The Baltic War(178)

Fortunately, there had been no clashes between her and her husband, over the subject of Emelie's growing attachment to the up-timers and her subtly-expressed but growing political radicalization. It might be better to say, cultural radicalization. Like Caroline Platzer herself, Emelie was not particularly interested in politics, in the narrow sense of the term. But she too, like the princess, had found herself powerfully influenced by the attitudes toward people and social relations that, in many ways, were more deeply rooted in Caroline and—especially—Maureen Grady than they were in the most flamboyant CoC agitator.



Emelie and Ludwig Guenther might have clashed, had circumstances been different. But her husband, much to his surprise, had found himself at the center of the growing storm in Lutheran theological circles, ever since he'd sponsored the now-famous Rudolstadt Colloquy, the year before. The continuing controversies over that colloquy and the decisions the count had made at it had become so contentious for the continent's Lutheran clergy that an exasperated emperor Gustav Adolf had ordered another colloquy be held to adjudicate all the issues under dispute—and had appointed Emelie's husband to oversee it. That, because whatever their other quarrels, all theologians involved had expressed no animosity toward Ludwig Guenther as a person. Indeed, they'd all agreed that he'd been quite even-handed and judicious—even if, to many of them, astonishingly wrong-headed.



So, Emelie and Ludwig Guenther had come to Magdeburg a few months earlier. Since her husband spent practically every waking hour attending to the Lutheran dispute, she'd found herself with a great deal of time on her hands. At her sister-in-law's invitation, she'd spent those many free hours at the settlement house. And, as the months passed, felt a subtle but sweeping transformation come over her, in terms of attitudes that she'd inherited unthinkingly from her background and upbringing.



Maureen Grady had been more influential in that respect—at least, for Emelie if not a seven-year-old princess—than Caroline Platzer. Maureen was in her late forties, in the prime of her life, with both an extensive education and an administrative practice "under her belt," as the Americans put it. The fact that she was married to an up-time policeman, with the usual conservative views of such men—conservative, at least, by American standards—gave Maureen's own attitudes that much more impact. This was no flighty girl whose opinions could be easily dismissed. This was an extremely capable and very level-headed woman, able to retain the affections of a tough-minded cop, whose views on most important social questions placed her in opposition to the standards of seventeenth-century society. Noble society, certainly.



You could start with Maureen's feminism, so deeply ingrained that she didn't even consider it "feminism" to begin with. Just . . . self-evident.



It would be interesting to see where it all wound up, in the end. And since Emelie was still only nineteen years old—and given the impact that the up-timers were starting to have on medicine and life expectancy—she had good reason to believe she'd see a great deal of whatever transformations happened to Europe, in her lifetime.



She was looking forward to it, even if—



"And now the princess seems to be developing an attachment to the peasant. What are we going to do?" demanded Anna Sophia, almost wailing the words.



—some others were not.





Fortunately, Kristina did not put up a fuss about attending the concert that night. She might have, except that the concert was supposed to include ballads from the Brillo saga, for which she'd become a devoted enthusiast and afficionado.



"Praise be," the princess' governess and official lady-in-waiting, Lady Ulrike, murmured to Caroline as they set off for the royal palace.



Unlike most of the German establishment—and most of the Swedish, for that matter—Lady Ulrike had few if any reservations about Caroline's relationship with Kristina. It might be better to say that whatever reservations the Swedish noblewoman had were simply overwhelmed by her relief at having someone who was far better suited than she was to keeping the princess under control. And if the young American's methods of "control" upset the established order, so much the worse for the establishment. They could cluck their tongues all they wanted. They didn't have the responsibility of keeping a girl who might be the world's smartest seven-year-old and was certainly its most self-confident and willful one—not to mention a truly superb horse rider—from running wild at every turn.





To make the situation still better for Lady Ulrike, Mary Simpson was at the concert also. She was surprised, since she'd thought Mary had left already on her trip to the Upper Palatinate.