"I am the chairman of the Mainz CoC," Donner pointed out rather mildly. "It would be rather ridiculous if I didn't let the group meet here. According to the theories of Althusius, since—"
" 'The Mainz CoC'—as if that means anything. It's not as if you have anything like they do in Magdeburg, with toughs and enforcers. You get all the grief and what do you have to show for it? Nothing. It's not as if there's a CoC-raised regiment anywhere near Mainz. They're all up north with the emperor. We've got Swedish regulars, German mercenaries, and maybe a dozen soldiers scattered among them with even the slightest interest in politics. Hah!" Kunigunde turned her head. "Something's boiling over." She stomped back into the kitchen.
Tata, more formally known as their daughter Agathe, who had pulled on her clothes and come down instead of going back to bed, took her place at the window. "Pffft. That's Corporal Hertling. You know him. He's been here often enough. He's in Eberhard's company, so it shouldn't be a problem, whatever it is."
Walther Hertling motioned for his little troop to stop and rapped sharply on the door.
Tata waved her parents back, opened the door, glared at him, and asked, "Why are you bothering us?"
"Look, Tata, it isn't my fault."
Justina relaxed. Interventions by one's social superiors that were likely to lead to measures of harsh oppression were rarely accompanied by plaintive apologies or the use of nicknames.
"It may not be your fault, but you're here. With your goons."
"They aren't goons," Walther protested, looking as firm has he could. Which, considering that he was barely twenty, was not particularly firm. He had gotten his rank because his father had once upon a time been Duke Eberhard's father's bootblack. "They're . . ." He tried to think of some term more martial, impartial, and less embarrassing to his captain than babysitters. "They're, uh, the Captain Duke's personal Leibkompanie. Bodyguards, sort of."
Lorenz Bauer, Jacob Kolb, Ludwig Merckel, and Christoph Heisel strove mightily to look as un-goonlike as possible. Since all four were long-time mercenaries in their thirties, with the scars to show for it, this was not particularly easy. Still, if Corporal Hertling, otherwise known as the immediate conduit to their now-reliable paymaster, urged them to look harmless, the least they could do was try.
"Eberhard says that he's off today."
"That's not the problem. At least, the problem isn't about anything he's not done. It's about something he's supposed to do next. It's, uh, about Hartmann Simrock."
"Theobald's friend?"
"Yeah. Uh, Theobald Pistor took home a copy of some of the speeches that Simrock has been giving here at the CoC meetings."
"Ouch. Dumb, dumb, dumb, stupid. University student or no university student, Theo has no sense at all. I can't believe that he's Margarethe's brother."
"And, of course, he left them on the breakfast table where they're quartered. At least, that's what Margarethe told Lieutenant Duke Friedrich. He left them on the breakfast table where their father, Chaplain Pistor, found them. And read them. Especially the one about . . . well, you know. He is a military chaplain, after all, so he took it to someone on Brahe's staff. And we've been ordered to investigate."
Reichard swept up his various piles of receipts and stuck them into a cubbyhole under the bar. " 'We' being?"
"Uh, well, the captain's company. Him. Us. And his brothers."
Hertling wasn't worried about Donner, but he was a little intimidated by Frau Justina, so he turned around so he could talk directly to her. "Uh, that wasn't the brightest thing Simrock could have done, you know. Calling for the equivalent of a Ram Rebellion in Mainz and the Rhine Palatinate. Especially not criticizing General Brahe the way he did. Captain Duke Eberhard has the highest respect for the general's military talent and bravery. So it's just lucky that . . ." He stumbled, not quite sure how to phrase what was coming next in a manner that might be interpreted as mildly tactful.
Merckel was less concerned about tact. ". . . damned fucking lucky that the captain is actually fucking Tata here, or you'd all be in a deep pile of shit, you stupid assholes."
Justina winced. It wasn't that Reichard was unhappy about the attraction that led the young German officer on General Brahe's staff to regularly attend meetings of the Committee of Correspondence at the Horn of Plenty, in the company of his brothers and then spend the night, even though he had finally been allotted a much nicer room in the new unmarried officers' quarters. He was perfectly aware that Eberhard's interest did not lie entirely in the realm of radical political theory. Or even primarily in the realm of radical political theory.