The Eastern Front(134)

"You too?" asked Kristina. "Won't that make your father very angry?"

"Probably. But . . ." Ulrik sighed. "I am very fond of my father in most ways. But he's simply not a king you can depend on in a crisis."

"So where do we go?" asked Caroline.

"I should think it was obvious. We go straight to the heart of power. We go to Magdeburg." His voice began to rise, as the anger finally seeped through. "Let the chancellor try to dictate who rules and who does not, when the rightful heir to the land, the empire and the union     had placed herself in the bosom of her people. Let him try."

Kristina clapped her hands. "Oh, yes! People like me there!"

"Yes, they do. Soon, girl, they will like you even more."

Caroline Platzer finally realized the full scope of what was about to unfold.

"Prince," she said, her tone one of pleading. "She's still only a child . . ."

"I'm almost nine!" Kristina stamped her foot. "In a month. Month and a half. Well, almost two. Still, nine years old isn't a child anymore."

She looked up at her husband-to-be, who was almost three times her age. "Is it, Ulrik?"

He gave her a shoulder a little squeeze. "For most people, yes. Nine years old is still a child. But you're of the house of Vasa and I'm of the house of Oldenburg, We grow up much faster."

Kristina gave Caroline a triumphant look. "See?"

Caroline wasn't looking at the princess, though. She was still looking at Ulrik.

"I didn't . . . I hadn't . . ."

He cocked an eyebrow. "Yes?"

She swallowed. Then took a breath and squared her shoulders, as if she were a soldier reporting for duty. "I never understood—never realized—I didn't think . . ."

She took a second breath. Her shoulders relaxed a little.

"I guess I just didn't think you were this . . . bold."

"Oh, most certainly!" exclaimed Baldur. He clapped Ulrik on the shoulder. "In the olden days he'd have gone a-viking. Every summer! And I'd have followed him, too."

The humor went away, then. Norddahl's eyes were normally a light blue, but now they looked almost gray. Not the warm gray of ash, but the gray of arctic seas.

"Every summer, I'd have followed him," he said quietly. "Each and every one. There are not so many princes in the world—not real ones—that you can afford to let go of the one you find."

"That's very . . . medieval, Baldur," said Kristina. Very, very approvingly.


Kassel, capital of Hesse-Kassel

Amalie Elizabeth von Hanau-Münzenberg had access to many more newspapers than Ulrik did. Better ones, too.

But she'd let slip her lifelong habit of reading newspapers, these past weeks. She was a widow now, no longer a wife. And she'd found that the change had affected her far more powerfully than she would have believed, before her husband was killed on the banks of the Warta.

Her marriage to Wilhelm V had been one of political convenience and family advancement, originally, as were most marriages among their class of people. Neither at the beginning nor at any time since could you say they were romantically involved, in the way the up-timers used the phrase.

Still, they'd been married for years. She'd borne him a son, who would someday become William VI. She could hear him now playing in a nearby room, with all the energy and enthusiasm of a healthy six-year-old boy. He was a smart boy too, it was already obvious.

For years, the last face she'd seen most days before she slept was her husband's. And his was usually the first face she saw in the morning. Except for servants, of course, but they didn't count.

She'd almost always been glad to see the face, too. Many wives in her class dreaded opening their eyes in the morning. But she never had. Wilhelm's worst flaws had simply been irritating, nothing worse than that. If he wasn't always the cleverest and shrewdest of men, he was certainly no dullard, either. Generally good-natured, often of good cheer . . .

She missed him. She really missed him. There was still an ache inside.

Finally, though, just a few days ago, she'd started to resume her normal activities.

It hadn't taken her long to start feeling another ache inside. A hollowness in her stomach, this one, not a hollowness in her heart.

She got the Hamburg newspapers and journals regularly. Also all the most important ones from Magdeburg, Hannover, Mainz, Nürnberg—Grantville, of course.

The pattern was clear in all of them, if you knew what to look for.

The Swedish chancellor fixed in Berlin, like a barnacle on a piling. Why? Berlin was a wretched place. Miserable to live in, and a political backwater.

The badly injured king kept there, jealously guarded, the great up-time Moorish doctor dismissed. Why? Once the weather cleared, Gustav Adolf could have easily been moved to the capital. Or Grantville or Jena, for that matter—wherever the medical care would be the best for his condition.