The Ram Rebellion(191)

"Just what," Steve asked, "is the question?"





"Do we and the margrave want to try to bring it down, between us? Or do we let the ram's people do it?"





"Are there advantages, either way?" Weckherlin asked.





"If we take it, it should be a kinder, gentler, sort of conquest. For one thing, Margrave Christian has some cannon, which the ram rebellion doesn't. So he could set up a siege and tell everyone to come out. If he wanted to ally with us publicly. Which he doesn't, yet, no matter what his Amtmann at Lauenstein is trying to talk him into doing.





"Otherwise. The ram's people at Teuschnitz have some kind of major difference of opinion with the Freiherr at Mitwitz, who has a Halsgericht—the right to impose capital punishment. He seems to have used it rather freely and not always against people who fit the ordinary definition of `criminal.' If we, the SoTF or Margrave Christian, don't occupy the castle at Mitwitz, the ram will level it. Some way."





"Would it be a great loss to society if the ram did?" Steve asked.





"Not that I can tell," Vince answered. "But burning to death isn't a nice way to die. Not that there are many."





Steve sighed. "Scott thinks we ought to let the farmers do the dirty work."





"Scott would. He thinks like a military man. My deputy Wade Jackson thinks the same way. He's UMWA, and they've always been a hard-fisted bunch. You and I, on the other hand, are proper civil servants. Bureaucrats, when you come right down to it. Honest and capable ones, sure, but we're still pencil-pushers."





He looked out the window onto the streets of Bamberg. "The truth, Steve? At least in the here and now, I agree with them. I'm sick to death of these swaggering little lords. Let the farmers make a weenie roast of that knightly prick at Mitwitz. Maybe it'll encourage the others to learn some manners."





Melchior Kronacher was watching his sister, instead of listening to the sermon. Mutti wouldn't come to church any more. They had become Catholic under the bishop's pressure in the late 1620s. Mutti said that enough was enough. She said that she had been to church enough to last any reasonable person a lifetime and she wasn't going back again. Ever. To any church. Of any kind. Now that the uptimers said she didn't have to.





Martha, though, shortly after Pastor Meyfarth had brought things in to be printed last spring, started going to the Lutheran services. Mutti said that either Melchior or Otto had to go with her because the streets were not as safe as they should be. Mutti blamed that on the guilds.





This week was Melchior's turn to go to church with Martha. He wiggled.





Martha was paying close attention to the sermon. Or, more likely, to the sermonizer. Melchior couldn't think of anything in a learned disquisition on John 3:16 that would bring such a calculating expression to Martha's face. Sort of like she was bargaining with God.





Melchior shuddered. He thought that bargaining with God was probably a bad idea. He was pretty sure of it, in fact. Especially when Martha was doing the bargaining. God might end up with the short end of the stick.





"So," Eddie asked, "how's it going?" He looked out of the small room they were sitting in—just a very big pantry, really, with two stools—into the large kitchen beyond, to make sure that no one could overhear them.





Seeing his somewhat shifty-eyed glance, Noelle sniffed. "Stop acting like a B-movie spy, Eddie. There's nobody here, won't be for at least a half an hour—and even if there was, it wouldn't matter anyway." A bit smugly: "The whole kitchen staff is with the ram. By now, I'm sure of that."





Eddie's eyes widened. "All of them?"





Noelle gave him a level gaze. "Yes, all of them. Along with maybe one-third of the rest of the Schloss' staff. The ram is especially strong in the smithy and the stables. The maids . . . well, that's harder. They come and go a lot, since most of them don't have my status."





"I'm impressed."





Noelle's face got a little pinched. "It wasn't hard. Even by the standards of Franconian Freiherr, Fuchs von Bimbach is a pure son of a bitch." She nodded toward the kitchen. "He hung one of the cook's sons two years ago. Along with three other boys. None of them was older than nineteen."





Eddie grimaced. "Why?"





"Apparently the four of them got drunk one night in a local tavern and started mimicking his Bimboship. Just teenagers being disrespectful, the way teenagers will. But somebody reported them to von Bimbach, and he charged them with `petty treason.' That's a hanging offense, and he's got the legal right on his lands to apply capital punishment. Halsgericht they call it—the `neck court.'"