“Unwilling to share?” Mariana asked.
“Afraid they would embarrass House Liechtenstein,” Leo clarified. “And not totally without justification. I am afraid that the up-timer girls who arrived with Prince Karl aren’t any more impressed with the seventeenth century than our other up-time guests.” Leo turned to his brother. “Victoria Emerson asked your mechanic’s daughter how she liked life among the peasantry. ‘In the sticks,’ she said.”
“My mechanic’s daughter?”
“Hayley Fortney von Up-time will likely be a bridesmaid at Prince Liechtenstein’s wedding. Gundaker is caught between wanting the match for the advantage to his branch of the family and being deeply offended by the whole notion of any Liechtenstein marrying a jumped-up peasant. Judy Wendell told me that Hayley is a Barbie, or something.”
“Is that a title?” asked Mariana, “I thought it was a doll.”
“You’re saying her family has some status among the up-timers?” asked Ferdinand.
“I’m not entirely sure. Judy Wendell said that it was Hayley who was rich, not her family. You know the up-timers count such things differently.” Leo shook his head. “And they may be right to do so. Look at what we have. Out of three thousand people, all of whom arrived with no significant rank, we now have two baronesses, a general . . . no, two generals, one of them a former prime minister, an admiral, a colonel of the air force, several other officers, more burghers and merchants of distinction than you can shake a stick at. Craftsmen and healers without peer in Europe. And the village priest makes a short visit to Rome and comes home a cardinal. Three thousand, many still children or toothless with age. And all in less than five years.”
“So we are all peasants to them? Or just all barbarians?” Mariana asked. She was clearly more amused than insulted by the idea. But there was some offended dignity in her tone as well.
“Judith Wendell von Up-time, claimed that it wasn’t an insult but a translation problem.” Leo tilted his head to the side in a gesture of uncertainty. “It may have been, but there is no way they consider us their natural superiors.”
“Well, I wasn’t expecting to overawe the up-timers with my exalted birth,” Ferdinand said. “Sonny Fortney once offered to shake my hand, just as though we were equals. I happened upon him and Bob Sanderlin with no one else about. It must have been a month or so after they got here.”
“What did you do?”
“I shook his hand and reminded him not to offer that sort of lèse majesté in public. But by that time, I was pretty sure that he was Nasi’s agent in Vienna . . . well, at least one of them.” Ferdinand shook his head. “We are in a horrible bargaining position. I need to know what I am facing. Do you think that von Trauttmansdorff could persuade the USE to see reason? After all, he persuaded John George of Saxony to support the Catholic powers.”
He looked over at Moses Abrabanel as he had looked to him increasingly over the last year. Moses’ father had been his father’s chief financial adviser. More importantly, Moses had been to Grantville and met Michael Stearns.
“It depends on what you mean by seeing reason, Your Majesty,” Moses said carefully. “Establish a firm peace with Austria? By itself, yes. Do any of that at the expense of Bohemia or in support of Poland? No. Beyond that . . .”
“Yes?”
“Gustav Adolf will want concessions in exchange for his help with anything. About Michael Stearns, I can’t tell you any more today than I did last week,” Moses said. “When I met Stearns, he was the leader of a newly formed independent nation that was little more than six miles across. He was both more desperate and more free to act as he saw fit. Now he has been a prime minister to a king, become a general, and is commanding an army in Saxony. At the same time, he controls—or at least influences—a great deal more. There is also the question of how much he has been influenced by this century. All I can tell you about how he will act as a general is that the man has a phenomenal talent for finding talent. And listening to it. Besides, Michael Stearns is no longer the prime minister. William Wettin is and he, like Gustav, will want concessions.”
Ferdinand III nodded. “And the money?”
“Possibly in exchange for concessions that we may well not be able to give.”
“So we are back to Liechtenstein’s bride and her sister who may or may not think of us as peasant barbarians.”
Then Moses smiled. “I have, by the way, met both Wendell girls. Sarah was studious even then, and Judy the Younger a charming child. That was before Judy and her little friends decided to ride through the financial markets like a Mongol horde.”