Matt made pretty good time coming up from Würzburg. Vince sent him and the doctors on their way on a really fast turnaround. In spite of the tension, nobody bothered them, neither the peasants nor the imperial knights. That might be, Matt thought, because there were a lot more peasants than knights, and Vince had a kind of . . . understanding . . . with the Ram.
On the Road to Kronach, Franconia
April 1634
Gatterer turned out to be a chatterer. Matt was just as pleased. Kronach was more than a little out of the loop, so he hadn't seen anywhere near as much data on these guys as Vince's inner circle had gotten.
"Dr. Weinhart was a student of Mercurialis, you know."
"Of who? I mean, of whom?"
"A professor at Padua. He is dead, now, for a quarter century, but he was very famous for what up-time you call 'sports medicine.' He wrote De arte gymnastica which isn't about what you call gymnastics, though. It's about caring for the body during exercising it. Mostly, though, Dr. Weinhart writes about diseases of the eyes. He is mostly here because he is, as you say, committed to fighting the plague. And, of course, because he has enough influence with the duchess to get the project approved."
Matt wondered vaguely just how Gatterer had come to hear of sports medicine. Then he thought of various reports about the number of down-time researchers combing through Grantville's books and encyclopedias and pushed it off into the category of not a problem. Of course there was stuff about sports medicine in the high school library and even if there hadn't been, Dr. Daoud, the chiropractor, loved to give classes and seminars.
"Please try to be tactful with Dr. Guarinoni," Gatterer said.
"Why?"
"You must understand. His father, the late Dr. Bartolomeo Guarinoni, was the emperor's personal physician. Logically, one would assume, our Dr. Guarinoni would have started life in a position of advantage. Unfortunately, ah, his parents were not married to one another. Although his father acknowledged him and provided him with an excellent education . . ."
"Narrow-minded folks talk."
"Precisely. He accompanied his father to the imperial courts—that of Maximilian II and Vienna and that of Rudolf II in Prague. He studied at the University of Padua. Still, every now and then, there is a certain . . . condescension . . . that he must cope with. Therefore, if, sometimes, he seems a bit . . . excessive . . ."
"Excessive? How?"
"Not everyone appreciates the comedy skits with which he attempted to enliven his book on practical health. Many of them are taken from stage routines. Directly adapted from them, even. But when he tries to get people who have come to him for advice to stand up and act them out . . ."
"I always hated that when my teachers made us do it. Both when I had to do it myself and when I had to watch other kids."
"But it is a good technique for embedding a concept in the memory. Excellent." Gatterer nodded sagely.
Near the Walls of Kronach
May 1634
Matt pointed down at the figure on the walls of the Rosenberg. The three doctors were taking fascinated turns with his up-time binoculars. "That's de Melon. Actually, he's expecting you. Inside the city, I mean."
"How do you know?"
"Well, we've set up the drop point. We keep the quarantine hard. No meetings with their people. No letting parties outside the walls to bury the dead. But . . . I'll show you. Over there—see? We've got that table in the middle of this field outside the walls. It's where their militia drills in normal times. We leave things on it and back off about the length of a football field. They come out and pick them up. They leave things on it and go inside again. We come down and pick them up."
"Things?"
"Information, mostly. Negotiations over this and that. So they know you're coming. We gave them a copy of the letters that came from your Duchess Claudia. And both of your books, Dr. Guarinoni and Dr. Weinhart."
"De Melon will receive us?"
"That's not the problem."
Matt smiled at Dr. Weinhart, who shuddered.
"There are two sides to this, you know. Not just 'will he receive you' but 'will good old Matt here let you go.' "
"How can you make conditions? People's lives are at stake."
"They've been at stake here ever since we came down to Franconia. If I don't finally get some kind of cooperation out of these stiff-assed . . ."
"What conditions are you imposing on them?"
"That if the three of you come into the city, I come too."
Guarinoni gaped at him. Very few people, other than physicians and clergy, voluntarily walked into plague sites.