The Tangled Web(119)

"It's getting to the point that we have to do something." Kerstin's frustrated older brother brushed his hair back from his forehead. "She's twenty-five, and it's not as if she has any desire to make a career as a scholar in some German Damenstift. She really expects us to find her a suitable husband and I've simply been too busy to worry about it. So have you."

"What about the oldest of the Württemberg dukes—Eberhard. You've had a chance to observe him. She's older, of course, but not by that much—only six years. She's really in prime breeding age. Moreover, a duke is a duke. At the rate the world is being turned upside down, who's to say that he won't end up in control again in a few years. Think of that encyclopedia article you sent me about what happened to the changes that the little Corsican, Bonaparte his name was, made all over the map of Europe, and how the Congress of Vienna reversed them."

"I'm not sure that she would be of equal birth under the Württemberg house laws."

Anna Margareta sniffed. "The German Hochadel has this insane passion for Ebenbürtigkeit. There's no doubt that Gustav would really have preferred to marry your cousin than the daughter of the Brandenburg elector. But, no, his mother, German that she is, didn't think a Brahe was of equal birth."

"As far as Gustav's mother was concerned, only the daughter of a ruling prince of some kind was equal to any other ruling prince. That's the way the Germans do it. But it wouldn't hurt to take a look at the prospect of Eberhard. Don't set your heart on it, though. We ought to be looking at other possibilities this winter. Ulfsparre is only three years younger than Kerstin; the same is true for Stenbock. They're both younger sons, of course, and shouldn't really be thinking of marriage until their careers are better established . . ."

"You are a younger son and you were only twenty-four when we married."

Brahe paused in his meditations. "And at least they're Swedish."



The posse left from Mainz. Hartke, from the Fulda Barracks Regiment, led them. Brahe based this on the theory that he both knew the up-timers and their concerns, and had been fighting across the Germanies for so long that he had a vague idea, at least, about most of the past campaigns. Not, of course, that most soldiers had a clear idea about the campaigns in which they had participated. Frequently, from one winter quarters to another, from one battle to the next, a private soldier had only the slightest idea where he was and how, if he had heard the name of the place, it might be spelled.

Hartke, being a Pomeranian, picked Hertling to go with them, because the boy had a keen ear for the Swabian dialect and, since the spring campaign, could make a fair stab at understanding German from the southern Palatinate and northern Alsace. Hertling had objected, being of the opinion that his proper place was "with his young dukes," until Eberhard and Friedrich ordered him to do what Sergeant Hartke told him. He obeyed with reasonably good cheer until Hartke also picked Bauer and Heisel. Once upon a time, they admitted, probably about the time of the Danish battle nearly ten years before (a description interpreted by the officers to signify Lutter am Bärenberg, or some clash that took place near to it in time), they had known a soldier who served under Geraldin. Additionally, of course, they looked the part of veteran mercenary soldiers looking for a new place.

Hartke's view was that Hertling's ensuing fit of the sulks only added to his plausibility in the role of a boy who had run from a company whose captain he disliked. Hertling took a radio, Eberhard and Friedrich having trained him in its use and taught him Morse code after the debacle at Weselberg the previous spring. As Eberhard had said, they didn't have much else to do while their injuries healed.

Brahe's regiments provided eight men, four of them as young as Hertling; the other four hardened veterans. Of the four youngsters, three, all of them from the Magdeburg region, Caspar Zeyler, Andreas Wincke, and Peter Schild, were trained radio operators. The fourth, Jacob Stettin, was a medic. Brahe also provided the posse with three of his precious tuna tin radio transmitters—precious because he only had a dozen or so to cover the entire Province of the Main and his temporary garrisons—still temporary, of course—at Merckweiler.

Not a single officer went with the party. Officers—the problem was that they tended to act like officers. Officers didn't usually turn up out of the blue near anybody's encampment asking for work. They relied on networks of relatives, godparents, and friends to obtain a new position when the prior one vanished under more or less normal circumstances such as the death of the colonel or disbandment by the employer. However, Sergeant Hartke was seconded by Sergeant Lubbert Nadermann from von Manteufel's regiment. According to Captain Hohenbach, who was a friend of Erik Stenbock's, he had acquitted himself very well in the fighting outside Hagenau and had a good head on his shoulders. His other main qualification was that he came from a village named Vettelhofen, near Bonn, and knew the area, at least on the right bank of the Rhine, fairly well. He additionally claimed to have cousins named Schurtz who lived—or at least had lived before the start of the war—across the Rhine, somewhat north of Bonn, at Dollendorf.