1636: The Cardinal Virtues (7 page)
Read 1636: The Cardinal Virtues Online
Authors: Eric Flint,Walter H Hunt
Tags: #Fiction, #Alternative History, #Science Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General
Chapter 8
Marseilles
Sherrilyn had come to Marseilles with an introduction arranged by Estuban Miro to a Jewish doctor, Bonnel de Lattès. She’d gotten some nasty looks from some of the men in the Jewish Quarter—
imagine, a single woman without escort!
—but Bonnel had received her very kindly, and sent her and a bundle of medicines to Pont de Garde. There the priory had welcomed her, quizzed her on up-time—everyone seemed to still do that, even four years after the Ring of Fire—and gave her personal space. Apparently the Jewish doctor was well-regarded among the religious, having practiced some real medicine there over time.
Bonnel had visited her twice there while she rehabbed in the only way she knew how: fresh air and exercise and patience. It had dulled the memories of the Wrecking Crew’s last campaign, and she might have stayed a while longer had Bonnel not introduced her to Cosme de Valbelle, who told her he might have a job for her.
De la Mothe’s offer was interesting. She was a little concerned about whether she was the right person for the job: not that she didn’t know her stuff—she did, that was for sure. And the offer paid well—his messenger later that afternoon had told her exactly how much Turenne was willing to spend to hire an up-timer gym teacher to work for him.
Truly, it came down to the idea of working for Turenne—and, by extension, Cardinal Richelieu. Since Grantville had been dropped into Thuringia more than four years ago, the enemy had consistently been France and the villain had always been Richelieu.
She’d been raised on adventure movies about the Three Musketeers. Richelieu was the fork-bearded red-cloaked devil who controlled the puppet king and manipulated everything and everybody to the advantage of church and country. The reality was different from that, of course. Not only was the cardinal a more complicated figure—Harry had told her that—but there really was a D’Artagnan, and he was supposed to be way different from the books and movies.
Richelieu had done a damn good job of trying to tear apart the USE from the get-go, so his villain status wasn’t exactly fiction either. Wietze . . . that was just part of it. There had been battles on sea and land and in the air, leading to the big fight at Ahrensbök a year and a half ago.
It really was above her pay grade. Treaties and the Union of Kalmar and all of the business of the little princess’s marriage . . . Sherrilyn knew that the world had changed from what it had been even in ’31 and ’32. But Harry would say what she was thinking: that she was a grunt, a regular soldier, not anyone significant. Decisions were made by bigger people on a bigger stage. People like Ed Piazza and Mike Stearns made decisions . . . a high school principal and a coal miner before the Ring of Fire gave them field promotions.
A little destiny, or luck, or freakin’ magic pixie dust, and it could be her instead of Ed or Mike.
All of this introspection led her back to the question: could she really think about working for Turenne and Richelieu?
If they really considered Spain as an enemy—which Sherrilyn certainly did, especially after the Crew’s rescue of Frank and Giovanna on Mallorca—then the answer actually could be
yes.
And since she really was likely to have to deal with this bum knee for life, and since Philippe de la Mothe wanted to give her a chance to teach—something she understood—and since the pay was damn good—then the answer was probably
hell yes
.
But she was
really
going to need a whistle.
◊ ◊ ◊
She took the job. It wasn’t a difficult choice: the pay was good and the opportunity to do something—anything—was compelling. She knew that she could have stayed as long as she liked, but time was marching on.
On the day she prepared to go it was cold and brisk. Her cell, only a few extra blankets more luxurious than the ones the sisters occupied, was filled with sunlight. She packed her gear, which didn’t amount to much. Before leaving the room she turned to look at it one last time. There was really no evidence that she’d been there at all.
“Sherrilyn?”
She turned to find a sister standing in the doorway: Sister Amelia, a tiny, middle-aged woman who had been exceptionally kind to her—she had arranged the extra blankets. Sherrilyn put down her pack and embraced the nun.
“I’m so glad you came by,” Sherrilyn said. “I didn’t see you in the refectory, and I would have been sad to leave without saying goodbye.”
Amelia smiled—her
secret smile
, Sherrilyn thought. “Oh, never fear, daughter. You’d not pass through the gate without my blessing.”
“I appreciate it.”
“And how is your knee?”
“It aches rhythmically, but Dr. Bonnel’s plaster seems to help. I’ll manage.”
“Good, good.” She folded her hands. “I’ve actually come to let you know that you have a visitor.”
“A visitor? Who—did the doctor come up?”
“No. It is a . . . member of his community, I think. He does not wear the hat, but I think . . . well. He is in the courtyard.”
“Did he say what he wanted?”
“Only to speak with you. If you would prefer not to meet him, I can give your regrets—I can tell him that you have already departed. If you hurry, you can save me prayers at confession by making it true.”
“It doesn’t sound threatening. I’d be happy to meet him.”
“I will accompany you, of course.”
“Of course. But I can take care of myself.”
“I am certain. But I will accompany you. I am curious—so I will face extra prayers at confession after all.”
Now it was Sherrilyn’s turn to smile. She picked up her pack.
“Lead on.”
The priory had a large open courtyard, flanked by four passageways, with solid walls on one side and plain, solid pillars on the other, ending in doors leading to other parts of the complex. Inside was a square area forty or so feet across where the sisters had planted flowers and herbs. There was a single stone bench in the middle; as they approached, she saw a modestly dressed man patiently sitting and waiting. He was middle-aged, with a carefully trimmed beard and moustache. There was a gray skullcap on his head (as opposed to the pointed, peaked
Judenhut
that she’d sometimes seen in Marseilles). But from his looks he might have been Estuban Miro’s cousin.
Sister Amelia settled onto a bench and drew out her rosary. Sherrilyn set her pack beside her friend and walked out into the courtyard.
“Mademoiselle Maddox,” he said, standing up. “I am so pleased to meet you at last.”
“What can I do for you, Monsieur—Monsieur—”
“My name is Seth ben Adret,” he said. “I am a humble soap-maker by trade, but I come as a friend of Dr. Bonnel—and of another mutual friend.”
“I have a lot of friends.”
“The . . . principal,” ben Adret said. “Your former principal.”
Principal
, she thought. Did he mean Harry Lefferts? . . . Then she realized what he was trying to say, and practically slapped her forehead. He meant Ed Piazza—the former principal of Grantville High School, who was now president of the State of Thuringia-Franconia.
The Principal.
It was like the name of a Batman villain. “I haven’t talked to him for some time.”
“I understand. But please be informed that he is aware of your presence here in Marseilles, and the employment opportunity you have just accepted.”
“Huh. Is he trying to tell me not to take it? Because it’s none of his damn business whether I take a job or not. If this is some sort of loyalty test—”
“No, no, Mademoiselle Maddox,” he said, putting his hand up. “He is not telling you that at all. Indeed, he wishes you the best of luck in the position—there is no enmity between your new employer and . . . your previous one.”
“All right then. But
he
sent you to talk to me?”
“Yes. He wanted to let you know that he had not had a letter from you for some time and would welcome one. Or more.”
Sherrilyn thought about it for a moment, frowning. Before she could frame an answer, Seth ben Adret stepped forward and took her right hand in both of his. She was surprised enough not to react or pull away immediately.
Sister Amelia, who had seemed to drift off into a nap, was sitting forward, moving to get up. Out of her sight, though, ben Adret had slipped something into her palm: a small square object, perhaps two by three inches. He withdrew his hands, letting them fall to his sides, and fixed Sherrilyn with a steady gaze.
She didn’t know what to make of it, but tucked the gift—a small, leatherbound book—into her sleeve, and nodded.
“He is sure that you will do well in your new role,” the Jewish soap-maker said. “He knows that it is trite to say so, but wherever an up-timer goes, the United States of Europe goes with him. Or her.”
“Thank you,” she said. “And please thank the principal when you communicate with him. I’m glad to hear that he hasn’t forgotten me.”
“On that,” ben Adret answered, “you can be sure.”
◊ ◊ ◊
De la Mothe’s troopers went out of their way to respect her person and her privacy as they traveled. She wasn’t sure if they were genuinely intimidated by her, by the cachet of an up-timer, or if the comte had warned them of her statement to him regarding broken limbs . . . or if he’d simply told them to be polite. But she was allowed privacy whenever they stopped to rest.
Late in the afternoon, the first day out from Marseilles, they stopped near a creek to water the horses. She separated herself and went a few dozen yards away to attend to her personal needs, after which she reached into a pocket within her pack and drew out the book that ben Adret had given her.
It was sixteen pages in length and carefully and beautifully printed in tiny type. The first fourteen pages consisted of a long list of common words that she might use in a letter about her assignment, but which were . . . descriptive, possibly sensitive.
Rifle. Troop. Attack. March. Reinforce. Siege.
There were hundreds of other, nonmilitary terms, but those caught her eye. Next to each one was another reasonably common word:
Shovel. Chorus. Invite. Vacation. Draw. Broil.
It was a cipher—not an especially clever one, but something she could use to send sensitive information.
God damn it,
she thought.
Ed—the “Principal”—wants me to be a
spy
. De la Mothe says that Turenne has no designs on the USE, but Ed Piazza wants to make sure.
The last two pages contained a set of substitution codes, a dozen of them, each keyed to—of all things—TV shows, all seemingly from the 1990s. To indicate which code she used, she’d have to include a reference to a character on the show: Buffy, Mulder, Cooper (that one took her a minute, then she remembered
Twin Peaks
); Lois; Sipowicz; Munch; and so on. It was a long way from unbreakable, but without any real computing power it would be hard.
It could also get her killed. Even having this little book could get her killed. What the
hell
did Ed Piazza think he was doing?
But she knew the answer to that question, even as she stowed the little book back in the inner pocket of her pack. He was watching out for the interests of the USE. It was true in a way, what ben Adret had said: wherever an up-timer went, the USE went with it. There were about three thousand up-timers in the world, a tiny little drop in a fairly big ocean, and there weren’t going to be any more of them. In five years, in ten years, that number would be even smaller . . . and not all up-timers felt loyalty to the last vestige of the world where they’d grown up. Some, and she counted Harry Lefferts among them, had really gone native—this was their time not just by circumstance but by inclination.
God damn it.
One of de la Mothe’s troopers called out to her, walking slowly along the river bank, not seeming to want to get too close. Sherrilyn smiled to herself; the guy must be attached to his limbs.
“I’ll be right there,” she answered, stepping back into view with her pack slung over her shoulder.
The USE goes with me
, she thought.
Part Two
The Virtue Of Fortitude
A noble and steady purpose of mind
Chapter 9
March, 1636
Lyon, France
It had taken all winter to sort them out.
When Sherrilyn Maddox first arrived at Marshal Turenne’s headquarters, she expected to find an army camp—men in tents or barracks, with the marshal himself living rough with his troops. She had heard of his common touch . . . all the way from Marseilles, in fact: the men in her escort had made a great display of it.
But Turenne himself, and his staff, had engaged a very handsome villa outside of town where they were accommodated in quite comfortable style. It was fully staffed, and Sherrilyn was given her own room. It was a simple solution to a problem she had been concerned about: how to doss down with a few thousand men.
“You are comfortable?” he asked the day she arrived. She was walking around her room, pacing it out, looking at the furnishings and wondering what might break if she sat or leaned on them. Turenne had just come in from a ride: he had mud on his boots and hadn’t taken the spurs off. He took his leather riding gloves off and tucked them in to his belt.
“More than comfortable, my lord,” she said.
“Marshal is fine. Sherrilyn Maddox, isn’t it?” He gave the name a surprisingly American pronunciation. “Colonel Maddox from now, I think.”
“That’s quite a promotion.”
“It is what I had in mind.” He looked down at his boots, as if noticing them for the first time. “I am very pleased to have you here at last. I know that de la Mothe explained my interest in having you come here.”
“I admit to skepticism.”
He stepped into the room, avoiding the delicate carpet and settling himself onto an armchair. Sherrilyn came and sat nearby.
“That is quite understandable,” Turenne said. “I know de la Mothe told you that I needed someone to help train my troops—to teach them to fight like a modern army. But I realize, and I am sure you realize, that if each has a Cardinal rifle in his hands and knows how to shoot it, that is more than sufficient.”
“I’ve done the math. Three shots a minute—three thousand men or so, that’s nine thousand rounds a minute at a range of two to three hundred yards. Even if your men were lousy shots—”
“They’re not.”
“Even if they were, your average tercio would never reach the front ranks of your force. And a cavalry charge wouldn’t get there either. If they really
can
shoot, then you have everything you need. The Spanish have no idea what you can do, do they?”
“The Spanish do not think too deeply about anything,” Turenne answered. “I suspect that they would not expect much from a few thousand French troops against the mighty
Tercio Español
. With the proper cavalry support they would expect themselves to be unbeatable. If they come up against us—”
“Is that what’s going to happen, Marshal? The Spanish are going to invade France?”
“I don’t know. The cardinal clearly has some inkling that it might happen—otherwise why would we be deployed here? It’s a long way from Paris—or the Dutch frontier—or anywhere else but Spain or Savoy.” He made a gesture with his hand. “Really . . . it’s a long way from just about everywhere.”
“Keeps the boys out of trouble.”
“Oh, believe me, mademoiselle, they make their own trouble. But it is a much smaller amount of trouble than they might make in sight of Notre-Dame de Paris.
“But to the point. The men can shoot; the rifles are accurate and deadly. My subcommanders have trained them well. I don’t need you to help with that.”
“Then . . .”
“When the Spaniard crosses the Pyrenees, as he surely will, it may not be with trumpets sounding and banners flying. We will need to know what he intends to do and where he intends to go. It will be this for which we will need your expertise. I believe the up-timer term is ‘small unit tactics’—infiltration and precision attack at a distance. One rifle—one shot.”
“Snipers.”
“I have heard that term used, yes. I originally thought it meant a sort of hunting exercise, but I have come to understand it as something far more deadly and effective. My men can shoot, yes, but not all of them can perform this mission.” He pointed at Sherrilyn. “I want you to find the ones who can.”
◊ ◊ ◊
And so she had. She had divided them into groups of twenty to see which ones met the minimum standard: decent eyesight, skill in the manual of arms, and careful use of their weapon. Once she could see which ones could
see
the broad side of a barn, she picked out the ones who looked like they had a chance of actually hitting that barn with reasonable skill. Those whose marksmanship—and poise—impressed her made it into a second, smaller group.
Turenne’s quartermaster went to the marshal to complain on the first day regarding the extravagant waste of powder. Turenne thanked him and ignored him. He appeared each of the next two days, still hopping mad at Sherrilyn for squandering resources—and each time the marshal heard him out and turned him away. The fourth time he appeared at the villa there was a short closed-door meeting from which he emerged chastened: that was the last time anything was said about it.
She taught her little group of thirty-five every trick that the Wrecking Crew had managed to use during its active career. The hardest lesson was convincing them to think for themselves (as opposed to simply thinking
about
themselves—which mostly involved thinking with what was in their breeches.) There were thirty-one left after that lesson.
By the spring there were only twenty-four, for various reasons—but it was worth all the powder and shot, all the sidelong looks, the snide remarks, and the two brawls.
To fill out her company—
Maddox’s Rangers
was what they decided to call themselves—there were sixteen regulars who could handle themselves well in a close-in fight. A winter’s worth of conversations with Turenne’s sergeants and NCOs helped pick those guys out.
It wasn’t exactly the varsity at Grantville High—but it was what Turenne wanted.
It was just a matter of putting it to use.
March 28, 1636
Lyon, France
Dear Ed:
Thanks for sending me the nice going-away gift when I decided to give up Marseilles for this place. It sure seemed like a good idea at the time, but I’d rather have some soft Mediterranean breezes than the wind off the Massif Central. One winter in this place would probably be enough. It’s colder than old Mr. Mulder’s classroom at the high school, when he’d leave all the windows open.
Mulder had never been a teacher at Grantville High. That was a keyword from the cipher book, telling them what page to use.
Windows open
meant that the army was in camp, and hadn’t been given orders to deploy anywhere.
Things have been pretty smooth here. The best part has to be the food. The boss treats us very well, nothing but the best. He’s even arranged for the best forks and knives to be put in all of the troopers’ hands, and they’ve all learned to eat with them. Some of them are still a little sloppy, but mostly they put the food in their mouths.
The connection between Mulder and the windows had been clever. This reference was a little less subtle—
forks and knives
meant weapons, and the best weapons had to refer to the Cardinal rifles. And they’d been given to all the men, and they all knew how to shoot.
The head cook comes up with amazing recipes. They told me that originally the food wasn’t fit to eat—it made people sick—but you know how it is with cafeterias. After a while, if you start with good ingredients, you can make a pretty good meal. I’m a believer, and so is he.
Recipes
was a cipher-replacement for
ammunition
. The comment about making people sick was a reference she hoped he’d understand, going along with the word
believer
. Their engineering expert was Johann Glauber, a chemistry wizard who had found a way to replace the mercury fulminate in the percussion caps with something more effective and far safer.
Glauben
, of course, was the German word for “believe.”
It’s a little harder than working for you, but I guess teaching is teaching. You get the students lined up, you blow the whistle and you watch them run. You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, but at least I have a few cartons. Well, two cartons at least.
She was guessing that the average down-timer wouldn’t know that an egg carton held a dozen eggs, so that the key number here was twenty-four—the number of special troopers she was training.
There wasn’t any easy way to explain to Ed exactly what she was doing by using the cipher since most of the substitution terms weren’t useful in this context. It was probably going to take a few letters back and forth in order to get the hang of it—if someone didn’t figure out that she was sending in code.
I am not cut out for this
, she thought, and nearly tossed the whole thing into the fire. What was the benefit? She could convey a few general things, and would be risking that Turenne, or someone else in the camp, would figure out that she was spying on them. That sort of thing could get you killed . . . after some very nasty things happened to you.
But I think you’d like these guys,
she finally wrote.
The boss has kept them busy digging, enough for twelve main drags, but that’s like running laps on the track.
The
main drag
, the principal road through Grantville, was Route 250; 12 x 250 was 3,000. Maybe he’d get that reference, maybe not. As for
liking these guys
, she was trying to tell Ed that they were probably not enemies of the USE.
If they were going to catch her spying, this letter would surely do it. She decided to close it out before she wrote something even more transparent.
I’ll look forward to your letter.
Best regards,
Sherrilyn Maddox
Gym Teacher to the Stars
