The Dreeson Incident(43)
"What were you thinking, for that matter, going off and leaving Annalise alone with the children.
"No, it does not matter that Thea and Nicol are there. It is just as well they didn't die, I suppose, but being alive is no remedy for being fools. They were alive when I met them in Grafenwöhr and fools there, already. Just one more expense for you, I suppose. It would be too much to hope that they are paying their own way."
By this time, she was halfway up the pier, the bodyguards closed in behind her. Ancelin and Deneau stayed at the rear of the other debarking passengers, but they could still hear her voice, ranting away.
Then she reached the head of the pier, where the formal reception party was waiting. Stopped. Lifted her head and smoothed her face.
"I am honored to make the acquaintance of the Bürgermeister and councilmen of Frankfurt and their gracious wives."
The Bürgermeister turned to another man. "Permit me to present you to Monsieur le duc de Soubise, a guest in our city."
The wrinkled old harridan curtsied quite properly.
Ancelin couldn't quite believe it.
Of course, he had never encountered the Abbess of Quedlinburg.
The Bürgermeister had turned to his prominent guest again. "Monsieur le duc, may I present Mayor Henry Dreeson of Grantville. Herr Wesley Jenkins, the State of Thuringia-Franconia's administrator in Fulda. His wife. Major Derek Utt." He proceeded through the litany, having carefully memorized the list that his secretary had given him the evening before.
Soubise inclined his head. "It is my pleasure. My brother, the duke of Rohan, has already met one of your fellow-countrymen, Monsieur Thomas Stone. In Padua, where he presented him with an autographed copy of his translation of the life of Duchess Renee of Ferrara. He was very favorably impressed with Monsieur Stone's lectures and delighted to extend hospitality to his son Elrond at his current headquarters in Switzerland. He finds him to be a very promising young man."
The Grantville contingent blinked but, all things considered, bore up well under this rather startling information.
Occasionally, the newspapers did miss something.
Chapter 16
Frankfurt am Main
"Angry people are, mostly, just angry people," said Henry Dreeson. "It's their nature. Solve one of their problems and they'll find something else to be angry about. Maybe because you solved it and took away their gripe."
Henry figured that this ceremonial banquet with the Frankfurt bigwigs was going fine. Shop talk was shop talk, wherever you found it. Names kept floating past his ears. Günderrode. Zum Jungen. Both of them named Hector, which was sort of peculiar. He hadn't met any Germans in Grantville named Hector. Maybe they were relatives.. Stalburger. A couple of men with a "von" in front of their names, though he didn't understand why nobles would be city councillors. But "Baur von Somewhere" didn't actually sound very much like he descended from some medieval knight in shining armor, and neither did "Weiß von Somewhere Else." Recent promotions, maybe—guys who had bought the farm, or at least the estate, in the most literal sense of the word.
Down the table, past the Bürgermeister, one of the councilmen was starting to rant about the dangers of popular revolution. Sounded like Tino Nobili going full tilt. He turned his head a little to direct his good ear toward the man. "Popular election to choose the council is the worst idea I've ever heard. And I've heard it before. If you let these CoC rabble into the city government . . . Why, the last time, twenty years ago, it took us two years to get the movement under control."
As usual. The municipal equivalent of generals fighting the last war.
"The gates of the ghetto are barricaded. The main difference from twenty years ago is that this time the defenders are armed, as well." The printer Crispin Neumann finished his report. He was known to have connections in Frankfurt's Jewish ghetto, although most people were too polite to specify what they were—namely, that his grandfather had been a convert to Lutheranism; he still had relatives who lived there.
The members of the Frankfurt city council looked at one another.
"Isn't there any way you can head it off?" Henry figured that maybe he wasn't expected to talk, him not being a citizen of Frankfurt; but, what the hell, the Bürgermeister had invited him to come to the meeting. He looked at the militia captain. "I mean, this town can't be that different from Grantville. Our police know to keep an eye on the 250 Club when certain sorts of things come up. Don't your watchmen do the same thing? Have a sort of list of trouble spots, that is? Even if it's in their own heads and not written down anywhere?