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Speaking of Uncle Abner

Written by Virginia DeMarce

Grantville, October 1634

"That is the most perverse use of the law that I have ever heard of," Samuel Krapp exclaimed.

Thomas Price Riddle closed the law textbook he had been balancing on his lap and looked at his "student body." If a man could call it that. A dozen young men and women. At first, the only students who had come to him had been girls, like Laurie Koudsi and his granddaughter Mary Kat. And Ricky McCabe, with the police force. Most of the young men had already been called into the army, or busy on technical projects, before it had occurred to anyone in town that they might, possibly, if they survived, need a few more lawyers. Then the government of the New United States—now the State of Thuringia-Franconia—had thought that some of its civil servants and bureaucrats could benefit from an introduction to legal principles. So he had added a few up-time young men who came when they could and, if they survived their postings elsewhere, would come back if they could. Those were doing most of their course work by mail.

The new lawyers, "baby lawyers," like Laurie and Mary Kat still came to class. He hadn't managed to cover everything when he pushed them through his first version of a law course. Luckily, they knew it. If they hadn't known it when they passed the bar exam he and his son Chuck designed, they had found out during their first year or so of active practice.

A couple of years later, even the military had recalled that there was only one person in town who had any experience with administering the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and that person was not precisely youthful. His "student body" had increased in size to include young officers taking law courses in what counted as their spare time.

Now he had a few down-timers as well, some students from the University of Jena putting in a semester in Grantville, but mostly associates from the German law firms that had opened branches in town—men who already had their degrees and, in most cases, a few years of practice, but who realized the need to build bridges between the up-time and down-time codes. Or like young Samuel Krapp, a cousin of the friend and rival his granddaughter Mary Kat addressed as "Georgie," who had just finished law school in Jena last year and was adding the practice of up-time law to his licentiate before starting graduate work in pursuit of the Dr. utriusque jur.—an advanced degree that would allow him to rise to a professorship or judgeship someday.

So he looked at Sam. "What I just explained to you is far, far, from the most perverse use of the law that I ever encountered in my practice. And, probably, far from the most perverse that you may encounter in yours. There is a reason for the quotation, 'The law, sir, is an ass.' Maybe," Riddle said, "the time has come that I should talk about something other than the law in the strictest sense of the word." He placed the textbook on the lamp table next to the arm of the sofa. "Let me tell you a story. Speaking of my Uncle Abner . . ."

He closed his eyes. "Abner Patton was actually my uncle by marriage." He smiled at Sam. "He was married to my mother's sister—Ann Price was her maiden name. Aunt Ann. I think that I prefer the down-time terminology for these things. When you bring me a document on probate that refers to Mutterschwestersmann or Vaterschwestersmann, I know that it's an in-law who is probably involved in the case as an adult male who has potential to serve as an executor or a guardian—not a blood relative uncle with possible inheritance claims. Muttersbruder tells me directly that a specific 'uncle' has concern for the child of a marriage, but no claim to the farm in which the child's late father held a quarter-share. That can be very useful data." He ran his fingers through his thin white hair. "But perhaps I am digressing from the point."

Not one of the students shifted with impatience. They had learned, some more quickly than others, that even when Tom Riddle appeared to digress from the topic, there was usually a connection—if they waited long enough, without interrupting his train of thought.

Johann Georg Hardegg, seated next to his cousin, wondered idly why it was a "train" of thought in English rather than a "chain" of thought. True, railroad cars were coupled together with hitches, but the links of a chain were fastened even more firmly.

"Abner Patton was a foreman at the ceramic plumbing fixtures factory. My father, Theodore Riddle, was a manager there. Pa was born in 1898—Spanish American War, that year—and named for Theodore Roosevelt. Though nobody ever called him Teddy, as far as I recall. Abner was a few years younger than Pa. But the man his name reminded me of was older than TR. And only lived in the pages of magazines and books."

Riddle turned his head, looking at the bookshelves on the wall behind the sofa. He grasped his walker and started to pull himself up.

Mary Kat jumped first. "What do you want, Grandpa?"

"Um. To the left of the fireplace. Second shelf, I think, about a foot in from the left side. A black-and-gray dust jacket with a small tear at the bottom. Melville Davisson Post. The Complete Uncle Abner."

The book was right where he said it would be.

Riddle took it and flipped it open, without even bothering to glance at the table of contents. "Post's 'Uncle Abner' stories are set in West Virginia—one of the reasons I like them, but not the main one—in the years before the Civil War. Back before the state seceded from Virginia, so, I suppose, they were really set in a remote region of Virginia, if one feels impelled to be precise. Which a lawyer should. Always. Naturally.

"Now, Post's Uncle Abner was a defender of the innocent." He looked at Sam Krapp. "You might want to read it. You can borrow the book after class tonight."

He closed his eyes. "The story I was thinking about, 'The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason,' isn't in here, though, because it wasn't an 'Uncle Abner' story. It came out in a magazine. I don't think I have a copy of it here. Well, I might have photocopies of the Randolph Mason stories in one of my filing cabinets, but it would take a lot of looking to dig them out.

"Post's father was a lawyer. So was Post, himself. I suppose that might be relevant. Randolph Mason is a lawyer. A smart lawyer and a perverse lawyer. A cynical lawyer. One who uses his skills and undoubted mastery of the legal system to set criminals—genuine criminals, embezzlers, thieves, a crooked sheriff who abused the power of his office; not the unjustly accused—free. And considers himself to be a defender of the weak and powerless all the while he does it. I sure wish I could find that series of stories."

Hardegg looked up. "Why? What do they show that is important, specifically?"

"What were we just talking about, Georg?" Riddle smiled. "Before young Sam became morally indignant and I went off on this tangent, that is?"

"You were discussing 'legal technicalities,' and the abilities of lawyers to get men off in American courts under the up-time law by using procedural improprieties, such as lacunae in the chain of custody for evidence or . . ."

"Improper police procedure," Krapp interrupted, receiving a cousinly glare for his trouble.

"Precisely. Thank you, both of you. However, in Post's stories, Mason did not use this approach. Rather he had the defendants admit precisely what they had done—that they had in fact committed the acts of which they were accused. These acts were—necessarily, if the stories were to succeed as literary devices—not common or ordinary crimes such as assault, but devious and, well, extraordinary. Mason would then proceed to demonstrate to the court that the laws, as they stood on the books, simply did not cover the action committed by the defendant and could not be stretched to cover the action committed by the defendant. Mason's point was always that while his client freely admitted that he had done something manifestly unfair, unjust, and morally wrong, it was nonetheless not illegal and did not fall within the purview of the current statutes."

Hardegg nodded. "He, then, undertook, ah, adventures, or explorations, perhaps . . ." He shook his head. "I am not sure of the precisely correct word in English. But . . . this practitioner applied the pure logic of the law. As legal scholars are accustomed to do, often to the point of absurdity. But Mason used logic to display the law's shortcomings. It's inadequacies. Thus the stories would have been designed to show—as in last summer's unfortunate matrimonial tangle of Patricia Fitzgerald—the inability of human reason to predict, and thus to cover within the pages of a legal textbook, all of the things that human beings may do."

"Especially all of the deep troubles from which Randolph Mason specialized in extricating his clients," Riddle said. "Long before the techniques of television's 'cop shows' of the later twentieth century, Post's Mason, in the story called 'The Corpus Delicti,' spent much time on such topics as the legal difficulty of prosecuting murder charges in the absence of a corpse—and the then-modern advances in scientific knowledge, at the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century, that contributed so helpfully when a miscreant found himself in need of making a corpse disappear."

Sam Krapp nodded. "Possibly, then, being of relevance when our theologians question whether all of the advanced technology that the up-timers urge us to adopt, so very strongly urge us to adopt, is really beneficial."

Mary Kat cocked her head sideways. "That too, though . . ." She had been introduced to the literary Uncle Abner long before, when she was in high school. "Post showed good things about the use of physical evidence, too. Horse tracks. Things like that. Even if he didn't always explain to the reader exactly what it was that Abner was seeing when he looked at a crime scene. That's not considered exactly fair in the classical detective story."

"Possibly both of you are correct," Tom Riddle said. "Even probably, both of you are correct, more or less to the extent that each of the six blind men observing the elephant was correct, given that his other writings—" He held up The Complete Uncle Abner again. "—are full of exposition on religion. Perhaps the best known of all of Post's stories—" He nodded toward the book in his hand. "—has the title 'Naboth's Vineyard.' He certainly expected his readers to grasp the reference. Philosophy and morality, also, but certainly religion. And democracy and the meaning of democracy in practice."

His eyes becoming shrewd, he looked at his students again. "Which of you, if called upon, would feel prepared to summarize the underlying moral of 'Naboth's Vineyard' for me without first going to look up the phrase?"

All of the down-timers raised their hands. Of the up-timers, only two of the seven.

Riddle muttered something about rampant cultural illiteracy. Nodding at the five, he said, "Be prepared to summarize it and explain the point of the passage, in the legal context of the historical period in which it occurred, by Thursday. If you manage to figure out where to find it, that is."

They looked back at him, expressions blank.

"Since we are discussing detective stories, perhaps I should give you a clue. Another of the 'Uncle Abner' stories, which revolves almost entirely about matters of the law and various types of legal swindles, has the title, 'The Tenth Commandment.' If my wife Veleda is feeling charitable, she may be willing to introduce you to the existence of a type of reference book usually called a 'concordance.'"

Mary Kat looked down, hiding a smile. Her grandfather was rarely acerbic. Even when he was, he did not follow the model of the law professor in Paper Chase, the icon of up-time law students for decades. That his sarcasm was presented gently did not make it any less acid, if a person knew what she was hearing. Grandpa knew perfectly well that Grandma would leap at the chance to introduce anybody at all to the use of a concordance, with a few well-chosen sentences about the need for one.

"Not just detective stories, although the puzzles are fascinating. Democracy," Tom Riddle said. "And the place of the law within a democracy."

He looked at Samuel Krapp. "So read it, young man. And when you're done . . ." He looked at five children of Grantville who could not identify Naboth's vineyard. "The rest of you read it, too. Take notes. Annotate your notes. With special reference to ambiguities."

Mary Kat raised her eyebrows.

"Think, child," her grandfather said. "What position does Uncle Abner hold in his community? Is he a policeman?"

"No."

"An officer of the court? A judge?"

She shook her head in the negative.

"Who is the righteous and honorable justice of the peace whose efforts Uncle Abner assists in righting wrongs and administering justice?"

Mary Kat opened her mouth; then closed it; opened it again. "Squire . . . Randolph."

"The two sides of the law in society. Always, the two sides of the law in society. Do not forget them." He handed the book to Samuel Krapp as the door to the living room opened. "And, now, I believe that Veleda has prepared some refreshments."

Jena

"Professor Arumaeus has published really a lot of books," was the way that Georgie Hardegg put it to Mary Kat, "which in due time led to his becoming dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Jena."

She nodded. "Publish or perish; a well-known principle in academic careers."

"His major area of interest is public law, but he wrote one rather interesting diversion on the topic of the legal definition of stipends, mercantile income, and wages, which has led to any number of academic disputations on the topic of whether or not such social groups as entertainers, fortune tellers, gypsies, and faith healers can truly, from a philosophical perspective, be said to earn income."

"Oh."

"He's not bad at public relations, either," Hardegg summed up.

"You might as well come with us," Sam Krapp said. "You're going to have to meet him some day—you and Laurie Koudsi both—if you intend to do anything with your law practices beyond the limits of West Virginia County. You'll need to get your regular licentiates; not just the 'bar exam' that your people invented after the Ring of Fire.

"Is my German really good enough to get through a meeting with a dean? Much less my Latin?"

"His English is fine if it comes to a pinch," Hardegg said absently. "He studied at Oxford before he got his doctorate. Anyway, he's curious to meet you, given that the dean of the Faculty of Arts has hired the famous Ms. Mailey to teach up-time political science. Which is quite a coup, since she's possibly the only person in the world today qualified to teach the subject. The best-qualified, at least. Or the most famous, anyhow. It should bring in a lot of students, which, of course, means a lot of income and prestige for Jena."

"Well, Jena had an advantage in the bidding wars, considering that Dr. Nichols is already on the medical school faculty there. I sort of doubt that, once she got out of England, Ms. Mailey was interested in taking a job outside of his sphere of influence. If she travels any more, she says, it's going to be with him, like the Prague trip. She didn't even wait in the Netherlands for the wedding—just came on home. I was honestly surprised, though, that they hired a woman."

"Who else could they hire?" Hardegg asked. "It's not as if she had any competition for the job. It's sort of like a ruler sending his sister or daughter as a negotiator instead of some faceless bureaucrat." He thought a moment, then grinned. "The bureaucrat, as a noble male of the human species, can always save what face he does have by thinking that if the ruler had a brother or son available, he'd have priority over the females in the family."

"Ms. Mailey is coming in as an extraordinary professor," Krapp pointed out. "If they'd hired her instead of a down-time academic with all the proper degrees as an ordinary professor, the faculty members would have made a lot more fuss, I'm sure."

"I get it," Mary Kat said suddenly. "She's an 'in addition to' rather than an 'instead of.' Or 'untenured adjunct' rather than 'tenured regular' professor."

"The university is paying her more than they pay most of the ordinary professors, though. They really do expect her to be an attraction." Hardegg turned to Krapp. "Who's doing the Latin translations for her handouts?"

"Cunz Kastenmayer. At least, I think I heard someone say so. Because of the Dreeson tour this fall, he has a sort of 'in' with the up-timers now."

"Odd sort of guy. But he does make the most of his chances. For someone who's never had a chance to make the grand tour, he's compensated by making friends with every single foreign student who shows up in Jena and talking to him in whatever his native language is. Somebody ought to fix him up with a plummy tutoring job, so he can travel around with some rich kid."

****

Mary Kat just listened almost all the way to Jena. That was one thing she had learned. She could often find out a lot more about what was going on in the down-timer community by listening to her colleagues talk to one another than by talking with any of them herself.

Until, near the end of the trip, she asked, "If you find the premises of Post's stories, the 'crucial' ones that you've hand-copied and we're taking for him to look at, to be so very 'Calvinist,' aren't you worried that this Professor Arumaeus will be offended by them? It's a Lutheran university, after all."

"The university is Lutheran," Hardegg agreed. "So the professors have to be Lutheran, of course. But Arumaeus isn't. Or, at least, he wasn't. He was born in Leeuwarden in the Netherlands. Dominik van Arum, Latinized into Domenicus Arumaeus. He was a Calvinist until he took a job at Jena—that must be close to thirty years ago, now. He's the one who introduced Staatsrecht, the law governing such things as sovereignty, as an independent subdiscipline here."

"Well, all of them are," Krapp said. "Almost all, at least. Althusius, for example. The professors at Herborn and Leiden. And Hoen."

"All what?"

"The scholars and professors with a serious interest in public law. Constitutional law, perhaps, would be a better term in English, except that it can be confusing, since no political entity in Europe has a constitution in the sense of your American written constitution."

Hardegg nodded. "Ever since Lipsius. Maybe because of Lipsius—his Politica is still very influential, nearly thirty years after his death. The people who are developing the theory of the law of government. Men like Arumaeus. And Grotius. A lot of them, as Sam says, are Calvinists from the Netherlands. Though I have to say that the Jesuits are also publishing on the topic. If Ms. Mailey were going to teach down-time political theory, she would have had plenty of competition. I wouldn't be surprised if the university hires a down-timer, now, in the Arts Faculty, to complement her courses. At present the field is taught only in the Faculty of Law, except in so far as it can be addressed in rhetoric courses through the Greek and Latin classics. That would bring in even more tuition-paying students."

"I have news for you," Mary Kat said.

"What?"

"If they think that Ms. Mailey is going to turn into a Lutheran because they hired her, they'd better think again."

"Ms. Unruh is Lutheran," Krapp said. "The extraordinary professor for statistics. I know—I've seen her in church in Jena on weekends she doesn't return to Grantville."

"That's different. She was Lutheran already. She's a member at St. Martin's in the Fields."

"What about Ms. McDonald in the medical faculty?"

Mary Kat frowned. "Presbyterian, I think. Most of the McDonalds are. And Mary Pat Flanagan is Catholic. Maybe they're making exception for the adjuncts."

Krapp frowned. "Lipsius taught for a while at Jena, too—ethics, logic, and history, in the Faculty of Arts. He never became a Lutheran, so maybe they are. Have. Do. Make exceptions, I mean."

Hardegg shook his head. "No, he was a Catholic from the Spanish Netherlands and had to convert to Lutheranism to be hired. The faculty was skeptical of his sincerity. That's why he had to leave again after only two years and go to Cologne. I've heard people talking about it. He only became a Calvinist, later, when the University of Leiden hired him. They say that's why he eventually applied for the job at Louvain—so he could go back to being Catholic. Though he was really a Stoic all along, no matter which confession he belonged to at the moment."

"I read the book," Mary Kat said. "All six sections. Grandpa said I had to. He ordered the English translation from a used book store here in Jena, because my Latin wasn't up to it the first couple of years after the Ring of Fire. The title page is burned upon my brain. Justus Lipsius, Sixe Bookes of Politickes or Civil Doctrine, Done into English by William Jones (London: Richard Field, 1594). I didn't like it at all and didn't agree with a word of it."

Krapp laughed. "I never expected that you would. Anything that Richelieu likes, anything that Maximilian of Bavaria admires, anything that Count-Duke Olivares considers a model of statesmanship . . ."

"Just doesn't do it for an old hillbilly girl. 'You have a choice between a virtuous authoritarian prince or anarchy and civil chaos.' That about sums it up for Justus Lipsius. No faith at all in ordinary people and their ability to govern themselves. As if we don't have any more sense of justice than a herd of pigs. Talk about a proto-Hobbes!"

"You'll probably like Arumaeus' ideas better, if you read his book. It's actually an anthology that he edited: Discursus academici de jure publico. It came out in five volumes several years ago, but I think it's still in print. As far as the Holy Roman Empire is concerned, he's pretty much in favor of the rights of the individual territories. Federalism, I suppose, except that it's not exactly the same thing the up-timers define as federalism."

****

"My daughter wanted to meet you," Dean Arumaeus said, thus explaining the presence of a severely dressed young woman in her mid-twenties in the room. "She feels somewhat deprived because she is only the daughter and wife of lawyers, without being one herself."

Mary Kat suspected that he was repeating a joke he had made many times before.

His daughter's face—her name was Dorothea Susanne and her husband, Ortholphus Fomann, was also present—indicated that it was a joke she was tired of.

Very tired of.

She'd clearly heard it much too often.

"Ortholphus' father was born in Schleusingen," Arumaeus continued. "He was a prominent member of the law faculty here at Jena until ill health forced him to retire; I'm sad to say that he died earlier this year. His mother is still alive—one of Georg Mylius' daughters."

He clearly expected Mary Kat to be impressed by his son-in-law's genealogy. She made a mental note to find out who Georg Mylius was. Or had been, since the implication was that he also was deceased.

****

"While you are in town," Professor Arumaeus said, "your escorts really should introduce you to Professor Ungepauer. And to Johannes Limnaeus, since he is in town with Margrave Christian of Bayreuth. Both of them are already acquainted with your father, Chief Justice Riddle, of course." He picked up the "crucial stories" from The Complete Uncle Abner that Hardegg and Krapp had copied for him. It was a dismissal—a polite one, but clearly a dismissal.

The dean was imposing, Mary Kat thought. Not just heavy, though he was, um, somewhat overweight. Also impressive and certainly an effective speaker. It was scarcely surprising that the former dukes of Saxe-Weimar had used him as a diplomat in addition to his other duties. He could probably talk a hen into laying her egg right into his hand.

****

His daughter escorted them to the door, where she stopped and looked at Hardegg and Krapp, nodding toward the steps.

Sam grabbed Georgie's arm and pulled him outside.

"What?"

"I just thought. Margrave Christian of Bayreuth. Cunz Kastenmayer. He's got two sons—the margrave, not Limnaeus. Rich kids, really rich kids, and just the age to be starting on a grand tour. Run and find Cunz—he's bound to be in the library. Get him here while we have an absolute order to go introduce Mary Kat to his most important councillor. SoTF Chief Justice's daughter. Mayor Dreeson's tour. Recommendations. We've got to take Cunz along when we talk to Limnaeus."

****

Mary Kat stayed where she was.

"I am tired of the joke," the young woman said. "I was sixteen when my father decided I should marry. Ortholphus' first wife had just died—she was Professor Hilliger's widow. She left him with a stepdaughter and daughter to care for, both under five years old, so he needed another wife right away. He was also a law professor at Jena—Oswald Hilliger, that is. I do not resent the marriage; I love my daughters—those two and my own. She is three, now. But I am tired of the joke. So tired of the . . ."

"Condescension," Mary Kat suggested.

"That will do."

"What do you need from me?"

"Give me your grandfather's address, please. I have lived among jurists all my life and I am not stupid. My mother's father was a law professor here at Jena, too—it's not as if I've never seen a law book in my life. I've done more than just dust them like a good little Hausfrau. I want information on what more I need to learn, specifically, to take this 'bar exam' that exists in West Virginia County." Dorothea Susanne smiled. "I couldn't practice, there, of course—not living in Jena. It wouldn't be practical. But perhaps, if I pass an examination that proves I know these things, he will stop it."

****

"You'll probably find Limnaeus' work on the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire of even more use than the one Arumaeus compiled," Sam said on the way home. "It's more systematic. Ius publicum imperii romano-germanici. Only three volumes, too. They came out in Strassburg between 1629 and 1632, so you won't have to bother with the used book trade—you can just order them from the publisher."

Mary Kat sighed. "I don't suppose there's an English translation. How can you possibly be so enthusiastic about three more volumes of Latin?"

"Well, I do want to become a law professor." Sam grinned. "Some day, I'll make a great reputation for myself by writing a definitive treatise on comparative up-time and down-time constitutions. If you ask the professors right now, 'Who are the upcoming lights of the legal profession?' they'll name Conring and von Chemnitz, or the younger Carpzov over in Saxony. They're all five or six years older than I am, though. Just wait."

Hardegg laughed. "Whatever else you may lack for, Samuel, it is not self-confidence."

"Just wait," Sam said. "Just you wait."

Grantville

"Well," Tom Riddle asked the class the next week. "What do you know about Naboth's Vineyard."

"I looked it up," was the offering of Jon Villareal, back from Würzburg at Wes Jenkins' behest to take over duties as deputy director of the SoTF Consular Service—a job reputed to require some minimal legal knowledge—offered cheerfully.

"What did you find?"

"Jezebel." He hummed a couple of musical phrases.

"That's all?"

"Hey, Mr. Riddle, I hardly had time for deep analysis this week. The new boss will be arriving any day now and we have to get the office up and running the way he wants it."

"That is the story of this seminar, I sometimes think. At least we are testing all ...