1635-The Tangled Web Page 12

  She was still facing him, her arms around his neck. She kissed him again. He agreed it seemed unlikely that either of them would ever try to undo their marriage.

  They listened.

  "And when the fight is fierce, the warfare long,

  "Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,

  "And hearts are brave again and arms are strong."

  The strains of Ralph Vaughan Williams's "Sine nomine" rang through the Reichsritterschaft of Schlitz.

  "The golden evening brightens in the west.

  "Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest."

  Wes picked up the garden spade. As soon as they got close enough, if the Fulda Barracks Regiment ever stopped howling out their anthem long enough that they could hear him, he would start banging on the bars to save them time in figuring out where he and Clara were in the building.

  He shook his head. That blasted song really stayed with a person. He'd heard it before, he was sure, but couldn't remember what the name was. He'd have to ask what it was called.

  "I've had enough."

  Wes told the whole staff at once, at the regular morning meeting. "Now that Harlan has agreed to cover Andrea's cost overruns in the land titles department, which I fully agree turned out to be worth it in the long run, I've asked Ed Piazza to relieve me, and he's agreed. I'm going back to Grantville to take over the consular service. Our people still manage to get in enough trouble that the State of Thuringia-Franconia needs its own consular service. With Clara, since her job as liaison has sort of been ended by circumstances."

  "You're looking pretty happy," Andrea said. "Aren't you going to miss dear old Fulda?"

  "Not the town. And Mel Springer will do fine here in the interim, until we get an elected board of commissioners in the spring and can transfer authority. I have full confidence that all of you will back him up."

  The strains of the Fulda Barracks Regiment singing its anthem came up from the square in front of the administration building. Wes got up and walked to the window, looking down, then over at St. Michael's church.

  "But. I never thought I'd say it, when he first showed up. But honest to goodness, I'm going to sort of miss Schweinsberg."

  He looked up, toward the Vogelsberg, out over the hills that surrounded the town. "The guy was more of a politician than a monk, I guess, but still, I'm sorry that the search parties never found him. There are a lot of places he could be, out there. If we had found his body, at least, we could have brought it back so the abbey could give him a decent burial with all the others. He was the abbot. He belongs there."

  The Fulda Barracks Regiment down below redoubled its efforts.

  Wes glanced back at the table. "Derek, what is that song called in English?"

  Derek Utt looked at him. "For All the Saints."

  Mail Stop

  Home, Sweet Home

  Frankfurt am Main, March 1633

  Martin Wackernagel drew up his horse, first looking back at the route he had just completed and then forward toward the walls of Frankfurt am Main.

  Via regia. Die Reichsstraße. There would never be anything to equal the Imperial Road. Sure, if you wanted to be prosaic, it was just one more trade route, a commercial connection between the great cities of Frankfurt and Leipzig and their fairs. It had been for centuries.

  But it was more than that. He hoped that it always would be. Merchants, teamsters, journeymen looking for a new place to demonstrate their existing skills and acquire new ones. Crowned heads, princes of the church, pilgrims on their way to the great shrine of St. James of Compostella, Santiago, in Spain. Victorious soldiers who had triumphed and beaten soldiers in retreat. Unemployed soldiers looking for work, entertainers looking for audiences, peddlers, and beggars. Sometimes it was hard to tell them apart, but they all used the road.

  Martin loved the road. He had been riding it as a private messenger for fifteen years, ever since he finished the apprenticeship that his father had forced on him and refused to go ahead and become a journeyman in the trade. Not that he had anything against Uncle Reichard. He had been a good master, but he was a belt-maker. Belts were necessary, of course, but not very interesting.

  So, then and now, he carried messages from Frankfurt to Erfurt via Hanau, Langenselbold, Gelnhausen, Wächtersbach, Soden and Salmünster, Steinau an der Straße, Schlüchtern, Neuhof, Fulda, Hünfeld, Vacha, Eisenach, and Gotha to Erfurt; then back again. Sometimes he had covered the further stretch to Weimar, Naumburg and Leipzig if there was no one available in Erfurt to pick up the rest of the run, but Frankfurt to Erfurt was his regular route. Or had been, until he started adding the leg that took him to the new city of Grantville, which sent out a truly amazing amount of correspondence.

  He knew that all of this caused his mother a lot of distress. She recited with some frequency—every time he got back to Frankfurt, in fact—a lament that she was beginning to wonder if he would ever settle down and get married.

  It wasn't as if, being a widow, she needed him to marry and make a home for her. She lived very comfortably with his older sister Merga and her husband Crispin Neumann. She just wanted him to settle down and marry. No special need for it—just a want.

  She just could not understand why he loved the road so much.

  Good Lord, Mutti, he thought. Do you suppose you could let it go just this once?

  Mechanical Ingenuity

  Bonn, Archdiocese of Cologne, March 1633

  Arno Vignelli had something to sell. Of course. He was an Italian engineer. Most engineers were Italian. They made incredibly ingenious machines in Italy. Italians produced clever devices and then crudely set out to make their fortunes by selling them to that portion of Europe's population that lived north of the Alps.

  Evrard Holmann's job, at the moment, included investment in new technology on behalf of Duke Ferdinand of Bavaria, Archbishop of Cologne. He shuffled through the papers on his desk. The man now standing in his office was the student of someone famous. Holman shuffled again. He had the information here somewhere, he was sure. He moved the pile in front of him to the side and snagged another one which should have the letter of introduction. Vignelli had also been to Grantville. He had built this particular device on the basis of something he had observed there.

  Vignelli ignored Holman's paper shuffling and went on running through his spiel. "Then, at this 'museum,' I saw the machines which lie at the basis of my new invention."

  "Museum?" Holmann raised his eyebrows at the unfamiliar term.

  "It is, ah, like a cabinet of curiosities, but the size of a building. It is devoted to the history of the region where this Grantville came from. And since it was a region where people used many various and different technical devices, it is full of them. That is where I saw the 'mimeograph.' "

  "They let you come and examine this freely, with no restrictions?"

  "Well, not freely. There is a charge to visit the 'museum,' but it is really a quite small one. I could afford to return for several days in a row. They had a placard posted that indicated the costs. The fee is reduced for visits by groups of school children. Otherwise, as to 'with no restrictions,' yes. There were guards, but to prevent damage and theft. Not to prevent visitors from examining the exhibits closely."

  "Very well. Go on."

  "I saw this 'mimeograph.' It is not a press. It works on a very different basis, using 'stencils.' I thought that I could make one. With enough time and money and workmen. It would be difficult and very expensive to make, with much hand-fitting of metal parts, especially teeth, and the need for several springs, but it could be done."

  "Expensive?"

  "If I had tried to copy the 'mimeograph.' There was a lever to partly open the 'drum' so that it could grasp the 'stencil' for example. If the grasping foot did not come together precisely, the stencil would be torn loose and ruined. Many other complications. But I did not copy it. There was another machine, a 'hectograph' it was called. Much simpler, but calling for more complicated inks. I though
t—if there were some way to combine these. That was when I saw the 'washing machine.' More precisely, when I saw the 'wringer' attached to the washing machine." Vignelli smiled.

  "Wringer?"

  "Two wooden rollers, fastened together and cranked by gears. The laundress feeds the wet clothing through them. The movement of the turning rollers moves the cloth through them; the pressure of the two rollers forces the water out of the cloth much more effectively than it can be wrung out by hand."

  Holmann nodded. He could visualize how that worked.

  "So," Vignelli beamed. "I thought. Take a tray, like the 'hectograph.' Run it through two rollers, one above and one below, as if feeding the cloth. But how to ink it? One more day, two more days, I came back and looked at them again and again. Then, on the third day, when I came in, I looked at the counter where the girl who took the fee I paid was standing. She gave me a receipt. She 'stamped' the date on it, with a mechanical device. It is quite delightful, and simple. I will have to make one some time."

  "You are wandering from the point."

  "Not really. To get the ink on the stamp, which transferred it to the receipt, she had a little tray, with a pad in it. Not something alchemical. Just a cloth pad inside the little metal tray, soaked with ordinary printer's ink. Boiled linseed oil and carbon black. She had that in a bottle. There was a hinged lid, so the pad could be closed at night so the ink did not dry out. When I asked her, she showed me how to ink the pad, just using a swab and letting it sink in. And then I knew. The hectograph tray, the inked pad—a thin silk covering is best, but fine linen such as is woven for ladies' handkerchiefs and collars will do—the stencil, the piece of paper on top of the stencil, another waxed sheet to protect the rollers from becoming inky, the whole thing moving back and forth between the two rollers of the 'wringer' until the paper is inked. Simple. Cheap. Anyone could make one—any decent craftsman, at least. It was like a divine revelation."

  "Show me," Holmann said. "Archbishop Ferdinand invests in results, not concepts."

  "See," Vignelli said after he had finished the first demonstration. "The operator can release or tighten the tension on the rollers. He can make a second pass if the ink is getting dry and the paper does not become dark enough the first time."

  "I don't think that I believed you," Holmann said. "But it is clear. How many of these machines do you have available?"

  "I have already completed ten. At least, my shop had completed ten at the time I began this journey and that was several weeks ago. I have five more almost finished and my assistants are in the workshop even as I talk to you here. I sold two—well, received orders for two—in Frankfurt on my way to Cologne. The eight available, I can deliver as fast as the parts can be transported, unless, of course, my head assistant, who left for Vienna the same day that I started north, has received orders there."

  "Tell me about the 'stencils.' "

  "They are not durable. You cannot print a large number of copies from a single stencil. The best ones that I have made, waxed silk, allow a hundred pages, perhaps. With good fortune, if the stencil does not wrinkle. Waxed paper will not make more than twenty-five copies, usually, before it begins to deteriorate."

  "That doesn't sound good," Holmann complained.

  Vignelli suspected that a skilled operator could get many more copies from a stencil—perhaps as many as a hundred from a paper stencil and a thousand from a silk one. But not all operators were skilled and presenting inflated claims to the dukes of Bavaria tended to have permanently fatal consequences for the businessman who presented them. The archbishop was a younger brother of Duke Maximilian. Much better that he should perhaps receive a happy surprise rather than an unhappy one.

  "But think. They are simple, even if not durable. Once a traditional print shop somewhere—such as in Cologne—has created the form for cutting the stencil, it can make as many stencils as may be needed. If the shop producing the pamphlet or placard will need to make five hundred copies, then make five stencils. Make a couple to spare. They aren't that expensive. If you want the item copied in ten different towns, if it should be the case that the archbishop has bought ten of these copying devices, then make ten stencils. They are lightweight and easy to distribute. Why, they can even be sent through the mail, properly protected and packed."

  "Better, but . . ."

  "At need, it is even possible to make a stencil without a print shop. Just to copy words from a manuscript."

  "How?"

  "It is best done for large placards, but this way." Vignelli opened a box and tumbled a batch of multi-colored letters on the table. "The up-timers use the Latin letter forms as we prefer them in Italy, not the German Fraktur. These, I understand, were for children in their earliest years, so they are large. Such a treasure, but possibly not surprising. I was highly gratified to discover how many Italians reside in this Grantville. The letters had magnets in the back and could be arranged and rearranged on a magnetic board. I have removed the magnets, of course, for safe-keeping. They are in my shop."

  "Which is where?"

  "I have established myself in Bolzano. Bozen, you may call it, in the Tirol. The duchess has created a very favorable business climate."

  "No wonder. The regent, Duke Leopold's widow, is a Medici," Holmann griped. "Damned family of Italian pawnbrokers, even if they have clawed their way up to Grand Dukes of Tuscany and given two queens to France."

  "Not to mention a couple of popes," Vignelli answered mildly. "Let me show you how to use these letters to make a stencil. Of course, any craftsman can make such letters from thin wood. There is no need for them to be of this up-time material."

  "You just carry them around to impress potential customers, then?"

  "Of course. Now. First draw around them on the piece of paper you intend for your stencil. Then cut them out with a razor blade, quite carefully. Only then wax the paper. Otherwise, no matter how careful a craftsman may be, the wax cracks and the ink seeps through. If the wax does not coat the stencil completely, the paper remains permeable to the ink. We are experimenting with hand-stenciling smaller letters by pricking the paper with a needle, but . . ."

  Holmann had made up his mind. "Hold that for my workman," he said. "You can explain the rest of it to him. The archbishop will take four of your machines. Is it possible to deliver them, ah, inconspicuously?"

  "Certainly," Vignelli said. "They are easy to assemble and I have prepared a sheet of directions. When they are disassembled, no guard at a town gate will give them a second glance. If there were a need for easier passage through tolls and customs or other inspections, the parts can even be shipped separately."

  "A need?"

  "If, for example, there were some need for the archbishop to ensure the preparation of literature in such a city as Magdeburg, or if a partisan of the emperor who is residing in Nuernberg might need discreet access to a way to provide information to the people. I call it," Vignelli said proudly, "a 'duplicating machine.' "

  News of the Day

  Frankfurt am Main, March 1633

  Martin delivered the bags he was carrying, saw to the stabling of his horse, and picked up the latest newspaper, fresh off the presses. Originally it had appeared weekly, but it came out twice a week now. You could buy it in every post office in Europe, of course, even those outside the CPE, but you got it first in Frankfurt, since that was where it was printed.

  He stood there, looking absentmindedly at the sales rack.

  There were a lot of other newspapers, of course. You could buy those at the Frankfurt post office, too. Nuernberg, Augsburg, and Leipzig. Berlin, even. Since the beginning, since the day a baby avisa grew up to be a regularly circulated commercial newsletter, post offices and newspapers had gone together. Before the war, there had been four or five real newspapers—not just occasional broadsides—in the Germanies, all weeklies. Five years ago, there were a dozen. Before the war, all of them together had printed perhaps five hundred copies per week. Five years ago, perhaps five thousan
d copies per week. Now, since the Ring of Fire—especially since the main theater of war with its plundering and marauding armies had moved away from the central cities of the Germanies—there were probably two dozen weekly papers and a half dozen that appeared more than once a week. Twelve thousand issues per week, perhaps.

  The rumor was that the new paper in Magdeburg might try to publish daily. He had picked up that gossip, as well as a newspaper, in Erfurt. Gossip was still usually a bit ahead of the printed news, especially when it came to things that might affect your job, so he dropped it into his conversation with Max Leimbacher who ran the newspaper concession. Someday, Max would return the favor. Then he headed for home.

  * * *

  Martin tossed the local paper on the table in his brother-in-law's print shop. "Saved you a trip," he said to the general direction of the back room and sang out a vendor's call. "All the latest news, guaranteed fresh. Notice, relation, and timely information concerning what has happened and occurred in Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, England, France, Hungary, Austria, Sweden, Poland, and Silesia, with items from Rome, Venice, and Vienna. Antwerp, Amsterdam, Cologne, Frankfort, Prague, and Linz, et cetera." He tossed the Erfurt paper, and any others he had collected on his route, onto the table after it. The men sitting around picked them up. That was the way it went with newspapers. They went to city councils, to monasteries, to subscription clubs in small towns, and even to village taverns. Well, occasionally to village pastors who tempted their parishioners to more diligent attendance at the weekly sermon by the bribe of getting to read the newspaper afterwards, but more often to village taverns. And, of course, to schools and libraries. Most Latin schools expected their students to keep up with the current news.

  One of the men started to read the items in the Frankfurt paper aloud. Not that the others couldn't read, of course, but if someone read aloud, everyone else could join in the discussion.