Chapter 5
On the Road
November 1635
A month later, Bismarck and Ruvigny reluctantly set out from Paris. Not that they were sorry to be leaving. Reluctantly because they were returning to Rohan with his wife’s refusal to either join him or send his daughter to him. The duke would not be happy.
“Why did the duchess have to delay so long? If you think about it, she gave us the same answer a month ago, the instant she read the duke’s letter. She postponed, then delayed, then procrastinated, and dragged her feet about giving us her written answer. Now we’re headed back to Burgundy in the middle of what looks like it could be the most miserable winter I’ve ever seen. Even worse than last year.” August looked up at the lowering gray sky, which was drizzling tiny pebbles of sleet onto the half-frozen mud of the ungraded track that was pretending to be a road in eastern France.
“She’s not the one who has to ride in this,” Henri pointed out. “She may have put things off so long so she could add that she didn’t want to risk the seed pearl’s health by traveling in midwinter to the rest of her excuses.”
“He isn’t going to like it.”
“Entendu. Maybe all the church bells ringing to celebrate the child of the royal couple in the Netherlands will distract him. Too bad it was a girl.”
“But healthy, which isn’t something the Habsburgs can always count on. That augurs well for the future.” August hunched his shoulders against the sleet. “Sometimes it’s better for the heir to come second, with a girl first to undergo the process of having her head stretch out the mother’s hips for childbearing.”
When he heard their report, Rohan could have used some soothing medication. He started to compile yet another list of acceptable—to him—matches for Marguerite. “It’s more urgent with every day that passes,” he insisted. “As Grand Duke Bernhard said, when he declined the honor of fulfilling the role of her husband himself, she needs someone who can be Rohan for her.”
Laubach, County of Solms-Laubach
November 1635
Condolence letters were much more difficult than letters of congratulation, but Käthe had to produce one. Her brother-in-law, Amalie Elisabeth’s husband, the landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, had been killed in action at the Battle of Warta in Poland.
That was a frequent enough end, of course, for noblemen who spent their time fighting one another. She had already written over two dozen similar letters since she became old enough to correspond and would write dozens more if she lived for a biblical span of years.
She wondered if Amalie Elisabeth would miss him. That marriage had been a family arrangement, of course. Like her own. Like those of every woman of her acquaintance. They had seemed to get along well enough. At least it meant that Amalie Elisabeth would stop burdening Hesse-Kassel with another child every year.
Instead, she would become regent for young Wilhelm. She’d be regent for quite a while, considering that young Wilhelm had just turned seven years old in May. Would the emperor appoint her as the governor of the USE’s new Province of Hesse as well as regent of Hesse-Kassel itself? If so, knowing her sister, she would be gaining influence under Gustavus Adolphus.
Käthe nibbled at the tip of her pen. Her sister would be an independent actress on the imperial stage, playing a significant role.
If she herself had had the slightest idea of the impact that the Ring of Fire would have on the world, she would have held out for a better match in September of 1631. True, she had already been twenty-seven, but that wasn’t so old. She hadn’t been desperate. It was about the age when most women married. Only the high nobility or the rich sometimes made matches like that of Amalie Elisabeth, who had been seventeen when she married.
She had settled for Albert Otto, thinking that he was the best she was likely to get, considering that he was an only son and had therefore inherited his father’s lands unpartitioned, with a sick mother who had died a week after their wedding. No mother-in-law to second-guess every decision she made. He had barely come of age when he offered. Six years younger than she was by the calendar. A dozen years younger when it came to ordinary common sense.
Thinking that he was the best option might have been a mistake, but one it was much too late to do anything about. If her marriage lacked a certain vivacity of sentiment that a woman might ideally desire when contemplating the husband God had given her, neither did it contain insuperable difficulties that would prevent her from fulfilling her duties to that husband in a satisfactory manner. She shook her head. Her reasons had been good enough. And while her husband kept the local militia in good order, he had at least never joined Gustavus’ army, marched off to Poland, and died for the glory of it all.
Not that his female relatives would have let him. The three months after his father died of the wounds he had taken at Breitenbend in March of 1610 had been tense. From his posthumous birth in June to the birth of her own first son, the political survival of Solms-Laubach as an independent county had depended upon the physical survival of one thin-faced boy.
His mother had dealt with a long regency, during the last dozen years suffering the difficulties of the warring parties along the Rhine. Albert Otto had three living older sisters and five paternal aunts. He also had three paternal uncles who would have been more than happy to partition the Laubach lands into the other subdivisions of Solms if the child count had died—or been killed in action. The aunts and sisters had formed a protective phalanx around him.
All that female protective cherishing had left him with a reaction of massive impatience if anyone showed signs of hovering over him. “Anyone” included his wife. But it was so hard not to.
Besançon
Late 1635
“It’s far more than I want to deal with,” Rohan wrote. “I was no sooner finished speaking with Bernhard (who is far from fully recovered from his acute illness of last summer) about the impact of Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel’s death on Amalie Elisabeth—whom the grand duke has always liked a lot—than we were battered by the news of the assassination of Empress Maria Eleonora in Sweden and then Gustavus’ own severe injury at Lake Bledno. If the rumors of the involvement of Ducos’ fanatics in the death of the empress are true . . . ” The Rohans had their own, not insignificant, intelligence network throughout the Huguenot world.
He finished his instructions to Soubise and pulled a new sheet of paper from the desk. Perhaps it was not all bad that his wife had refused to leave Paris. He would be needing a pair of sharp eyes there. Whatever else anyone had ever said of Sully’s daughter, no one had ever asserted that she was not shrewd.
He laid the pen down. He needed to talk to Leopold Cavriani.
Brussels
December 1635
From: Susanna Allegretti, Brussels
To: M. Leopold Cavriani, Geneva
Most honored patron and friend,
Not having received word from you, I conclude that your other obligations have taken you to places that the postal service does not reach. Because of the difficulties I mentioned in November, I am taking prudent measures to avert what otherwise might become a series of unfortunate events.
I will remain here in Brussels for the time being, awaiting your further advice.
Your devoted friend and servant,
The old cobbler looked up from his workbench. “Are you sure that you want these shoes altered the way you described? They will be unstable to walk in, and the points are likely to damage the floors.”
“Yes, Joseph. Exactly as I described.” She hopped down from the wide windowsill on which she had been perching and took one of them in her hands again. “The wooden heels themselves—whittle them down from about here . . . ” She pointed. “Start a quarter-inch below where they attach to the sole and keep whittling until they are very narrow when they meet the floor. They’re about an inch and a half high altogether—that’s what’s fashionable now—so the wood shouldn’t break when I put weight on them. Then stiffen the matching fabric, mold it to look like it is covering a normal shoe heel, and glue it to the unwhittled quarter-inch of the wooden heel at the top.” She pointed again. “Right here. The false fabric heel should be a little off the floor—an eighth of an inch, maybe. Not enough that a casual observer will notice but enough that it won’t snag.”
“Every pair? This will ruin them, and shoes do not grow on trees, petite Suzette. You have to pay for them.”
“Yes, Joseph. All five pair. I have my reasons.”
From: Susanna in Brussels
To: Marc, wherever you are (c/o M. Leopold Cavriani, Geneva)
My dearest heart,
Should you hear stories that a certain overly-persistent Lorrainer colonel of my lamented acquaintance has a broken instep, do not be concerned for me. I will be fine, I promise.
Wishing you were here.
With all my love,
Besançon
January 1636
Leopold Cavriani came into town with his son Marc late in the month, dusted the snow off his nose and kicked the slush off his boots, did not curse the slippery cobblestones, inquired where the duc de Rohan might be found, and expressed cheerful relief when informed that his quarry was not at the top of the citadel.
“It’s just a little garrison up there right now, Sir,” the hostler said. “I’m plenty sorry for them, too, because their teeth must be frozen, not to mention their balls, the way the wind whips across that hilltop. At least the cold kills off most of the plague during the winter season. There’s some smallpox in town, but the grand duke’s people assure us that come next summer, using measures from these up-timers in the Germanies, the smallpox will be prevented from coming back. I’m of two minds about that, myself, interfering with the will of God the way it does.”
Cavriani sent Marc off to look for their mail, conferred with Rohan, and then with the assent of Grand Duke Bernhard annexed Colonel Raudegen temporarily. The contents of the mail packet proved to be unsatisfactory—either a great deal of correspondence had gone astray or some malefactor had been purloining bags from the postal system. He borrowed the use of Bernhard’s radio to check with Potentiana in Geneva, by way of multiple short re-sendings, only to get the dismaying news that none of the missing mail had arrived there, either.
So on the basis of the most recent information they had, which was far from recent enough, Rohan sent Bernhard’s man Raudegen, with Marc as assistant, off to stage a couple of interventions in England and the Netherlands.
“England first,” Leopold counseled, when it became clear that whatever Marc’s mind might be advising him, his heart was of the opinion that Susanna Allegretti had priority over anyone or anything else. “When Rohan sent Soubise back to England last summer to deal with the disgrace that Ducos and his fanatics are bringing on right-thinking Huguenots, he had no idea that the true idiots to whom Charles has now entrusted control of his policies would detain him. It was supposed to be a fast trip, digging them out of wherever they had fled in those remote islands and bringing them back where saner Calvinists could control them. But the imbeciles put Soubise under house arrest, so now we have to get him out, whether he managed to do the job he was assigned or not. Just bring him back.
“Bring him back first, before you go in pursuit of the idol of your eyes. You should find Susanna at The Hague, or wherever Fredrik Hendrik’s court is right now. Keep an eye on the newspapers to see where he is and if his wife is with him or spending the winter more comfortably in a town house in Amsterdam. I sent the request for Susanna’s transfer to the head dressmaker in Brussels back in November, but the last letter I received, she was still in Brussels. Something is wrong with our communications.”