The Ram Rebellion(158)

Martha Kronacher pressed the heels of her hands to her temples. "Oh, the boys are fussing again that no other printer will apprentice them because of Mutti's fight with the guild. That no other printer will ever be willing to apprentice them. That even if Mutti succeeds in her fight with the guild and keeps running the shop, they won't have had their proper apprenticeship and journeyman years and therefore the guild won't let them take it over when they are old enough."





"Oh, yecchh! Are they all the way back to casting you in the role of the sacrificial lamb—moaning that they just can't understand why Frau Else wasn't willing for you to marry the guild's candidate because at least that would have kept it in the family more or less?"





"Melchior's position is that it isn't as if I wanted to marry anyone else in particular. Otto's position is that it isn't as if anybody else is ever likely to want to marry me."





"Don't listen. They're just being brothers." Noelle plopped her tote bag down on the sales counter.





"Both of them have decided that Mutti wasn't really doing it for them, but because she's selfish and just didn't want to give the management over to a son-in-law. That if she'd been willing—"





"If she'd been willing, there's not a single guarantee that your husband would have helped either of them to open a shop of his own when the time came. There's also no prospect that either of them could have married into a shop by way of a widow or only daughter. They're daydreaming." Noelle picked up a guide rule and slammed it down. "Honestly, though, if things are that bad between your brothers and your mom, why doesn't she just send them off to help the Ram?"





Frau Else, her ample figure covered by an apron and ink stains on her hands, pushed open the curtain between the shop and the sales room. "Because I can't get any one else to work for me as apprentices or journeymen, that's why! But having my sons at home is insane. Everybody in the world knows that it is insane."





Noelle's eyebrows went up. "What's insane?" A flicker went through her mind of Gretchen Richter's—Gretchen Higgins'—frequent proclamations that this or that Grantville custom was wahnsinnig, absolut wahnsinnig.





"To try to deal with your own children at this age. Nobles foster them to the courts of higher-ranking nobles. Then they hire tutors to take them away for a grand tour for two or three years. Merchants and craftsmen apprentice the boys and send the girls to the households of friends. Bureaucrats send them away to live with relatives in other towns and attend a good Latin school. Laborers and peasants put them out into service by the time they are fourteen or fifteen. No parent who has the slightest amount of Herr Thomas Paine's famous `common sense' keeps them at home during the stage of youth. They are too unruly. Where do you think the term `unruly apprentices' comes from?"





Frau Else waved her hands in the air. "At the very least, any other master would beat them for the way they are behaving this morning. Even better, Otto and Melchior would be apprenticed to different masters and therefore would not be available to fight with each other. But can I do that? No. No other master will take them. In any case, I can't do without them. If I send them to the Ram, no one else will work for me. Martha and I don't have the strength to handle the presses by ourselves, and someone must be available for the sales room. Someone has to take orders. Someone has to keep the books."





Noelle had heard all this before. And knew that "someone" was Martha. Good, reliable, Martha. When it came to Otto and Melchior, Frau Else was writing her own version of the Book of Lamentations. She shook her head. "Speaking of unruly apprentices, I saw Hanna on the stepladder in the alley. The printers' apprentices are still throwing filth at the shop, I presume?"





"Only in the alley, now. The front to the street is well enough patrolled since the power changed in the city council. There are no more cobblestones. No more open threats. Just noises in the night. Shit in the morning. The guild masters piously say to anyone from the Ram who confronts them that they do their best to control the boys, but what can one expect? With much more of the same." Frau Else picked up an old rag and wiped off her hands.





Noelle pushed aside the curtain and went into the back of the shop. "Melchior, shame. Poor Hanna is not young and yet you let her stand on a ladder while you are wasting time here fighting with your brother. Get out there, right now, and clean the wall if you expect to have food at noon. Otto, I heard you. Turn that bin right side up and sort the type. Don't waste any time. Now, now, now!"