Willa Fodor interrupted his musings. "We'd best get started, then."
"I'd say so!" That, from Maydene Utt. Very firmly.
Estelle McIntire didn't say anything. She just nodded. Very firmly.
Steve ushered them out of his office, smiling all the way.
Chapter 2: "Helmut, speaking for the Ram"
September, 1633
"And just who are you?" demanded the head of Bamberg's city council, after he and the rest of the council had been ushered into the room at the back of the Ratskeller. The man's name was Seifert. He was big, beefy, and had a bluff personality that he was doing his best to summon.
Under the circumstances.
Which were . . . not good for bluff and beefy Bamberg city officials.
Not good at all. Herr Seifert had only to consider the fact that the Ratskeller in the basement of his own city hall was now filled with men—some of them considerably beefier than he was, and not a few obviously Jaeger—who were in no sense under his control.
Quite the opposite. He had no doubt at all that the three men who had escorted him and his fellow council members into the back room were Jaeger. Seeing as how their method of "escorting" consisted mostly of prodding the council members forward with the butt of their rifles.
It didn't help that Seifert's expensive clothing was torn and dirty from being slammed to the cobblestones of the square where the American heretic was being flogged, when the mob erupted. Or that he sported several visible bruises, and was certain that he had several others under the clothing that were worse yet.
Especially the one on his right leg. He'd had to limp into the meeting room at the back of the Ratskeller.
Still, proprieties had to be maintained. So, again, he demanded:
"And just who are you?"
Constantin Ableidinger considered the question, and how he should answer it.
Stupid of him, really, not to have given any thought to it before. Sooner or later, after all, it was bound to come up. He ascribed the stupidity to a momentary lapse; the product of the constant activity he'd been engaged in since he arrived in Bamberg after being hastily summoned from the Coburg border.
To use his own name would be foolish, he decided, on a practical level. The rebellion might very well fail, as most farmers' rebellions did. In that case, he'd be on the run—if he wasn't already dead—and he saw no point in providing his enemies with an easy way to track him down, much less to track his son Matthias down.
But what was more important was that it would be inaccurate, in a much broader sense. In a manner that still puzzled him, whenever he thought about it, Ableidinger had somehow emerged as the effective leader of this new rebellion. One of a handful, at least. Hardly what a schoolteacher from a small provincial town would have expected!
But that was the key, perhaps. The great Bauernkrieg of the past century had been led in large part by theologians and knights. Thomas Muentzer. Goetz von Berlichingen. Impractically and flamboyantly, as theologians and knights did things.
And the Bauernkrieg had been defeated, in the end. Disastrously defeated. The number of dead, when it was all over, was estimated to have been as high as one hundred thousand people. Most of them farmers, of course.
Ableidinger was determined to avoid that, this time—the great casualties as well as the defeat. He thought they had a good chance of doing so, basically for two reasons.
First, official authority in Franconia was now in the hands of the American uptimers. Who, obviously, had no good idea how to wield that authority—but who, just as obviously, were not going to serve as a center for organizing a counter-revolution. In fact, if the Suhl incident was any guide, were far more likely to give a rebellion their blessing. Tacitly, if not openly.
Secondly, there was no Martin Luther to stab the farmers in the back. Even if a theologian of his stature were around—thankfully, there wasn't—Ableidinger had been very careful not to give the new rebellion a theological content of any kind. Well, at least nothing that wasn't directly quoted from the Bible by way of Thomas Paine. And only pertaining to the proper powers of the secular authorities. There'd be no convenient Anabaptist extremists, this time, to provide the reactionaries with an easy way to muddle the issue
Keep it simple, uncomplicated—and, most of all, purely political and civil.
Ableidinger grinned. The Americans would like that. It would appeal to their common sense.
So, grinning, he gave his answer:
"You may think of me as Helmut, speaking for the Ram."
Some Americans might even appreciate the joke. He'd gotten the idea, after all, from one of their uptime books—a copy of it, rather—that had, in the circuitous way these things happened, somehow worked its way into the house of the printer in Bamberg. Else Kronacher's daughter Martha had lent it to him, one of the times he'd visited and had had to spend a few days in the city.