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Nothing's Ever Simple

Written by Virginia DeMarce

Grantville, December 1633

"That's probably about the best we can do." Roberta Sutter looked at the stacks of paper on the table in front of her with considerable dissatisfaction.

"We've interviewed everyone in town," Sandra Prickett said. "We've made them look for family Bibles and scrapbooks and newspaper clippings and birth certificates and applications for delayed birth certificates and applications for Social Security cards and . . . Anyway, quite a few people got annoyed and said things, like, 'Don't you realize there's a war on?'"

"We've gotten a lot that we didn't have before," Mary Jo Blackwell added her bit to the Genealogy Club council meeting. Mary Jo was always spoiling someone else's desire to have a good fight. She was a nuisance that way, sometimes.

Marian Butcher nodded. "Some surprises, too, like how Rose Howell's descendants knew that some of Cyrene's great-grandkids lived here in town and that they were related, but Cyrene's had forgotten all about it."

Miriam Miller looked at Jenny Maddox. "I guess the point is—does the Bureau of Vital Statistics want us to stop the blitz? Have we done enough for the records you need?"

"More than enough, probably. We're going to put copies of everything in the public library. Marietta's fine with that. People can come look up their family trees if they're interested. Down-timers as well as up-timers."

Roberta frowned again. "The down-time stuff is still mainly oral history. It's not properly documented. When the wars stop, maybe we can write to the parishes where people told us they were born and married and get copies of their baptisms and weddings for our files."

"With your approach to genealogy, there will never be an end to it."

Roberta looked at Jenny, honestly surprised. "Of course not. Everyone who's ever been born has two parents, and lots of them have aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews. And cousins. Even Jesus had cousins. The historian Josephus wrote that Roman officials interviewed them, about thirty years after the crucifixion. Oral history is an important part of the process, even though it isn't sufficient in itself." Her voice was starting to perk up again.

Sandra Prickett sighed.

February 1634

"I hate to say it, Melvin, but I think they're losing their enthusiasm."

Melvin Sutter chewed his sausage. Personally, he had sort of hoped, after they adopted a couple of children after the Ring of Fire and Roberta got a full-time job, that she would lose some of hers. Not that he had anything against family trees. But their house didn't have just plain family trees. It even had family trees that Roberta had cross-stitched, framed, and put up on the walls. There was one hanging right over his head, here in the breakfast nook.

"I started to explain how we could supplement the oral history we collected for the new immigrants. I need documentation for our own children. I've already written to Gotha for Albrecht and Margaretha and to Kitzingen for Martin. Now if I could just find someone who remembers exactly where Verena was baptized, since she doesn't seem to be related to any other of the Elsisheimers who have immigrated to Grantville—not that I'm sure they're telling me the truth. They're a bit evasive, especially Magdalena Albert. She's Kunz Polheimer's wife—her first husband was an Elsisheimer, though she didn't have any children by him. If it's because Verena was born out of wedlock and her mother Maria was actually a relative somehow, then . . ."

Melvin, a veteran of such speculations, tuned it all out and continued chewing.

Until he heard the dire words, ". . . and I'm not going to put it off any longer. I'm not going to wait until it's too late."

"Uh. Put what off?"

"Melvin, you haven't been listening."

He didn't even try to defend himself.

"I know we don't have any natural children, but Marilyn has Matt and it's likely he'll marry and have children one of these days. So I really need to finish the Hooper side of the family. Before the Ring of Fire, I took it as far as the church records from Schwarzach that had been microfilmed by the Mormons would let me, but they only started in 1612. If I go to Schwarzach now, before it's too late, I can interview living ancestors. I'm sure with what they remember, I can add a couple more generations to the family tree. Huber, it was, in Germany, before the Germanna immigrants Americanized the spelling. I hope that my ancestor Georg Huber is still the mayor of Schwarzach."

"I hate to say this, but we've got four adopted children, now. Their mother can't just go haring off someplace to do genealogy."

"They're not babies. Albrecht's sixteen; Martin's fifteen. Margaretha's eleven. Even Verena's five, not a baby any more. Marilyn will help you. I'm sure she will, especially now that Matt's off in Magdeburg. It's her family tree too, after all. You can manage on your own this coming summer."

"Marilyn just got married again last fall. Baxter Harris may not want for her to be babysitting a batch of kids all next summer."

"Since she married Baxter, she's Trissie's stepmother, and Trissie's the perfect age to baby-sit Verena and Margaretha, plus she's in the same class at school with Albrecht." Roberta patted Melvin's cheek. "Don't worry. It will all work out fine."

Melvin shook his head. "It won't be that simple. Things never are."

July 1634

Roberta sat quietly.

Roberta quiet was Roberta dangerous.

"Just where is this Schwarzach place, anyway? Why don't you write them?"

"After the Benedictine imperial abbey there was secularized in 1803, it became part of the Grand Duchy of Baden. That was the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg in our day. I did write to the mayor, last year. And to the Catholic church, but I haven't gotten an answer. So I need to go."

"By my count, there's close to a hundred seventy-five years of politics between now and 1803. Where is it now?"

"Um. In Swabia."

"Horn has a Swedish army in Swabia."

Roberta tilted her head. "Not in the part of Swabia where Schwarzach is."

"Just what part of Swabia is Schwarzach in?"

"It's on the Rhine. And now I have a contact there, so . . ."

"You have a contact there? I thought you said that they hadn't written back."

"Well, Mayor Huber hasn't written back."

"And . . ."

"Uh, you remember that Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar offered Kamala Horton a job? And she took it and shook the dust of Grantville off her feet, so to speak? She and the kids left right after school was out in May."

"Yeah . . ."

"Well, Duke Bernhard has his military headquarters at Schwarzach. That's where Kamala and her kids are. She's going to Besançon this fall, but there's stuff they want her to do in Schwarzach first. They've been given quarters right in the abbey buildings because she's working on military sanitation first. I can stay with her while I'm doing the research, which will save a lot of money in hotel costs . . ."

"Roberta!" This time Melvin practically shrieked. "You'll be walking right into a war zone."

"But not through a war zone. I can go straight over to Frankfurt and then take a boat down the Main and up the Rhine."

"Roberta! It's fucking dangerous!"

She looked at him, honestly bewildered. "Well, that's sort of the point." She patted his cheek again. "If the war is moving that way, I need to get in and copy the records for our family tree now, before things like tax records get destroyed or someone who remembers important information gets killed or dies. Think how many courthouses got burned during the Civil War up-time. It was horrible—just horrible."

****

"It's not common to have such a long family tree that's all made up of perfectly ordinary people," Roberta said. "There's not a famous person on it. Just farmers and innkeepers and stonemasons and carpenters. People like that. And their wives. I have all the maiden names back to the Georg Huber who is alive now, in this year 1634. Matt's the thirteenth generation. If I can just talk to this Georg Huber—a lot of the records spell his given name as 'Jerg'—then I'm sure I can add his mother's maiden name and he almost certainly knows the names of his grandparents. All four of them. His father was named 'Jerg' too. I've only been able to determine from the microfilmed church records that the older Jerg died some time between 1629 and 1641. If I'm really lucky and that ancestor is still alive, then he should remember the names of his grandparents, too. That would give us fifteen generations to my nephew Matt. At worst, I'll be able to find out Jerg, Sr.'s date of death and enter it on the charts."

Ed Piazza wished that he dared reach up and massage his temples. Roberta Sutter's family tree—to be more precise, Mrs. Sutter's extended disquisition on the topic of her family tree—was giving him a headache. Not only the abstract "problems for the consular service" headache that would result from her intention to go kiting off into Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar's little personal sandbox, but a very real one, here and now, in the front of his brain. This was worse than Count Ludwig Guenther's librarian in full spate on the topic of relationships among the ruling families of the various states and substates of the USE.

"Of course, it's not entirely a male-line pedigree. It was male-line up to my sister Marilyn, but then she married Harry Tisdel, so Matt's a Tisdel. Of course, she'd divorced that bum even before the Ring of Fire and Matt didn't see much of his father. Maybe he'd be willing to change his name to Hooper and carry on the family name." Roberta smiled brightly. "I'll write him in Magdeburg and ask. He's up there training to be a Marine since he graduated from high school this spring. There shouldn't be any legal problems."

Ed pulled his shoulder blades together as inconspicuously as possible, trying to relieve the tension in his neck. Roberta Sutter had been in his office for an hour. Unfortunately, he hadn't primed his secretary to interrupt with an urgent appointment. Maybe the kid liked being a Tisdel. Who knew?

A knock on the door. A wonderful, blessed, knock on the door. It opened. Jamie Lee Swisher's head poked through. "Mr. Piazza, guess what? Mr. Ferrara is here. I just knew that you'd want to see him."

"Yes. Thank you, Jamie. Get him a cup of coffee, will you? I'll finish up here." He prepared for some difficulty in disposing of his current visitor, but Roberta Sutter was already picking up her purse.

Unfortunately, as she went out the door, her parting words were, "I just knew that you would understand how important the project is. I'm meeting Melvin and Henry Dreeson for lunch at Cora's. I'll tell them that you don't have any objections at all."

He did. He could think of a dozen perfectly reasonable objections. He just hadn't been able to get in a word edgewise, which was—unusual for him.

If she had stayed a little longer, he would have told her no. Now, unless he actually chased her down the corridor, she would be out in public announcing that he had given permission to go to Schwarzach before he could do anything about it. That kind of announcement was hard to retract without ending up with egg on your face.

He looked at Mrs. Sutter's departing rear and reminded himself to be careful, because sometimes you get what you wish for. In this case, an interruption. One more premature than timely.

Anyway, why did Mrs. Sutter think that Matt Tisdel needed to carry on the Hooper surname line if the ancestor was alive right now? Presumably carrying the line on himself. Why couldn't anything ever be simple?

At least, Greg was carrying two cups of coffee.

Ed smiled. "Greg," he asked, "do you happen to be interested in genealogy?"

Another hour later, well into the permutations of the Ferrara family tree, which involved the Trapanese family and the second marriage of Greg's mother to one of the Zeppi boys, Ed made a note to himself in regard to an addition to his personal list of "Questions a Sensible Person Never Asks."

Schwarzach on the Rhine, August 1634

Abbot Georgius of the Abbey of Saints Peter and Paul at Schwarzach on the Rhine looked at the papers on his pedestal desk. Then he reached out and felt them again. Maybe for the tenth time since the up-time woman arrived. Perhaps for the twentieth time. Possibly for the hundredth time. So slick, so smooth. He had received descriptions of up-time paper from the librarians of the great Stift at Fulda, but this was the first time he had seen it for himself. Much less touched it.

Schwarzach was a Benedictine abbey, an imperial abbey, but not an important one like Fulda. One small town and a few villages, occupying seven square miles. Seven square miles—not seven miles square. Smaller now than it had been in the middle ages—the tribulations of the past couple of centuries had forced the abbey to sell some of its holdings to the margraves of Baden. A few thousand subjects. A ferry across the Rhine at Greffern—the tolls from that, far more than the modest taxes and dues paid in by the village farmers, kept the abbey going in a moderate sort of way. A very moderate sort of way, as evidenced by the fact that there was not a single nobleman among the monks and had not been for generations. Schwarzach did not have sinecures that would support the younger son of an influential family in the style to which he wished to remain accustomed. The monks of Schwarzach did not have to make any significant effort to fulfill their vows of poverty. They doubled as the parish priests for the villages. Sometimes, in difficult circumstances when no fellow villager would serve, they also doubled as godfathers for the children of the abbey's parishioners.

Or for children who did not belong to the abbey. His mind wandered back, briefly, to the annus terribilis of 1622, when the imperial troops had been quartered on the abbey. Sometimes he wondered what had happened to those soldiers and the women to whom the abbey's monks had married them that winter. What was the fate of the children who had been born in a dozen different camps and finally baptized here, on the banks of the Rhine, sometimes three or four years later?

He picked up a piece of the wondrous, slick, smooth, paper.

"Photocopies" the up-time woman called them. "Photocopies" that she had made by a machine from something called "microfilm."

He turned to the other pedestal desk, the one he had borrowed from Father Gallus' cell. On it lay the church registers for Schwarzach and its villages, meticulously maintained—or as meticulously as possible, given the exigencies of the war—in accord with the prescriptions of the Council of Trent. He picked up one of the pieces of paper, turned a few pages of the register, and compared.

It was true. Exactly and precisely true, just as Father Gallus had said. This woman had brought, from the far future, copies of pages from their own church registers. Black, a bright white, and gray, rather than the gentle cream color of the paper in the church books. On the copy from the future, one could see little tears at the edge of some of the pages, broken corners, an occasional stain ...