1634: THE BAVARIAN CRISIS – snippet 68:
Chapter 37
Sedis Apostolicae Propositiones
Munich, Bavaria
The English Ladies received mail in the ordinary way, of course. In addition to that, they received mail through the Jesuit Order’s own postal system. This was “just one of those things” in the ambivalent relationship between the Ladies and the Jesuits.
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Neuburg
Marc’s mood brightened perceptibly when his father told him that he could come along to Munich. They left Neuburg on horseback, quite openly. They were still merchants. Not, however, from Geneva. Bavarian border authorities were quite picky about allowing Protestants into Bavaria’s sacred precincts—almost as bad as they were about prohibiting the import of Protestant books and pamphlets. The Cavrianis, father and son, were now Italian cloth merchants who had been visiting a branch of the family firm in one of Switzerland’s Catholic cantons and were returning home by way of Bozen—Bolzano to Italians—in the Tyrol, in order to consult with the firm’s factor there.
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Chapter 36
Audacter Calumniare
Neuburg
Marc Cavriani was seriously disillusioned by his first introduction to serious intelligence gathering. It seemed a bit deflating that instead of indulging in elaborate skullduggery, intrigue, and derring-do, they could have found out where Frau Simpson and Frau Dreeson were just by staying right here and reading this week’s newspaper when it was delivered from Nürnberg.
1634: THE BAVARIAN CRISIS – snippet 65:
Chapter 35
Stipendia Pluria
Copenhagen, Denmark
It was a good thing, Mike Stearns reflected, that John Chandler Simpson was in excellent health for a man in his mid-fifties. Or else Mike would be worrying that the USE’s premier admiral would soon be suffering a stroke or a heart attack—or just dropping dead from apoplexy. Simpson was a naturally pale-skinned man. At the moment, though, his complexion could best be described as “blotchy,” with the color red prominently featured among the blotches.
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Chapter 34
Rumores Plurimi
Nürnberg
It took so damned much time to get news out, down-time, when a person needed to. There was nobody in the whole goddamned city of Amberg who could work the radio this week. Three of the techs were getting better; there was some comfort in that. But they sure weren’t well enough to come back to work yet, Bill Hudson said, unless people deliberately wanted to put them in danger of complications and relapses. Plus a lot more words.
1634: THE BAVARIAN CRISIS – snippet 63:
PART VI
July, 1634
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Chapter 33
Schola Patientiae
Bavaria
Even for the heir to the duchy of Bavaria, it was practically impossible for a man to have a private word with his wife in the middle of a formal wedding procession traveling through the countryside. True, the room that Bishop Gepeckh had assigned Albrecht and Mechthilde was quite luxurious, the walls covered with tapestries, heavy brocade hangings on the bed.
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Duke Maximilian heard the words Schloss and Amberg and regent. He was a man who read the reports submitted by his intelligence agents with great diligence.
Tight-lipped, he issued his order. “Let the women be released at once.” The guards complied.
1634: THE BAVARIAN CRISIS – snippet 61
Chapter 32
Festae Miraculique
Bavaria
Papa and Mama, Cecelia and Mariana, were gone, back to Vienna. The wedding procession moved slowly toward Munich, the days punctuated by the ringing of bells calling people to prayer, the dismounting of everyone in the procession in response to the bells, and the recital of the liturgical offices. In between, it moved through villages that offered pantomimes in honor of the marriage and towns that had decorated their market squares. Every mayor welcomed her; every Latin school had a teacher who had written a poem in her honor; some towns had organists or choir directors who had set the poems to newly composed music. There were allegorical pageants, some classical and some biblical. Always, there were children with flowers; always, there were prayers that this marriage might prove fruitful.
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Chapter 31
Pompa Introitus
At the Passau Border, Bavaria
Maria Anna stood passively, submitting to the protocol that required her to be undressed in public. Why flinch at this? After all, when they reached Munich, she would be married. Her wedding night would have witnesses who would take proofs of her virginity; she would give birth to her children with fifty or sixty people in the room, taking official notice of the event. Which was certainly not as bad as the long-ago Constance, who had given birth to the future Emperor Frederick II in a tent with its walls up in the city’s market square, just to make certain that those who might claim that she was too old for childbearing and assert that her child was an imposter could be confuted. The life of a ruler’s wife was by its very nature a public one.
1634: THE BAVARIAN CRISIS – snippet 59:
Ingolstadt
And now this insult!
Johann Philipp Cratz von Scharffenstein barely managed to keep from snarling openly at the insufferable man standing before his desk in the commandant’s office, smiling down upon him.
The smile was perhaps the most insufferable thing about Colonel Wolmar von Farensbach, too, outside of the so-obviously-false “von” he was now adding to his name. The smile exuded a certain sort of smug condescension, barely this side of derision.
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