For the first time, one of the auditors smiled. Willa Fodor, that was, whom Steve had already tentatively pegged as the most easy-going of the trio.
"Sort of like illegal aliens back in the USA uptime," she said.
Steve returned the smile. "Pretty much, yes. Except there's no Immigration and Naturalization Service here to chase after them and get them deported. Not on a national scale, for sure, or even a regional one. Now and then, one of the local authorities carries out a little campaign. But all that does is just mix everything up still further. Franconia's even more of a crazy quilt of principalities than most of the Germanies. If a group gets rousted from one area, all they usually have to do is move a few miles and they're in somebody else's official jurisdiction."
Fodor was still smiling, but Maydene Utt had a frown on her face. "It sounds a lot more . . . I don't know. Tolerant, I guess. Than what I'd expected."
Salatto leaned back in his chair and shrugged. "It is, and it isn't. Depends on the time and place. The Catholic parts of Franconia actually had even more Protestants in them until just shortly before the Ring of Fire. But during the years 1626-1629, the bishop of Würzburg started a big campaign to force the re-Catholicization of the Steigerwald.
"And by `force,' I mean just that. He sent troops into villages that had become Protestant to drive out the Lutheran clergy, confiscate their rectories and any tithe grain they had in storage, reprogram their churches to be Catholic, and generally pushed pretty hard. In some villages, if there was resistance, the episcopal troops took the adult men as hostages, carried them off to prison in the nearest walled town where they had a garrison, and told the rest of the people in the village, `either promise to convert or we start shooting your husbands and fathers one by one.'"
All three auditors were frowning, now. Steve continued:
"That's made a lot of the Catholic administrators whom Grantville sent down to Franconia really uncomfortable, as you can imagine. But that's what the bishop was doing, and we can't close our eyes to it. Because of the bishop's campaign, it isn't really surprising that a much higher percentage of the population in the Prince-Diocese of Würzburg was Catholic, officially at least, in 1632 than had been the case five or six years earlier. It also isn't really surprising that a lot of the ex-Protestants are still holding grudges and think that a new administration installed in the episcopal palace ought to be a good time to start getting their own back."
Willa Fodor chuckled. "What a mess. I imagine you weren't all that happy when the NUS administration hit you with the Special Commission on the Establishment of Freedom of Religion."
Steve matched her chuckle. "Well . . . we certainly had mixed feelings about it. Just when we thought we were starting to get a handle on things . . ."
He shrugged again. "But I'm not complaining. The Commission probably helps more than it causes me headaches. Truth be told, I'm a lot more bothered by the ongoing corruption in the area. Government in Franconia—if you can even call it that—has been so screwed up for so long that people have gotten accustomed to cronyism and personal contacts and swapping favors as the way to do things. Can't say I even blame 'em, really. But I'm bound and determined to get that problem turned around, at least, by the time we can think of scheduling a regional election sometime in the spring of next year."
He gave the three women another smile. "That's why I asked for auditors to be sent down here. Whatever else, I've got to see to it that those ingrained habits don't start infecting our administration."
"What are you mostly concerned about?" McIntire asked.
"Contracting problems," Steve replied immediately. "Every time we put out a contract, I know blasted well that most of them wind up getting steered to somebody's friend or relative. People here don't even think about it, really. Cronyism has gotten so ingrained in their habits that they take it as a law of nature."
Maydene Utt's frown deepened. "We can fix that."
Steve thought she was overoptimistic. Wildly overoptimistic, in fact. But he figured Utt and the other two auditors could at least make clear to everybody that from now on they'd have to hide their corruption.
That was progress of a sort, he supposed. He thought ruefully—and not for the first time—of those innocent days when he'd been an administrator for Baltimore County, Maryland. Not that Maryland, or West Virginia for that matter, had ever been anyone's ideal of "clean government," he'd admit. A high percentage of the state's politicians, including governors, had wound up in prison, after all. Still, by the standards of down-time Franconia, even the most sticky-fingered West Virginia politician had been a veritable paragon of public virtue. Arch Moore excepted, probably.