"We don't want to be anybody's f . . . never mind, feudal lord," Harlan Stull exploded.
"Well, it doesn't matter what we want," Andrea Hill said, "until the New United States gets around to changing the land system, we are. Not as individuals, but the administration is. So we are, collectively, as representatives of the government. That's pretty clear from the land title stuff that I've collected."
Fulda, February 1633
"I'm it, I think," Mark Early said. "The whole Special Commission on the Establishment of Freedom of Religion in the Franconian Prince-Bishoprics and the Prince-Abbey of Fulda. At least as far as Fulda is concerned. That's what my orders say. It's what my wife Susan says, too, and since she's working directly for Mike Stearns, I guess it's for real."
"How do you intend to do it, on top of all the rest of your work?"
"If you want me to do it, Wes, Derek's just going to have to make someone else bookkeeper and paymaster. Either pull one of the kids into the job or use a down-timer."
"Derek, do you see any options to that?"
"No, to tell the truth. They say that they'll send Joel Matowski out to help Mark, but he can't be freed up until late summer or early fall, probably. And when he does get here, he'll have a steep learning curve."
"That's the down side. Is there an up side?"
"Fulda's a lot smaller than Würzburg or Bamberg, so maybe one guy can do it," Andrea offered.
"I don't think so," Wes said. "Even if we free up Mark, he's going to need help and it obviously isn't going to be an up-timer. Do we have any down-time staff who could lend a hand, at least with scheduling the hearings and taking the minutes? Filing the records. Stuff like that."
Harlan Stull shook his head.
"What about Clara?" Derek asked.
"Clara?"
"Well, it looks to me like a lot of what this Special Commission is going to be doing is trying to get the Lutheran imperial knights and the Catholic abbot and chapter at the monastery to coexist and leave the ordinary people who belong to each other's religion alone. She's already been working with the abbot, so she should have a head start, so to speak. Then if we can get someone local . . . Andrea, did you ever hire a lawyer full time?"
"I did. But the Special Commission can't have him. I'm not just paying him full time. I'm using him full time. Maybe he can recommend someone else."
"Oh, sure, they always can," Harlan said. "A younger brother or a nephew or their cousin's brother-in-law."
Roy Copenhaver shook his head. "Aren't we supposed to avoid nepotism?"
"Hey, until we get an actual civil service, it works as well as any other hiring system. The trick is to make sure that we fire the incompetents who don't work out, and even with a civil service they didn't manage that, up-time. Neither West Virginia nor the feds."
"Are you a cynic?"
"I'm a realist. Okay, I'll ask Clara about it; see if she'd be willing to," Harlan said. In addition to his other duties, he was personnel manager.
"How about Herr von Boyneburg?" Clara asked.
"But he doesn't even work for us," Mark Early protested. "He works for the landgrave of Hesse-Kassel."
"But it would be a good idea for someone who works for the landgrave of Hesse-Kassel to learn about separation of church and state. Wouldn't it?"
"Yeah, I guess so. When you put it that way," Harlan answered. "Seems weird, though."
"They have their own problems," Clara said. "People in the border villages along the Werra who even now walk over into neighboring Lutheran territories to take communion , after all these years and in spite of the fact that they've made it illegal. Maybe they could just learn to let them do it in peace. Plus there's an occasional Calvinist imperial knight with lands well inside Fulda territory, so they could learn to make it a trade-off. The abbot stops hassling the Calvinists and Lutherans. The Calvinists stop hassling the Lutherans. Then the Lutherans could stop hassling the Calvinists, too, maybe. Or at least stop calling one another crypto-Calvinists."
She smiled. "Are you sending an observer to the Rudolstadt Colloquy?" she asked.
"H . . . that is, heck no!" Harlan answered.
"Do we need a pilgrimage church up on top of a hill?" Andrea asked.
Roy Copenhaver winced. "You know, sometimes I ask myself if this place is worth all the grief that it's causing us. There can't be more than fifty thousand people in the Stift and town of Fulda, combined. Total. If that many. Maybe forty thousand if you count out all the subjects of somebody else who are just living here."
"We did get Fulda as sort of an appendage to Würzburg and Bamberg, I think. An afterthought. It's nowhere near as big. Nowhere near as exciting. But if Mike hadn't taken it on, it would have gone to Hesse-Kassel, like Paderborn and Corvey did. And the landgrave would have done the same sort of stuff to the folks here as he's doing to the folks there, so maybe it's worthwhile," Andrea answered.