The Tangled Web(138)

Bruchsal, Diocese of Speyer, proposed Province of Swabia, March 1635

The combined Swedish/SoTF camp was finally settling down for the evening. As soon as he escaped what appeared to be the perpetual staff meeting in Brahe's tent, Derek Utt started the final paragraph of his long-neglected letter to Mary Kat. "So we 'captured' Butler's camp followers." He dipped his metal-nibbed pen into the inkwell once more.



What we really did was leave a small unit of soldiers, just to keep order, and several medics behind with Butler's camp followers. There's sickness among them. Pestilence. According to them, they didn't have it when they left Euskirchen, but picked it up while passing through Lorraine. One of the down-time medics believes that it's plague. He was very loud-mouthed about thinking that it's plague. If he was wrong, it was bad for him to panic people like that. If he was right, it's worse. We left almost all our chloram behind with them. We radioed. Fulda is sending plague fighters. Pray for us all.



In Brahe's tent, the meeting was still, to some extent, going on, in spite of the official adjournment. Brahe, still, occasionally wanted a "Swedes only" consultation.

"This time last year," Botvidsson pointed out, "Horn wouldn't have dared to come far enough north to meet us in Württemberg. He was much too preoccupied with Bernhard. Now . . . With any luck, Bernhard has granted us the luxury of doing a pincers movement on the Irishmen. Seems peculiar to have him on our side, though. Not exactly on our side, but . . ."

"If I have a choice," Brahe said, "a choice of having Bernhard the grand duke of the county of Burgundy or whatever grandiose title he may be giving himself by now as my ally, even sort-of, and Bernhard once duke of Saxe-Weimar as my enemy, I will not dither. I will take him as my ally any day, on any terms."

"Presumably, the king has reached the same conclusion."

"The enemy of my enemy . . ."

Nürtingen, Duchy of Württemberg, March 1635

The palace, which had been used as a retirement home for dowager duchesses, probably had not been in the best of condition even before the war. Now, twenty years after the last permanent resident died, it was in a wretched state. The most recent widow had been left with small children, so had stayed in Stuttgart before the war drove her away. Now she was dead and her daughters lived in Strassburg.

Moritz Klott, aide-de-camp, secretary, and, as he had learned from the up-timers, gofer, thought that General Horn should make the best of it. At least they had a roof over their heads, even if it did leak. However . . .

"I knew it," Gustav Horn ranted. "For as long as I have been assigned to this theater of operations, which is now nearly three years, Konrad Widerhold, with all the remains of the Württemberg forces he could gather, has been operating as an integral part of my army. Now, although we have not met up with Brahe and Utt yet, just because he knows that they are bringing the young dukes of Württemberg down into Swabia, what do I have?"

"I don't know, General." The liaison Bernhard had sent to work with Horn, an uncouth Lower Austrian who called himself Raudegen and had been promoted to colonel by Bernhard simply on the grounds of his ruthless efficiency, shook his head.

"That was a rhetorical question." Horn waved a piece of paper. "I have a petition from Widerhold to be permitted to place himself under Duke Eberhard's command."

He beckoned to Klott. "Take a letter. To Nils Brahe, administrator, general, et cetera. You know the titles and forms of address. Dear Nils:



Read this damned petition from Widerhold (attached). Do you really want a captain in the forces of the State of Thuringia-Franconia to have what amounts to a full regiment and part of a second under his direct command, Nils? Is that what you want? For that matter, is it what Colonel Utt wants—to have one of his captains in charge of a force larger than his own? What were you thinking to bring those boys back into Swabia?

"Continue with the 'yours sincerely' and all that at the end." He waved the secretary out and looked back at Raudegen. "What's next?"

"There is plague to the southeast, coming up from Marseilles, moving toward this region. The grand duke is instituting all possible preventive measures. The three Paduan physicians . . ."

Raudegen's voice went on, floating past Horn's ears. "Instituting strict quarantine at the borders . . . the up-time nurse . . . small capacity for manufacture of chloramphenicol will probably not prove to be sufficient . . . universities of Basel and Strassburg . . . all possible resources . . ."

Horn rested his forehead on his hands. "May God preserve us all."

Bretten, Baden, April 1635