The Tangled Web(120)

Brahe and Utt had debated at considerable length as to whether they should make a greater effort to locate someone from the region of Cologne itself to go along. Eventually, they decided that it was not worthwhile, if only because of the possibility that such a man in one of their regiments might have been planted by Ferdinand of Bavaria. Such suspiciousness might be interpreted as a lack of faith in the general goodness of mankind—Brahe admitted as much. It might, however, as Utt pointed out, contribute to the longevity of the other members of the posse.

Late October, almost into November, was an iffy time for anyone to start traveling. The river was still clear of ice, so to expedite matters, Brahe told them to take a boat as far as Koblenz. If things looked quiet there, they should split into two parties and take separate boats as far as Honnef and walk into Bonn divided into three different parties, of uneven numbers, but each of them having a radio. There they were to ask around in taverns and rooming houses—inconspicuously ask around in taverns and rooming houses—until they found someone who had an least an idea where the Irish colonels had gone. At that point, reunited by the divine, or up-time, boon of radio communications, they should follow the tracks of the four colonels. Nobody had the slightest hope of finding the tracks of Gruyard himself, but the pragmatic association was that he had been with one of them when they arrived in Bonn.



"At a minimum," Brahe said, "the plan has the advantage of simplicity."

"Well," Utt agreed, "its simple until we get to the point when they leave Bonn. After that, I can think of multiple possible ways for it to go wrong."

"It could go wrong well before Bonn," Botvidsson commented. "For example, the boat could sink between here and Koblenz. They could contract pneumonia and lose all the radios when it sank."

Brahe nodded. "Thank you, Johan. I think. Tell Sven to bring us some wine if you would be so kind. He may also ask Lady Anna Margareta and Lady Kerstin to join us for the remainder of the evening." He turned to Utt. "My wife has expressed great interest in the notion that your wife is a lawyer. She feels that legal training would be of immense assistance to women whose destiny it is to administer large estates while their husbands are away 'playing soldier.' "

Barracktown bei Fulda, November 1634

Tata didn't really think that going with the posse would have been more fun than staying comfortably in Barracktown, but she had more sense than to express this opinion to Eberhard, Friedrich, Simrock, and Theo. Even though at some level they knew why they were not appropriate to the task of the posse, in a spectacular display of the theological principal that abstract knowledge of a principle is not the same thing as believing in it as an article of faith, all four of them had their noses somewhat out of joint.





Euskirchen, Archdiocese of Cologne, November 1634

The inhabitants of Euskirchen were not particularly happy, honored, delighted, or cheered by the decision of the archbishop of Cologne to reside in their town for the winter. "Miserable" and "depressed" would have been better terms to describe the prevailing mood. On good days, perhaps, at least as far as the city council was concerned, an observer could have used "resigned."

The city council would have been more resigned if he had not brought four regiments of Irish dragoons with him. These—the officers, rather, and the more privileged of the noncoms—were quartered in the town, as were the archbishop's administrative staff, personal servants, and assorted hangers-on, along with their staff, servants, and assorted hangers-on, if any. The remaining portion of the regiments were bivouacked outside the walls.

That wasn't equivalent to being besieged, of course. Quite. Peddlers with their wares, peasants with their produce and occasional pig or sheep for sale, and travelers moved in and out through the gates.

Unfortunately, so did the dragoons. Their ideas of what was entertaining did not necessarily agree with what the fathers and shopkeepers of Euskirchen considered to be an afternoon or evening's harmless amusement.

Even more unfortunately, the archbishop was suffering from financial reverses. More plainly, Ferdinand of Bavaria was flat broke. He was not able to pay his mercenaries (or his staff or his personal servants, but they tended to be less of a problem for the city watch).

Since he was not paying the dragoons, a distressing number of peasants with produce and livestock for sale never made it as far as the city gates. The items they were transporting were, as the current terminology went, "conscripted" before they got that far. Conscripted meant that the dragoons confiscated them—without pay, other than promissory notes. The dragoons interpreted the entire situation as equivalent to a license to forage without exerting themselves to go anywhere. They waited for the villagers to come to them.