Chapter 31
Paris
May 1637
“The duchess and Candale haven’t contacted Mirepoix, as far as I know.” Joachim Sandrart dropped that into common pool of data that they had gathered over the previous two weeks. He added nothing in regard to his speculations about why this might be or whether they might yet still do so. One agreed principle of this cooperative venture was that they would share only information. “Just the facts, ma’am,” he had said, quoting an up-timer acquaintance. Sharing interpretation of the facts might skirt perilously close, on occasion, to betraying confidences received from their employers.
“Neither has Mademoiselle Anne,” Gardiner said. “Not as far as I can tell.”
He also carefully refrained from stating his speculations. Nonetheless, now each of them was in a considerably better position because . . .
The first wife of Mirepoix had been the younger daughter of Sully and consequently a sister of the duchesse de Rohan. She had also served Anne of Austria as an honorary lady-in-waiting. However, after the bitter separation between Mirepoix and Louise (who had her problems—Sully had offered a huge dowry to get her married off at all) and Mirepoix’ subsequent rapid remarriage after her death . . . No one was certain which of the developing Rohan factions he would throw his support to. If neither had even bothered to send out feelers, then the answer might be neither—something they could speculate upon independently and include in their respective reports to their respective employers.
Gage, who was an English recusant Catholic, added some facts concerning some gossip which was based upon some rumors pertaining to Richelieu, Tremblay, and the king’s reliance, or possible lack of reliance, upon the Dévots, and whether this would lead to harsher restrictions upon the Huguenots, no matter which internal faction they might opt for.
They parted with all three of them feeling considerable satisfaction with the new system.
* * *
That was about the time that Marc managed to run Raudegen down for an urgent conversation.
“Soubise hasn’t been talking to me much lately,” Raudegen said. “If this has been coming up toward a boil, that’s not surprising, since his brother and Bernhard put me in his household and I’m quite sure he doesn’t want them to find out. I’ll ask around among some of the servants. Meanwhile, if you could make a run up to Brussels with a few things I’d like your Aunt Alis to bring to the attention of Huygens personally when she has the opportunity . . . “
“He’s already been through Brussels on his way to Lorraine,” Marc said. “I saw it in yesterday’s paper. You must have missed it because you spent the whole day on horseback.”
“Oh,” Raudegen said. “Shit. Well, I’ll send a letter to Mme. Cavriani. How do you feel about joining Bernhard in Lorraine by way of Besançon?”
Besançon
June 1637
Since Susanna was still there, Marc felt that “by way of Besançon” was a fine idea. He didn’t get there before the Burgundian delegation left for Lorraine and Rohan told him to stay put rather than follow it, so lacking other instructions, he stayed for a few days, bunking with Waldemar and Gerry Stone at the otherwise-unoccupied Ruvigny apartment, Henri and Sophia being in Nancy with Bernhard.
After months of nearly nonstop running, during which he had occasionally dropped in, left a packet of diplomatic correspondence, kissed his dearly beloved almost-fiancée a couple of times, and dropped out again, he finally got clued in by Gerry that it was high time that he sat down and actually listened to her for a couple of hours.
“I like all the people here,” Susanna said to Gerry. “Most of them, anyway. I’ve learned a lot since our expedition from Brussels brought me here. I’ve learned about French court life in Paris from Marguerite, even though I’ve never experienced it. I’ve learned about how the up-time was from Dominique and Shae, even though I’ll never be there. Knowing those things may do me a lot of good as time goes by, if I’m ever in France or Grantville; I realize that.”
She pulled one foot up under her skirts and turned around on the bench to face Marc.
“I don’t like that I’m not working; that I’m really living on your father’s charity. It’s not as if any woman in Burgundy, the way things are now, actually needs a court seamstress. Not even Marguerite. Or could afford the kind of work I do, even if she wanted it. Not even Grand Duchess Claudia, who has a couple of seamstresses of her own in any case, who make the things she does need. Mama worked for one of her Italian ladies-in-waiting, of course, when we were still in Tyrol. Those were magnificent clothes. But Mama rarely did anything for the Grand Duchess herself. They certainly weren’t so close that Claudia would have brought Mama to Burgundy as part of her own staff.”
At which point Carey wandered through the room and sent her off to do something for Marguerite.
It took Marc a couple more days, but he finally managed some time and an alcove.
“Tell me your troubles.” He pulled her onto his lap and kissed her again. “All your troubles.”
“I’ve not been asked to make many clothes for anyone in the duke of Rohan’s household. There are . . . well . . . budget issues and Marguerite had to leave all that lovely fabric and trimming we bought there behind when we escaped. The up-time women that Grand Duke Bernhard has hired wear clothes that are incredibly plain. None of them have that ‘you can only make a public appearance in it once’ mentality. Shae says that there were women like that in the up-time world, but none of them ever lived in Grantville, and even a grande dame like Mrs. Simpson won’t have much of it. She’ll be more along the lines of ‘you buy something that’s high quality and then you wear it and wear it and wear it again’ than going the flashy route. Shae says that Mrs. Simpson’s style is classic. Did you know that the up-timers even classified the ways that women chose to dress?”
“Um,” Marc answered. “No. Nobody ever mentioned that to me.”
“Well, they did. Almost like library catalogs. I can tell you all about it some other time.”
Marc hoped, deeply hoped, that some other time equated to some far distant day.
“And even if I had made any connections into the household of the grand duchess, she’s had two babies since she and Bernhard got married and wasn’t inclined to spend much on clothes she couldn’t wear for more than a few months, even if they were having fancy court functions, which mostly they don’t, because Bernhard doesn’t have any extra money and the regents in Tyrol have put her on a strict allowance. She hardly has any ladies-in-waiting at all because there aren’t many Lutherans who want to come from the USE and there aren’t many Catholics who want to come from Tyrol, and there isn’t room in their house down in the Quartier Battant for many attendants, even if they did want to come. It’s not like Bernhard has a proper palace.”
“No elaborate court functions; two babies in three years, no ladies-in-waiting, no fancy clothes,” Marc summed up. “Not to mention that you haven’t met her. Got it.”
“Plus, all the wealthy merchants are trying to pretend that they don’t have any money so the grand duke can’t collect it in taxes, so they aren’t letting their wives buy expensive clothes either. I made some things for Sophia, both before they went to Savoy and since they got back, but that won’t last. Now that Ruvigny has enough money to support an ambassadorial lifestyle, he’ll be getting some more prestigious diplomatic appointment to a court somewhere else and they’ll be moving away.” Susanna jumped up off his lap. “I’ve got to get ready for taking Marguerite to her latest tutor. World geography, this time.”
* * *
“She has a point,” Gerry said that evening after dinner. “Even the wives of Bernhard’s high army and civilian officers haven’t been in a position to buy expensive or extravagant clothes, because the grand duke was barely managing to pay them, given his viewpoint that the enlisted ranks should also get their share of whatever payroll is available. Erlach’s wife, who might have set some kind of a dressing-up mark for the rest of them, is also his cousin, and stayed in Switzerland to manage their properties. Now that Bernhard has money again, and his officers are getting paid, they’re cautious about spending it because there’s no telling how long the good times will last. The whole Burgundian luxury goods market is in a slump and likely to stay there for a while.
“Also,” he added, “As far as the whole ‘learning to live among Calvinists’ project is concerned, Rohan’s ménage here is about as far from typical as anyone could get. You would have been ahead to send her up to Frederik Hendrik’s court, the way she wanted you to do in the first place.” He closed his mouth and then opened it again. “If you asked me, I’d say that you were at least a little bit inconsiderate and more than a little bit selfish to haul her along with you when you picked her up in Brussels. She hasn’t even gotten to so much as see the inside of a normal Reformed church—just the duke’s little open-to-the-public-on-the-Sabbath foyer in his house and the little Scots thing down by the river where Traill has planted himself until the whole fiasco with Hamilton has sort of slipped people’s minds.”
“Has anyone spotted Hamilton?” Marc asked.
“There have been a lot of supposed sightings. According to Ron, probably the most reliable one was in Antwerp.”
“Antwerp? Antwerp!”
“Wild geese. Supposedly, he was with a couple of their officers in a salle. They were trying to improve his swordsmanship.”
“Oh. Irish politics. I don’t believe for a minute that Hamilton’s in Antwerp. No way would Fernando and Frederik Hendrik put up with that.”
* * *
Marc and Susanna finally managed to find another bit of time to talk. “You know that there is a place for you with Amalie Elisabeth, the landgravine-regent of Hesse-Kassel. She’s Calvinist.”
“I am tired,” Susanna said, “genuinely, meaningfully, tired, of being picked up like one of your packages of diplomatic correspondence and moved around from one spot on the map to another according to your whims.”
Marc hadn’t thought about it like that. “I’ve told you that in the landgravine’s household, you will get to work for what my father calls ‘the pick of the world’s Calvinists.’ Or at least of the USE’s Calvinists. The only possible better situation for you would be in The Hague.”
“Then why didn’t you let me go to The Hague in the first place?”
Marc decided to duck that issue. “Even though she moves her household back and forth between Hesse and Magdeburg, the landgravine spends most of her time in the USE capital rather than Kassel. She has daughters who are growing into adolescence. She has equally prominent friends who have daughters. That should be enough to satisfy the aspirations of even the most ambitious young fashion designer or court dressmaker. There will be young people in Kassel also. Aren’t the Stones involved in making the Hessian university into the best?”
“That’s in Marburg,” Susanna snapped. “Not Kassel. Even if it were in Kassel, the young people at the university will be students. Pretty much by definition, students don’t have money to spend. Oh, a few have well-to-do parents but most of them don’t.”
Susanna paused. “And as for the landgravine’s daughter, ‘growing into adolescence’ is stretching things a bit. Amalie, the oldest, is eleven. Charlotte, the one you gave the kitten to—remember the girl? remember the kitten?—is ten. Little Elisabeth was born after the Ring of Fire. She can’t be more than three or four.”
“Maybe,” Marc said, “you can adopt a long-term economic perspective.”
“You,” Susanna answered, “have to be the most exasperating man ever born on earth.”
“My father and I already made the arrangements with the landgravine last fall. Before the cat caper and all that. I told you so then. She’s already agreed to appoint you as a member of her household. I’m going to be using it as the base for my various comings and goings for a while. I’ve just been too busy to take you to her.”
He didn’t see Susanna for three entire days after that conversation.
All the other ladies of the Rohan household assured him that he was better off not seeing her until her temper had cooled down a bit.
Before he had a chance to talk to her, he got an emergency radio transmission from his father and headed off to The Hague, leaving a note behind.
* * *
“I do love him,” Susanna said. “He can just be so desperately obtuse.”
“You’re contaminated,” Carey answered. “By us. We up-timers have contaminated you.”
“Plus,” Kamala added, “You’ve grown up. How old were you when you met Marc? Eighteen? You’re three years older now, and you haven’t even spent much time together. That was the big problem with early marriages, up-time. A couple got married when they were kids. Then, after they had both finished growing up, one of them discovered that he, or maybe she, didn’t much like the finished version of the other one. What do you really know about another? Are you in love with the real Marc Cavriani, or Marc-some-kind-of-a-romantic-idea-that-you’ve-built-up-in-your-mind?”
“I’m pretty sure,” Susanna answered, “that I’m in love with Marc-whom-I-want-to-be-the-father-of-my-children.”
“Have you talked about those children? About which church you’re going to bring them up in? Since this Catholic/Calvinist split is so important to you?”
“Oh. I guess I assumed we’d do what everybody else does. Like the grand duke and grand duchess. Their boys will be Lutheran and the girls Catholic. So our daughters would be Catholic and our sons Calvinist.”
“Hmm. I didn’t know that, I guess.” Kamala hummed,
Tea for two, and two for tea;
A boy for you, a girl for me.
“That’s . . . strange,” she continued. “How does the Catholic church deal with that arrangement? What will your confessor say? For that matter, will you be married by a priest or . . . Up-time, I know, the Catholic church insisted that it had to be a priest and the other person had to agree that all the kids would be Catholic. The old priest, Father O’Malley, the one before Father Mazzare, well, Cardinal Mazzare, was pretty fierce about that.”
“What could they possibly do, though?” Susanna was bewildered. “If the families set the terms in the marriage contract, they’re set. They could fuss, I guess. And it would be different in someplace like Spain, but that’s Spain. Or if someone like Ferdinand II was back as emperor in Austria, but he’s dead. He didn’t mess with marriage contract terms, though. He just expelled the Protestants and if they had Catholic husbands or wives who went with them, that was mostly their own problem.”
Kamala fixed her with a firm gaze.
“Okay. So I haven’t talked to Marc about it. About any of this.”
“My advice is to take enough time in Magdeburg to think about it. My advice is that the time to talk about it, whatever ‘it’ is, is definitely, totally definitely, before you marry the guy. Believe me, trust me, the voice of experience is speaking to you.”
Just before the Lorraine delegation left, Grand Duke Bernhard had written to Colonel Raudegen and directed him, when feasible, to resume his escort duties for one Susanna Allegretti, this time to Magdeburg. “When you get there, stay put for a while,” Bernhard directed. “I’ve heard a few rumors. Just stay there for a few weeks. I’ll get in touch by radio from Nancy if there’s anything else I frantically need you for.”