Henry Dreeson was sitting on a different rock, waiting for them to finish. Margie and her husband had taken a trip to Europe once, back up-time. A package tour. Afterwards, the next time she came home to Grantville for a visit, she'd brought a video for her parents to watch. If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium. That was the title, or something like it.
He was beginning to understand what his daughter's excursion must have been like.
"Where are we?" he asked Martin Wackernagel.
"About five miles northeast of Steinau an der Strasse. On the Reichsstrasse, that is. That's where we'll be spending the night.
"Wackernagel, I hate to tell you this, but if by the word Reichsstrasse you folks mean something like 'superhighway,' the follow-through on construction leaves something to be desired."
Cunz Kastenmayer, always the peacemaker, said, "You have to admit that it is much better than some of the rural roads we have traveled during the past two weeks in Buchenland county."
Dreeson nodded a little reluctantly. "Yep. Some of them were worse than anything I'd seen since about, oh, 1950 or 1960 in up-time West Virginia. Before the War on Poverty. Thank God for four wheel drive."
A couple of horses came in sight around the bend behind them. The riders stopped suddenly. They had planned to lag back far enough that the motorcade never spotted them.
Derek Utt was looking back. "Jeffie," he yelled. "Jeffie, what in hell?"
Jeffie Garand—Sergeant Garand now, Henry reminded himself—was moving up to face his commander.
"Ah. Um. Well, Gertrud and her stepmother wanted to come along to see the sights in Frankfurt, since the rest of us are going. I know you always say 'no camp followers,' but that's not exactly it. They're going to find a different inn to stay at, everywhere we stop, and they're paying their own way."
Utt looked around again. "Sergeant Hartke, did you know about this?"
Helmuth Hartke, father of Gertrud and husband of Dagmar, came forward. Dragging his feet a bit. "No, Sir." He cleared his throat. "I understand the problem, Sir. Dagmar really shouldn't be riding right now. In her condition."
Utt groaned and looked at Henry Dreeson.
He didn't have to ask. "Sure," Henry said. "We'll be glad to give her a place in the car. I'm sure Martin won't mind riding her horse the rest of the way into Frankfurt. He rides the Reichsstrasse all the time. It's his job."
Jeffie looked at Gertrud. Then at Wackernagel. He'd picked up a couple of rumors about the courier, when it came to girls. That's all they were, rumors, but . . .
Gertrud was his girl. He looked at Derek Utt.
"Maybe Gertrud oughta ride in the car with Dagmar? In case that she has, you know, female troubles, or something. Cunz can ride the other horse."
Derek sighed, waved one hand, and proclaimed, "So be it."
Frankfurt am Main
"Michel has gone mad," Mathurin Brillard said, almost snarling the words. "Stark, raving mad. Assassinate Stearns?"
Guillaume Locquifier glared at him. But not even Locquifier, with his near-adulation of Ducos, was prepared to argue the matter straight out. Instead, all he said was: "We will have to give Michel's orders some thought. Hard thought."
Those thoughts came to a consensus without much difficulty. It didn't take long, either. Two bottles of wine, at most.
Nobody said out loud that Michel Ducos really must have already heard about the group of Yeoman Warders whom the now-fabled Captain Lefferts had brought with him out of England—and who now served the USE's Prime Minister as a bodyguard. Or that, if not, he really should have. Ducos should have realized that Stearns would be almost impossible to assassinate, at least with the resources at their disposal.
True, the Pope's guards had been as ferocious—but there, they'd had the advantage of surprise. Nobody had really expected anyone to make a serious assassination attempt on the Pope. Whereas no one in Europe, down to village idiots, had any difficulty imagining the multitude of enemies who might wish to assassinate Michael Stearns.
No, it was simply out of the question to assassinate the USE's prime minister and his wife. Or his wife, for that matter. The protection of the Yeomen Warders extended to her also.
Robert Ouvrard shook his head. "Security is too tight around Gustavus Adolphus and Princess Kristina, too. The Swedes and Finns who guard them really mean business. If it comes to dying for them, those men will do so."
Locquifier chewed his upper lip. "Who does that leave, then? Wettin?"
Ouvrard shook his head. "Wettin doesn't have Yeoman Warders, but he does have bodyguards who take their jobs really seriously. Almost the only place we could reach him would be when he attends church. I am afraid that we all still have unfortunate memories of the last time Michel tried an assassination in a church."