The Tangled Web(126)

"I'm a what?" Willem van de Passe asked.

"You're a military contractor." Derek Utt nodded solemnly. "Count yourself lucky. I've arranged for you to have your own cabin out in Barracktown and meals on wheels delivered by Riffa's mom. The printer who had the engraving equipment in his back room, but no engraver, will have it carted out tomorrow."

"What are 'meals on wheels' and who is Riffa?"

* * *

After supper in the Hartkes' cabin was still the best time and place for general shooting of the breeze when there wasn't a full-scale CoC meeting.

"Why are we going to all this trouble for a Mennonite?" Theo Pistor asked. He had perched on the end of one of the picnic-style tables with his boots on the bench.

Sergeant Hartke frowned at the boots. "Put them down."

Theo moved. "Getting the administration to pay for publishing van de Passe's sketches, and all. They're heretics. Mennonites, I mean. He's a heretic."

"We're getting the caricatures, dimbulb. If he uses the equipment to engrave his other drawings after hours, as long as he pays for his own disposables, it's no skin off our noses." Jeffie leaned back. "Besides, I want a copy of the one of Hartke here to give to Gertrud's mother for Christmas. Three Kings. Whatever. Whenever. For the holidays."

"Where is Dagmar?"

"Over at the sutlery, plotting something with Mama," Riffa said.

Jeffie, his right thumb pointed at Theo, looked at Hartmann Simrock. "For a CoC member, I don't think that Theo is making much ideological progress."

"Ah, his politics are radical enough to satisfy almost anybody." Riffa came over from the other side of the room. "It's just when it comes to religion that he's not making much progress."

"Probably the best word is 'incremental,' " Simrock added. "Pretty small increments, too."

"Stop talking about me like I wasn't in the room." Theo shook his head so hard that both of his cowlicks stood straight up.

Joel Matowski ran through the front door, a panicked expression on his face. "Guess what just came in on the radio."

"Okay, I'll guess. What?"

"We're not going to have our Major Utt any more."

Everyone else in the common room jumped up with shrieks of horror.

"Was there an accident? Is he dead?"

"Did someone kill him?"

"Oh, God, please tell me that they aren't going to transfer him. The Fulda Barracks Regiment has established such a reputation for the overall worst military etiquette in the USE that anyone they send in his place will be trying to 'shape the men up.' "

"Tsk, tsk." Joel shook his head. "Such leaping to conclusions. You should all be ashamed of yourselves."

Gertrud took a swat at him. "Damn it, what?"

He struck a dramatic pose. "They gave him a promotion. We're going to get Colonel Utt back next month."

Gertrud looked at Jeffie. "You put him up to this, Jeffrey Garand. Didn't you? You had already heard, but if you had come running in like that, none of us would have believed it, you joker, so you got him to do it."

Hartke made a gesture that threatened to take off the head of his fellow sergeant. "For this, I should forbid you to marry my daughter next month."

His hands wrapped protectively around his neck, Jeffie ran out the door. Gertrud, pretending to be swinging a frying pan, followed him.

Mainz, December 1634

"Here we are, back in dear old Mainz." Eberhard sighed. After counting the cost, Tata had proclaimed that it would be cheaper for all of them to make the trip from Fulda and back again on a freight wagon instead of renting horses and then having to pay for their stabling for two weeks. Freight wagons did not deliver their passengers door-to-door. They were walking, slipping on the filthy, slushy, cobblestones.

"It's just for Christmas," Tata said. "General Brahe asked Major Utt if you and Friedrich could come. That was quite a while ago, a couple of months. Remember, that was when you ordered your new suit." Tata frowned suddenly. "How much did you pay for that suit? Margarethe says that Friedrich is just going to wear his Fulda Barracks Regiment dress orange whenever he has to go to some official function or unavoidable party. That's much thriftier."

"I get tired of the uniform. There's something to be said for dressing to match your status."

"Have you paid for it?" Tata put her hands on her hips. "Who loses when the forces of oppression fail to pay the hard-working people who supply their needs? How can a shoemaker feed his children when the tooled art objects that he creates for the feet of arrogant aristocrats result only in invoices that aren't paid for months, or sometimes for years? How . . ."