"So we're going to Coburg and we'll spend the rest of the fall, maybe into the winter, collecting these oaths. The wagon up front," Reece nodded, "actually does have the Special Commission's stuff. You didn't really miscalculate, Paul. This wagon has stuff for the Coburg project. We sort of sneaked it into the storeroom. Steve didn't want any leaks. Lynelle and the kids can go on to Grantville with the first wagon, and . . ."
Lynelle said, "Over my cold, dead body."
Reece stared at her.
"Look, Reece," she said in a level voice. "There's no more risk of smallpox in Coburg than in Würzburg; there's no more risk of plague in Coburg than in Würzburg, there's no more risk of anything in Coburg than in Würzburg. The kids won't be in a bit more danger in Coburg than they have been for the last few months while your Special Commission did its thing."
"But what about getting them into school?" Paul asked.
"If I could home-school them in Würzburg, which I did last spring, I can home-school them in Coburg this fall. And I can do more than that. You can deputize me and I can take oaths. Show these folks that a woman can be a citizen as well as a man. Remember what Saunders Wendell said that Johnnie F. figured out, up in Bamberg. You can't just tell people something. You have to show them. Show them that we mean it."
"Lynelle," Reece said, "I'm not going to do that."
"Why not?" Over the summer, Lynelle had had a little more of Reece Ellis than she could endure gracefully. "Since when are you the only one who decides things? Do you think I'm too weak? Do you think that you can wrap me up in cotton batting and stick me on a shelf somewhere the way you try to do with Anne Marie when it's not handy for you to have a wife around? Listen to me, Mr. High-and-Mighty-very-old-settler-Protestant-son-of-a-DAR-member-Mr.-Ellis. My grandparents, all four of them, were the first ones born in the U.S. of A. My great-grandparents went through a lot, really a lot, so they could get out of horrible places in the Balkans and come to better places in Pennsylvania and West Virginia so people like you could spend their spare time looking down their noses at them . . ."
"Lynelle!" Paul said faintly.
"Well, somebody ought to say it. We've all thought it often enough."
The subsequent discussion was rather painful. From Coburg, the front wagon went on to Grantville without Lynelle.
Würzburg, Late October, 1633
"If they can do it in Coburg," Johnnie F. asked, "then why can't we do it here? At least for the people who are living on lands that used to belong directly to the two bishops and the abbot? We've taken those over. There's never any use in leaving one of your opponents the financial resources to mount an opposition. Since we're here for the NUS, and we're certainly willing to promise, on its behalf, to protect and shield them . . . Hell, that's what we're down here for. Isn't it?"
Steve Salatto looked a little doubtful. "I'm not one hundred percent sure what the legal status is. We're—that is, the NUS—is supposed to be administering Franconia on behalf of Gustavus Adolphus. I'm not so sure that we're supposed to be incorporating the people into the NUS itself by taking oaths of allegiance from them to our Constitution."
"The suggestion came from Arnold Bellamy, himself," Scott Blackwell pointed out. "And it's in writing. We're covered."
"Well, at least it came to us under Arnold's signature." Steve looked at the letter again. "But there's something sort of, um, mischievous, about this idea. I just don't see it as the sort of thing that Arnold would come up with. Now I could suspect Ed Piazza of it, if he had time. But since last spring, when would he have had the time?"
Johnnie F. grinned. "There's always Noelle Murphy. It's the sort of thing she would think of and sneak into a memo if she had the chance."
Anita tended to tire of the tendency of the guys to analyze the underlying significance of their orders endlessly. Or, at any rate, tediously. "The point is, are we going to do it?"
The men looked at her.
"Or not?" she added.
"Do we have any idea what the response would be, out in the countryside?" Steve looked at Johnnie F.
"I'm not sure. I could ask around. One thing is pretty sure, though. It would make the farmers on the estates of the other little lords, the imperial knights and the petty nobles, just as jealous as could be. Not necessarily because the ex-episcopal farmers will want to take the oath. Not even because the other farmers would want to take the oath, necessarily. But because we would be giving them the chance. The grass is always greener, and suchlike. When it comes to the farmers who are subjects of other lords, it would sort of double, maybe triple, the effect of what we did when we abolished the remaining obligations of serfdom on the ex-episcopal estates."