The Baltic War(100)

"Yes, you're right. Poor Endymion—but he'd be the first to tell us to seize the occasion."



There was a stir at the outer entrance. A moment later, Thomas Wentworth was forcing his way through the crowd.



"Clear a path, damn you!" he shouted angrily. "Make way! I'm the earl of Strafford!"



He caught sight of Richard. "Cork!" he cried out. "Is there word of His Majesty? I could find no sign of him—"



Before Wentworth got halfway through that last sentence, Boyle had already gauged the crowd in the vicinity. Courtiers, mostly, not actual ministers except the secretary of state standing right beside him. Best of all, the soldiers were the same ones he'd used to bring in the king. And given their captains the promise of a very hefty bonus.



"Arrest that traitor!" he bellowed, pointing at Wentworth.





Chapter 23





Brussels, the Spanish Netherlands


Don Fernando was, of course, only twenty-three years old. That accounted for many of the things that he had already achieved. He did not yet know that they were impossible. His aunt Isabella and her advisers, on the other hand, did—and she was still the ruler of the Spanish Netherlands.



Isabella Clara Eugenia was certainly old enough to know better. According to the incredible encyclopedias to be found in Grantville, she should have been dead by now. More than three months ago, in fact, on the first day of December 1633.



Given how she felt this morning, that did not surprise her in the least. However, instead, she was quite alive and sitting in a wheeled chair at the conference table in her palace in Brussels, in the presence of her very closest and most trusted advisers and confidants. Wearing, as she had since she'd joined the order in 1625 a few years after her husband's death, the vestments of a nun of the Sisters of Saint Clare rather than the flashy court apparel and regalia of her younger years.



The decision that they had just placed on the table was not, perhaps, impossible. It was just . . . dangerous. Dreadfully dangerous.



"It is my will," she said.



Hers was an imperious voice, still, for all that it was beginning to quaver with age. Infanta of Spain by birth; daughter of Philip II, archduchess of Austria by marriage, joint sovereign of the Netherlands with her husband Archduke Albrecht VII of Austria, and sole sovereign since his death twelve years earlier.



"It is signed. Witnessed. Sealed. From the first, it was my father's intent that the Netherlands should be an appanage for us, for Albrecht and me. The lawyers have revisited all the provisions of my marriage contract in detail. For us, and for our children, to revert to Spain only if we did not have children."



A shadow of regret for three tiny, frail, babies, dead so long ago, flitted across her face. "Not that they should return to being directly ruled from Madrid after my death. I bore children, so the Netherlands became ours, no matter that they died soon after their birth. Mine, since my husband Albrecht's death. Not, of course, that it will prevent other lawyers, paid by other masters, from interpreting the clauses in other ways. So be it.



"It is my will," she repeated. "My nephew Fernando has earned my trust. I have bequeathed my holdings to him. Let the king of Spain react after he finds that the deed has been done. It will not be long."



Her confessor Bartolomé de los Rios y Alarcon shook his head. "Please, Your Grace! You are not dead until you are dead—and you are only sixty-seven years old."



The archduchess gave the Augustinian priest a rather cool look. Arch, it might be called.



"Only?"



De los Rios seemed discomfited, and looked away. Across from him at the table, Pieter Paul Rubens chuckled. "He's a priest, Your Grace—and Spanish, to boot. You can hardly expect him to say it out loud."



He shifted his chair forward and planted his forearms on the table. "But since I am merely an artist—and Flemish, to make it worse—I will undertake the crude business. You thought you were on your deathbed last summer, remember? And yet here you are, quite definitely alive. The only reason you know you were 'supposed' to have died at the end of last year is because you read it in a copy of a Grantville book."



She nodded. "And . . . so?"



A bit sternly, he said, "So read some of the other books. In the world that book was written, the average age at death of an American woman was almost eighty. And most of them were active and alert—reasonably enough—until the end. So stop predicting your imminent demise. Who knows?"



"I say it again—and so? In that same world, my three children would not have died in infancy. But they did, nonetheless."