The Tangled Web(22)

"Andrea, who's doing the actual collection of revenues from the estates the government holds?"

Roy looked around. Andrea's little domain was buzzing, with a half dozen clerks clustered around ledgers and box files. Harlan had complained a lot about the cost of reconstituting the records. It was way over budget. She had looked at him and answered, "Well, if the original estimates were realistic, nobody would ever authorize starting any project at all. You have to break it to them gradually."

The clerks were jabbering away in the standard means of communication, which was German with a bunch of English terms thrown in. Terms like "paper trail" and all sorts of acronyms. The up-timers did the same thing when they spoke English. There might have been English words for technical terms like landsässig and Stift that von Boyneburg had taught them, but it was certain that not a single one of the Grantvillers in Fulda knew what they were. Anyway, mostly, except when the Grantvillers were by themselves, they all spoke German. Or Gerglish. Or Amideutsch.

Andrea was wearing the down-time full skirts that went right to the floor. She said they were warmer. The one she had on today was a sort of dull gold color, like the shade that used to be in the crayon boxes. She was also wearing a gray knit sweat shirt with a hood and a wool up-time ladies' suit jacket. It was pink. Because she spent her days with pens, pencils, and dusty ledgers, she had added, in this world without dry cleaning, a set of down-time removable linen cuffs to keep the pink wool clean at the wrists. Roy couldn't have described this ensemble to his wife Jen in any detail if she had asked. He could and did stand there hoping, inarticulately but profoundly, that the ensemble did not represent the wave of the future as far as fashion was concerned.

Andrea shook her head. "Ask Harlan. We do the titles, not the collections. This office just figures out who owes us and sometimes how much. Not to mention how far the payments are in arrears."



"You don't mean it," Roy said.

"Well, it's not as if I have a budget for a property management staff," Harlan protested. "It was the only thing I could think of that made sense. So I contracted it out."

"The abbot's collecting them?"

"Straight percentage."

"Is he scamming? Skimming? Doing any of the other stuff with which West Virginia state employees are so familiar?"

"I don't think so, but how the h . . . heck should I know. It's not as if I have a staff of auditors at my disposal."

"Wes is going to have a cow."

A Bunch of Damned Anarchists

Fulda, December 1633

"I tell you," Wes proclaimed, "these imperial knights are a bunch of damned anarchists. I've never seen anything like it. Each and every one of them thinks that he's a little universe all to himself and not bound by anything that anyone else decides. Certainly not by a majority vote. Not even by a majority vote of their own organization that they set up themselves and voluntarily joined."

"That is," Clara said, "their definition of liberty, after all. That no one else can tell you what to do. Or, for the Reichsritter, liberties. Not to be subject to someone else. To determine one's own destiny freely."

"What have they done now to set you off?" Fred asked.

"I was over at the Buchen Quarter meeting. They're still trying to decide what they want to do about the election next spring. Some of them, like Ilten, are willing to take part in it. He was actually radical enough to say that he would accept a majority vote. Some of them, von der Tann right at the head of them, don't want anything to do with it. The Till von Berlepsch guy got up and talked for a good hour about how they defied the abbot back in 1576 and his ancestor was involved. Riedesel, over on the western border—he has lands at Eisenbach and Lauterbach—won't have a thing to do with anything that might put him under Fulda. His family has been fighting the abbots for centuries, it sounds like. Fighting as in armies and such. When his ancestor introduced the Reformation, it just gave them one more thing to fight about."

"It's not as if they ought to be worried that the NUS administration is going to try to make them Catholic again, just because we're working with the abbot on some stuff. Haven't we managed to make that clear?" Fred's frustration was plain in his voice.

Urban von Boyneburg, who was still in Fulda keeping an eye out for any possible advantages that might accrue to the landgrave of Hesse-Kassel, started another mini-lecture. "It's clear to them that you won't. And that for as long as you are around, Schweinsberg won't. But even though they're anteing up a lot of money to Gustavus Adolphus, they're trying to hedge their bets in case he doesn't win the war—keeping a weather eye out on what the imperials and the Leaguists are doing and the possibility that this abbot could be tossed out and replaced. It's not as if there's no precedent, since they tossed one out themselves, back in grandpa's day. There are several of them who think that if there's another tilt and the emperor comes out on top, they could plead 'coercion' for making the tribute payments to Gustavus Adolphus and get off lightly, but not for formally voting themselves into the USE and State of Thuringia. Or even for letting themselves be voted in."