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1634: The Bavarian Crisis: Chapter Twenty Four
Last updated: Monday, August 13, 2007 07:04 EDT
PART V
June, 1634
Those shadowy recollections
Tempora Jucunda
Vienna
Every item that had personalized her apartments, made them her own, was gone. Packed, some of them. The rest placed into storage. Some day, a daughter of her brother Ferdinand and his wife Mariana would live in these rooms. Until then, they would stand empty except for the bed, chests, and chairs.
Maria Anna walked over to the window and stood watching as the carriages that would take the court to Passau for the ceremony transferring her to Bavaria lined up on the streets below. The wagons were waiting outside the walls. The servants had finished the job of loading the baggage the day before, but things were moving slowly. A woman, the wife of a chancery official from the place of her carriage in the cortege, lost control of a wiggling lapdog. A groom grabbed it before it could spook the horses, thank goodness. A team out of control could have delayed everything for hours. It seemed that every additional minute since breakfast just made her more melancholy.
She turned back in toward the room, fingering her rosary. “Did you manage to get any news this morning?”
Doña Mencia reached into her satchel. “No newspapers. I suppose that Frau Stecher has kept little Susanna too busy to go find any for us. The private secretary to the ambassador from the Spanish Netherlands sent me correspondence that arrived in the diplomatic pouch yesterday evening. Someone delivered it while we were at mass. It doesn’t contain much that we didn’t already know. There’s a list of all the prominent people who are or will be taking part in the Congress of Copenhagen called by Gustavus Adolphus. The official sessions have started. The preliminary official sessions, at least. There’s a lot of discussion of Prince Ulrik’s heroic actions. They’ve caused a great deal of excitement.”
“It must be nice for the nobles to be able to find and talk about at least one heroic prince among all the heroic commoners in this campaign.” Maria Anna’s voice was flat. “What do they say about the Norwegian whose designs and ideas let the prince be heroic? Or what Oxenstierna thinks about the Swedish king’s agreement to negotiate with the Danes?”
“As for the Norwegian, it depends upon who is writing the despatch. Oxenstierna is said to be less than pleased. Both with heroic Danish princes and heroic commoners.” Doña Mencia paused, trying to think of something that would distract the archduchess. “Many of the participants were brought in the up-timers’ airplanes. Scaglia is there as an observer and was able to observe the planes land and take off again.”
“Don Fernando sent an observer to Copenhagen? Was permitted to send one? Isn’t that a little… odd?”
“He was invited to do so by the USE ambassadress. By Rebecca Abrabanel.”
“With the Swede’s permission?”
“Presumably. Although one hears that the Stearns administration often acts on the maxim that it is easier to ask for forgiveness after a fait accompli than to obtain permission in advance. We live in very interesting times.”
“But Don Fernando himself is not going to be in Copenhagen?”
“That would be a little… excessive… under the circumstances. Whatever people expect, whatever people speculate, he has not yet made a formal break with Spain. Although–it is said that Rubens has collected portraits of all the eligible Catholic princesses. Not, it is to be presumed, just on a whim.”
“Before my betrothal to Uncle Max, I would have been among the eligible ones.”
“Indeed, your portrait is among those in Brussels. Presumably, Rubens ordered one before your betrothal became official. Which is interesting, since it indicates that Don Fernando must have been contemplating his next move for several months before the rumors began to circulate.”
Maria Anna went back to the window. She wished that the steward would send someone to summon her. There was nothing left for her in the Hofburg. She might as well leave right now. But people entered the carriages in a certain order, defined by protocol. It would never do for the emperor’s daughter, much less the emperor, to sit waiting while lesser mortals ran back into the palace for forgotten items or grooms repaired a bit of harness that broke at the last minute. She would be called third from the last. Then Mariana, baby Ferdinand, and her ladies in waiting. Then Papa and Mama and their personal attendants. After that, her wedding procession could start on its way.
She placed one hand on the drapery. “Talk to me, Doña Mencia. Tell me a story. ‘Once upon a time…’” She laughed softly. “But leave out the fairy tale ending, please.”
Besançon, in the Franche-Comté
By the time Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar ended his faked maneuvering in the Breisgau and brought his forces back to his administrative center at Besançon, there was more news from Paris. Some of his aides thought Bernhard had acted precipitously, even rashly, to have ended the maneuvers immediately after receiving the first reports of Torstensson’s crushing defeat of de Valois’ army at Ahrensbök. But the newspaper accounts from Paris that awaited them at Besançon made it obvious that he’d gauged the situation correctly. Bernhard was basking in the sunshine of a bold move that had turned out quite well, and all but sneering at his more timid associates.
Richelieu had summoned Marshal Turenne and his cavalry to Paris. That was a sure sign that the cardinal was now completely pre-occupied with France’s internal situation. Well…
Mostly pre-occupied. Richelieu was quite capable of handling several matters at once, and doing them all very competently. But it really didn’t matter if he did manage to devote some time to gauging the situation with Bernhard in the Franche-Comté. What could he do about it, really, beyond sending stern missives? The only capable army he could rely upon at the moment was Turenne’s, and he needed Turenne guarding Paris and the royal palace at the Louvre.
Bernhard clapped his hands. The gesture was simply one of satisfaction; indeed, exuberant satisfaction. Not only was the political situation developing very nicely, but his indigestion had ceased as well.
“Who says plans never work the way they’re supposed to?” he demanded, smiling slyly at his chief aide, Friedrich von Kanoffski.
“Not I,” replied von Kanoffski. Unlike some others, Friedrich had had the sense to keep his mouth shut.
Bernhard nodded. Then, after a moment, said: “I believe I’ve been a little testy of late.” He cocked an inquisitive eyebrow.
Friedrich shook his head, making sure to maintain a solemn expression. “I can’t say I noticed, Your Grace.”
Amberg, Upper Palatinate
“I suppose there’s no way to restrain General Banér now,” said Duke Ernst. He leaned back in the chair in his office and studied the mass of papers on his desk. “As if I didn’t have enough to worry about already.”
Colonel Erik Haakansson Hand chuckled and shook his head. “After the news of Ahrensbök? Not a chance. Johan was champing at the bit already. He’s jealous by nature, and of no other of my cousin’s generals is he more jealous than Lennart Torstensson. Johan Banér is looking at his thirty-eighth birthday, in a couple of weeks, and Lennart just turned thirty-one. Now, the upstart Torstennson has the great victory at Ahrensbök under his belt—and to make things worse, he was the commander-in-chief at the battle, not simply serving under my cousin. So now Johan is determined to match the feat—come as close as he can, at least—by seizing Ingolstadt from the Bavarians.”
“But it’s silly, Erik, even in those terms. Ahrensbök was a decisive victory, one of the very few such in the annals of war. Even if Banér succeeds in reducing Ingolstadt, it wouldn’t come even close. To be sure, having a Bavarian enclave north of the Danube is a nuisance to us, but that’s all it is. Especially since we have our own enclave south of the river at Neuburg.”
Colonel Hand shrugged. “What difference does it make? For good or ill, Gustav Adolf made it clear that Johan could operate as an independent commander down here. You simply can’t restrain him, any longer.”
Duke Ernst sighed. “True enough. What do you recommend I do?”
“Since you can’t stop him, you may as well do what you can to see that Banér succeeds. I don’t quite agree with you, anyway, that Ingolstadt is simply a nuisance. So long as the Bavarians have a bridgehead north of the Danube, they’ll pose a continual military threat to the USE. Seizing Ingolstadt would improve our strategic situation considerably.”
As the chief administrator of the Upper Palatinate for Gustav Adolf and the USE, Duke Ernst was not inclined to argue the point. In truth, he’d be a lot happier himself if he didn’t always have to keep a wary eye on Ingolstadt. These things were unpredictable. Sooner or later, Duke Maximilian was bound to dismiss the fortress’ garrison commander, Cratz von Scharffenstein, and replace him with someone who was less slothful, if not necessarily less avaricious. An energetic and aggressive commander of Ingolstadt’s forces, combined with the already-aggressive Bavarian cavalry under the command of von Mercy and von Werth, could present a real problem.
So… Colonel Hand was undoubtedly right. If Johan Banér was determined to press the matter, best to give him all the assistance possible.
“There are the mercenary units in Franconia,” he mused. “I know for a certainty that Steve Salatto and Scott Blackwell would like to get rid of them. Given the situation with the Ram Rebellion, mercenary units of that nature are more trouble than they’re worth. Ten times better at stirring up animosity among the populace than they are at squelching it.”
“True. And what’s better still, after Ahrensbök I think it’s quite likely the emperor would agree to freeing up some of Torstensson’s units and sending them down here.”
The duke winced. “They’ll be CoC regiments, Erik. CoC-influenced, at the very least. Hardly the sort of troops that would please Johan Banér.”
“Fuck Banér,” said Colonel Hand bluntly. “That’s simply the price of his own ambition. He can’t take Ingolstadt unless he can neutralize the Bavarian cavalry—and he doesn’t have cavalry as good as that commanded by von Mercy and von Werth. He doesn’t have captains who can match them, either. The regiments from Torstensson’s army could make the difference, especially if you can persuade my cousin to release one of the flying artillery regiments. By all accounts, they were quite effective against the French cavalry.”
Duke Ernst thought about it, for perhaps a minute. Then, nodded. “As you say… Well.” He was not about to repeat the crude expression aloud, even if in the privacy of his own mind the sentiment fuck Banér came quite frequently. Even easily.
“We’ll do as you recommend,” he said. “Would you do me the favor of composing the message to the emperor? I’ll have it sent out over the radio this evening.”
“It would be my pleasure, Ernst. The truth is, I’m tired of those Bavarian bastards at Ingolstadt myself.”
****
Mary Simpson had had an appointment to see Duke Ernst today, right after breakfast, to further discuss the prospects of fund raising for the normal school. She’d been looking forward to it, since Ernst Wettin was a man who positively loved the subject of education. In a happier world, he’d have been the Secretary of the USE’s department of education—which still didn’t exist, unfortunately—instead of the administrator of a province under military occupation. He was certainly competent at the task, but it was not one that really suited his temperament.
But the meeting had had to be cancelled. Just when the flurry of political and military activity triggered off by the news of Ahrensbök had seemed to be dying down, news came to Amberg from Düsseldorf of an event that was probably even more important to the Upper Palatinate, if not to the world as a whole. It seemed that Duke Wolfgang Wilhelm and his son and heir, Philip, had gotten themselves killed in the course of a stupid attack on the Republic of Essen while the duke was pushing his claims to his maternal inheritance of Jülich, Berg, and parts of Ravensburg.
Westphalia would have to take care of itself now that Torstensson had so thoroughly trounced the French at Ahrensbök, but it would make a huge difference right here in the Upper Palatinate that the heir to Pfalz-Neuburg was no longer a nephew of Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, but rather an infant. Duke Ernst and most of his advisers, including Colonel Erik Haakansson Hand, had been closeted for two days discussing the matter.
So be it. Mary would see to re-scheduling the meeting with the duke in due time. Meanwhile, she could relax in the comfort of the inn, savoring the knowledge that her husband John had come through the hard-fought naval campaign in the Baltic. Without so much as a scratch, so far as she could determine from the newspaper reports. He was certainly alive and not seriously injured. All the accounts agreed on that.
Her companion at the breakfast table did not share her insouciance, however. Veronica Dreeson slapped the newspaper down on the table. “Arrested! What was that idiot boy thinking?
She glared at Mary. It was one of those glares that was not simply rhetorical. Ronnie wanted an answer.
What to say…?
Reading between the lines of the newspaper stories—and all the newspapers were dwelling on this one; no, slobbering over it—the situation seemed clear enough. It was obvious that Eddie Cantrell had been nabbed in flagrante delicto—by the girl’s father himself, to make things perfect—while engaged in activities with the daughter of the Danish king that the newspaper did not precisely delineate but were not hard to imagine.
“I suspect he wasn’t thinking much at all, Ronnie,” Mary said, as mildly as possible.
It was going to be a long day.
Amberg, Upper Palatinate
“Elbow room,” Keith Pilcher exclaimed.
Leopold Cavriani raised his eyebrows.
Keith put his newspaper down. “Did anyone ever tell you about Daniel Boone?”
Leopold nodded a yes; Marc nodded a no. Keith turned toward the boy.
“He was a frontiersman. Not to start out with. His father was a settler in Pennsylvania, a weaver, with a big, comfortable house. All the amenities, like Huddy Colburn puts in the ads when he’s trying to sell a house. A spring for fresh water, a cold room for keeping food fresh. Plastered walls. It’s a park, now. Well, it was a park, then. Daniel Boone’s birthplace, that is. Maxine dragged me to see it once.”
Leopold raised his eyebrows again.
Keith looked back toward the older man. “I do have a point, here. Well, George Boone’s little boy Daniel didn’t take to amenities. He headed out to the frontier and he pretty much kept moving. Western North Carolina. Kentucky. Missouri. That’s where he died, out in Missouri, on the other side of the Mississippi River. As far away from where he was born as . . . oh, as Muscovy, where Bernie Zeppi has gone, is from here. Maybe even farther. And when I was in fourth grade, we had to memorize a poem for a school program. I’ve forgotten most of it. Heck, I never learned most of it–I was just in the chorus that recited the refrain after the soloists went out front and gave a verse.
“Every time he made a move, it went: ‘Elbow room,’ said Daniel Boone.”
“So?”
“So that’s what Gustav has gotten for us. He’s bought us a year, Cavriani. You and Count August, Duke Ernst, Ollie and me, and all the iron people here. He probably thinks that’s what is important is that he beat Denmark and got his little girl betrothed to that prince, but I know better. We’ve got a year of elbow room before the next crunch comes down. A year to get things going again.
“Now we’ve got to get these guys to roll up their sleeves and show some elbow.”
Amberg, Upper Palatinate
“I suppose there’s no way to restrain General Banér now,” said Duke Ernst. He leaned back in the chair in his office and studied the mass of papers on his desk. “As if I didn’t have enough to worry about already.”
Colonel Erik Haakansson Hand chuckled and shook his head. “After the news of Ahrensbök? Not a chance. Johan was champing at the bit already. He’s jealous by nature, and of no other of my cousin’s generals is he more jealous than Lennart Torstensson. Johan Banér is looking at his thirty-eighth birthday, in a couple of weeks, and Lennart just turned thirty-one. Now, the upstart Torstennson has the great victory at Ahrensbök under his belt—and to make things worse, he was the commander-in-chief at the battle, not simply serving under my cousin. So now Johan is determined to match the feat—come as close as he can, at least—by seizing Ingolstadt from the Bavarians.”
“But it’s silly, Erik, even in those terms. Ahrensbök was a decisive victory, one of the very few such in the annals of war. Even if Banér succeeds in reducing Ingolstadt, it wouldn’t come even close. To be sure, having a Bavarian enclave north of the Danube is a nuisance to us, but that’s all it is. Especially since we have our own enclave south of the river at Neuburg.”
Colonel Hand shrugged. “What difference does it make? For good or ill, Gustav Adolf made it clear that Johan could operate as an independent commander down here. You simply can’t restrain him, any longer.”
Duke Ernst sighed. “True enough. What do you recommend I do?”
“Since you can’t stop him, you may as well do what you can to see that Banér succeeds. I don’t quite agree with you, anyway, that Ingolstadt is simply a nuisance. So long as the Bavarians have a bridgehead north of the Danube, they’ll pose a continual military threat to the USE. Seizing Ingolstadt would improve our strategic situation considerably.”
As the chief administrator of the Upper Palatinate for Gustav Adolf and the USE, Duke Ernst was not inclined to argue the point. In truth, he’d be a lot happier himself if he didn’t always have to keep a wary eye on Ingolstadt. These things were unpredictable. Sooner or later, Duke Maximilian was bound to dismiss the fortress’ garrison commander, Cratz von Scharffenstein, and replace him with someone who was less slothful, if not necessarily less avaricious. An energetic and aggressive commander of Ingolstadt’s forces, combined with the already-aggressive Bavarian cavalry under the command of von Mercy and von Werth, could present a real problem.
So… Colonel Hand was undoubtedly right. If Johan Banér was determined to press the matter, best to give him all the assistance possible.
“There are the mercenary units in Franconia,” he mused. “I know for a certainty that Steve Salatto and Scott Blackwell would like to get rid of them. Given the situation with the Ram Rebellion, mercenary units of that nature are more trouble than they’re worth. Ten times better at stirring up animosity among the populace than they are at squelching it.”
“True. And what’s better still, after Ahrensbök I think it’s quite likely the emperor would agree to freeing up some of Torstensson’s units and sending them down here.”
The duke winced. “They’ll be CoC regiments, Erik. CoC-influenced, at the very least. Hardly the sort of troops that would please Johan Banér.”
“Fuck Banér,” said Colonel Hand bluntly. “That’s simply the price of his own ambition. He can’t take Ingolstadt unless he can neutralize the Bavarian cavalry—and he doesn’t have cavalry as good as that commanded by von Mercy and von Werth. He doesn’t have captains who can match them, either. The regiments from Torstensson’s army could make the difference, especially if you can persuade my cousin to release one of the flying artillery regiments. By all accounts, they were quite effective against the French cavalry.”
Duke Ernst thought about it, for perhaps a minute. Then, nodded. “As you say… Well.” He was not about to repeat the crude expression aloud, even if in the privacy of his own mind the sentiment fuck Banér came quite frequently. Even easily.
“We’ll do as you recommend,” he said. “Would you do me the favor of composing the message to the emperor? I’ll have it sent out over the radio this evening.”
“It would be my pleasure, Ernst. The truth is, I’m tired of those Bavarian bastards at Ingolstadt myself.”
Mary Simpson had had an appointment to see Duke Ernst today, right after breakfast, to further discuss the prospects of fund raising for the normal school. She’d been looking forward to it, since Ernst Wettin was a man who positively loved the subject of education. In a happier world, he’d have been the Secretary of the USE’s department of education—which still didn’t exist, unfortunately—instead of the administrator of a province under military occupation. He was certainly competent at the task, but it was not one that really suited his temperament.
But the meeting had had to be cancelled. Just when the flurry of political and military activity triggered off by the news of Ahrensbök had seemed to be dying down, news came to Amberg from Düsseldorf of an event that was probably even more important to the Upper Palatinate, if not to the world as a whole. It seemed that Duke Wolfgang Wilhelm and his son and heir, Philip, had gotten themselves killed in the course of a stupid attack on the Republic of Essen while the duke was pushing his claims to his maternal inheritance of Jülich, Berg, and parts of Ravensburg.
Westphalia would have to take care of itself now that Torstensson had so thoroughly trounced the French at Ahrensbök, but it would make a huge difference right here in the Upper Palatinate that the heir to Pfalz-Neuburg was no longer a nephew of Duke Maximilian of Bavaria, but rather an infant. Duke Ernst and most of his advisers, including Colonel Erik Haakansson Hand, had been closeted for two days discussing the matter.
So be it. Mary would see to re-scheduling the meeting with the duke in due time. Meanwhile, she could relax in the comfort of the inn, savoring the knowledge that her husband John had come through the hard-fought naval campaign in the Baltic. Without so much as a scratch, so far as she could determine from the newspaper reports. He was certainly alive and not seriously injured. All the accounts agreed on that.
Her companion at the breakfast table did not share her insouciance, however. Veronica Dreeson slapped the newspaper down on the table. “Arrested! What was that idiot boy thinking?
She glared at Mary. It was one of those glares that was not simply rhetorical. Ronnie wanted an answer.
What to say…?
Reading between the lines of the newspaper stories—and all the newspapers were dwelling on this one; no, slobbering over it—the situation seemed clear enough. It was obvious that Eddie Cantrell had been nabbed in flagrante delicto—by the girl’s father himself, to make things perfect—while engaged in activities with the daughter of the Danish king that the newspaper did not precisely delineate but were not hard to imagine.
“I suspect he wasn’t thinking much at all, Ronnie,” Mary said, as mildly as possible.
It was going to be a long day.
Amberg, Upper Palatinate
“Elbow room,” Keith Pilcher exclaimed.
Leopold Cavriani raised his eyebrows.
Keith put his newspaper down. “Did anyone ever tell you about Daniel Boone?”
Leopold nodded a yes; Marc nodded a no. Keith turned toward the boy.
“He was a frontiersman. Not to start out with. His father was a settler in Pennsylvania, a weaver, with a big, comfortable house. All the amenities, like Huddy Colburn puts in the ads when he’s trying to sell a house. A spring for fresh water, a cold room for keeping food fresh. Plastered walls. It’s a park, now. Well, it was a park, then. Daniel Boone’s birthplace, that is. Maxine dragged me to see it once.”
Leopold raised his eyebrows again.
Keith looked back toward the older man. “I do have a point, here. Well, George Boone’s little boy Daniel didn’t take to amenities. He headed out to the frontier and he pretty much kept moving. Western North Carolina. Kentucky. Missouri. That’s where he died, out in Missouri, on the other side of the Mississippi River. As far away from where he was born as . . . oh, as Muscovy, where Bernie Zeppi has gone, is from here. Maybe even farther. And when I was in fourth grade, we had to memorize a poem for a school program. I’ve forgotten most of it. Heck, I never learned most of it–I was just in the chorus that recited the refrain after the soloists went out front and gave a verse.
“Every time he made a move, it went: ‘Elbow room,’ said Daniel Boone.”
“So?”
“So that’s what Gustav has gotten for us. He’s bought us a year, Cavriani. You and Count August, Duke Ernst, Ollie and me, and all the iron people here. He probably thinks that’s what is important is that he beat Denmark and got his little girl betrothed to that prince, but I know better. We’ve got a year of elbow room before the next crunch comes down. A year to get things going again.
“Now we’ve got to get these guys to roll up their sleeves and show some elbow.”
Mary Simpson made the diagnosis first, long before Bill Hudson had finished leafing through his manuals. Through the admiral’s old friendships in the Netherlands, she knew people at the World Health Organization who had worked for the international center for vaccination when the disease made its way through the former Soviet republics in the early 1990s.
Diphtheria.
The down-time physicians concurred. It was the “strangling angel of children.” They had, all of them, seen it before. All too often.
“It’s a kid’s disease,” Toby said, when Bill told him. “You get your DPT shots and that’s that.”
“They don’t have DPT shots here,” Bill pointed out. “And we don’t have any magic bullet to cure it. Oh, yes, it’s bacterial rather than viral. My little pamphlet says that it can be treated with penicillin. Or with erythromycin. Neither of which I happen to have available.”
“Oh.”
“Try to get through to Grantville tonight, will you, Toby? I know that reception in these hills has been driving you guys, crazy, but please try. If not tonight, then tomorrow morning. Keep trying. Get me one of the doctors. What I have is chloramphenicol, and not much of that. Ask them if it works on diphtheria. If it doesn’t, there’s no point in wasting what we have; I’ll save it for something it does work on. If it does work, well . . . ask them if they can send some more. Please.”
“People don’t really die of it, do they?”
“According to what I have here, it was a major killer, right up through the end of the nineteenth century. There aren’t going to be DPT shots for a long, long, time. I’ve put your tech into quarantine. Let’s hope that it doesn’t spread too fast. What about you. Are your shots up to date? When did you get your last DT shot?”
Toby didn’t have the slightest idea. “Last time that I had to get one, I suppose. That would have been, uh, when I started high school, maybe?”
“And you’re twenty-five now? So, about ten years. Well, let’s hope that you still have antibodies.” Bill stomped off, looking glum.
He was feeling frightened. That’s about how old his shots were, too. He was just a year younger than Toby. Of all the up-timers in Amberg, only two had their immunizations up to date when the Ring of Fire hit. Keith Pilcher was one of them, because of the nature of his job He had to have tetanus shots, being a machinist, and diphtheria vaccine came with it. Mrs. Simpson was the other one, partly because she traveled so much; and partly because she was just naturally one of those super-picky people who kept everything up to date. Jake’s last shot was before his and Toby’s.
And there were a lot of down-timers who had never had diphtheria. Including, he found out, Mrs. Dreeson. She’d had a lot of stuff, but no diphtheria. Duke Ernst, yes; Böcler, no; Zincgref, yes; Hand, no; Brechbuhl, yes; Leopold Cavriani, no; Lambert Felser, no; Marc Cavriani, no. The “no” list went on and on. Not a virgin field, but bad enough.
Like the out-of-date immunizations, he hoped that the immunity gained from childhood exposure would last for the ones who had already had it. Diphtheria was one of those things you could get again, once the antibodies wore off. Strangling on the swollen membranes in your own throat wasn’t a pretty way to die. Not that there were very many pretty ways. It hit children hardest, mainly because their windpipes were smaller, more quickly closed off by the membranes.
The pamphlet talked about complications, too. Severe heart and nervous system complications which develop after two to six weeks and can lead to collapse, paralysis, coma and death in about five percent of the cases. He guessed that real doctors found that sort of information fascinating. And stuff about possible long-term complications for people who survived. He’d worry about those later.
And how was he supposed to identify carriers? Not! At least, he could tell the down-timers that there were carriers and ask them to look for patterns. If person X’s visit to a household is regularly followed by an outbreak, quarantine him, too. And tell them what the incubation period was. If he could convince them that it was contagious and that’s how it was spread.
Oh, damn.
If he ever got out of the army, he was going back to Grantville. And going to work for Tom Stone. Let the other guys go to med school. He was going to make the medicines. Somebody else could deliver the doses.
Caspar Hell’s voice was steady. “I have closed the school because of the epidemic. Too many children are quarantined, or their parents are afraid to let them come, for us even to try to hold classes.”
None of the other Jesuits disputed that.
“We will offer the collegium to the city as a quarantine hospital. It is the largest suitable building. Those diagnosed can be brought here and we will nurse them. That may offer some hope, at least, that uninfected members of their families will escape exposure. Otherwise, the young medic, as they call him, tells us that whole families will die, one after another.”
None of the other Jesuits disputed that, either. Most of them had seen it happen, when families, the sick and the well alike, were quarantined together in their own houses.
Duke Ernst accepted the offer of a lazarette with gratitude.
Hand crossed “espionage centered at the collegium” off his list of things to worry about for the time being.
Bill Hudson’s hopes sank. He had kept wishing for a magic bullet. That someone could dispatch a 4×4 from Grantville with a batch of a lifesaving drug. Instead…as best the medical personnel in Grantville knew, chloramphenicol would not work on diphtheria. They didn’t know just why. Diphtheria was a gram positive bacilli, which chloramphenicol was effective against as a class. In short, it did work on the class of bacteria but they couldn’t find anything in their searching that specifically said that it would work on C. diphtheria—on this specific organism. It probably wouldn’t hurt someone, if he tried it on them as an experiment, Doc Adams had radioed. But they didn’t have any evidence that it would help.
Jakob Balde found it odd, having so many strangers inside the private portions of the collegium. There were usually students, of course. The few boarding students, however, had now been confined to their own quarters on the other side of the building, where the infection had not entered yet, and to the care of one of the cooks.
The Jesuits were not the only ones who volunteered to nurse. The older up-time man had been here, almost from the start. He wasn’t squeamish, either. An up-time woman had volunteered to come, but Father Hell had drawn the line at having that. So she worked in the city, with the young medic, who insisted that he was not a full-fledged physician. Doing something that she called triage. The arriving patients were marked: those who, God willing, would benefit from nursing; those who, barring a miracle of God, probably would not.
The other men who assisted the Jesuits in caring for the sick had only one thing in common. Chosen by Duke Ernst and the up-timers, they had all had the disease before and survived it. And, of course, a second thing: they were willing to come. Duke Ernst had not forced them, other than some of his own direct subordinates and some of the city employees. A few Catholics—there were not many Catholics in Amberg any more. Several Lutherans, several Calvinists. A Jew, just a peddler passing through the city. Two Swiss men who listed no religion when they arrived, which probably meant that they deserved burning for heresy. Jakob Balde, now in charge of the hospital, had chosen not to ask them for details.
Duke Ernst had not closed off the city; which was the reason the Jew and the two Swiss were here. One could not quarantine a city for every little disease that came along. For plague, yes, but not for diphtheria. Life had to go on.
Three deaths; five deaths; nine deaths. The count went up every day.
Father Hell among them. Also Oswald Kaiser, one of the lay brothers, a cabinetmaker who had been working on finishing the interiors of some of the rooms.
Balde, in the company of the regent, continued his tour of the sickbeds. And pulled the sheet over the face of another child.
None of the rest of them would have believed that Keith Pilcher could stand up to Veronica Dreeson until he did it. Over his dead body, he announced, was Veronica going to be involved in the care of the sick.
“Because,” he said, “you never had diphtheria and if you die on us here, everybody back home will blame it on Maxine’s not liking you. They’ll say that because the two of you don’t agree about whether four-year-olds ought to learn conversational Latin, I didn’t take care of the old woman. And I’m not going to put Max through that. You’ve got Henry waiting, you’ve got Annalise to send to school, you’ve got a dozen of Gretchen’s kids who depend on you. So you’re not going to go out and die of something on my watch. Like it or lump it.”
He might not have made it stick by himself, but Mary Simpson agreed with him. As did Bill Hudson, Duke Ernst, and just about everybody else. Hand volunteered to keep an eye on her.
They couldn’t precisely lock her up. She continued to investigate the situation with the Grafenwöhr properties. Elias couldn’t help her; he was one of those at the hospital, caring for the sick. She continued to meet occasionally with Rastetter, her lawyer. Until his family became ill and he closed his office temporarily.
“Hey, Toby,” one of the down-time radio techs asked. “Why aren’t you eating.”
“I don’t really feel like it, Franz. I’m getting a sore throat.”
“Where’s Lambert Felser?” Marc Cavriani asked. “I don’t think that I’ve seen him the last couple of days. Is he taking time off because Keith is busy at the hospital?”
“I’m not sure,” Eric Haakansson Hand answered. “I don’t think that I’ve seen him around, either.”
“I’d better,” Marc said, “check his room.”
Felser wasn’t there. The chambermaid at the inn said that, the morning before, she had come to clean and found him sick. So, according to the instructions that had been given to all the innkeepers, she told Hans from the stables to take him to the quarantine hospital. Had she told anybody? Well, no. She hadn’t known whom to tell. Herr Pilcher, his master, was, like the others who cared for the sick, sleeping at the hospital.
Balde made his rounds. More than seven hundred people were lying ill in the collegium, today. They were calling for more volunteers to care for them. For more people who had already survived the disease.
Three more of the Jesuits were among the ill.
There had been only about seventy deaths, though, so far. Most of them children.
A recurrence of the plague would have been far worse.
By the end of the week, the tide seemed to be turning. The patient count was under five hundred. Not, of course, all the same people who had been there the week before. The acute period of the disease did not last long; many of those still in the hospital were clearly recovering. Those who had family to care for them had already returned to their homes for convalescence.
Balde completed the day’s entries in his ledger. The death toll stood at ninety-three, including one of the sick Jesuits. However, no more of the brothers had sickened. So far.
During the plague epidemic the previous year, there had been nearly five hundred deaths in Amberg. God had been very merciful this time.
Franz looked at his friend Toby. Then, had one of the stablemen load him into a cart and take him to the hospital.
Toby was likely to recover, though, Franz thought. He was a strong young man.
Franz, like the chambermaid at the inn, wasn’t sure whom he should tell. Toby had been more or less the boss of the other radio techs. Franz wasn’t really sure who Toby’s boss was.
It wasn’t as if he could just drop into the regent’s office, even though he was living in the Schloss. Nor could he leave the radio room for a long time to go running around town looking for someone to tell. Finally, he just left a note on Böcler’s desk and returned to the top floor. Someone had to watch the radio, now that Toby was no longer there to do it.
He looked at the familiar, comforting, scene with its blue Leyden jars. Tiptoeing across the room so as not to jar them, he lay down on his cot.
Keith Pilcher was the first of the up-timers to learn that Toby was in the hospital, when he came to bathe him. Of the radio techs who had come with them from Grantville, this left how many on duty? Keith racked his brain. One of the down-timers, the first one who had become ill, was dead. Three more had been here and recovered enough to be sent over to the convalescent ward, because there wasn’t anyone to take care of them at the Schloss. Now Toby. That left one more. What was his name? Oh, yes. Franz. He ought to remind somebody that they were down to one functional radio tech.
Bill Hudson climbed up to the top floor of the Schloss and started to cuss a blue streak. It was one thing to say that the geeks were married to their work, but that didn’t mean that all six of them had needed to have their cots crowded into one little room next to the array of Leyden jars. Not eight inches between them; they must have walked sideways to get into bed. Plus they worked together and ate together. No wonder they had infected one another.
He asked Franz whether he had diphtheria before. Franz went on the “no” list.
Two days later, Bill ordered Franz to the hospital. Until one of the recovering techs was well enough to come back to work, Amberg would be on a radio blackout. No one else had the vaguest idea how to work the thing.
He notified Jake Ebeling. And Duke Ernst.
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