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If the Demons Will Sleep

Written by Eva Musch

There were still two hours until his appointment at the city hall. Istvan Janoszi was walking around Grantville at a rapid pace, watching it wake up on a Saturday morning. He had been thoroughly briefed before he came, so he knew that the pace of a Saturday should be somewhat different than the pace of Monday through Friday. Still, to some extent, the place bemused him. How could a city function without a marketplace? But it seemed to be that the market just spread throughout the town. Instead of gathering in one convenient, designated, and duly licensed spot, women were setting up their tables on the grassy spots around the houses—just on some of them, but not on all of them—and putting out their wares. Other women were gathering around them, prepared to bargain.

How did they find out who is selling what and where the vendor will set up? he wondered. From near one of the tables, a young child ran toward the paved street. A woman, heavy with late pregnancy, turned from the piles of second-hand clothing and said a few sharp words, calling her back. Istvan thought, almost, that he recognized the words. But no woman from his home village was likely to be here, among these Americans. It had been nearly twenty years since he'd been there himself.

He had never wanted to go back to that village in Slovakia. He walked on, deciding to take in the Saturday sermon at the Calvinist church before his meeting.

Two men came into the Leahy Medical Center. The receptionist knew the first man. He taught physical education at the grade school her two sons attended. Since she knew he was a Scot, she said, "Good morning" instead of "Guten Morgen." Then she asked, "May I help you?" And she beamed with pride.

"Wonderful, Maria, wonderful!" Guy Russell said with approval. "Your English is very good now. Just keep coming to the adult education classes." From the confusion on her face, he concluded that this was not one of the answers that she had been taught to expect when she memorized her dialogues.

She repeated her question. "May I help you?" Then she tried the rest of her repertoire. "What do you want? Is someone sick? Is someone hurt? Do you have an appointment?" To her obviously great relief, the last question was the correct one.

"We have an appointment. We are here to talk to Nurse DeVries."

Several simple declarative sentences later, they were sitting in a small office that Guy Russell was sure was a cubbyhole, but which he had learned that the up-timers called a "cubicle," waiting until the nurse came in. Mrs. DeVries was not, he thought, perhaps the right specialist for his companion's problem, but she had an inestimable advantage over any other of the nurses in the hospital. The man accompanying him was originally from Cleves, and Nurse DeVries spoke Dutch. Indeed, she was Dutch. There might be some hope of mutual understanding.

The man with Guy was named Endres Elstener. Or maybe Andreas Aelstener. Or possibly Anders van Aelsten. It had depended on the mood of the company clerk: all three appeared on the records of the mercenary unit to which he had formerly belonged and he answered to them all, although he preferred the last one. The Grantville Bureau of Vital Statistics found this very annoying. One apprentice clerk sat there all day and did little else than cut pieces of paper into rectangular slips, all the same size to go in drawers, and write down the different ways to spell the same person's name on them. Guy didn't know how what official or bureaucratic alchemy they used to decide which one was the "right" way. It would be too complicated to ask.

Anders knew the teacher because his son, also, attended the school. Nurse DeVries came in. Anders explained. At first, his problem seemed simple enough. His woman was within a month, he was sure, of delivering a baby. He wanted to have an up-time midwife when the time came. This would be the last baby, he expected. His Barbara wasn't young any more. They had been together a dozen years, and she was no young girl a dozen years ago. Between the ten-year-old in school and this day there had been four babies, born in camps and along roadsides. Only one still lived— a three-year-old girl.

"Just bring her to the hospital when labor starts," was Henny DeVries' first answer. "We always have a nurse midwife on call. Even better, bring her in for one or two prenatal checkups, first."

That was when things got complicated. "There can't be four walls," Anders said. "Barbara screams a lot when there are four walls around her." He looked at the nurse's expression and said defensively, "I didn't do it. I don't beat my woman. She doesn't need beating. Walls made her scream when I found her."

Up-time, Henny DeVries had been a psychiatric nurse. She didn't really want to contemplate the events in the unknown Barbara's past that might have brought her to the point of screaming if there were four walls around her and a roof over her head. "Where did you, ah, 'find her'?'

"In Bohemia. When I was fighting in the Crazy Halberstadter's men. She was by a roadside, with a shovel, trying to bury an old man. She wasn't strong enough to dig. I took the shovel and buried the man. Then I took her back to camp with me. She is my only woman. I am her only man."

"Full name?"

"Barbara Hartzi. Or Barbola Harczy? Maybe Harssy? Near that. I can't spell Bohemian. Anyway, I don't think she was born in Bohemia. Farther east. Maybe—Ungarn?"

"Hungary."

"Or maybe Transylvania. Perhaps Croatia. She knows what the village name was, but she doesn't know where it was. But she was not very small when her family fled into Bohemia. She was almost grown to a young woman."

Henny sighed, then asked, "Does she speak any German?" It was far too much to hope that she would speak English.

"She has learned some of mine—the Platt from Cleves. But she does not speak the German from around here," Anders replied.

Henny contemplated the problem of delivering a baby, outside of the hospital, to a possibly Hungarian woman who had, over the past ten years, learned to speak a little Low German, but would almost certainly forget it in the stress of hard labor. We do not have problems, she reminded herself. We have challenges and opportunities. Although, most of the time, she admitted that the Mormon women who volunteered at the hospital were worth their weight in gold, there were times that she wanted to strangle them. Those times were mostly when they recited that "challenges and opportunities" jargon!

Then something occurred to her. "If she can't stand walls, then your family can't be in the refugee housing. Where do you live?"

"In a camp. Up in one of the 'hollows.'" Anders smiled proudly. "I made it myself. I invite you to come and see. We have made a good home, my woman and I."

Henny looked at Guy. Guy looked at Henny. She asked, "Your woman? Or your wife?"

Anders frowned. "My woman. Who would authorize a marriage for such as us?"

Guy looked at Henny. Henny looked at Guy. "It's Saturday morning," he said. "I'm not doing this because I work for the school. I'm on my own time." Thinking, he added, "Cleves is Calvinist."

"Let's go, then." Henny stood up, the men following her. As she led them through the entrance, she stopped. "Maria. I am on call. I am not on duty. Clock me out for two hours, please." She looked at her wristwatch. "It is nine o'clock. I will come back in two hours." She checked as Maria recorded this on the chalkboard; then said, "Thanks."

Henny had been at the hospital, if not on duty, for three hours already. When she stepped outside, she said, "I do not believe this." The sun was shining. The sky was blue. The only clouds were tiny, white and puffy. The breeze was warm. It was May. It might not last for long, but for this one day, it was spring. She whirled around in her white sneakers, clapping her hands. Then she remembered to go back inside, take off the sneakers, and replace them with heavy walking shoes. She cast a wistful glance at the bicycle rack, but there was no point in outdistancing the others. They walked.

Earlier that morning, the driver of the freight wagon that stopped in front of St. Mary Magdalene's Catholic Church had also been happy for the good weather. It was not fun to unload wagons in the rain. The crates that he brought were very heavy. It took four men to unload each one of them. Father Augustus Heinzerling, who signed for the delivery, had run back to the rectory for a crowbar and pried one of them open, right there on the sidewalk. His prayers had been answered: Auserlesene, Catholische, Geistliche Kirchengesaeng (Cologne, 1623). They had arrived safely, even though the press was outside the borders of the CPE, in enemy territory. Now he had enough copies of the most modern, up-to-date, and popular hymnal that the German Catholic church published to supply every member of the choir and scatter them out among the congregation as well. He could have danced for joy. He did jump around a little and give a few shouts. After all, it was spring.

Once the crates were all open, the freight wagon was long gone. Father Heinzerling didn't have four men to carry them the rest of the way, so he intended to leave the containers outdoors and carry the books a few at a time with the help of his sons. Unfortunately, Heinzerling discovered that while he was going for the crowbar, the teamsters had become too efficient. Two of the crates did not have hymnals for St. Mary's but books that clearly belonged to someone else and had been removed from the wagon by mistake. He thought about what to do with the others. The crates were very heavy. He called four men who were just walking past and had them lift them onto the pushcart that the parish used for moving tables and chairs. He pushed the cart down the street and out onto the highway. The Presbyterian church was on the outskirts of town.

Everybody arrived at their goal at once. Since the entrance was temporarily blocked by Father Heinzerling and his pushcart, Guy paused to take a good look.

The scene was very strange. The old church, covered with tar-paper shingles and with a peeling tar-paper roof, still stood where it had been for years, unchanged. Around it and over it, a new brick church was being built. Guy remembered that last Sunday, the outer shell of walls had been about as high as a man's waist. This morning, they were twice as high as a man's head and the bricklayers were up on scaffolds. The window openings had been carefully measured to match those in the existing church. Eventually, the windows with their precious uptime glass would be moved to the new walls and inserted, with the remaining openings in the larger building simply shuttered until the congregation could afford the elaborate finishing touches. After the roof was put on, the men in the congregation would carefully dismantle the existing church building, piece by piece, so that as much of the woodwork and flooring as possible could be reused in finishing the interior of the new one. The unusable bits would be carried out the front door, beam by beam, and made available to other people who needed building material.

Instead of a dying congregation of mostly quite elderly Free Independent Presbyterians, the Reverend Enoch Wiley now ministered to an extraordinarily mixed collection of parishioners that included nearly every variety of Calvinist in Europe. Henny DeVries, although she had lived in the United States for many years before the Ring of Fire, was Dutch by birth and Dutch Reformed. The Scots in Mackay's company had almost all been Church of Scotland and most of them did attend church when there was one available. There was an occasional German Calvinist, who, like Anders van Aelsten, came from one of the former mercenary companies. Occasionally, there were Swiss Reformed, of both the Zwinglian and Calvinist varieties (although Guy was not sure what most of them were doing in town, he had his suspicions). Now and then there was a French Huguenot, or a passing Calvinist exile from the Spanish Netherlands, or someone from the Calvinist churches of Bohemia or farther to the southeast in Europe. There were even, of all wonders, a few of the snobbish PCUSA type American Presbyterians, although those mostly held themselves back or, worse, in the Reverend Wiley's opinion, went to the prayer services that had been organized by the Episcopalians.

After the Ring of Fire, the Presbyterians and their miscellaneous Calvinist adjuncts had outgrown the "yahoo shack" of Tom and Rita Simpson's wedding very fast. The Reverend Enoch found it glorious, at first. First, he had added a Sunday afternoon service that catered to those with ingrained objections to instrumental music and hymns not found in the psalter. Then a Sunday evening service. He had added a Wednesday evening service. He had added a Thursday morning service, with an after-school catechism class for the children. As the 24/7 industries got up and running, he had added the Saturday morning service, aimed at shift workers who could not both earn a living and keep the Sunday version of the sabbath holy, as well, which was followed by an afternoon catechism class. He was now, in May 1633, preaching or teaching eight times a week. At the age of sixty-two. And he wasn't getting any younger.

By January of 1632, the deacons and elders had approached the bank. By the spring of 1632, they had located an architect. By the fall of 1632, they had found a building contractor, although he had said that he had so many jobs that he could not start until the next spring. They had started digging for the new foundations in March. There was to be a new, much finer, church. There was to be a separate wing with classrooms and church offices. There was to be a "fellowship hall" that would lessen the temptation of Presbyterians to have wedding receptions and other functions in places that permitted the serving of liquor.

Guy Russell found that last provision very, very, odd. The temperance movement was not something that had influenced seventeenth century Scots Presbyterians. But he donated to the project, nevertheless.

Guy had also suffered through fund-raisers. Yard sales. Bake sales. White elephant sales. Needlework sales. Ham and beans suppers. Pancake breakfasts. Guy did not care for this aspect of the separation of church and state. Overall, he thought, it ought to be done by a system of church finance. Certainly the Swiss and Germans who were serving on the Board of Presbyters insisted that it was much simpler just to let the tax collectors gather the tithes as part of their job and turn the proper portion over to the kirk. But the Americans didn't do it that way. Nor did the Scots.

And they needed the money. As Deacon Silas McIntire had said, in a rousing and inspirational speech to the congregation, "Folks, we've got two choices here. We can put our noses to the grindstone and do it all now in one fell swoop. Or we can track construction mud into church on our shoes for ten years while we work on it one little niggling bit after another. It's 'root hog or die' time folks, and I hereby officially move that we root." Even Guy had voted to root after that harangue. Well... He had to admit that in an uncommon burst of enthusiasm, he had seconded the motion.

Gus Heinzerling was just as uncommonly happy to find that the Reverend Wiley was busy getting ready for the morning service, so that he only had to deal with Mrs. Wiley. He found her much more approachable. Much friendlier. Far less likely, in general, to start denouncing the pope as the anti-Christ in the middle of a conversation about where to put two crates of metrical psalters that had come FOB from Edinburgh via Amsterdam. Completing the delivery, he waved cheerfully at the others and headed back to St. Mary's with his pushcart, looking like a man who had been delivered from dire peril.

Guy had been present at a few of the dialogues between Wiley and Heinzerling, so could make a good guess about why the priest looked so relieved. Guy actually rather enjoyed Reverend Wiley's denunciations of papistry. Some of them were so familiar that they actually made him homesick. Though not for long. Why go back to Killecrankie to listen to the minister denounce popery when there was a minister who could and did denounce popery quite adequately right here in Grantville, where Guy himself had a secure, well-paid, job?

For the first time, Guy realized that he was not a resident alien—he was an immigrant. I should see about those citizenship papers, he thought.

Inez Wiley turned her attention to the other visitors. "In plenty of time, I see, Guy," she said cheerfully. "The reverend should be right here any minute and we'll get the service started." Reaching into her tote bag, she pulled out a large, old- fashioned, brass school bell and rang it loudly. The church lacked a steeple and the down-time parishioners expected church bells. "The family hasn't come yet."

Henny raised one eyebrow.

"Ah, weel," Guy said. "I have another little task at the service here this morning. But," he said, turning to Mrs. Wiley, "first things first. This is Anders van Aelsten. He was brought up Calvinist. He works at the mine. He has a woman named Barbara. They have two children. They are expecting a third very soon. Henny and I think it's time for the reverend maybe to say a few words over them?" He smiled hopefully.

"If I had ten dollars for every time I've played "Restore Thy Brother" since we landed in this century," Inez exclaimed, slapping the back of her hand to her forehead like a silent movie star, "I could pay for all the interior refurbishing of the church by myself."

"Aren't you happy to see them restored?" Henny asked. She was prepared to continue exploring this philosophical line of thought, being noted among everyone who knew her for extraordinary thoroughness, but first an extended family appeared from the left and then the Reverend Wiley appeared from the right. From the left, three exuberant children charged Guy, yelling "Hi, Mr. Russell! Good morning, Mr. Russell! Thanks for coming, Mr. Russell!" From the right, the Reverend Wiley solemnly shook hands and said, "God's blessings upon you, Deacon Russell."

They all proceeded into the church, where, within the next hour, amid a congregation of Guy, Henny, and Anders, a few up-timer church ladies, miscellaneous miners and steelworkers with their families, a few catechism students whose parents had sent them early on the presumption that an extra sermon never hurt anyone, and one man whom nobody else recognized, the latest addition to the family of Heinrich Eichelberger and his wife Catharina geb. Kraemerin, emerged from the baptismal font with the improbable name of Guy Angus Eichelberger. Improbable, of course, if the hearer didn't know that his godfather was Guy Angus Russell.

Occasionally, Enoch Wiley made an effort to be jovial. "Well, Deacon," he asked after he had shaken hands all around, gotten the stranger, whose name was Istvan Janoszi, to sign the guest register, and seen the Eichelberger family on its way in possession of a neatly filled-out certificate, "how many godchildren does that make this year? A round dozen? The kindergarten teachers should have plenty of little Guys to go around in five years or so."

"Ah," Guy muttered, seriously embarrassed. "Since January, it can't be more than four. The rest were last year. It's the school, ye know. The children come to know me, so I come to know the parents. With the refugees' lives being so overset, no aunts and uncles or old neighbors to stand as sponsor, they look to choose someone who has found a place in the town."

"Enoch," his wife interrupted. "Guy's friend is Anders van Aelsten. We have another family to regularize and restore to fellowship. Two children, with a baby due."

"There's a wee problem," said Guy. "His woman screams if she's made to come within four walls."

"Then," replied the reverend, "things are perfect. God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform, Deacon Russell. Bring them tomorrow. The weather should be fine again. We shall dedicate the new building at the early service, even though it won't be"— he paused and looked at the partially completed walls and uncovered roof rafters— "quite finished. Once the dedication has been completed, I'll perform the wedding right here, in between the old church and the new walls." When it came to restorations to fellowship, Reverend Wiley's philosophy was strike while the iron is hot.

"We'd better," said Nurse DeVries to Anders, "stop at the Bureau of Vital Statistics and get you a marriage license on the way out to your camp." The Bureau of Vital Statistics was open on Saturday in Grantville. For that matter, it was open on Sunday. The inhabitants of the town kept its staff very busy. "Inez, do me a favor, will you? Phone the hospital and tell them that the appointment that I scheduled for this on-call shift is going to keep me out all day and not where I can be called."

"Enoch can call them," the minister's wife answered. "I'm going with you."

Anders van Aelsten was rather confused. His English was still limited, but it was good enough for him to realize that a man who had come looking for a midwife was about to be handed a marriage license. Instead? Also? He was far from sure.

One thing, he knew. "First. I find Barbara. She is at the shopping. Miklos and Ilona are with her. Then we go."

They walked out of town on the highway, to a gravelled road. They followed the gravelled road up through the hills to a dirt road. They followed the dirt road to a path. They followed the path for quite some time. It took them forty-five minutes, but the others were catering to Guy's gimpy leg. The rest of them could have done it in a half hour.

Anders displayed his home proudly. At some point, early in its construction, it had begun with a wagon bed. "To think," he said to Nurse DeVries, "someone had just gone off and left it that way, hanging off the edge of the road. Just because it had almost splintered in half when a wheel came off and it fell. I was so lucky. Nobody had taken it for firewood yet when I came by."

He had hauled each half of the wagon bed up to his camp by fastening sledge boards to the underside, and carefully fitted the two pieces back together, splicing them and putting piles of stones underneath to hold it some distance off the ground to keep the wood from rotting. For the first few weeks, in the summer of 1631, the whole family had slept in that, with a canvas draped over the top on two stakes when it rained. They had already had the canvas.

But time had passed, and as Anders counted out paydays, additions had arrived. The wagon bed itself now had three walls about eight feet high. Two of the walls had been topped by wedges, so the extra-large overhanging roof slanted and the water that fell on it, when rain came, went into gutters and then into a barrel.

Barbara glowed with pride as she showed off the barrel. It was wonderful to have a man who made a roof and a barrel to collect water, instead of making a yoke with buckets so his woman could carry water from the creek. It really was. In rather broken Platt, she told her visitors so.

Anders continued the tour. As an annex to the wagon bed, which now contained three well-stuffed straw pallets, not to mention, on the little girl's mattress, a neatly folded bright yellow acrylic blanket, he had built another three-walled shelter, placed at right angles, also with a slanted roof and a barrel beneath the low edge. For that, he had bought a—well, a something—that he had seen in an open shed in someone's back yard. Neither Guy nor Henny had the slightest idea what it might be. Inez knew: the grain bin and spout from a late 1940's Case combine. In any case, the grain bin, with one of the metal sides cut off and placed across the top, was now set into a base of rough fieldstones and had become a cooking stove, with the spout serving as the flue. It was, Barbara said, quite the finest arrangement she had ever had. It was wonderful.

The four walls problem? The fourth wall of the wagon bed shelter was a loose flap, made of the canvas, now folded three layers thick. Yes, it could be warmer in winter. But cold was better than having the demons seize upon his woman and cause her to scream so. Anders was firm about that. He had fenced a kind of courtyard, on the other two sides, so the wind did not blow the flap too badly. One fence, as high as the walls of the sheds and with an overhanging roof, protected their woodpile; ...