The Tangled Web(61)

What kind of customer would want a small or light package, too big for the mail bags but not heavy or bulky enough to require a freight wagon, taken somewhere fast? Who would want it enough to pay a tenth or twelfth of the cost of running the route and still leave the rider a decent profit?

Maybe there wouldn't be a new post office monopoly. The king of Sweden might not object to establishing one, but the Grantvillers were very enthusiastic about what they called "free enterprise."

Something to think about. Some way to keep riding the Imperial Road.

End of the Road?

Gelnhausen, August 1633

Simon zur Sichel came into Gelnhausen from a resupply stop in Frankfurt as he made his rounds. He found that Zivka and Riffa were gone and nobody in the community knew where.

When, they could guess, Zorline Neumark told him.

She and Meier zum Schwan were going back to Frankfurt. That was the general gossip. Meier had a business to run and there did not seem to be any sign that the feud in the Kronberg family would abate any time soon.

Samuel Wohl and Hindle Kalman had sent their daughter Jachant to cousins in Worms. The parents of Feyel's fiancé had made that a condition of continuing the betrothal.

When he found out that a teamster had emptied the cottage under the sign of the sickle out neatly and driven away with the goods, Simon started to feel much better.

No one in the community knew who the teamster had been.

He asked at the post office. "Veit Huss," the postmaster said. "He drives from Fulda to Frankfurt. He was on his way to Fulda when he drove out that day."

Simon zur Sichel decided to head for Fulda. If Zivka had gone there, she would have had a good reason.

"If you are going," the Hanauer rabbi said, "may I accompany you? I would like to observe the changes that the up-timers have made in Fulda for myself."

Barracktown bei Fulda, September 1633

The Barracktown Council agreed to accept Simon zur Sichel as one of the approved resident sutlers. He requested permission to throw out the front of the cottage by about ten feet to make the front room into a "general store." After some discussion of the concept, the council, chaired by Dagmar, agreed to the proposition.

Menahem ben Elnathan and Simon zur Sichel discussed the heavy responsibilities of matrimony with David Kronberg, who said that he would be quite ecstatic to assume them, thank you. At least, he qualified, if they involved Riffa zur Sichel.

Then he asked Simon what name he intended to carry now that his family was no longer living in the sickle cottage in Gelnhausen. This proved to be such a successful distraction that it spared him from further embarrassment for all the rest of the evening.

Zivka did the same for Riffa, who indicated a high degree of reciprocal enthusiasm.

David said that he did not think that his parents would agree. The rabbi said that if they were patient, he would see to it, so they all relaxed.

Martin Wackernagel and the rabbi continued their discussion of stencils and duplicating machines. Both of them talked to Sergeant Hartke and his wife Dagmar about pamphlets. Dagmar recalled the Menig-Bodamer connection. Wackernagel recalled the Bodamer-Schlitz-Mangold chuckling convention. Gertrud Hartke and Jeffie Garand recalled the odd-looking contraption that was on the stand at Menig's paper mill the evening they had walked up to check if Emrich and Liesel were okay. They hadn't thought about the room being full of stacks of paper at the time, Jeffie admitted, since a person really expected to see stacks of paper in a paper mill. Then someone remembered seeing Mangold at Menig's.

Jeffie said that he thought he had better tell Derek—Major Utt, that was.

Major Utt got them an appointment with the NUS administrator, Wesley Jenkins. Not "one of these days," but first thing on his calendar the very next morning, even though the whole day was scheduled for a big celebration of the up-timers' first down-time "airplane."

Fulda, September 1633

The NUS authorities arrested a lot of people, of course. First Jodocus Menig, who identified Karl von Schlitz as the person who paid for the import of the duplicating machine and stencils. They could not arrest him, of course, or his sons, since Schlitz, although in the CPE, was not in the NUS.

Captain Wiegand felt considerable relief that the miscreant had not been someone from Fulda. That lasted until Emrich Menig said that, by the way, they had just been getting ready to run off another set of stencils. He and Liesel Bodamer had made them, he reported proudly. They had followed the instructions in the manual and been entirely successful. These stencils had been brought to them by Lorenz Mangold.

Wiegand's apprehension lasted until someone read the manuscript, which proved to contain not anti-Semitic tracts but rather some of the worst heroic poetry ever written. Andrea Hill made some rather biting comments on the probable impact of "duplicating machines" on vanity publishing in the seventeenth century.