudgingly admiring Napoleon. The German poet and playwright Schiller even wrote several plays-in the next century, that would be-about him. Odd, really-a Corsican folk hero for the French, and a Bohemian one for the Germans."

The scowl was still on Morris' face. "Big deal," he said, adding somewhat unkindly: "That's just because the Frogs and the Krauts don't have too many genuine heroes to pick from."

Uriel's easy smile came. "Such terrible chauvinism! Of course, that term does come from a French word, so I suppose there's some truth to your wisecrack. Still-"

The smile didn't fade, but the old spy's dark eyes seem to darken still further. "Do not let your animosities get the best of you, Morris. This much is also true of Wallenstein: a peasant on one of his estates is in a better situation than peasants anywhere else in the Austrian empire. Wallenstein is shrewd enough to know when not to gouge, and he even fosters and encourages what you would call scientific farming. He opposed the Edict of Restitution and, by all accounts, is not much given-if at all, beyond the needs of diplomacy-to religious persecution. If he is amoral, he is not im-moral."

"They say he believes in astrology," grumbled Morris.

"Indeed, he is quite superstitious." Uriel's smile broadened, becoming almost sly. "On the other hand, they also say he treats his wife very well."

Morris grunted again. "Um. Well, okay. That's something, I guess."

They heard the sounds of a horse nearing and twisted in their saddles to look backward. The motions were easy and relaxed, since both men were experienced riders. In Morris' case, from an adult lifetime of being an enthusiast for pack-riding; in Uriel's, from an adult lifetime that had had more in the way of rambunctious excitement-including several desperate flights on horseback across the countryside-than most city-dwelling Jews of the time ever experienced.

The same could not be said for the man approaching them, and neither Morris nor Uriel could restrain themselves from smiling. Jason Gotkin, though in his early twenties, was not at all comfortable on horseback-and showed it. He rode his mount as gingerly, and with the same air of uncertainty, as an apprentice liontamer enters a lion's cage.

Seeing their expressions, Jason flushed a little. When he finally came alongside-it might be better to say, edged his horse alongside with all the sureness of a cadet docking a boat-his words were spoken in something of a hiss.

"Look, I was getting a degree in computer science and was trying to decide between a life spent as a software engineer or a rabbi. I was not planning to become a cowboy."

Uriel's smile widened into a grin. Among the uptime hobbies that Uriel had adopted since the Ring of Fire, reading westerns was one of them. He was particularly fond of Donald Hamilton, Luke Short and Louis L'Amour.

"I should hope not! Leaving aside your pitiful manner on horseback, you can't-what's that expression?-hit the broadside of a barn. With a rifle, much less a revolver."

"Software engineer," Jason hissed again. "Rabbi." He scowled faintly. "The average rabbi does not pack a gun. Not even in New York-and wouldn't, even if it weren't for the Sullivan Act."

Morris' gaze slid away from Jason and drifted back toward the rear of the not-so-little caravan. There, almost at the very end, was the small group of horsemen centered around the figure of young Dunash Abrabanel. None of them rode a horse any better than Jason. But, unlike Jason, all of them were armed to the teeth. They looked like a caricature of highwaymen, in fact, they had so many firearms festooned upon their bodies and saddles.

Morris sighed. "We're nearing Bohemian territory, if we're not already in it. They're going to have to hide the guns, Jason. Whatever Wallenstein's promises, until he carries out his rebellion Imperial law still applies."

"Either that or agree to pretend they aren't Jews," grunted Uriel. The humor that had been on his face was gone, now. This was a sore subject with him, and one on which he and Dunash's little group had already clashed several times. Many times in his life, Uriel had passed himself off as a gentile of one sort or another. Once, he'd even successfully passed himself off as a Spanish hidalgo.

"Stupid!" he said, almost snarling. "They are no more observant-not any longer-than I am. Much less my brother Balthazar. And even in the days when we were, neither of us hesitated to do what was necessary. So why do they insist on flaunting their Jewishness, when it is pointless?"

Morris started to sigh again, but managed to restrain himself. Jason was apprehensive enough as it was, without Morris making his own nervousness about their project apparent.

It was hard. Even in the age from which Morris had come, the urbane and cosmopolitan world of America at the turn of the twenty-first century, there had been divisions between observant and non-observant Jews, leaving aside the disagreements between the various branches of Judaism. In the seventeenth century, those tensions were far more extreme.

Not, perhaps, for the Ashkenazim of central and eastern Europe, cloistered as they were-corralled by the gentiles surrounding them, more properly speaking-into their tight ghettos and shtetls. There, rabbinical influence and control was powerful. Even enforced by law, since in most places-Prague being no exception-the gentile authorities gave the rabbinate jurisdiction over the members of the Jewish ghettos. But for the Sephardim, since the expulsion from Iberia, it was far more difficult. The Sephardic Jews had been scattered to the winds, and although many of them had managed to retain their traditions and customs and ritual observances, many others had not. So, the issue of how to handle nonobservant Jews-any number of whom had even officially converted to Christianity-was always difficult. In practice, Amsterdam being one of the major exceptions, most Sephardic rabbis and observant communities had adopted a fairly tolerant and patient attitude.

Morris and Judith Roth were themselves Ashkenazim, but their attitudes had far more in common with the cosmopolitan Sephardim they'd encountered since the Ring of Fire than the Ashkenazim of this day and age. And now, unwittingly, the arrival of a half-dozen modern Jews into the seventeenth century had introduced a new element into the equation: the twentieth-century ideology of Zionism.

"Zionism," at least, using the term loosely. Not even Dunash proposed to launch a campaign to create the state of Israel in the middle of the seventeenth century. His own Abrabanel clan would squash any such notion instantly, since their own survival and well-being depended largely on the tolerance of the Ottoman Empire. Murad IV, the current sultan ruling in Istanbul, bore not the slightest resemblance to Lord Balfour. "Murad the Mad," they called him, and for good reason. Though astonishingly capable for a ruler who was obviously a sociopath, one of his principal amusements was wandering about Istanbul personally executing inhabitants he discovered violating his recently decreed hardcore Islamic regulations.