"When I look at 'encrease' or 'Tissew,' they don't seem to make sense, but when I read them out loud, they turn into 'increase' and 'tissue.' I did get really messed up by table-cheare. I thought at first it meant 'table chairs,' until I figured out that it meant good cheer at the table. Food, in other words."
Eberhard looked around. "The incredible variety of clothes here would have provided Montaigne with about as much good cheer as he could use if he could have seen them."
"Sweats. Lots of sweats. No tee-shirts, but then it's January. Up-time 'Sunday best.' Down-time 'Sunday best' or whatever you call it." Joel paused. "Andrea Hill in one of her weird combinations of up-time and down-time. That—really remarkable suit you have on."
"I had it made especially for Mainz, but I decided I might as well get some use out of it. Once the campaigning season starts . . . 'How soone doe plaine chamoy-jerkins and greasie canvase doublets creepe into fashion and credit amongst our souldiers if they lie in the field?' "
Jeffie wandered over. "Quoting Montaigne again, Eberhard? Thanks for that book you sent us. It has more antique English in one place than I've seen since Ms. Higham made us do Shakespeare in drama back in high school. I was the last one to the library, so I had to check out the Collected Works instead of just the one play."
"What's Willem doing over there?"
"Van de Passe? I didn't know he was still in Fulda. I thought he was heading for Grantville."
"He'll leave when my mom goes back," Jeffie said. "He got involved in doing some stuff for Derek out here at the barracks. He's not a bad guy. He drew a wedding portrait of us and signed it. Maybe it'll be worth something, someday. I'd better go. Gertrud beckons." He wandered across the room.
Behind Joel and Eberhard, someone went, "Pssst."
Eberhard looked around.
Gertrud's next-younger brother Johann, eyes gleaming, whispered "charivari."
Tata came prancing across the room. "Ja. I talked to Frau Hill before we went to Mainz. I brought back everything we need. A good, old-fashioned, West Virginia-German Rhineland shivaree-charivari."
Johann nodded enthusiastically. "I already put the ice in their bed. If it melts a little before the end of the reception, that's even better. If it stays frozen hard, she'll just shake it out of the sheets. Tata's little brothers sent a whole box of noisemakers. Rattles. Clappers. Whistles. Some lovely things that make a howl when you whirl them around in a circle. Erdmann has already made sure that very kid in Barracktown has one. Oh, how our big sister is going to suffer."
Mainz, January 1635
"Magnificent plates," Brahe said. "I've never seen such high-quality engravings from anything other than an artist's studio." He spread the prints out approvingly. "Butler, Deveroux, Geraldin, MacDonald. Who's this?"
"Felix Gruyard. That's why the project took a couple of weeks longer than we planned. Van de Passe had no idea who he was, but Paul Moreau, that crippled artist working at the St. Severi church in Fulda, finally agreed to go through van de Passe's sketches and see if he recognized anyone. Moreau's skittish. Well, given some of the things he's been through in his life, I don't blame him for being skittish. Useful, though. He's been rattling around through various studios and printing shops for nearly twenty years, ever since he was apprenticed. He also has the advantage of being completely reliable in his loyalty to the SoTF. Or, at least, completely reliable in his loyalty to Andrea Hill. He seems to think that she walks on water. I'm not sure whether he has any abstract loyalty to the USE at all."
"How come he recognized Gruyard? I've never heard that the Lorrainer is a habitué of art galleries."
"His specialty is the reason Moreau is crippled. On Ferdinand of Bavaria's behest."
"Oh. How many of these sets can we get smuggled onto the left bank of the Rhine?"
"Depends on how many we can afford to pay the freight, load onto the Monster, and have flown into Luxembourg. Under the table, Fernando and Maria Anna have given Nasi carte blanche to use Luxembourg as a basis for smuggling them in from the eastern border of Ferdinand's lair. Send some to the Hessians and they'll get them into Bonn. Get them to our friends in the USE city-state of Cologne and I guarantee they will trickle out. Send some to Essen and they'll drift south. Van de Passe himself will send batches of them in through a kind of underground network of Mennonites."
"Aren't they pacifists of some kind?"
"Ah, Nils. I ask you. How can the distribution of sketches possibly be construed as an act of violence?"
Euskirchen, Archdiocese of Cologne, January 1635