“We’re barbarians destructive of the good social order.” Judy grinned. “But I’m sure Prince Gundaker has already told you that.”
“I don’t think he put it quite that way, but that was the gist, yes. So are you barbarians?”
For the first time that evening Judy the Younger put on a serious mien. “It probably depends on where you’re standing, Your Majesty, whether it’s us or you who are barbarians. I understand that John George of Saxony indicates his readiness for another mug of beer by dumping the dregs of his last one on whatever servant happens to be handy. Did you know that?”
Mariana was surprised by the sudden turn of the conversation. “Yes, I am aware of it. An unpleasant quirk, but John George is an unpleasant man.”
“To us, the way John George treats his servants isn’t all that different from how you treat yours. Tell me, Your Majesty, were you to find yourself visiting a court like John George’s, would you then request a second drink by dumping the dregs of the first on a servant’s head?”
“No!”
“Neither would we. Prince Gundaker felt that my sister saying ‘thank you’ to a serving girl was an offense against the natural order of the world. In order to punish Sarah, he dismissed the servant.”
* * *
For her part Judy thought Empress Mariana might almost have been a third Wendell sister. An older sister; she was about thirty. Her hair was almost the same shade as Judy’s, though curly where Judy’s was mostly straight. Her figure was more like Sarah’s. Well, almost a sister—she did have the Habsburg lip. “We hired her. Anyway, we brought you some other stuff, just between us girls.” Then she told the empress about feminine hygiene as practiced in late-twentieth-century America and which of those products they had been able to reintroduce in the seventeenth century.
* * *
While Judy was chatting with the empress, Sarah and Karl were buttonholed by Moses Abrabanel. The question was: how can we make money magically appear the way you up-timers do? The problem was that they wanted to do it without accepting the worthless paper themselves.
What they wanted was a Kipper-and-Wipper-like paper money. Everyone else would be expected to take it at face value, but the crown would only accept it at a discounted rate.
That wasn’t how Emperor Ferdinand’s “financial managers” put it, of course. They talked about crown expenses and the crown’s special status. Sarah at least found it an interesting, if infuriating, conversation. Karl was a little bored by it, but you couldn’t date Sarah Wendell without learning something about economics, so he rarely got lost. He even winced at all the right times when Moses explained something about finance that was clearly wrong.
When all was said and done, Moses was what Adam Smith would later call a mercantilist, opposed to free trade and a firm believer that a nation needed a great pile of silver to be a great nation.
“No. It just needs a good credit rating,” Sarah explained.
“Ferdinand III is the emperor of Austria-Hungary. Of course, he has a good credit rating.”
Karl winced visibly.
“Not the emperor. The nation,” Sarah insisted.
“The emperor embodies the nation.”
“Then Ferdinand has a sucky credit rating,” Sarah shot back and Karl winced again.
Moses’ face was getting a bit red. Not, Karl thought, because he disagreed, but because he was supposed to disagree and couldn’t. The Austro-Hungarian reichsthaler traded at about half its face value, outside of Austria-Hungary, and that was an improvement over what the HRE reichsthaler had traded at.
* * *
Count Amadeus von Eisenberg was a wealthy young man whose father was even wealthier. He had spotted the daughter of the emperor’s auto mechanic and wondered what she was doing here. She looked out of place. Well, not exactly that. She looked uncomfortable. Partly out of Christian charity and partly out of curiosity, he went over to talk to her. “Miss Fortney, I’m Amadeus von Eisenberg.” He wasn’t going to use the silly title “von Up-time.”
“Good evening, Count.”
“I was wondering . . . do you think you could explain to me how the internal combustion engine works?” He guessed that would be a safe question to put her at her ease. Besides, he really was curious about it.
Miss Fortney gave a slight sigh and started to explain. “It works in essence like a musket. Save that a liquid rather than . . .”
* * *
“Woman, get you to a convent!” Father Lugocie shouted. He was not happy with the guests of this gala. Using up-timer craftsmen was one thing, but presenting them at court was something else. He was also a bit in his cups. When he saw a young up-timer in a dress that left her knees clearly visible, he felt that the dress provided an excellent justification for putting the up-timers in their place.