If her father had been around more often, things might have been different. In the presence of Gustav Adolf, Kristina was a much happier and less difficult person than she was at most other times. But the king of Sweden, while he was obviously very fond of his daughter, was a man with many ambitions and preoccupations. He simply hadn't been around that often as she grew up.
Ulrik didn't have as much in the way of sheer raw intelligence as Kristina did. The girl was almost frighteningly precocious. But he was still a very smart man in his own right. What was more important, in Caroline's opinion, was that the Danish prince was also a wise man. Amazingly so, in fact, for someone who was only twenty-four years old. Ulrik had an ability to deliberate that you'd expect in a man twice his age—assuming the man in question was a wise man himself. He was prudent without being unduly cautious; temperate without being indecisive; and his automatic first impulse in the face of any problem or challenge was to reason rather than emote.
Caroline Platzer thought very highly of Ulrik, just as she did of Kristina. And, as she ate her dumplings at the same table with them, never thought twice of her presumption in analyzing and guiding the future rulers of much of Europe.
Why should she? She was a social worker, just doing her job, in a time and place that really needed the job done.
A field outside Dresden
"This will do nicely," announced Eddie Junker. Hands on hips, he surveyed the pasture again. "Very nicely."
Noelle Stull turned to the farmer and handed him a pouch full of coins. "Remember, you have to put up a good fence. There's enough in there to cover the cost."
Eddie nodded. "Very important. Or you might have a dead cow and—worse still—I might have a dead me."
The farmer didn't argue the point, once he finished counting the coins. "Not a problem. Keep my sons busy after they finish man-ma"—he stumbled over the English word a bit—"manicuring the pasture. Or they'll waste too much time in the taverns."
"Remember," Eddie said sternly. "Not one stone left in the field bigger than my thumb."
He held up the thumb in question. Standing next to him, Denise Beasley looked up at it and laughed.
"That thumb! A rhino could stumble over it." She held up her own thumb. "No bigger than this one."
The farmer squinted at the much smaller appendage, then shook his head. "Too much work."
"Leave it be, Denise," said Eddie. "My thumb's not all that big and—"
"I'm the expert on your thumb, buddy, not you, on account of—"
"Hey!" squawked Noelle.
Denise gave her a cherubic smile. "On account of I've hitchhiked with him."
"It's true," said Minnie. "Eddie's thumb can stop a truck. Of course, it helps when Denise and I"—here she hoisted her skirt and stuck out a leg—"show off too."
The leg was in stockings, but the stockings were very tight. The farmer looked a lot more intrigued at the sight than a man in his late forties with a still-living wife and three sons ought to look. But Noelle supposed it was hard to blame him. Minnie Hugelmair didn't have her best friend Denise Beasley's almost-outrageously good looks, but she was a still a healthy and shapely young woman. True, she had a glass eye and a little scar there, but people of the seventeenth century were more accustomed to such disfigurements than up-timers were. Smallpox left much worse scars on a face.
"I think we're done here," Noelle said. It was less of a statement than a plea.
Part Five
October 1635
The motion of our human blood
Chapter 26
The south bank of the Odra river, near Zielona Góra
"I don't want a repeat of what happened in Świebodzin, Captain Higgins. If you have to, shoot somebody. If that doesn't work, shoot a lot of somebodies. Shoot as many as it takes until they cease and desist. Is that understood?"
Mike Stearns was still icily furious, as he'd been for the last two days. Jeff had never seen him in such a state of mind.
Świebodzin had been hideous, though, sure enough. Some of the Finnish auxiliary cavalry that Gustav Adolf had attached to the Third Division had run amok once they got into the town and got their hands on some of the local vodka, the stuff they called "bread wine." They started sacking the town, with the atrocities that went with it. To make things worse, a couple of companies from an infantry battalion joined in. By the time Mike was able to put a stop to it, half the town had burned down and at least three dozen Polish civilians had been murdered and that many women had been raped. Nine of the dead were children. So were six of the raped girls, including one who was not more than eight years old.