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Chapter 15

August-September 1636

Besançon


Rohan was not happy, but he was pragmatic. “Has she resumed her liaison with Candale, then?”

“I wouldn’t put it past her,” Marguerite said.

“I saw no sign of it while we were in Paris last summer.” Ruvigny shook his head. “He was rarely around. On the way here, he shared a room with the other men every night.”

“It’s probably political, then, but that’s neither here nor there.” Rohan looked at Raudegen. “I’ll have a letter ready by morning. With Bernhard’s approval, if he will agree to continue to second you to me for a span of time, you will be on your way back to Soubise shortly thereafter. He needs to know I’m aware that she is out there, somewhere, spinning her intrigues.”

“You have probably been receiving more information here, through the radio connection to the USE, Your Grace, than we did the last two weeks we were in France. Do you have any sense where they might have gone?” Ruvigny asked. “We speculated, of course. Brittany? Back to Sully? To Brunswick to negotiate Candale’s brother out of captivity?”

“Back to Paris to make Uncle Soubise’s life miserable,” Marguerite contributed. She paused. “Why don’t you divorce her, Papa?”

“No.” Rohan shook his head. “I won’t say never, but not as long as your grandfather is alive. I respect and admire him more, perhaps, than you can believe. In my estimation, Sully is one of the greatest men of our age with perhaps the greatest of political visions.”

* * *

“Do you believe, Henri?” Marguerite asked.

Ruvigny cocked his head a bit to the side. “Believe what?”

“The teachings of John Calvin. The tenets of the faith. What the theologians write and the preachers say?”

“How come you ask?”

“Because Susanna believes, I think. Bismarck believes. Gerry believes, in his odd way. I’m pretty sure that Uncle Soubise does believe; at least he did as a young man. The court considered him something of a zealot for the Reformed faith and he got into several confrontations. Papa can talk about theology in learned ways, but I don’t think he has a belief that informs his life. Nor Maman, or at least only that God’s favor has not fallen upon her and she is predestined to damnation, so she might as well do as she pleases on the way there. Do you believe?”

“Sometimes . . . sometimes I think that we—Rohan, Sully, Coligny, Bouillon, Trémouille, the great Protestant houses and their clients—have been placed in France to defend the faith of those who do believe.” He paused. “I am prepared to expend my life’s blood defending the right of Huguenot believers to follow their convictions, without forced conversions, without expulsions, without confiscations. Is that belief? Make of it what you will.”

* * *

“I hadn’t given it enough thought,” Rohan said to Marguerite. “Here you are, without your mother, and your presence is disrupting my bachelor household. You must have a mature woman as your companion, since your mother did not come. How many ladies-in-waiting will you need? A personal maid. A chambermaid.” He ticked items off a list as he muttered. “It’s already September. There’s not a lot of time left to bring suitable persons here.”

“If I may speak, Your Grace?” Ruvigny was standing with his back to the wall. “You no longer have close personal ties with the major Huguenot families, and the constellations at court are changing every day. You can’t be sure that any woman you bring from France won’t be acting as an agent for Gaston. Or for the duchess, as far as that goes.”

“Then what do you recommend? Marguerite can’t stay here without a proper establishment.”

“Borrow someone from Archduchess Claudia.”

“Most of her attendants are Catholic. She has accepted a few Protestants as a concession to the Grand Duke, but they are all Lutheran.” Rohan chewed on his upper lip for a moment. “As for that, this girl who came with you . . . she’s Catholic, isn’t she?”

“But betrothed to Cavriani’s son.” Ruvigny steepled his fingers, briefly considering how much of a diplomatic career would consist of balancing the relationship among the down-time equivalent of “lies, damn lies, and statistics.” “So it is possible that her Catholicism may be interpreted as a temporary or interim condition.” When pigs fly. “We should certainly behave in such a way as not to discourage her from converting if or when the possibility should arrive. In addition to that . . . ” Ah, he thought to himself. What would we do without the subjunctive case?

Rohan coughed politely. “I know Cavriani. I enjoy conversing with him. However, I’m never sure whether I’m on solid rock or shifting sand when I’m dealing with the man. Still . . . oh, well, yes. The girl can stay in Marguerite’s household until Cavriani sends for her and Marc. That doesn’t reduce the need for suitable Calvinist attendants.”

* * *

Rohan did not fully understand why they were in his conference room. He hadn’t summoned them; they had just filed in after his daughter. Why were all of them taking such an interest in her marriage? It wasn’t as if, aside from Ruvigny, any of them were Huguenots. The up-time boy had even stuck his hand up in the air and replied, “Present,” when he called the meeting to order.

“Understand, ladies and gentlemen. If a time comes when there are only two members of la religion prétendue réformée, as Henri IV chose to call our beliefs when he issued the Edict of Nantes, left standing, I will be one of them. That is the point from which all our discussions start. Now, first, as to the Catholic nonentity to whom the crown married Marguerite according to the up-time encyclopedias, impelled by Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin: he was a terrible mésalliance to be forced on the ducal house of Rohan. He was a minor Poitevan nobleman, merely a seigneur with not even a title, of no special fortune. That is unacceptable and will not occur. Understood?

They signaled that they understood, Ruvigny whispering to Gerry, under the general murmur, that prétendu was one of those “false friend” words that foreigners had to regard with suspicion.

“Nonetheless, I am having difficulties in locating matches of suitable rank among the Calvinists. Turenne would be the ideal candidate, but circumstances make such a match impossible. Rupert of the Palatinate is out of play; so are Amalie Elisabeth’s brothers.” He slammed one hand on the table, palm down, waving a list with the other. “Not one of these other possibilities is acceptable.” He slammed his hand down flat on the table again. “I can’t identify a single French nobleman of suitable rank who would place Rohan first. Not with any certainty. By now, my minimum requirement is a Protestant nonentity.”

“Don’t pick a dumb one,” Gerry advised. “It’s like breeding horses, if you don’t mind my saying so, Your Grace. Look at every single one of the possibilities and ask yourself, ‘Would I mind having a grandson exactly like this guy?’ If your answer to yourself is, ‘I’d rather have a pig,’ then he’s not the right choice, no matter how many political connections his family has.”

“So,” Bismarck said. “One requirement on the list is, smart. At least reasonably so.”

“Smart, kind, and reliable,” Gerry qualified. “You can vary the proportions but you need all three of those. At least, if you’re honestly trying to make a decent marriage for her, Your Grace, and not just use her as a pawn in your political games.”

Ruvigny looked at Rohan uneasily. People, at least most people, didn’t say things like that to dukes. At least not more than once.

Rohan ignored the up-timer, going back to his original train of commentary as if the boy hadn’t said anything. “She needs someone to be Rohan for her.” He frowned down at the papers in front of him.

“I’m here, you know,” Marguerite grouched at her father. “Sitting right here at the table.”

Gerry, blithely indifferent to the peril in which he kept placing himself, ignored her and kept on talking to the duke. “Yeah, I can see that, Your Grace. Politically, I mean.” He gestured toward Marguerite with this thumb. “For some important guy, she’ll just be a territorial annexation, so to speak. Land and money walking on two feet, to add glory to him. The tail that some dog would be wagging. As an even better analogy, she’ll be a commodity on the futures market and her husband will be speculating that she’ll retain her value—survive childbirth and not have anything happen to cause the French crown to seize the Rohan estates.”

“There’s a story that Gerry told me and the young duchess,” Bismarck whispered to Ruvigny. “About some emperor and some new clothes and a child who calls it the way he sees it.”

Gerry was still full steam ahead. “But some unimportant guy doesn’t have the clout you want.” He leaned back. “Maybe there really isn’t anybody suitable. Like there wasn’t for Queen Elizabeth of England last century.”

Bismarck shook his head. “She needs a husband. On that, I agree with the duke. Otherwise, she won’t have the heirs she needs. That Rohan needs. The queen of England got it wrong. She’d have been better off to find some guy, even if he wasn’t ideal, and have a half-dozen kids rather than let Mary of Scotland’s son take the throne after her.”

“I’m here, you know,” Marguerite grouched at Bismarck. “Right here at the table.”

Gerry glanced at her. “Yeah, I know you’re here, but I wouldn’t count on getting any of them, your father and his advisers, to listen to you. Face facts. It’s not as if you have any say in the matter. Not even if you think you should or I think you should. You know all of us guys in the Red Headed League better than you’ll have a chance to know the man you eventually marry before you have to stand up in the church to say, ‘I do.’”

He turned back toward Rohan. “But why does any guy you pick to marry her have to be Rohan for her at all?”

The duke popped his head up from studying the papers. “What do you mean?”

Before Gerry could answer, Bismarck gestured. “Why can’t she be Rohan for herself? She has us, Your Grace, if Grand Duke Bernhard will accept our resignations in your favor. Give us a few years. Ruvigny for her secretary of state, so to speak. Raudegen, when he gets back, as chief of security.” He nodded at Marc. “Head of the intelligence service.” At Susanna. “A confidante representing the voice of common sense, I suppose. I nominate me for her commander in chief.” He started to nod at Gerry. “Uh, chaplain? You could always convert to Calvinism. I’ll have to if I become her general, I suppose. It won’t be that complicated. The Brandenburg Electors are Calvinist already; they didn’t force their subjects to give up Lutheranism, but they’ll be pleased enough if one of them does. She’ll have our whole Red Headed League, with Raudegen and Marc as bonuses.”

“Nope,” Gerry preempted him. “I’m going to be a Lutheran pastor and as soon as this is over, I’m going back to Jena. Finally! Maybe I can be a consultant for you guys.”

Marguerite looked at him. “Are you sure?”

“I am, Your Grace. I know who I am and I know what I am. Out at Lothlorien, where I grew up, we had lots of vinyl LPs and a lot of those were Pete. He sang it, ‘Keep your eyes on the prize.’ You have to hold on and keep an eye on where you’re going. And there was Horton.”

Nobody else in the room had the vaguest idea what either vinyl or an elpee might be. This wasn’t Grantville. It wasn’t even Magdeburg or Bamberg. Neither did they know who Pete might have been. Nor Horton.

“Horton?” Marguerite asked.

Rohan tried, though. “Horton. Frau Dunn’s late husband, the one who was involved at Suhl. You know the up-time nurse that Grand Duke Bernhard brought here, don’t you? She prefers that we not speak of him.”

“Not the Suhl Incident Horton.” Gerry shook his head. “The other Horton. ‘I meant what I said and I said what I meant.’ That Horton—the elephant who was faithful, one hundred percent.”

Rohan finally broke the ensuing silence. “A fable perhaps, similar to those composed by Aesop?”

“I tell you,” Gerry said. “We had a lot of books out at Lothlorien, but Dad bought them at yard sales and flea markets. They were pretty beat up, so we didn’t give them to the State Library. They’re still out at the dome. I’ll have Ron send someone out to find Horton for you, when he hatches the egg and when he hears the who. ‘A person’s a person, no matter how small.’”

Murmurs of translation fluttered around the table, along with the making of lists of topics to be investigated further.

Bismarck thought that even though Gerry had so casually refused the jocularly offered ducal chaplaincy, a prize which almost any cleric of any denomination would grasp with both hands, there might yet be, in the form of this scrawny, unprepossessing, boy, someone who would give thought to providing a moral compass for a girl who certainly would need one. Still, the up-timer was, like himself, of the wrong confession. And also going back to Germany . . . 

Are you sure,” he asked Gerry after the others left, “that your true desire is to serve God for pure love of him? Are you sure that you aren’t trying to atone for what you see as your own unforgivable transgressions by following this path, relying on works rather than faith and grace? Are you sure that you aren’t following the same mistaken path that Luther took when he vowed to become a monk?”

* * *

During the last course of that evening’s dinner, Marguerite leaned her chin on her hand. “Do any of you care what I think about it? Anybody? How can I be Rohan for myself if nobody listens to me?”

“I’m listening, little daisy. What do you think?”

She sat up straighter. “Don’t indulge me with that soothing voice, Henri. Do even you really want to know what I think?”

“I do.” That was Bismarck.

“Me too.” That was Gerry.

Susanna and Marc waved from the other side of the table.

“Well then.” She pushed back her chair and stood up. “If Papa won’t divorce Maman and marry again to have more heirs, I think that he should make Uncle Soubise get married. He can put on ‘crusty old bachelor’ as what Gerry calls his public face as much as he wants to, but he’s several years younger than Papa. He can’t be much past fifty. If he had children, then it wouldn’t all depend on me. And it shouldn’t all depend on me, because I’m a girl.”

“Girls can do things for themselves,” Kamala Dunn began with the almost automatic up-timer’s reaction. She started to say more.

Marguerite pressed her hands together. “I know that I’ll have to marry the man Papa chooses . . . and . . . and get pregnant . . . whether I want to or not, because it’s my duty under God. If my husband is kind, like Gerry said, then it shouldn’t be so bad. But what if I die in childbirth, the first time? What if the baby dies with me? What will become of Rohan then?”

Nobody answered.

She reached up blindly, clasping the wall tapestry behind her in her left hand and squeezing it into pleats. “What if I’m like Maman? What if I become pregnant time after time after time and watch the babies die? And die, and die, until my husband tires of it and says no more, so that I will know that God has cursed me because I have failed in the only reason women are on earth, to give male heirs to their husbands? And then she had Tancrède, after Papa said there would be no more childbearing, and he was a boy and was healthy and he lived and she thought it was a sign that God had forgiven her for being a daughter of Eve, for as the preachers say, the pains of childbed are God’s retribution on us for her sin?”

Marguerite’s voice rose higher and higher in a pathetic wail. “So Maman loves him and she at least tried to take him with her when she went her own way this time, but she left me behind. She didn’t even try to keep me. She just left me behind.”

Letting loose of the tapestry, she sank back down in her chair. “But I am a daughter of Eve, too, so my babies will die and die, and the preachers will tell me that I must humbly accept God’s will. And then there will still be no more Rohan!”

She looked at them, almost desperately. “Do you know what it’s like, to have your brothers and sisters die, and die, and die?”

Bismarck shook his head. “Our family has lost none.”

“Nor ours,” Gerry said. “Presuming that Frank and Giovanna are okay, that is. Wherever they are by now.”

“Yes,” Susanna said. “I’m from my father’s second marriage, so I mostly didn’t see it. But almost all the children of my father’s first marriage have died, seven out of eight. I remember two of them besides Maria, who is still alive. My full brother and sister also died. I barely remember them at all. I was four when Ercole died and five when Lucretia’s time came. It’s my half-brothers Giuseppe and Gian Armando that I miss. I was eight when Seppi died and twelve when the smallpox took Mando.”

Ruvigny bowed his head. “You know that only Maximilien and Cirné died. Max was an adult, already in the Royal Guards. The other four of us are fine.”

Gerry thought of slipping out, but the radio room was at the top of the citadel. No reasonable person would climb up the path to the citadel in the dark if he didn’t have to. He’d try tomorrow. Which he did, the first thing in the morning. Ron wasn’t available, but he got a response from Missy.

“At this hour?”

“It’s important. Honestly.”

“Oh, all right. I’ll get in touch with someone I know at the State Library, see what she can find, and have her get back to you.”

He waited for an hour and a half for the response, climbed back down the path, and then wandered into the breakfast room.

“You know that Catholic nonentity your father keeps harping on, little duchess?”

Marguerite, who had been staring miserably at her griddle cakes, raised her head.

“He wasn’t entirely useless. You had six kids. Four of them lived and had kids of their own. I don’t know why the duke didn’t think to mention it to you. He obviously has that same article about your family from the EB1911 that Missy just had one of her friends look up for me, or he wouldn’t have known who your husband was.”

Marguerite pursed her lips. Her eyes lit up with new interest. “Who was he?”

“Uh. I forgot to ask.”


From: Gerry, in Besançon

To: Ron, in Nancy


Dude, a second thought. When you have someone at Lothlorien hunt for those Dr. Seuss books I asked you to send, can you have them dig out Yertle the Turtle, too? I’m pretty sure we packed it in the same crate. I’ll give it to Ruvigny and Bismarck to think about. I’m not sure the rest of these guys are anywhere near ready for Yertle yet, much less Mack.

And if Pratchett’s Guards! Guards! is in there, send it, too, please.

Greetings and salutations and all that, Bro. See you soon, I hope.


“Don’t let Maman get custody of Tancrède,” Marguerite warned her father. “She’s an intrigante. She’ll try to use him, somehow. Don’t let Candale have him, either. That would be tantamount to letting Maman have him.” She bit her lip. “Especially if you do die in two years, my lord father, which I most sincerely hope that you do not.”

“What are you thinking?” Ruvigny pushed away from the wall.

“That she might use him to become regent of Rohan for a far longer time than she will be if I inherit. I’m almost of age.”

Bismarck looked doubtful.

“She could, you know. Now that I am out from under her control, if she has Tancrède she can invent some fairy story about how he is a legitimate heir. She could peddle it to his advisers as how she and Papa hid him for fear of the evil machinations of Richelieu. She could create a tale that Papa feared that the cardinal would seize the infant heir and bring him up Catholic, thus depriving the Huguenots of their strongest pillar. Now, under the magnanimous generosity of a new monarch, there is no reason to fear. She can bring him out of the shadows into the protection of the royal sunlight. I could practically write it myself, and Benserade most certainly can write it. Heroic. Sentimental. Shocking. Touching. The Epic Poem of the Protective Mother and her Defenseless Son.”

Marguerite flicked her finger. “With a Greek chorus of lawyers.

“If nothing else, Papa, if you are so sure in your heart that you will die soon, then when you write your will, don’t just name me as your sole and universal heir. Put an explicit, unmistakable, unarguable statement into your will that you know the child exists, name him by name, state that he is a suppositious child, a bastard, and that in no way and under no circumstances should he be acknowledged as your heir.”

“He should be safe from her right here,” Rohan said. “Or safe from her ambitions, which amounts to the same thing.”

“I won’t have him here.” There was a certain air of focused menace slithering around the room. Most of it was slithering out of Marguerite. “I won’t have him in my household.”

“It’s my household,” Rohan pointed out.

“I won’t have him in any household where I am. Take him somewhere else.”

“We can’t send him back to LeBon in Paris,” Ruvigny pointed out. “If Gaston’s supporters get hold of him . . . That would cause more complications than even the improbable scenario that you are predicting, my panicked little puppet. I had planned to take him up to Leiden. Board him anonymously with a university professor who would bring him up to be a specialist in ancient linguistics or something,” Ruvigny said. “It was an actual plan. It was a workable plan before everything went sour in France.”

Marguerite glared. “I take it that you developed this plan before you actually met the little goblin.”

“I do agree,” Bismarck said, “that he doesn’t come across as a prime candidate for a career in Babylonian linguistics or anything of the sort. I don’t believe the sciences would be a prudent choice. I hate to think of what he could achieve in an alchemical laboratory.”

Gerry cleared his throat. “We can take him.” He waved his hand vaguely. “Marc and I. We’re leaving anyway. We can take him with us.”

“Why?” Rohan asked.

Gerry looked at Marc. There were limits to what you ought to say to a duke and he had reached his.

“He means,” Marc said, “that we’ve got something that as far as we can tell is pretty much missing in the whole French upper class. We both have fathers, good ones, with experience in bringing up boys. Either one would take him—Dr. Stone or my dad.”

“I think that Magda would like to have a kid,” Gerry said. “It looks as if she’s not going to have any of her own. But she’s Lutheran, like me. If you want him brought up Calvinist . . . ” His voice trailed off.

“I can take him to Geneva,” Marc interrupted. “Um. I agree with August that he’s not likely to turn into a pedant, but being a Cavriani is enough to keep even a kid as energetic as Tancrède is busy.”

He thought, Enough to occupy even a boy as naturally ambitious as the child of a certain politically adaptable French count and that intriguante of a French duchess may grow up to be.

He didn’t say it, though. Instead, he looked at the younger Marguerite. “Busy enough that you won’t always have to be thinking of him as a threat to your security just over there on the horizon—on the margin of everything else you have to think about.”

Ruvigny nodded. “Busy, and well out of the way of anyone who might be considering how to use him as a pawn in some power play.” He thought of the elder Marguerite. His voice firmed up. “Anyone at all.”

* * *

“I should stay here,” Susanna said. She and Marc were standing in a not-very-busy hallway, his arms around her waist and hers around his, their foreheads resting against each other. “Not go with you. Here as a dressmaker. Visiting Mama was a pretext, anyway. I should work for la petite Marguerite.”

“Why? I thought we had agreed with what Raudegen said, before France. That you would go to Geneva with me and have the pick of the world’s Huguenots to choose among.” Marc tried for a judicious, impartial, tone of voice. He wanted to take her with him. To Geneva. To wherever came next.

“Because I haven’t learned enough,” she answered. “Brussels was a Catholic court. It’s as Catholic as Vienna was, at least when you’re down in a dressmaker’s workshop. When you’re there, you know that the alliance with Fredrik Hendrik exists, but it’s kind of abstract. You don’t see it or experience it. I never went up to Amsterdam or Rotterdam or . . . Leiden, or . . . The Hague. Not to any of those northern cities. So I need to be where I’m working with Calvinists every day. To find out, you know, if I can stand living among Protestants. The way you found out in Naples whether you could stand living among Catholics.” She wrinkled up her forehead.

“I’m not sure how much you will learn about living among 99.99% of the world’s Calvinists by working for the little duchess,” Marc said. “I don’t think anyone would describe the Rohan family as typical of the breed. You could come to Geneva with me. It’s full of Calvinists.”

“All of the ladies in Geneva wear black dresses with white collars. Not one of them needs a court dressmaker.”

“There is that problem. Calvinists come in different varieties. The court of Frederik Hendrik would not have been typical of Calvinists, either.”

“So the little duchess is better than nothing. Even if the Rohans are not typical, I will meet their associates.”

Marc lifted his head and nodded. The nod was affirmative. Reluctant, but affirmative.

“If Rohan agrees to having you in her household longer term, then all right. I’ll be back.”

He was thinking No, no, we’ve agreed to take Tancrède to Geneva and we’ll be doing it without Susanna.

She was thinking, Serves them right for volunteering to take that kid to Geneva with them and expecting me to babysit him the whole way without even asking in advance whether I’d be willing.

Since September was often the last month to offer decent weather—October fell into “if you were lucky” and November into “if you liked to gamble”—Marc and Gerry were off to the livery stable the next morning.

The rain kept pouring. It dripped off Marc’s cape, down onto the hand by which he was holding Tancrède. The boy pulled away from his increasingly slippery grasp and dashed into a passageway to which the description alley would have assigned undue dignity. It had been swept, but the running water was scouring residual slime from deep between the cobblestones and dropping it into the occasional puddles that formed in low spots. Tancrède splashed through them, uncaring, in pursuit of a feral cat.

Gerry dashed after him, indifferent to the muck landing on his boots and the hem of his cloak.

Marc stayed where it was cleaner. Mama will be thrilled to have another little boy to bring up, he thought to himself. Of course she will. If he thought it often enough, perhaps he would convince himself.

That Papa would be thrilled went without saying. Ruvigny’s “Anyone at all” shouldn’t be interpreted as applying to Leopold Cavriani, and it would be a decade before the child would be old enough to do anything interesting. Who could predict what would be happening in the world by then?


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