The Tangled Web(127)

"Horn of Plenty in view," Friedrich called. "And none too soon. By the way, Tata, he paid for the suit."

Reichard and Justina, Kunigunde and Ursula, Philipp, and three youngsters with reddish hair came pouring out the door, all yelling, "Tata! It's Tata!"

"Veit, Lambert, Hans." Agathe did her best to hug all three of her younger brothers at once, but they, Veit in particular, were getting too big for her to accomplish the task. "Mama, Papa, Tante Kuni . . ."

The others went on in to the taproom, leaving the delirious jumping around of the family reunion     to occur in the middle of the street.

"Good grief," Friedrich said. "She's only been gone for six months. We haven't seen our sisters for more than three years."

"Unless the political situation calms down, we may not see them for three more." Eberhard frowned. "When is the last time you wrote?"

"I am a virtuous brother. I write them regularly at least once a month." Friedrich stuck his nose up in the air.

Margarethe pinched it.

"Well, I've written them at least once a month ever since I got married. Before that, ja, it had been a while."

"Quite a while," Margarethe said. "More than a while."

"Margarethe makes me write them, so even though they've never met her, they already love her. Margarethe ordered ginger-flavored Kuchen from Nürnberg for the little ones and sent some of the treats that Riffa's mom bakes for Antonia. They should have it all by now, and love her even more. I thought maybe she should send them toys."

"Fritzi." Margarethe yanked on his hair. "Think how long it has been since you have seen them. The 'little ones' are fifteen and fourteen. They are growing up. You don't even know how tall they are. You don't know what colors they like. The sweets were all I could do. How can you know so little about your own family?"

Theo looked at Friedrich. "This isn't about you. This is about us. She misses Papa terribly, no matter how irritable he always has been a lot of the time." He gave her a quick hug. "We'll try, Margarethe. I'll go see him first. Maybe he'll be willing to reconcile."

"I really don't think so," she said. "He'll just be angry that we are celebrating Christmas with Tata's family. He thinks it's a papist holiday because the early popes matched it up to some pagan celebration. The Bible doesn't say exactly what day of the year Jesus was born."



It was a very fine new suit, Eberhard, thought, even if he was admiring himself. The extraordinarily large mirror that General Brahe's wife had installed in the vestibule of a house that had once been occupied by one of the more prosperous cathedral canons was impressive. The canon was now residing, in appropriate ecclesiastical poverty, in a small room in a boarding house near the cathedral.

He made another half-turn, admiring the effect of his hat.

He had bought the hat here in Mainz. It just wasn't possible to pack a hat with plumes for a trip from Fulda without crushing one of them.

Well, maybe it was possible for a professional valet, but he didn't have one. He was doing his own packing these days. He was not capable of packing a hat with plumes in such a way that one of them did not get crushed.

The receiving line moved again, perhaps four feet.

Brahe and his wife came into view.

He didn't take off the hat. As a duke, he outranked a Swedish nobleman. As an officer, Brahe was not in his direct chain of command. The hat stayed on.

Tata's father would not approve.

There was a place for "all men are created equal," but it wasn't at an official reception with the cream of Mainz's secular and ecclesiastical patriciate, not to mention miscellaneous diplomats and the like, in attendance.

He wasn't going to take off his hat for the archbishop, either. Say what you would, it simply wasn't right for a good Lutheran to doff his hat to a subordinate of the earthly manifestation of the anti-Christ, the specific example of the manifestation now alive being named Urban VIII.

He supposed that the papists had a right to go to hell in their own way, as long as they didn't interfere with other people. Lutherans especially. Subscribing to the principle of religious toleration did not mean that he had to take off his hat for Anselm Casimir Wamboldt von Umstadt who was, when one came right down to it, by birth of far lower rank than a duke of Württemberg.

He reached the receiving line.



Eberhard glanced cautiously to his left. Brahe's wife was walking toward him, a predatory gleam in her eye. He moved slightly to the right, behind Ulfsparre. He took off his hat. Without the plumes he would be, he hoped, effectively invisible.

Ulfsparre moved to the farther to the right.

"Stay," Eberhard said. "Please, Mans."