It didn't look like Vince was going to finish the sentence.
Janie looked up at the cherubs on the ceiling. ". . . there's always the possibility that we've sent a secret weapon."
"What?"
"Guarinoni may bore Duke Bernhard to death with extended lectures on a healthful lifestyle. Replete with mnemonic tricks and pompous admonitions."
Together, most of the SoTF administrative staff in Bamberg chanted, "Let's all be gesondt."
Bozen, Tirol
October 1634
"God rest his soul," Duchess Claudia said. She was referring to her late brother-in-law Ferdinand, the Holy Roman Emperor.
Dr. Bienner crossed himself.
"Ferdinand was never seriously interested in the Austrian holdings in Swabia."
Bienner nodded cautiously.
"Our nephew Ferdinand is not likely to make them his primary concern, either. He worries about Hungary. And the Turks."
"As well he should."
"The Austro-Hungarian Empire?"
"Premature, perhaps. But not unreasonable, given the situation in the Germanies."
"Which leaves Tyrol to worry about Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar. If, of course, the Swede does not manage to smash him." The duchess-regent smashed her hand down on the table. "I like that English word. It has such a satisfying sound."
"General Horn is not given to smashing."
"So I have heard. Duke Bernhard accepted Our physicians?"
"And, apparently, their advice. There is the whole winter to prepare for what we may, according to the up-timers' encyclopedias, expect next spring. They will work with the up-time 'nurse.' "
"Perhaps our agents in the Vorarlberg should initiate diplomatic relations with him?"
Dr. Bienner stroked his beard without replying.
Duchess Claudia walked to the window. "We are well matched in age. I am only thirty and proven fertile."
Dr. Bienner nodded. Her first marriage, little over a year in duration, had produced a child who still lived. Female, unfortunately. The second, five children in eight years, four of them still alive and healthy and two of them boys. Claudia de Medici was a woman to gladden any ambitious dynast's heart.
While his mind wandered, she had continued talking. "Perhaps it was prescient that Leopold and I chose to name our first daughter Isabella Clara. Two years before this 'Ring of Fire.' If the king in the Low Countries and Maria Anna have a son right away, the age gap will not be too great. A boy is old enough to beget years before a woman has matured enough to give birth with maximum safety. And the symbolism should appeal to them."
Dr. Bienner nodded silently.
"Duke Bernhard is a heretic, but that is no insuperable obstacle. After all, the pope granted a dispensation for the French king's sister to marry that stupid Englishman. Lutherans are no more heretical than Anglicans."
She tapped her fingernails, one by one, on the window pane. "I am scarcely in Vienna's confidence, of course. But if it should happen that Our cousins are too preoccupied to think seriously about the, um, 'challenges and opportunities' presented by the situation in Vorderoesterreich and the Breisgau . . . ah, not to mention Alsace and the Franche Comte . . ."
She turned around from the window, leaning forward.
"Tyrol is not."
Dr. Bienner nodded again. "May your generosity be rewarded, Your Grace."
Lucky at Cards
Andrew Dennis
"So, how do we play this game?" Richelieu's manner was open, inquiring, almost naive.
Smirks passed around the table. The business of state had finished hours ago and the guests who had remained in the Louvre to drink and gamble the night away were somewhat relaxed from the formality of occasions of state.
"Armand, you are impossible." Abel Servien, marquis de Sable, was a little more relaxed than most, laughing out loud as he spoke. Louder than most, too. It was all Mazarin could do not to wince at the way the man boomed. He actually liked the fellow, but it was a lot easier to picture him riding to hounds or spearing a boar than haggling the fine provisions of a treaty or partaking of a detailed academic correspondence. He did both of the latter, to the mild puzzlement of many, who looked at the big, hearty, beefy fellow with the loud voice and the bombastic manner and assumed he was, at best, an uncomplicated soul. The missing eye, lost in a hunting accident in his youth, did nothing to detract from the image of a simple brawler from the rural nobility.
Which he was. Simply a highly intelligent, supremely educated one whose achievements off the hunting field had just won him election to the newly-formed Academie Francaise, an accolade that paled somewhat beside being regarded by Richelieu as a smart man. Mazarin also had a high opinion of his talents: he had thrashed out the Peace of Cherasco with Servien, what seemed now like a lifetime ago, and both of them had done well as a result. Mazarin had made a name that now saw him in good odor in Paris and Rome both, and Servien had ended up minister of war and able to place any number of his relatives in the cardinal's service. His fourth cousin, Etienne, was one of the more notorious of the special intendants who did the cardinal's more surreptitious work.