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The Viennese Waltz(101)

By:Paula Goodlett


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The next morning, there was a sign by the door of the shop. WE ACCEPT BARBIECO STOCK. GOOD AS CASH. That led her neighbors to question her, and Frau Krauss explained the situation, adding her own interpretation and not clarifying what came from her and what from Frau Sanderlin.

The next day there were similar signs on half a dozen shops in Race Track City. And still more the day after.

* * *

Tuesday morning, before having the Fortneys over to dinner the next day, Duchess Eisenberg and two other ladies of the court were in Race Track City. They intended to buy some of the strawberry wine that was becoming quite popular with the very upper crust of Vienna after the dowager empress had come out to see her stepson race around the track and discovered it.

The wine had quadrupled in price in the last week and Duchess Sophia Eisenberg wasn’t at all sure that her servants would have the clout to get some. Besides, any excuse to go out to Race Track City was a good excuse. After it had been learned that she had invited the Fortneys to her home, she had found herself the center of a storm of curiosity. So, along with her servants, this trip had her accompanied by Katharina Schembera, Maximilian von Liechtenstein’s wife, and Gundaker von Liechtenstein’s daughter, Maximiliana Constanzia, called Liana, who had married Johann Baptist Mathias von Thurn und Valsassina about five years before.

The trip was quite fun. They chatted as the pontoon boat carried them down the Danube to the canal, and up the canal to the docks. The emperor wasn’t racing today, but the Sonny Steamer would be making a few laps this afternoon, driven by Bob Sanderlin. Which Liana, in particular, was looking forward to. She was trying to get her husband to have such a car built.

The weather was warm and the flowers were blooming. There were smells of baking bread and sausages from the shops along the street. They reached the wine shop and swept in. Duchess Eisenberg proclaimed to the air, “I will have ten bottles of the strawberry wine.” She knew about the fad of addressing servants and merchants directly, but it made her uncomfortable. Not so much with her own servants, whom she knew, but with a clerk in a wine shop such familiarity might lead to who knew what. The next thing you knew the fellow would be asking her for an introduction at court or a loan.

“I am most sorry, but there is no more.”

“What? Why not?”

“It was an experiment suggested by some of the texts that young Brandon Fortney von Up-time brought with him,” the shopkeeper explained. “We only made a gross of bottles and we almost didn’t make those. We used strawberries from the imperial gardens and mixed the juice with the grapes from . . .” He apparently saw her expression because he stopped explaining how the wine was made. “Well, anyway, we could only make a little. The strawberries in the imperial garden plots were not extensive before last year and this year’s crop will make next year’s wine. Most of our limited stock went to the imperial cellars and Victoria Emerson von Up-time bought several bottles as well.”

“What else do you have?” asked Liana.

“We have a pear and spice wine that uses cinnamon. Here, let me get you ladies glasses.” While other clerks took over the serving of the rest of the wine shop customers, the owner himself served them.

The pear and spice wine proved to be a bit cloying. The sweetness overwhelmed the other flavors. Then they tried a brandy that had been made from the same wine and it worked. The bottles of the brandy were expensive, and when the change came it wasn’t all in reich money.

“What are these?” Duchess Sophia asked the owner, startled into speaking directly to him.

“Those are BarbieCo money. If you would prefer we can give you reich money. It makes no difference to us.”

She examined one of the bills. It was mostly pink, with other colors in the background. She had seen the young woman at the reception the emperor had held for Prince Karl Eusebius’ intended. She had also seen faces on money before. In fact, two of them. One was the face of Ferdinand II, and the other was the face of Ferdinand III. She pulled another bill out. Orange dominated this one and the portrait was the young woman who had been so rude to Father Lugocie. The bill’s printing said that it was worth twelve groschen of BarbieCo stock. She looked back at the first one. One pfennig. She read more carefully. The bill itself didn’t say it was money, but stock. She wasn’t sure what that meant, but she doubted that it had much to do with cattle or sheep. Sophia suddenly felt a chill run down her spine. Here was something that looked a lot like the new paper reich money, except for the fact that it was clearly better. The colors were vibrant and the engraving was neither smudged or scratched. Sophia knew quality work, and this was quality. “Please,” she said to a shopkeeper for the first time she could remember, “may I see the other sorts of bills of this BarbieCo money?”