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Chapter 16


Münster

September 1635


At least, he had known that his aunt was coming long enough to have his staff find appropriate quarters. Barely adequate quarters. Not in town; he had to put her in a manor house some distance from the center of the city. Several canons who belonged to the far-flung and multi-branched lineage of the counts of Merveldt had proved to be . . . intransigent and uncooperative. Not surprising when the current head of the Westerwinkel line had served as chamberlain to the wretched Bavarian nuisance who had been archbishop of Cologne. Was still chamberlain in vacante to the archdiocese of Cologne.

They claimed to be Uradel. They were a bunch of jumped-up ministeriales who had made a fortune from the defeat of the Anabaptists a century earlier; one of them had taken Jan van Leyden prisoner and been amply rewarded.

The family should consider itself fortunate not to receive more significant retribution than involuntarily hosting a dowager-electress of Saxony at one of its nearby manors. From the Drostenhof in Wolbeck, she could incidentally keep an eye out on what the retainers of the late Catholic prince-bishop were doing at Schloß Wolbeck.

Which was measurably better than having her live with him, and a minor benefit of his own residential situation. He was still in a cramped townhouse rented from an absentee merchant, its only charm being its convenient location.

His staff was still cramped and crammed into inadequate quarters in the city hall. Quarters that he had arbitrarily requisitioned. Beschlagnahmt. The city council still wanted the space back, not that they had been pleasant about vacating it in the first place.

* * *

Within weeks, Frederik was dismayed to discover that while Aunt Hedwig was content to deposit her entourage in comparatively rural quasi-retirement for the time being, she had no intention of remaining there herself.

She returned to town. Rented a neighboring townhouse. On credit. Made her presence known.

In her opinion, Frederik was not making the kind of an impression that a ruler—well, even a governor—should. She’d visited Denmark the year before when the chosen prince, Christian, married one of John George’s daughters, Magdalene Sybille. She’d been present for the all the displays and spectacles, processions and parades, fireworks and entertainments. She had enjoyed them.

Anything at Lichtenburg, of course, had been much smaller in scope. And more sedate, as became a widowed dowager. But she remembered other grand presentations from before she was widowed; from her own wedding. Outdoor performances and pageants; her groom had been obsessed by tournaments. Which had been forgivable in a boy of nineteen; less so when he got himself accidentally killed in one nine years later, by which time he should have grown up.

He had been less enthusiastic about plays and ballets. She loved them. Theater. Music. Dancing. Masquerades. Banquets.

One of the surprises she had encountered in Magdeburg was the up-time woman, Mary Simpson, who in these matters was a true kindred spirit.

Frederik’s digestion moaned with misery at the suggestion of more and longer, more elaborate and longer, more highly spiced and longer, banquets.

“What do you mean?” she asked. “How can you possibly be coping without a chef? Without a court designer? You haven’t even established your own wine cellar! And do you want eels for dinner?”

Frederik had never wanted eels for dinner in his life. He consulted with Christoffer Gabel, the young accountant he had recently hired to track his personal budget (always insufficient to need), as distinct from whatever budget the Province of Westphalia might be in process of developing (equally insufficient to need).

That amounted, in practice, to tracking the allowance that he was receiving from his father. Which, Gabel confirmed, was generous, but not sufficiently generous for the governor to afford Aunt Hedwig.

Then a young cousin of the footman Vendt caught her eyes as being clever, with deft hands. She decided it would be worthwhile to train the girl as a fine laundress, specializing in laces and embroidered linens. This resulted in her buying the girl out of serfdom—along with her parents and minor siblings, of course—which the lord in question (that nuisance von Raesfeld) had made a fairly expensive proposition.

And she brought up the question of finding him a wife.

Reiterated the question of finding him a wife.

Said that she would consult with his father about finding him a wife, given the childlessness of the chosen prince and the extreme youth of Princess Kristina. There was no telling what might happen.

Frederik had enough.

“There are two options. Only two. If you do not wish to return to Denmark, that is.”

He thought that Denmark would be a lovely solution to his dilemma, but an unlikely one for Hedwig to choose.

His aunt did not appear to welcome the news of limited options.

“The first is that you can retire to Thedinghausen.”

That would solve another problem for him. Thedinghausen Schloß, as it stood, had been built by Great-Uncle Johann Friedrich for his lover. Not the bürgerlich lover currently pensioned off in Bremervörde, mother of Johann Friedrich’s two legitimated and ennobled children, who was still very much alive and playing the role of “grieving widow” to the hilt while collecting a generous pension from the archdiocese.

Rather, he had constructed Thedinghausen for a noblewoman, the widow of a former archiepiscopal adviser and steward Heinrich Corlehake Hermeling, now resting among the saints of the church triumphant for some two decades. After a sequence of rather . . . iffy . . . financial transactions with the equally late archbishop, one hand washing the other. Upon the occasion of an overnight visit to Hermeling’s home by the late archbishop a couple of years before that, Johann Friedrich had found Hermeling’s young wife Gertrud to be charming, utterly charming. After Hermeling’s death, the archbishop and the widow had experienced a lovely, lustful, interlude, much to the outrage of the pastor at Lunsen, that continued for some years and included the building of a beautiful modern Schloß, until Gertrud’s sudden (and in Frederik’s opinion, fortunate) death in March 1620. Great-Uncle had nonetheless completed the building the next year.

“Thedinghausen,” Frederik said with all the persuasiveness he could command, “is not equivalent to Schloß Lichtenberg, certainly. It is not as large and has no attached villages, but it’s attractive, comfortable, and the outbuildings have been kept in good repair.

“There may be some challenges to your occupation of the property, but I’m certain that you are capable of dealing with them.”

Great-Uncle had given the new Schloß to his illegitimate son Friedrich von Holstein immediately after the charming Gertrud’s demise.

Frederik, as successor, and in his role as defender of the assets and budget of Stift Verden, had retrieved it, pensioning off the young man and his sister Christine von Holstein, now married to a von Hagen from Mecklenburg. Also, Gertrud had a surviving, married, sister—the von Heimbruchs were from Brunswick—who was heiress to her properties. All of them were almost sure to make a nuisance of themselves with lawsuits, but surely Aunt Hedwig would be capable of handling persistent appeals to the Reichskammergericht. It would be useful to have someone in residence who could handle them—one less thing for him to keep track of himself.

“It should prove to be an ample residence, where you can continue to live out your retirement in comfort.”

At the expense of Verden Hochstift, he thought, rather than out of my own pocket. It’s not like the Stift doesn’t have to pay for the upkeep even when it’s empty.

“It’s upriver from Bremen,” he said coaxingly, “but only a couple of miles—close enough that you could conveniently visit the city for cultural events and shopping for a week, every now and then. Even take in a sermon at the cathedral, now that we have reinstated Lutheran services there.”

And wouldn’t it annoy the Calvinists of Bremen if she showed up, numerous entourage in tow. He took some pleasure in the prospect.

“The interior is beautifully decorated.”

Aunt Hedwig averred that she would think about it.

“The other option,” Frederik said temptingly, “is that you could take on a major project.”


Bremen

September 1635


The FoJP administration in Bremen was far less concerned about Lutheran services in the cathedral than the Calvinist patricians of the Hochedler, Hochweiser Rath had been. Certainly less so than the city’s Calvinist clergy. Being native Bremer, most of them, and cuius regio, cuius religio having been around for quite some time, most of them were nominally Calvinist by virtue of having been brought up as Calvinists. If they had been reared as druids, they would probably be nominal druids.

The cathedral services hadn’t been mentioned in their conversations for months.

“Frederik gave the concessions at the charter convention,” one of the mayors commented. “How long do you think we can keep them? How far can we push them?”

“What if he decides to revoke them and shows up in person?”

“He’s sticking to the script when it comes to religious toleration. He’ll show up as governor if he shows up at all, so we won’t get the fun of making him walk through the Bishop’s Needle.”

“Focus, focus. Our aim is to become a free imperial city with a vote in the USE House of Lords.”

The CoCs concurred with that aim, but tended to indulge in more philosophical debates. At least, the more academic among them, students and such, tended to indulge in more philosophical debates.

“I have an up-time textbook on something called ‘business management.’ It’s a reprint, with annotations in Amideutsch. Doesn’t say who did the annotations. But Professor Grotius, the Dutchman who’s at Jena now . . . ” Tönnies Breiting’s family had dispatched him off to law school whether he wanted to go or not, so he only participated occasionally now. “It says, ‘Keep your goals firmly in view, but be flexible as to your methods.’”

“I saw something like that,” Agnes Bemmeler said, “but it was, ‘Keep a firm grip on your goals.’ Is that a significant distinction?”

“According to the annotations—I do suspect they were added by some researcher in the State Library in Grantville, because who else would have convenient access to so many different up-time books?—there are several versions of both parts of the maxim. ‘You must be stubborn with your goals,’ or ‘You should stay flexible in the approach and the methods.’ I think . . . ”

Hans Schwarzkopf, another Marburg student who had come up with Breiting for a chance to see what was happening in Bremen, asked, “Are you trying to justify a flexible method of making ethical decisions? Some form of raison d’etat?”

Peter Schorfmann frowned at him. “Is that a version of Machiavelli’s ‘the end justifies the means’? Whatever the means end up being? Spartacus writes about that in some of his pamphlets. If that’s what it’s all about, we don’t need to borrow it from the up-timers. We have it ourselves and have had it available to us for a century, at least.”

Neither Knaub nor Jauch knew anything about these conversations, so they reported nothing to Frederik.


Hamburg

September 1635


Daniel Bartoll, happily employed by the FoJP administration of the imperial city of Hamburg, as supervisor of the cattle market, looked out upon what he had created and found it good.

The immediate purpose of the Hamburg FoJP was to aid the Bremen FoJP by putting pressure on the Province of Westphalia.

If they choked Westphalian farmers’ access to the cattle market and loading docks . . . No when they choked Westphalian farmers’ access to the cattle market and loading docks . . . Frederik would have to give up his opposition to Bremen’s independence.

Oxenstierna’s stinking Province of Westphalia, full of cows and reactionaries, but without much else in the way of economic resources to support Gustav Adolf’s personally appointed, hand-picked, Hochadel, reactionary, Crown Loyalist, Danish governor. “Prince of Westphalia.” Pfaaah! He cleared his throat and spat.

The requirement had been there for centuries. Three days. Before cattle or swine from the north, Jutland, Schleswig, Holstein, may be ferried across the Elbe and exported to the south, they must . . . must mind you . . . be available for sale to Hamburg merchants for three full days. Three entire days.

Three entire days at the price that Hamburg sets. Is that too much to ask? It’s the responsibility of the government of the free imperial city of Hamburg to ensure that its citizens are provided for. Not to mention the obligation to provide for the USE troops here.

It’s our ferry, too. We run it.

Which brought up the matter of ferry costs. It’s only reasonable that we regulate them—certainly not Westphalia!

Now as for grain, how about mandatory warehousing in Hamburg-owned facilities as a prerequisite for loading dock use? With appropriate fees, of course.

When he was outlining his plan, somebody had asked if this was fair and just.

“All’s fair in love and war,” he answered.

“We’re not at war. Westphalia’s part of the USE too.”

“We’re at war with the reactionaries, and Westphalia’s a hotbed of them.”

“What if the up-timers object? They’ve forced the abolition of all the noble toll stations. Called them obstacles to trade. That’s why we can’t stop the Westphalians if they get hold of barges, load them upstream, and float them past us.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve gotten one of their business management textbooks. It makes pretty clear what techniques we can use and still be well within the boundaries they impose. Welcome to the wonderful world of usage fees, my friends. No petty noble will extort anything from the ignorant peasants as they bring their animals to the port for shipment.” He smiled blissfully. “We’ll get it all at the end.”

As Albert Bugenhagen, the Fourth of July Party mayor of Hamburg, commented during his consultation with his stalwart supporters, there was no one in Magdeburg who had any vested interest in seeing Frederik succeed in administering Westphalia. Certainly not the FoJP, but not the emperor, either; there was no way he had truly wanted a son of the Danish king in office over here. He’d been pressured into it—probably something to do with the Union of Kalmar. That was obvious. Anyone who looked at the way the Province of Westphalia had been designed at the Council of Copenhagen could see that the Swede had designed it to fail. Neither Gustav Adolf nor Oxenstierna could cherish any desire to see the second son of Christian IV of Denmark in an important position inside the USE.

“Hold back,” Bugenhagen imagined Oxenstierna recommending. “Let him suffer an embarrassing failure, and then we can move in and demonstrate how it should be done.”

Only the FoJP would move in; not Oxenstierna.


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