Willard had expected to do his work here just as he had before; to go from one house to the next. During his first week in Bamberg, that was what he had done. This evening, he was looking a little doubtfully at his visitor and saying, "I'm really no good at public speaking. I'm not sure that putting up a booth at the weekly market would be the best thing, either . . ."
About public speaking, he was sure. About the booth at the market though . . . After all, the stake in Fairmont had always had a booth at the Grantville Fair, with volunteers to hand out literature and talk to the visitors. A booth in the marketplace might be a way to reach the villagers, too. A booth might work. . . .
The next market day, Willard's booth, so kindly furnished to him by Councilman Färber, went well. He handed out a lot of material. He was pleased.
Councilman Färber was pleased, also. If he had known that as a token of his gratitude, Willard had given a copy of the Book of Mormon to his wife, the Frau Stadtraetin, and to each of his three adult daughters, his satisfaction would have been notably diminished. Frau Färber found the book quite fascinating. Sufficiently so that she tucked it safely away beneath her handkerchiefs and collars and advised her married daughters to take the same precaution with their copies.
The second market day, there was more muttering and unrest around the booth. Stewart Hawker, Bamberg's "hearts and minds" man, was picking up some worrisome rumors. Not bad enough to bother Vince about, of course. But he sent a worried note off to Johnnie F. in Würzburg. Johnnie F. read it, took the morning to clear a few urgent items off his desk, and told Scott he was running up to Bamberg for a few days. In the nature of Johnnie F.'s work, he spent a lot of time running all over Franconia. Down-time transportation had eradicated the concept of "tight schedules." A few days would be a few days, more or less. Scott didn't give it a second thought.
One of the ongoing problems that plagued Franconia's senior administrators, both military and civilian, was that their subordinates who hadn't had uptime military service had been, by and large, brought up on the principle that if you saw a problem, you took care of it yourself, as inconspicuously as possible, without bothering anybody. Scott had said to Steve more than once, "I wish that just occasionally one of them would buck it up the chain. I'd have a lot fewer interesting surprises in the morning briefings if they could just bring themselves to do that. Now and then."
Johnnie F. wasn't worried about wasting his time in Bamberg. He and Stewart had plenty to do, even if the Willard problem didn't turn out to amount to anything. Still, on the third market day, he was in the square. So he got to see it all: the arrival of the mendicant friar who attacked the booth; Willard's defense of his supplies; the arrival of the city watch; the arrest. He noticed that a lot of people who wouldn't take Willard's literature when he was handing it out for free scooped it up eagerly after it had been scattered around on the cobblestones.
The court had to have been fixed in advance, Johnnie F. thought. Otherwise, why would it have been so conveniently in session, fully staffed, with no case before it, waiting for the accused and accusers to arrive? He wrote a note, gave it to Stewart, and sent him off on their best horse.
Stewart had only ridden this route once, the other direction, when he came up to Bamberg from Würzburg. An hour and a half later, he bore left when the road forked. There weren't any signposts. The left fork looked to be more traveled. It was. But it didn't lead to Würzburg. That accounted for six hours, right there.
Early September, 1633: Bamberg, Franconia
No N.U.S. cavalry had come to Bamberg in the nick of time. Johnnie F. guessed that his message hadn't gotten to Würzburg—or, at least, not soon enough for Grantville to Save the Day. Again. The show was going to go on.
They weren't going to burn Willard. Or hang him. Or behead him. Or anything else that was directly lethal. That far, at least, the N.U.S. had managed to impose its will. Heresy was no longer a civil crime in Franconia. Although the local church authorities, at the friar's behest, had duly declared him a heretic, the valid statues no longer authorized the civil judges to take action. Willard could believe what he pleased. He was not exactly welcome to believe what he pleased, but he had the system's grudging assent that the law guaranteed him the right to do so.
However, the civil authorities of Bamberg had drawn a sharp distinction between privately holding a belief and publicly advocating it. Since the persecutions of the late 1620s they were almost all Catholics, the city's well-to-do Protestants having almost all either fled or been executed as witches.