"I don't like the idea." Eddie Junker was chewing on his lower lip. "Ja, Helmut has supporters among the servants there. Bimbach's subjects don't have any love for their lord and master. Frau Else can put you in touch. But if the bosses catch on that you're not just one of the Ram's people but also that you're an uptimer, there would be hell to pay."
"It's not that dangerous. After three years talking mainly to Germans, my German is pretty good. Plus, with all the different dialects, accent isn't that much of a problem. I can avoid the castle authorities. I'll be Downstairs, not Upstairs. Even if His Bimboship's personal staff hear me say something, it won't be fatal. They'll know that I'm not from right around here, but with all the population displacement that the war has caused, they'll just think that I'm from somewhere else."
"Do you actually trust the old Neidecker woman?"
"Not as long as her daughter is in that castle. She lived through the witch trials. It's not like the nun who's helping us."
Eddie nodded. Anna Maria Junius at the Dominican convent in Bamberg was so grateful to Grantville for saving her sister Veronica when those fanatics hauled her into Suhl a couple of years ago that she had really gone out of her way to help the NUS administration.
"Taking Johnnie F. and Willard in and patching them up last fall. Everything. I'd trust Sister Anna Maria with my life." Noelle grinned. "I do trust her with my political maneuvers. That history of Bamberg during the war that she's writing has been a lifesaver when it comes to figuring out the various factions and such. Die alte Neideckerin, though. In her heart, I think, she's afraid that we'll be putting Judith in a lot more danger if she helps us deal with von Bimbach. After all, they sent her away in the first place in order to keep her safe."
"If you go," Eddie said, "I'm going too."
Noelle shook her head.
"Yes," Eddie persisted. "I am." He pulled out his own stack of mail. "I bet you put your letter from Arnold Bellamy on the bottom of your stack, didn't you?"
"Umm. Yes."
"Well, I opened mine. He's written to Steve Salatto and Vince Marcantonio. He can't rescind your `special envoy' status when it comes from Prime Minister Stearns, but he's made it clear to them. If you go in there, I go with you. Down-time muscle. Thick of skull and strong of arm, that's me."
Noelle leaned back, looking at him. Eddie was better known for brains than brawn, even though he was quite big.
"You think they'd let in someone who looks like a huge hulking bodyguard coming with the new maid that Judith Neidecker's mother sent her from Bamberg? Me, they won't even notice."
Noelle pulled out her letter from Arnold Bellamy and read through it before she answered.
"Okay. It looks like you're coming. But I don't like it. You're just a kid."
"I'm as old as you are," Eddie said. "And just as stubborn. I may not be as wrong-headed and snobbish as my father, but I'm just as stubborn as he is. Plus . . ." He flashed her an impudent grin, "I got my mother's smarts, too. The combination is unbeatable."
"Except, maybe, by Otto Kronacher."
"Well, yeah. There's always Otto."
Würzburg, mid-March, 1634
"The person with whom you are meeting this morning," Weckherlin said, "is an agent of the Fuchs von Bimbach family. A lawyer and administrator. His name is Dr. Polycarp Lenz. Nicknamed by almost all who know him, I hear, `Pestilenz.' Signifying . . ."
"Plague," Steve Salatto interrupted. "Why?"
"Irascible. Irritable. Obnoxious. Obstructionist. Uncooperative. Unreasonable."
"Got it. Enshrines all the worst qualities presupposed in a Libertarian's view of the typical bureaucrat."
"What is a Libertarian?" Weckherlin asked.
"A person who thinks that sort of thing about us—the noble civil servants who give of themselves unstintingly that the citizens of their country may receive their driver's license renewals in a timely fashion."
"What is a driver's license?" Weckherlin had, after all, spent only a week in Grantville and that had mostly been devoted to acquiring a passport from the consular service, a health certificate from the Leahy Medical Center, and other mandatory activities that interfered seriously with getting to know more about life in the twentieth century.
"A permit to drive a motorized vehicle. Did Lenz tell us what he wants?"
"No."
Dr. Lenz delivered a petition, signed by over two hundred of the Protestant imperial knights and petty lords of Franconia. All of Franconia, not just the parts included in the SoTF, but also Bayreuth, Ansbach, and the Nürnberg hinterland. In fact, mainly Bayreuth, Ansbach, and the Nürnberg hinterland, since the majority of those inside Würzburg, Bamberg, and Fulda were Catholic.