The Tangled Web(27)

"What League of Women Voters? Since when do we have a League of Women Voters?" Wes Jenkins was frowning.

"The one in Barracktown," Derek answered. "The LDS in Grantville has kept sending them stuff, ever since Willard Thornton went through, way back when. You know Liz Carstairs, Wes—Howard's wife, works for Mike Stearns?"

"Sure."

"Well, she's one of them, you know. Willard's sister. She sent a lot of League of Women Voters stuff along with the LDS Ladies Relief Society stuff. So they organized one. That was, oh, months ago. I'm not sure it's real clear in their minds about which is which, but they have one."

Andrea clapped her hands. "That's great. What about poll watchers, Fred?"

"Derek is splitting up the soldiers from Fulda Barracks into small groups and sending a detachment to watch the polls in each of the Reichsritterschaften."

"Intimidation?" Harlan asked. "We don't want that."

"Anti-intimidation," Fred answered. "If they're not there, several of the knights will be standing around with their own guards 'guiding' the voters."

"What about the Stift territories proper?"

"We'll just have to spread ourselves pretty thin. Derek has arranged with Captain Wiegand for the members of the Fulda city militia to vote first thing in the morning and then be available to ride circuit with us, from one polling place to another."



"That reminds me," Andrea said. "Derek, did you ever get a school started out at Barracktown this winter?"

"Uh, yeah. Well, we don't have a building, but we have a teacher."

"Who?"

"Um, your lawyer's sister-in-law's nephew who needed to find a job to tide him over after the University of Tuebingen closed down because Horn and Bernhard have been marching all over the place down there in Swabia. He's only nineteen, but he works cheap, which is lucky. I wasn't authorized to hire a teacher, so I recruited him as a private, with a promise that I'd discharge him when the university opens up again. In writing. Notarized. He has a copy. His name's Biehr."

"Beer?"

"Yes, Biehr. The sister-in-law's sister married a German."

"Andrea, isn't your lawyer German?" Roy Copenhaver asked. "If not, why not? I never can remember his name."

"If there's no building . . ." Andrea persisted.

"In the loft of Sergeant Hartke's house. His wife fixed it up, and we're paying them some rent."

Harlan frowned. "I don't remember that item in the budget."

"That's because the budget didn't have an item for renting space for a base school."

"Where's it coming from?"

"Umm."

"Textbooks? Supplies?" Harlan was adding up sums on his notepad.

"We didn't have any to start with. But Howard Carstairs shipped over a whole set of German translations of LDS Sunday School materials."

"Err, Derek . . ." Roy frowned. "Separation of church and state, remember."

"It was those books or no books. Which choice do you like better? They're perfectly all right for learning ah, bay, tsay, day, ay, eff, gay." Derek whistled the German alphabet to the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." "Remember the budget and keep it holy. Anyway, Mary Kat says that she thinks it will get by."

Everybody grinned. Two weeks before, last man on the military rotation he had set up after Joel Matowski arrived, Derek had sneaked back to Grantville and, after a long courtship conducted almost entirely by letter, married Mary Kathryn Riddle. Since she was the daughter of the chief justice, first of the NUS and then of the newly-born State of Thuringia, not to mention a legal eagle herself, it probably would get by. This time.

"Any chance of more leave coming up?" Derek asked hopefully.

"For you?" Wes put a doleful expression on his face and shook his head.

"Well, Dave Frost married Mackenzie Ellis when he was back home in January, too. Lawson got married last November. Devoted new husbands and all that, you know." Dave and Lawson were two of Derek's four "kids," all of whom had done a lot of growing up. "Maybe if the others got back a little more often, they could get married, too."

"Isn't Jeffie going to marry Gertrud Hartke?"

Derek frowned. "He'd better."

"Where is the rent coming from?" Harlan was not easily diverted.

"The lawyer's relative is from Tuebingen?" Wes asked, thinking back to several sentences earlier. "That's Württemberg. I thought that I told you to hire a local lawyer, Andrea."

"Maybe the boy was just going to the university there. Etienne was living in Frankfurt as a refugee when we hired him. That's pretty close. And he was low bidder."