Of course, Hobbes had other reasons, too. William knew them.
"Mister Hobbes, are you sure you are going to live in Grantville permanently?"
"The ball is still on the roof, Lord Devonshire."
Hobbes was quite sure that only the Americans would tolerate his views toward religion. While the Cavendishes might protect him from charges of heresy, such protection would probably come at the price of his remaining silent on any matter that could give offense to anyone.
Such silence was a price he had resolved not to pay.
Still, change might come to England, too. Perhaps sooner than the king, or even Doctor Harvey, expected.
William embraced him. "Goodbye, Mister Hobbes. I shan't forget all your lessons. And I will have your things sent to you."
"When you write to me, do not put my name anywhere on the letter. I would like to leave as vague as possible where I am and what I am doing."
"But how will the letter be delivered to you?"
"You must place some token upon it that the people in Grantville would understand, but the censors in England will not. A drawing of a whale to signify Leviathan, perhaps."
Hobbes paced. "Or perhaps not. The king may have sent agents to Grantville, to find every encyclopedia reference to Englishmen of our day, and the whale would surely point to me."
"Mister Hobbes, I promise to try to come up with something better. I have a long sea ride with nothing to do but think."
"Letter for you, Mister Hobbes."
"Thank you." Hobbes ripped it open the letter. It was from William. At least, Hobbes recognized the handwriting. The letter itself was unsigned. It thanked Hobbes for his efforts, and assured the unnamed recipient that he was to consider himself still on the family payroll. Without naming any particular family.
And there was a laundry list of gadgets to collect for William's uncles "if it wouldn't be too much trouble."
Carefully folded inside the main letter was a second one, addressed to Judy. Hobbes didn't open that one. Now that William was outside his custody, it was none of his business.
He decided that he would bring it by the Higgins Hotel and deliver it personally, as Judy might not otherwise realize who it had come from.
The next day, Hobbes spotted the postman as he walked down the street. Hobbes called out through his window. "That letter you gave me. How did you know it was for me?"
"It was obvious, Mister Hobbes." The postman waved and walked off.
Hobbes looked at the address side of the letter again, still puzzled. There was no name on it. No whale, for that matter. Just a drawing of a bipedal orange tiger, wearing a gown and a mortar board cap.
What could that refer to? Then Hobbes remembered the comic strip William had shown him, months before. Calvin . . . and Hobbes.
Eddie and the King's Daughter
K.D. Wentworth
King Christian IV nodded as the Danish court physician unbandaged what was left of Eddie Cantrell's leg. The monarch was a big, bluff man, narrow on the top and bottom, but wide in the middle. It was late at Rosenborg Castle, but, as Eddie had come to realize since his capture, the king kept idiosyncratic hours.
Lying on his narrow bed, Eddie flinched as his stump was revealed in the flickering candlelight, but the king's homely face took in the scarred flesh, the lack of both ankle and foot, with the utter aplomb of one who is whole himself and has never gotten in the way of an eighteen-pound roundshot in the heat of battle. "A very nice stump, Dr. Belk," he said in German. "Very nice, indeed. You have outdone yourself. Soon he can be fitted for a peg leg."
The doctor, who looked shriveled, as though he'd been freeze-dried at some point, waved a careless hand and replied testily, though Eddie couldn't understand more than a few words. Eddie's Danish was just barely coming along in the weeks since he'd been pulled out of the sea by the Danes, and the blasted doctor steadfastly refused to speak a single word of German to him. King Christian however spoke German like a native and seemed to prefer it. He even had a fair amount of English.
Eddie's room in Rosenborg castle was large and well furnished, with clean linens as well as a fireplace against Denmark's late autumn chill. He might have been an honored guest, but for the everpresent uniformed guard outside his room.
The doctor gestured at his truncated leg again, shrugged, then gathered the discarded bandages.
"What?" Eddie said. His fingers clawed at the bedclothes as he pushed himself up against the headboard. "Are you trying to tell me that it's going to grow back?" Despite of his gladness to be alive, even in this condition, he was tired of being treated like a stick of wood.