1635: The Eastern Front (49 page)

"You too?" asked Kristina. "Won't that make your father very angry?"

"Probably. But . . ." Ulrik sighed. "I am very fond of my father in most ways. But he's simply not a king you can depend on in a crisis."

"So where do we go?" asked Caroline.

"I should think it was obvious. We go straight to the heart of power. We go to Magdeburg." His voice began to rise, as the anger finally seeped through. "Let the chancellor try to dictate who rules and who does not, when the rightful heir to the land, the empire and the union had placed herself in the bosom of her people.
Let him try.
"

Kristina clapped her hands. "Oh, yes! People like me there!"

"Yes, they do. Soon, girl, they will like you even more."

Caroline Platzer finally realized the full scope of what was about to unfold.

"Prince," she said, her tone one of pleading. "She's still only a child . . ."

"I'm almost nine!" Kristina stamped her foot. "In a month. Month and a half. Well, almost two. Still, nine years old isn't a child anymore."

She looked up at her husband-to-be, who was almost three times her age. "Is it, Ulrik?"

He gave her a shoulder a little squeeze. "For most people, yes. Nine years old is still a child. But you're of the house of Vasa and I'm of the house of Oldenburg, We grow up much faster."

Kristina gave Caroline a triumphant look. "See?"

Caroline wasn't looking at the princess, though. She was still looking at Ulrik.

"I didn't . . . I hadn't . . ."

He cocked an eyebrow. "Yes?"

She swallowed. Then took a breath and squared her shoulders, as if she were a soldier reporting for duty. "I never understood—never realized—I didn't think . . ."

She took a second breath. Her shoulders relaxed a little.

"I guess I just didn't think you were this . . . bold."

"Oh, most certainly!" exclaimed Baldur. He clapped Ulrik on the shoulder. "In the olden days he'd have gone a-viking. Every summer! And I'd have followed him, too."

The humor went away, then. Norddahl's eyes were normally a light blue, but now they looked almost gray. Not the warm gray of ash, but the gray of arctic seas.

"Every summer, I'd have followed him," he said quietly. "Each and every one. There are not so many princes in the world—not real ones—that you can afford to let go of the one you find."

"That's very . . . medieval, Baldur," said Kristina. Very, very approvingly.

Kassel, capital of Hesse-Kassel

Amalie Elizabeth von Hanau-Münzenberg had access to many more newspapers than Ulrik did. Better ones, too.

But she'd let slip her lifelong habit of reading newspapers, these past weeks. She was a widow now, no longer a wife. And she'd found that the change had affected her far more powerfully than she would have believed, before her husband was killed on the banks of the Warta.

Her marriage to Wilhelm V had been one of political convenience and family advancement, originally, as were most marriages among their class of people. Neither at the beginning nor at any time since could you say they were romantically involved, in the way the up-timers used the phrase.

Still, they'd been married for years. She'd borne him a son, who would someday become William VI. She could hear him now playing in a nearby room, with all the energy and enthusiasm of a healthy six-year-old boy. He was a smart boy too, it was already obvious.

For years, the last face she'd seen most days before she slept was her husband's. And his was usually the first face she saw in the morning. Except for servants, of course, but they didn't count.

She'd almost always been glad to see the face, too. Many wives in her class dreaded opening their eyes in the morning. But she never had. Wilhelm's worst flaws had simply been irritating, nothing worse than that. If he wasn't always the cleverest and shrewdest of men, he was certainly no dullard, either. Generally good-natured, often of good cheer . . .

She missed him. She really missed him. There was still an ache inside.

Finally, though, just a few days ago, she'd started to resume her normal activities.

It hadn't taken her long to start feeling another ache inside. A hollowness in her stomach, this one, not a hollowness in her heart.

She got the Hamburg newspapers and journals regularly. Also all the most important ones from Magdeburg, Hannover, Mainz, Nürnberg—Grantville, of course.

The pattern was clear in all of them, if you knew what to look for.

The Swedish chancellor fixed in Berlin, like a barnacle on a piling.
Why?
Berlin was a wretched place. Miserable to live in, and a political backwater.

The badly injured king kept there, jealously guarded, the great up-time Moorish doctor dismissed.
Why?
Once the weather cleared, Gustav Adolf could have easily been moved to the capital. Or Grantville or Jena, for that matter—wherever the medical care would be the best for his condition.

General Lennart Torstensson and the bulk of the USE army, ordered to besiege Koniecpolski in Poznań.

For God's sake, why?
Amelie Elizabeth was no soldier herself, but as you'd expect from a very capable landgravine of Hesse-Kassel, she understood a great deal about military affairs. Torstensson had no chance of taking Poznań, not as badly as the war had gone so far. So why keep his army in winter siege lines which would be very hard on the troops? It would be much more sensible to retreat and winter over in Gorzów and Zielona Góra.

Only one explanation made sense. The Swedish chancellor Oxenstierna—Wilhelm Wettin, formally, but Wilhelm on his own was not this ruthless—was keeping the unreliable USE soldiery as far away as possible. And he was deliberately bleeding them.

The strategy was cunning, in a reptilian way. But didn't the chancellor understand how reckless it was? Did he really think an army would just quietly starve to death?

The USE's Third Division, under Stearns, had been sent even farther away. To southern Bohemia, if the newspaper accounts were to be believed. To do what? Help Wallenstein defend himself against the Austrians?

Again, why?
The last time Austria attacked Wallenstein—just a little over two years ago, at the second battle of the White Mountain—they'd been defeated. Was it likely they would try again? Not impossible, of course, but also not at all likely. So why weaken the USE army by drawing off a third of its forces?

Then, there was the evidence she'd spent all of yesterday and half of today piecing together. This took much more time, because there was no summary to be found anywhere, in any one newspaper or journal. Just small accounts scattered across many of them—most of them, actually—of what seemed to be casual movements. This markgraf going to visit his first cousin; this freiherr off to purchase some land; this burgermeister off to do this; that reichsritter off to do that.

She didn't believe it for a minute. She
knew
many of these people. The markgraf in question only had three first cousins. One had drowned as a young man during his wanderjahr in a drunken stupor, one had married an Italian viscount and was living somewhere in Tuscany, and the third had been filing lawsuits against the markgraf for at least fifteen years.

The freiherr? Going off to buy land? With what? Just six months ago, he'd tried to borrow money from Hesse-Kassel. They'd refused the loan, of course. The man was notorious for not repaying his creditors.

The burgermeister? Oh, that explanation was particularly grotesque. He was supposedly—

"Ah!" Angrily, the landgravine swept all the newspapers off her desk.

And the final piece of the puzzle—and to her mind, the most damning. Why had
she
not received an invitation to this so-obvious conclave?

The answer was just as obvious. She called for a servant.

"Paper and ink. Then pick this up. Not now. After I'm finished with the paper and ink which you still haven't fetched for me."

The servant girl raced off. Amalie Elizabeth forced herself to calm down a bit. There was no purpose in being harsh to servants simply because they were there. Doing so just made them more impervious to discipline when it was needed.

As soon as the servant returned, she began to write.

It was almost certainly a futile exercise, but she had to make the attempt.

Wilhelm, my old and dear friend. I implore you once again—

Chapter 43

Berlin, Capital of Brandenburg

Axel Oxenstierna laid a gentle hand on Gustav Adolf's shoulder. "Be well, my old friend. You need worry about nothing. Just heal. Come back to us."

The king had seemed to be dozing. Thankfully. He'd had one of his sudden furies two hours early. They came for no reason, they left for no reason, and left everyone exhausted, including the king himself.

Gustav Adolf's eyes opened suddenly. For a moment, there seemed to be recognition there.

But if it had been there, it passed. He just seemed puzzled now. His eyes drifted away from Oxenstierna and came to rest on his bodyguard. That was Erling Ljungberg, who had replaced Anders Jönsson. For a moment, again, there seemed to be recognition in the king's eyes.

It would not be surprising. Ljungberg's facial features did not resemble those of Jönsson's very closely, but otherwise they were much alike. Both very big men, both blond, both utterly ferocious in battle. They even shared the same love of American pistols. In fact, the pistol holstered at Ljungberg's waist was the very one that had been in Jönsson's hand when he died.

If Gustav Adolf did recognize him, though, it would be hard to know for sure. His speech was still . . . very odd. Axel would have thought he was outright mad, except for what the Moor had explained. This might still pass away, if all went well.

"Birches? Is that folded?" the king asked. "Just move the sand under the hymns."

Axel stroked his hair. "Rest, king. Rest."

He turned away, headed for the door. It was time to attend to the king's business.

"Make sure he comes to no harm," he said to Ljungberg, then had to restrain a little laugh when he saw the man's disgusted look. Giving such instructions to such a bodyguard was quite pointless, after all. You might as well instruct the sea to be wet.

One of the palace's servants was quick to open the door. Very quick. It had not taken Sweden's chancellor long at all to make clear to the servants of Brandenburg—the servants of
former
Brandenburg—that if they wished to keep their sinecures they'd have to understand that the old sleepy ways of Berlin were coming to an end. Soon enough, this would be the new capital city of the United States of Europe.

As he walked down the corridor to the very large chamber that had served the electors of Brandenburg for a reception room, Axel mused on his long relationship with Gustav Adolf. His father had died when he was sixteen—too young to rule by Swedish law and custom. At the same time, his capabilities were obvious and no one wanted a long regency with all of its attendant problems.

Axel himself had been only twenty-eight at the time. But he was a scion of one of the great noble families and already very influential. He had been the principal engineer of the arrangement that had enabled Gustav Adolf to come to the throne on January 4, 1612. He'd been only seventeen years old at the time.

Part of the arrangement had required the young king to sign a charter of guarantees that restored most of the rights and privileges of the nobility that previous Vasa rulers had stripped away from them.

Twenty-three years had gone by since then; almost twenty-four. For most of those years, Gustav Adolf had scrupulously abided by the charter of guarantees. In letter, at least. Inevitably, a monarch as capable and forceful as he would overshadow any nobility. But no one could reasonably ask for more. A weak and incapable monarch was far worse.

Then the Americans had come through the Ring of Fire. Within a year, their alliance with Gustav Adolf had begun to take shape. It had first crystallized in the formation of the Confederated Principalities of Europe, in the fall of 1632. A year later, under the impact of the war launched by the League of Ostend, the CPE's ramshackle structure had been swept away and replaced with the much more powerful United States of Europe—a true federation, now, with real national power.

Oxenstierna had had misgivings from the start. Still, the advantages had been obvious; hard to resist, even for a nobleman, much less a king. For all his dislike of the Americans—their ways and customs and attitudes; he did not dislike all of them as people; some, he even liked—Axel was neither stupid nor blind. There was no doubt that it was the alliance with Grantville—even with Michael Stearns, the man—that had enabled Gustav Adolf to rise so quickly to the prominence he now held in European affairs. Soon enough, Axel didn't doubt, in world affairs.

On the day of the Ring of Fire, Gustav Adolf had been the "Lion of the North." The king of Sweden, merely, but a king whose own innate abilities had made Sweden a much greater power than its population and resources would normally have warranted.

Four and a half years had gone by. Today, Gustav Adolf was still king of Sweden—and a considerably richer Sweden. He was also the emperor of the United States of Europe, a position which, despite the many republican absurdities and aggravations attendant upon it, still gave Gustav Adolf unmatched military power. Power which he'd used, among other things, to resurrect the Union of Kalmar—on a Swedish foundation this time, not a Danish one—and reunite Scandinavia for the first time since the middle ages.

All well and good. But as time went on—it was obvious, even if the king himself had been blind to it—the American elixir had become a poison. The higher the king rose, the weaker became the foundations of his rule. Before much longer, if this went on, it would all be swept away.

Axel thought the hand of God had been at work, that day on the shores of Lake Bledno. A king's life had been saved, yes, by a valiant hero. But perhaps just as important—here lay the subtlety of the Lord's work—was that the king fell into a swoon. A swoon that now looked to last for quite some time. Months, almost certainly. Possibly years. (Possibly forever, too; but the chancellor's mind shied away from that.)