The Tangled Web(121)

The arrangement was satisfactory only from their perspective.

Occasionally, of course, the officers ventured out and made their men let food vendors into the town. This happened most frequently when the household cooks and landlords who provided food for the officers quartered upon them were running short of provisions. Otherwise? At other times? Well, after all, the men had to eat.

The unfortunate city councilman who dared to protest that the civilian population of Euskirchen also needed to eat was handled appropriately. They fed his tongue to the dogs.

That was a suitable punishment, of course, but not particularly visible. Public relations were always important, so they tacked his pickled ears to the front door of the city hall.



Walter Deveroux entertained himself by using the point of his dirk to drill a small hole in the arm of an expensive chair in the parlor of the house where Butler had taken rooms for the winter. "If you ask me, we need to talk to Johann Schweikhard von Sickingen. He's in town with the archbishop."

Butler looked toward the stairs leading to the upstairs rooms. "My wife"—he waved in that general direction—"ran into his wife at mass last Sunday. They had a long conversation, much to the annoyance of the priest."

Deveroux stayed on topic. "Sickingen's men—some of them at least—actually ran into a small company of Brahe's forces on his own lands, down by Nannstein. Some little village called Weselberg."

MacDonald looked up blearily. "Where's that?"

"Southern Palatinate region, generally. The Sickingen territories are intermixed with those of the Elector Palatine. What's important is that Brahe's men locked Sickingen's riflemen into a granary for several days. It was good and strong, but it had ventilation of course, being a granary, so they managed to watch what was going on."

"Wouldn't it make more sense to talk to those men rather than talk to von Sickingen?"

"Undoubtedly, if we knew where they were. Sickingen, probably, has some idea of where they are. The Swedes released them on parole."

"What's the point?" MacDonald slammed his stein down. "There are Hessians outside of Bonn, not Swedes from Mainz. If the archbishop sends us back to the Bonn region in the spring, we'll be fighting Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel, not Nils Brahe. The king in the Netherlands is looking over our other shoulder. If the archbishop sends us west in the spring, that would put us fighting the Dutch and any Spanish troops he still has, not Nils Brahe. Why worry about Brahe now?"

Geraldin slammed down his fist, harder than MacDonald had slammed the stein. "Think, Dennis. Think. Brahe's men had radio. Brahe was over by Merckweiler when the fight went down. He got a medic and part of another company to that small detachment inside of two days. Sickingen's men watched them. The Swedes—well, they were Germans, but in Brahe's regiment—threw a wire over trees. I've heard that much. We need to find out what else they saw. With Gustavus's treaty with Don Fernando and the fact that Hesse-Kassel is an ally . . . Think. I get very nervous thinking about facing opponents who pretty well always know where all their units are. If you don't, you're even drunker than you look."

MacDonald looked up. "It's thinking about that kind of thing that makes me drink."

* * *

"Ursula Kämmerer von Worms-Dalberg is one of the few noblewomen near my age in this godforsaken town, Walter. She is the wife of the Freiherr von Sickingen. I invited her for an afternoon visit. We used our host's parlor. You use it for your meetings with Deveroux and the others. Is that too much to ask, that I should have some female companionship? I sent Dislav with the invitation. I spent a little of my gold—which is my gold, I remind you, that I brought with me from Bohemia—to purchase a few refreshments."

"You spent enough on those 'few refreshments' to provide plain food for you, for me, and for your precious Dislav for the next month. Almonds. Coffee. Dates. Where in hell did you even find them?"

"Dislav has his ways. I believe he obtained them from the cook for one of the city councilmen. The household is in mourning, so will not be entertaining this winter. She was happy to get the money. The civilians here say that food is getting very expensive because so little is coming into the town through the camp."

"It's not just going to be expensive for the civilians, you little idiot. It's just going to be plain expensive. That goes for us. I may be able to skim off some of what the men procure in the camp, but by spring, there won't be much of that. There are nearly three thousand men out there, eating. That's as many people as normally live in godforsaken Euskirchen. Can't you get it through your silly head that even if the peasants sell just as much as they usually do, either everybody will end up eating half as much, or everybody will run out of food halfway through the winter."