The Ram Rebellion(193)
She was glad that he was going to be talking to the Bamberg apprentices, whose increasing unruliness was part of the reason that Mama would no longer let her walk the streets, even go to market, unless she had one of her brothers to accompany her.
But she didn't like him. She thought that he was too loud; she thought that his speaking style was bombastic. She especially didn't like the fact that he was a widower, which tended to bring that speculative gleam into her mother's eye. Mutti was beginning to think that Martha was old enough to get married. Herr Ableidinger taught not far from where Papa had grown up, in the Frankenwald. The school furnished him with a residence. From Mutti's perspective, he was eligible.
Martha, however, had no desire to spend the rest of her life with a man who made that much noise; just by existing, Constantin Ableidinger made a lot of noise. Whatever Mutti thought, and however much anyone smirked about the ram and the ewe lamb.
Message delivered, she went back into the front shop.
Frau Else Kronacher sent a couple of apprentices out to deliver messages, then picked up her latest campaign speech. She wanted Herr Ableidinger to review it. She just could not understand why Martha did not like him. He was such an invigorating man.
There weren't any customers in the print shop at the moment. Martha started singing to herself. "Jerusalem, Thou City Fair and High." No, she did not want to marry the Ram, no more than she wanted to marry the third son of the master of the Bamberg printer's guild. The world held a better husband for her than either of them. She was quite sure of it.
Hasslach Valley, Franconia, late June, 1634
"Vince," Johnnie F. said, "I don't think that you've been up here before."
"I haven't, no. My duties keep me pretty locked in to Bamberg most of the time. Stew Hawker has mentioned the place. So did Scott Blackwell, once, when he was up to Bamberg for a briefing, but . . ."
"But he wasn't sure where it was. I don't think I've ever," Johnnie F. grinned, "seen a man who was so in love with having a piece of paper with a map on it in front of his nose. This is the Hasslachtal. That is, the little stream we're riding next to is the Hasslach, so this is the valley of the Hasslach. You'll note that most of these paths and little roads are well up away from the stream bed, even though that makes it more up-and-down over the hills. It floods in the spring. Most of these creeks do."
"So where does it come from and go to?"
"Basically, it starts not much south of Kamsdorf—you know, where USE Steel has its mines and plant—and runs south. We're north of Stockheim, now; almost to Rothenkirchen, which is licensed to hold a market. That last little village was Pressig. This is a sort of little peninsula of Franconia, if you want to think of it that way, sticking up into Thuringia. That's why its called the Frankenwald, the Franconian Forest, rather than the Thueringerwald, the Thuringian Forest. Same forest, if you look at it from the viewpoint of the trees, I expect."
Johnnie F. grinned. "It was a regular little checkerboard of feuding minor lordships until we oathed most of them to the NUS Catholic and Lutheran all mixed together. Now it's a regular little checkerboard of feuding small towns and villages, Catholic and Lutheran, all mixed together. No big change on the ground, Stew says. Same feuds, same cast of characters, pretty much. When we get up to the north end, where Margrave Christian of Bayreuth's Lauenstein castle is, near Ludwigsstadt, we'll only be about forty miles from home. From Grantville, I mean."
Vince frowned. "Why don't we come this way, then? Instead of going all the way over to the west, through Suhl."
"Because there aren't any decent roads, not even by down-time standards. The country is pretty rugged, as you can see for yourself. If we could get a railroad through here . . ."
"I can see that. I can't believe that there has been more coal, all along, as close as Stockheim, and nobody told us about it."
"Well, even though it's been mined for fifty years or at Reitsch, on the other side of the creek, they mostly just dig it out of little dogholes and use it locally," Johnnie F. answered. "There's no transportation for moving it any distance. They take some down to Lichtenfels on little rafts and skiffs. They aren't mining commercially, if you call what Reitsch is doing commercial, right around Stockheim, yet. It was the Frankenwinheim mayor who mentioned it to me when I was up there a couple of weeks ago to check on what the ram rebellion was doing over that way. He said that their school teacher, a guy named Constantin Ableidinger, told him that we'd probably be interested. I don't think that I've met Ableidinger. Not to be introduced to. I can't put a face to the name.