"Didn't I say it?" Frau Else inquired of the ceiling. "Anyone but a mother. Anyone but a mother or father and boys will do what they are told. Anyone else. Anyone at all." When Noelle came back into the sales room, she repeated herself.
"I do have a reason for being here," Noelle said finally.
Frau Else snapped her mouth shut.
"Duplicating machines from Vignelli in Tirol. They started coming on the market in March. He is now producing them in fairly large numbers. I have ordered a dozen. They will be shipped from Bolzano, Bozen you call it, this week; they should arrive here in January. One, you may keep in your shop. It will be useful. The remainder are to go to the Ram for quick reproduction of pamphlets and broadsides in places where the movement doesn't have print shops accessible. And in places where quick mobility is desirable."
"Who is paying for this?" Frau Else was not so revolutionary as to ignore her bottom line. "Not I."
Noelle frowned at her. "They are prepaid. I will give the paperwork to Martha."
Frau Else nodded.
"About the boys . . ." Noelle waved her hand at the curtain. "Once things settle down a bit, why don't you send them to Grantville to learn the new printing technology? It's not covered by the guild regulations." Yet, she thought. There was no real reason to assume that the guilds wouldn't be scrambling to catch up. There was also no real reason to bring that up at this very moment.
"The whole reason for what I have done is to keep this business for my sons."
Noelle ran a hand through her sandy blonde hair. The basic truth was that Frau Else didn't really want to overthrow the system. She just wanted to be part of it. "Could you—maybe—just think outside the box for a minute?"
That required quite a bit of explanation.
Ending with a repeat of Frau Else's protest that she couldn't send her sons away because no trained journeyman printer would work for a woman who was not a master. And since she was not a master, she could not accept apprentices even if there were parents who were willing to send their sons to her. Not that any reasonable parent would be willing to waste money paying a master when the boy would not be eligible to enter the guild at the end of not. Not to say . . .
Blast it! Luckily that was inside Noelle's head and not coming out of her mouth.
"Ah. Well, maybe we could kill two birds with one stone. Something to keep Melchior and Otto occupied. Someone to work for you in the shop."
"There's no way."
The world does not end at the borders of Bamberg. Noelle hadn't said that, either. Though she had come close.
"I'll see about having them organize a Committee of Correspondence in Bamberg. Maybe, given their age, a kind of `junior chapter' with a lot of training involved. They'll need mentors. Something like Boy Scout leaders, I guess."
Martha looked skeptical. "Where would these mentors come from?"
"That's the other end of my idea. I'll see if they"—she left "they" undefined quite deliberately—"can send a couple guys down from Magdeburg. CoC members who are printers and will be willing to work for Frau Else. Create a liaison with Helmut. Organize a junior chapter at the same time."
Frau Else crossed her arms over her ample chest. "I will not turn my shop over to any other master. Not to one from Magdeburg any more than to a guild master from Bamberg."
"Journeymen. Working for you. There won't be any masters from Magdeburg who are interested in a project like this, anyhow." Noelle laughed. "It's the nature of revolutions to be rather short on wise old elders. Mike Stearns is seriously frustrated at the shortage of Red Sybolt types."
That required more explanation also.
By the end of the conversation, Noelle wasn't too sure about just how far this fledgling Franconian revolution was going to go. Her mind skipped to the passage in Ezekiel where God told the hapless prophet to "prophesy to the breath." In her limited experience, it just wasn't exactly a snap to put flesh on dry bones. Much less raise the dead.
A second image rose up. She saw herself fanning the flames of a wood fire in an old-fashioned cooking range to make them burn more hotly. Blowing upon them. Someone would have to breathe more life into this revolt before anyone could prophesy to the breath.
Frau Else marched back through the curtain with a firm, "I can't just stand around talking all day. There's work to be done."
For one morning, Noelle thought, she had probably done as much as she could.