So it went. They spent two days talking about what he had set up in Grantville and what King Albrecht had thought about it. About the Fortneys, who were at this very moment somewhere on the road to Vienna. About the Barbie Consortium and—very much in spite of himself—talking about Sarah Wendell, how smart she was, how beautiful, how clever and kind.
* * *
“So tell me about this Sarah of yours,” Aunt Beth said. “Are the Wendells of a noble house?”
“She’s not mine,” Karl said. “At least not yet. And the up-timers are different. If anything, my title probably hurts my suit.”
Aunt Beth gave Karl a look that conveyed her displeasure at his obfuscations.
Karl continued. “By the up-timer standards, yes. The Wendell family are near the upper echelons of those who came back in the Ring of Fire. Her father, Fletcher Wendell, is the USE Treasury Secretary, who knows and is known by Gustav Adolf and Fernando, as well as Mike Stearns and Ed Piazza. And her mother, Judy Wendell the elder is, if less well known, even more astute in financial matters. Sarah takes after her mother in that. Right now she is working out the design of the Bohemian National Bank with Judith Roth and Uriel Abrabanel.”
“Aside from smart, what’s she like?”
“Well . . .” Karl paused. “She’s taller than I am by a couple of inches and she’s still growing. She has light blond hair with just a touch of red, what the up-timers call a strawberry blond. She is thin and I must admit she’s no horsewoman, but she loves flying and books and plays and solving problems.”
“Is she pretty?”
Karl laughed. “I think so, but she doesn’t. That’s probably because her younger sister is perhaps the greatest beauty in Grantville. Up-timers tend to be comely people by our standards, so even what we would consider pretty or handsome doesn’t stand out among them.” He smiled and Elizabeth noticed that his teeth were both straighter and whiter than she remembered. Not that they had been particularly bad before, but the evenness of his teeth now was remarkable. “Sarah considers herself gawky . . .”
“Gawky?”
“Sorry, I slipped in an up-timer English word. It means tall and awkward. And it’s true she is more at home with books than sports or dances. But there’s a vibrancy to her that is hard to see till you get to know her.”
“Is she Catholic?”
“No. Her family belongs to a Protestant sect that is vaguely similar to the Anabaptist. They are called Baptist. However, she is not devout. It’s not that she lacks faith. She once told me that you couldn’t go through the Ring of Fire and not believe in something. But she is doubtful of the certainty—” Karl paused a moment. “—professed by so many of what it means. She tends toward Pastor Steffan Schultheiss’ sect.”
“Who?”
“A Lutheran pastor from Badenburg. He didn’t see the Ring of Fire itself, but you can see the Ring from the walls of Badenburg. He has come to some disturbing conclusions about what God was saying when he delivered the town of Grantville to our time.”
Clearly, Aunt Beth wasn’t going to be distracted, even though her conversion to Catholicism was almost as unwilling as her marriage to Gundaker. “What about you, Karl? When last we spoke in person, you were almost as Catholic as your uncle, if less vicious about it. Can you live with a Protestant and not try to force her to become Catholic?”
“For myself, yes certainly. The Ring of Fire provides faith, but for me at least, it also instilled doubts. Politically, it would be better if she were Catholic and we will discuss the possibility of a conversion if we get that far. I won’t attempt to force her, but you should know, Aunt Beth, that the Catholic church of Grantville is not the Catholic church of Ferdinand II’s court. Oh, have you gotten the news yet that the emperor is dead?”
“It was in the letters. I didn’t know either the father or the son well, so I hesitate to guess what it might mean to us here.”
* * *
Elisabeth Lukretia von Teschen watched her nephew ride away, smiling. The news, from her point of view, was almost universally good. She had several letters from King Albrecht, and from what Karl had said there were good opportunities to get loans to repair the damage done by the Danes a few years before the Ring of Fire.
And Karl was falling for a girl who was not even Catholic. Gundaker would have a fit. With a bit of luck, he might even expire from it.
The railroad going from her capital of Teschen to Vienna would happen. At least on the Teschen side of the border. Better, there would also be a rail line, wooden rails, from Prague to her capital. Between the two, they would make her capital a transhipment location for goods going to half of Europe. Aside from the trade advantages, it would turn long, uncomfortable trips into relatively short, comfortable ones. At least, that’s what Karl said.