The Tangled Web(56)

"Then?"

"Then Captain Wiegand came along with some of the Fulda militia and took her into the Ratshaus," Jeffie Garand said. He had his arm around Gertrud's shoulders. "She stayed there until the day was over and came back home with her father. According to Wiegand, von Schlitz was angry—tried to draw his sword on the captain. But the militia had other more urgent assignments, so they couldn't stop to deal with him the way he really deserved."

"Exactly what," Wackernagel asked, "was this placard about?"

Dagmar produced one. She had several. The soldiers had obeyed the orders to tear them down, which did not mean that they had destroyed such entertaining reading matter. And, in any case, they could be used to paper the walls of the cottages. The more layers of paper a woman pasted up on the wall, the fewer drafts would come through in the winter.

She had several copies of the pamphlet, too. She gave Martin a couple. He tucked them into his saddlebags.



They were about to start eating. Whether Sergeant Hartke was home yet or not, a meal could be kept warm only so long. A minor riot appeared to break out by the entrance to the compound. Jeffie jumped up and ran out; then came back with Hartke.

"I finally threw that sutler out," the older man was saying. "He's been trying for weeks to overcharge really drastically on the thread and notions for making the rest of the new uniforms and I've already warned him three times. Tell everyone tomorrow, Dagmar. He's not to be allowed back. Have some of the women take everything out of his cottage and throw it on the ground just outside the entrance. If he wants it, he can come and haul it away. If he doesn't bother, then it's free pickings."

The conversation meandered back to the scandalous pamphlet and stayed there all through the rest of the meal.

Wackernagel headed back down the road. There would still be a couple of hours of daylight and he didn't want to waste it.



Gertrud Hartke and Jeffie Garand wandered out of the compound, up in the direction of Menig's paper mill. They had discovered a rather nice stand of bushes there a couple of weeks before.

"Jeffie," Gertrud asked. "Can men really do all the things that those woodcuts in the pamphlet showed?"

"Not, um, precisely. No."

She didn't say anything.

"If you would really like to know what we can do, I'd be glad to demonstrate the whole procedure, so to speak. Think of it as a lesson in up-time scientific method. The hands-on experimental approach to finding out."

Gertrud thought about it. Up till now, she had really sort of been teasing Jeffie. He had made it so plain what he wanted from her, but at the same time he had been so unbelievably well-mannered about it, that she couldn't resist teasing a little. But . . . If all those people in Fulda already thought that she was a soldier's whore, why shouldn't she be one? Especially his?

"Okay," she said.



"Gertrud," Jeffie said. "You know what?"

She shook her head no. It was too dark to see, but he felt her hair move against his chin.

"Last winter, Derek—Major Utt, that is—said something. He said that if I got you pregnant, I was a married man."

"Oh."

"I'm not as forgetful as people sometimes think I am."

Gertrud snuggled in. She wouldn't have minded being a soldier's whore. Not really a lot, at least if Jeffie was the soldier. There were plenty of them in Barracktown. But a soldier's wife would be better. She wondered how long it would take for her to become a married woman.

Gelnhausen

Martin Wackernagel found it odd to pull into the post station in Gelnhausen and not see David Kronberg waiting. He finished his business and prepared to start out.

There was a young woman standing outside.

"You are Wackernagel?"

"Yes, that's me."

"Have you seen David Kronberg?"

"I passed him at Neuhof. He was heading for Fulda, just as he planned."

She smiled. "Do you know where he will be staying, in case my father might wish to find him?"

"I told him to stop at Barracktown. Sergeant Hartke just threw out one of the sutlers, so there's a cottage standing empty. I expect he can stay there a few days until he finds a job. If David's already gone when your father gets there, tell him to ask for Dagmar. That's the sergeant's wife. She'll know where he is."

Riffa went home and talked to her mother. A sutler thrown out. A cottage. Zivka went to bed thinking. Could she afford to wait for her husband to come home? A sutlery. A permanent business for an honest man. A home, perhaps.

Hanau

"Ask him in person," Meier zum Schwan had requested. "I've written a letter for you to take, explaining the details. But please deliver it in person and tell him how urgent it is for me."