1635-The Tangled Web Read online

  1635: THE TANGLED WEB

  Virginia DeMarce

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Virginia DeMarce

  "Prince and Abbot" was previously published in slightly different form in The Grantville Gazette, June 2006, copyright © 2006 by Virginia DeMarce; "Mail Stop" was previously published in slightly different form in The Grantville Gazette, January 2007, copyright © 2007 by Virginia DeMarce.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4391-3308-8

  Cover art by Tom Kidd

  First printing, December 2009

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  DeMarce, Virginia Easley, 1940–

  1635 : the tangled web / Virginia DeMarce.

  p. cm.— (The Ring of Fire series)

  ISBN 978-1-4391-3308-8 (trade pbk. : alk. paper)

  1. Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648—Fiction. 2. Time travel—Fiction. 3. Europe—History—17th century—Fiction. I. Title. II. Title: Sixteen thirty-five.

  PS3604.E448A615 2009

  813'.6—dc22

  2009037540

  Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)

  Printed in the United States of America

  The Ring of Fire series:

  1632 by Eric Flint

  1633 by Eric Flint & David Weber

  1634: The Baltic War by Eric Flint & David Weber

  Ring of Fire ed. by Eric Flint

  1634: The Galileo Affair by Eric Flint & Andrew Dennis

  1634: The Ram Rebellion by Eric Flint with Virginia DeMarce et al.

  1634: The Bavarian Crisis by Eric Flint & Virginia DeMarce

  1635: The Cannon Law by Eric Flint & Andrew Dennis

  Ring of Fire II ed. by Eric Flint

  1635: The Dreeson Incident by Eric Flint & Virginia DeMarce

  Grantville Gazette ed. by Eric Flint

  Grantville Gazette II ed. by Eric Flint

  Grantville Gazette III ed. by Eric Flint

  Grantville Gazette IV ed. by Eric Flint

  Grantville Gazette V ed. by Eric Flint

  Time Spike by Eric Flint & Marilyn Kosmatka

  Preface by Eric Flint

  1635: The Tangled Web is set in the 1632 universe, also known as the Ring of Fire universe. I created that alternate history universe with the novel 1632, published in 2000. Many novels, anthologies and magazine stories, and articles have followed since. Most of those novels have been collaborations between myself and several different authors. With the exception of David Weber, those authors emerged within the 1632 universe itself, as writers who were first published in the Ring of Fire anthology and the electronic magazine devoted to the 1632 series, the Grantville Gazette.

  Virginia DeMarce has been one of those authors. She was first published in the Ring of Fire anthology with the story "Biting Time." She took the character of Veronica, the grandmother of Gretchen Richter and a minor figure in the novel 1632, and developed her considerably. That development would continue in Virginia's first collaborative novel with me, 1634: The Bavarian Crisis, in which Veronica is a major character.

  Before co-authoring that novel, Virginia produced many other stories which were published in the Grantville Gazette, and she continues to do so. She also co-authored the recent novel 1635: The Dreeson Incident with me, and was (along with me) the major author in the anthology 1634: The Ram Rebellion. That anthology consists of related stories by a number of different authors which follow a common story arch, and culminates in the short novel The Ram Rebellion, which Virginia and I wrote together.

  In short, she is a central author in the unfolding and by now very extensive 1632 series—which it would probably be more accurate to call a literary complex rather than a series. As regular readers of the series are well aware, once you get past 1632, 1633 and the first Ring of Fire anthology, the various novels and anthologies in the series do not follow the linear Book 1-2-3 sequence which is typical of most series. Some of the novels and all of the anthologies overlap each other, often with stories that take place simultaneously but in different areas and involving different characters.

  (See the afterword for my recommendations concerning the reading order of the series, along with a sketch of the various upcoming volumes.)

  With this volume, we're trying a new experiment. I say "a" new experiment because the 1632 series has been experimenting almost since the beginning. The first anthology, Ring of Fire, had a number of stories by well-established authors like David Weber and Mercedes Lackey. This is the typical pattern for shared universe anthologies. But I also set aside half the book for stories by new authors, which I organized by using the 1632 conference in Baen Books' online discussion area, Baen's Bar. (If you've never been there, go to www.baen.com and select "Baen's Bar" from the far right side of the top menu.)

  Several of the authors who have since become prominent in the 1632 series got started in that anthology. In particular, in addition to Virginia herself, Andrew Dennis got started there with his story "Between the Armies." Since then, Andrew has collaborated with me on the novels 1634: The Galileo Affair and 1635: The Cannon Law and will be doing the same with several more volumes to come.

  Following the success of that experiment, we launched the online magazine Grantville Gazette, with stories and articles by many different authors. (Over sixty authors, the last time I counted.) That magazine has now come out with twenty-six issues in electronic form, along with five editions in paper format. And there are more coming.

  But there's been one thing that all of these volumes have had in common, leaving aside the purely electronic editions. They've all had at least one story by me in them. With this volume, we're expanding that format and, for the first time since the inception of the 1632 series, producing a volume which consists of stories written entirely by another author.

  The author, in this case, is Virginia DeMarce—and this volume consists of four inter-related stories (one of them a short novel) which intersect with, and in some places overlap, the stories contained in the novel 1635: The Dreeson Incident and in the forthcoming anthology 1635: The Wars on the Rhine. I say "in this case," because if this experiment is successful—which means "sells enough copies," to put it crudely—then we will be able to repeat it with later volumes. Virginia is by no means the only author working in the 1632 series who could produce volumes of their own which would be well worth publishing.

  But that's for the future. For the moment, enjoy this volume by Virginia DeMarce—and rest assured that the courier Martin Wackernagel and the deeds of the three young dukes of Württemberg will continue to appear and resonate throughout the series. For the title of this book could just as easily be applied to the 1632 series as a whole.

  A tangled web, indeed.

  Prince and Abbot

  This Troublesome Monk

  Fulda, December 1632

  "Maybe they should have held the battle of Lützen last month after all," Wes Jenkins said. "Just have kept Gustavus Adolphus out of it. Up-time, it seems to have cleared a whole batch of people off the playing board that we could just as well have done without."

  "Pappenheim?" Harlan Stull asked. He was sitting far back in his chair, so his burly chest didn't bump into the table. Before t
he Ring of Fire, he had been a miner and was the UMWA contact man for the New United States' administrative team in Fulda. He was also a nephew of Dennis Stull, who was running the procurement office that the New United States had set up in Erfurt, where Gustavus Adolphus also had his main supply depot in Thuringia. All the rest of them figured that was something which would turn out to be real handy in the long run.

  "Johann Bernhard Schenk von Schweinsberg. The only thing that I love about him is his name. 'Barkeep from Pig Hill.' What a beautifully aristocratic name, once you translate that 'von' bit, no matter how many centuries the pigs have been sitting on top of their hill." Wes grinned. "Up-time, he was running around the battlefield, blessing the soldiers and calling for them to fight for the Catholic faith, when he ran into a squadron that wasn't friendly. They shot him neatly. Pistol to the head. So he was killed at Lützen, just like Pappenheim. Their bodies were carried into the Pleissenburg together to be embalmed, which would be a great thing for them to be, if you ask me, and good riddance to the two of them."

  Wes got up and looked out the window. Grantville hadn't had much information for the administrative staff of the New United States to prepare them for the job they faced in Fulda. Encyclopedia articles and a few tourist brochures from Len Tanner. That was about it. The tourist brochures hadn't been of much use. Up-time, practically the whole town had been redeveloped between 1632 and the twentieth century, it seemed.

  The building where they were sitting right now didn't have a picture in any of them. It would have been torn down in the eighteenth century and replaced. The big tan sandstone cathedral with its two tall curvy-topped towers wasn't here yet, either. Now, maybe, it never would be built. Instead, there was a church called the basilica. One of the monks had told him that it was eight hundred years old. That was now, 1632, not in the year 2000.

  Wes was willing to believe it—that the basilica was eight hundred years old. There was another one too, one that had survived until the twentieth century. That one had a photo in the brochures. St. Michael's it was called. The oldness of St. Michael's church had practically seemed to press down on his shoulders when he went through it. It was a burial church. Eight hundred years of dead monks. Already, in 1632, eight hundred years of dead monks.

  "What's the prince-abbot of Fulda done to you?" Andrea Hill looked at her boss with some worry. His thin face was dominated by a long nose. Wes had always been wiry, but since the Ring of Fire, he had gone down to skin and bones. He would just be annoyed if she acted like a substitute mom, though, so she was careful not to fuss at him about it. "He's been gone since before the king told us to take charge of Fulda."

  "Where's he been?" Fred Pence, Andrea's son-in-law, had just arrived the week before, with the second group sent from Grantville.

  "He ran off to the Habsburgs when Gustavus Adolphus and the Hessians came through and took 'Priests' Alley' here and along the Rhine River in the fall of 1631. Fulda gave up without a single shot. We haven't seen hide nor hair of him."

  Wes came back from the window. "At least, with the abbot and chapter monks gone, most of the people seem to prefer us to the Hessians as an occupation force. Even the monks who are still around, at least since we promised to try to get their library back from our noble ally the landgrave of Hesse, who swiped it."

  "Don't get their hopes up. When these brigands swipe stuff, it stays swiped. Our side just as much as their side." Roy Copenhaver, the economic liaison, was already thoroughly disillusioned by how little, between them, Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar for Gustavus Adolphus and the Hessian commander Albrecht Thilo von Uslar had left in Fulda in the way of resources for the Grantvillers to work with. Although, he had to admit, the monks who escaped to Cologne had supposedly taken most of the abbey's treasury with them, so he couldn't blame their own new captain general or his Hessian allies for that.

  Andrea stuck her pencil through her graying hair. "Not to mention that they stole their archives themselves. That is, the monks who ran off to Cologne took the records with them and aren't about to send them back. Anita in Würzburg and Janie in Bamberg at least have something to work with when they get these disputes about who has a right to what laid in front of them. I'm having to start from scratch."

  Wes sat down again, looking at the letter in front of him. "We have a Christmas present. The abbot's coming back, Ed Piazza says. In all his full glory, waving the banner of the Counter-Reformation and claiming that he has the right to do his thing under 'freedom of religion' and the constitution of the New United States."

  "From Cologne?" Andrea asked hopefully. "With archives?"

  "No, from Prague. He attached himself to Tilly and ran in a different direction, taking what little he had in the way of an army with him. He's been hanging around with Wallenstein since then. He must be fairly tough, though—he's been living like a common soldier. Duke John George of Saxony gave him a safe-conduct through Saxony to come back and an escort to the border of the New United States. They handed him over down by Halle." Wes sighed. "Good old Duke John George. With friends like that, we really don't need enemies."

  "Is he bringing imperial troops disguised as his personal staff?" Harlan asked.

  "God, I hope not. The landgrave of Hesse would be only too happy to send a batch of his troops back into Fulda in the guise of 'protecting' the king of Sweden's new allies, given how few of our own people Frank Jackson has been able to spare for us here." Derek Utt, the military administrator, spent as much of his time keeping a wary eye out for raiding "friendly" troops as he did for raiding "enemy" troops.

  "How many military, exactly, do we have now?" Wes asked him.

  "Besides me? A half-dozen up-timers. Seven, if you count Gus Szymanski, who's the emergency medical technician and nearly sixty years old. Aside from Gus, the most senior person is Mark Early, who's nearly thirty. He's doing most of my administrative stuff. Procurement, quarters, payroll. The next is Johnny Furbee, who is twenty-seven. I'm basically using him to help me train some military police from local town and village militias. The other four are kids. Good kids, and at least they all have high school diplomas, which Johnny doesn't, but they're still kids trying to teach what little they know about modern military procedures to a couple hundred of those ex-mercenary combat veterans that Gretchen picked out from the prisoners. The training that Johnny is giving the militias is ad hoc since he was never an MP himself and neither was I, but it's something, and at least they have a vested interest in keeping the ex-mercenaries from raping their wives and daughters. The kids and the new MPs do good to keep our people from relapsing into looting the locals, to tell the truth. That's it. I don't know whether to hope Frank sends us more down-timers or be glad that we don't have too many to control."

  Wes looked at him, thinking that Derek himself had just turned thirty. But he was not only older in years than the younger men he called "kids." He was a lot older in experience. Derek was a Gulf War vet. He'd been a member of the active reserves; married, with a kid, just a baby. They were left up-time. Wes understood. His wife Lena had been left up-time too, although his two daughters were in Grantville, Chandra with two kids and Lenore finally going to get married next month, which he would have to miss. Not that he would have chosen Bryant Holloway for her if he had been doing the picking.

  Derek had lived in Fairmont. He had just come over to Grantville the afternoon of the Ring of Fire to go to the sport shop with his sister Lisa's husband. He had volunteered for the army the afternoon that Mike Stearns called for people. Once Mike and Frank Jackson had gotten past their first stage of relying so heavily on the United Mine Workers, he had moved up fast in the army of the New United States.

  Wes nodded his head. "If he tries to bring in troops disguised as staff, stop them at the border, but I really don't think that Ed and Frank would let him get that far with them. He's free to come back as an abbot. He can walk right in carrying his staff. Hell, he can even ride in, if he wants to. We'll even provide him with an escort from the Thuringian bord
er to the gates of the abbey. But he's not a prince of the Holy Roman Empire any more and he might as well learn it right there as anywhere else. What route is he taking?"

  The meeting got down to the nitty gritty.

  Grantville, December 1632

  "Because you are offering a salary."

  Ed Piazza looked at the down-time woman who was sitting in a straight chair across from his desk. He knew that the chair was hard and remarkably uncomfortable. In his first job, a wise old teacher showed him that by sawing a quarter of an inch off the front legs of a chair and sanding them, front and back, so they sat flush on the floor, it wasn't enough to notice but anyone using it was constantly sliding toward the front, in the direction of the floor, requiring him to brace his legs. It was remarkably useful for keeping parent-teacher conferences within their assigned time limits and Ed had taken his pair of wooden chairs with him from job to job, defying the advance of metal folding chairs. Even now, the people he motioned toward them rarely stayed in his office any longer than was absolutely necessary.

  "How did you hear about the job?"

  "Miss Susan Beattie told Mrs. Kortney Pence who told Mrs." She paused. "Schandra? Sandra? Tsandra? Prickett."

  "Chandra," Ed said.

  "Mrs. Prickett. Who told me, all at a meeting of the League of Women Voters. Miss Beattie thought of me because her father knows Mr. Birdie Newhouse who knows my brother Dietrich."

  Ed sorted it out in his mind. From Orville Beattie's daughter to Andrea Hill's daughter who was married to Fred Pence to Wes Jenkins's daughter. All adult children of members of the NUS administration in Fulda. Grantville had been a pretty small town, after all, before the Ring of Fire.

  " 'Because you are offering a salary.' That is the most forthright reply I have had from anyone applying for this job. When I asked why he wanted it, I mean. Or she. Would you care to explain, Mrs. Stade?"