Sometimes it just took the right incentive.
By the end of the day, sixteen men knew how to work the wagon, pump, and hoses.
Seven of them left the next morning, heading south up the Saale to find Jacques-Pierre Dumais in Grantville.
Including Klick.
At least Dumais was paying a commission for every recruit he sent.
Bryant's feet were back in the wet and muck. "Pull those hoses straight. I mean straight. No kinks."
What did that guy say? Yogi Berra, maybe? "Déjà vu all over again."
Naumburg
"What does it take to get an idea across to you?"
Fortunat Deneau was not having a good day.
"Listen, Weitz. Yes, I know that you hate the Jews. That is why you are here. But you are going to have to do your hating someplace other than Grantville until March fourth. That is the crux date. On the fourth of March, you may go hate the Jews of Grantville. Until then, you may speak, rant, perorate, whatever you want to call it, in other towns in Thuringia, but not there."
Weitz protested that the Jews of Grantville were the ones they had all come to attack. The excitement that enabled him to gather a couple of hundred volunteers was because they would be attacking the synagogue in the up-time town. Where they would all get to be in the newspapers after their triumph.
Deneau took a deep breath. "Until March fourth, I do not want a large demonstration. I want a few people, scattered in several towns around Thuringia. Badenburg, Saalfeld, Rudolstadt, here in Jena, over in Weimar—you can read a map, can't you? Preaching in the street. Calling out in the marketplaces. Making noise, but not doing anything. But they are to avoid Grantville. Avoid. Do you understand the word? Not go there."
"Why?"
Deneau wondered if it would be helpful to tear his hair. He had heard that it was a custom in some exotic locales. "I am trying to lull the people of Grantville into a false sense of security. I want them, their police, their mounted constabulary, their military forces to come to the point of thinking, 'Those rabble-rousers at least have enough sense not to come here.' I want them to send their constabulary and soldiers away, to Stadtilm, to Arnstadt, to Ilmenau, to Zella and Mehlis, for all I care. But far enough that it will take them some hours to get back."
Gui Ancelin shook his head. "I don't like that part of the plan. Counting on someone else's complacency to do part of one's work is always a dangerous assumption."
Weitz ignored him, concentrating on Deneau. "And what are we to do, then?"
"Rabble-rouse. Agitate. Do what agitators do. But in small groups. And close enough to Grantville that your men can walk there in a day or two—quickly enough that the authorities won't have time to notice that the ranters have suddenly disappeared from everywhere else and wonder where they have gone.
"If there are any among you who have enough prudence to remain quiet for a couple of weeks, you can send them ahead. They can infiltrate into Grantville now, pretending to be day laborers, migrant laborers, temporary workers. But only those who have enough self-control to wait. Silently."
Eventually, Weitz agreed, although he was far from pleased.
That left Deneau with just one other important problem.
He had been trying to get Boucher and Turpin to do something useful ever since the group left Frankfurt. Without any notable success. He called them in and sent them to Grantville. They were to look up Dumais and be his errand boys.
Let Dumais deal with the hapless, hopeless, and helplessly inept.
Then, another thought crossing his mind, he called them back.
"Don't tell him that I sent you. Tell him that Laurent Mauger sent you."
A couple of minutes later, he called them back again.
"Don't mention Weitz. Don't mention Ancelin. Above all, do not mention Frankfurt. Or anyone in Frankfurt—not Guillaume or Robert or Mathurin. Or me. Or Jews. Or synagogues. Or . . . Don't tell him anything, understand?"
"If we don't say anything, he'll think that we are mute," Turpin protested.
Deneau cast his eyes up to the ceiling. "Very funny, Georges. Tell, him precisely, these words. 'We come from La Rochelle, like you. Laurent Mauger sent us to help you.' Do you think you can remember that much, my dear compatriots? Perhaps one of you can take the first of the sentences and the second of you the other one?"
* * *
After they were gone, Deneau sat, brooding over his wine. "If Boucher and Turpin are an example of what La Rochelle's defense forces were like in 1628, my dear Gui, no wonder our great citadel fell to Richelieu's siege."
"There is a proverb, Fortunat. There is always a proverb. 'Against stupidity, the gods themselves strive in vain.' "