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The Truth About That Cat and Pup

Written by Virginia DeMarce

 

Grantville, January 1635

". . . start planning for Jonas and Ronella's wedding," Carol finished. "I can hardly believe that we got them officially engaged. Finally. They sit around staring at each other. Jonas, as if he can't really believe his luck. Ronella, as if she can't really believe that she's actually managed to snag the man. Even with her father's assistance, no matter how reluctant. Talk about painfully honorable."

"Well, yes. He is rather . . ." Salome Piscatora, the wife of Pastor Kastenmayer of Saint Martin's in the Fields Evangelical Lutheran Church, admitted. "I guess the first question is whether Ronella wants an up-time style wedding. This will be the first one Ludwig has performed at Saint Martin's where the bride is an up-timer. All the brides have been down-timers, so far. So are the big batch we have coming up in April. So . . . that's first. Will Ronella be content with a wedding on the porch, or does she hope for a walk down the aisle to the altar?"

"The aisle and altar, I'm afraid. White gown and all. Wedding march from Lohengrin. With bridesmaids. Have you seen one . . . ?"

"Oh, yes. We were invited to several weddings at the Methodist church last summer. I went to the ones I thought were . . ." She stopped, floundering.

". . . important for maintaining cordial relations with the local community," Carol supplied.

Salome beamed. "Exactly. That was what Jonas said. Ludwig didn't feel that he could attend, of course. Heretics in the first place, and with a woman for a pastor. He's a Philippist, of course. But even for a Philippist, that's far beyond the permissible. If he had gone and any of the Flacians had heard about it, I don't think that even Count Ludwig Guenther would have been able to save him from the hellhounds."

"Flacians!" The tone of Carol's voice implied something between "dregs of the universe" and "sewer slime."

"With another one of them coming, now that Saint Thomas the Apostle is opening over on the Badenburg Road. That was the agreement that came out of the Rudolstadt Colloquy, of course, so we have to put up with it. As if Pankratz Holz isn't a sufficient cross for poor Ludwig to bear!" Salome sighed and handed Carol Unruh, wife of Ron Koch and mother of the bride, a cup of hot cider. Hard cider. A liquid which was rapidly loosening the usually very discreet and tightly-reined-in tongues of both women.

"Well, it wouldn't have been so much of a problem if Count Ludwig Guenther and his wife hadn't been away for a lot of last year. Oh, I know that the pan-Lutheran colloquy in Magdeburg was important for the USE as a whole. Then when they did get back, he was worried about the election, of course. And Emelie's pregnancy. It must come as a bit of a shock to him, being a father for the first time at his age."

"It's not as if he has to change diapers. He gets to admire his son when he's all clean, fed, and happy."

Carol blinked. "There's a saying: 'The rich are different. They have more money.'"

They sat for a moment, contemplating the place of dirty diapers in the universe.

"It's one of the places the theologians go wrong," Salome said. "Focusing on the pain of childbearing itself as Eve's punishment. It goes to show that they don't stop to think about everything else involved. Laundry in the winter, for example."

This time, Carol laughed. "Laundry in the winter probably wasn't such a problem in the Holy Land, considering the climate."

"It's nothing to laugh about. They'll turn it around," Salome predicted darkly. "Sound all pious and annoyed. Claim that Ludwig has not been supervised closely enough because the count and his consistory were distracted by the colloquy. When, in fact, Holz is the one who came into Grantville last month without any permission from the Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt consistory at all." She put her cup down. "He's a spy for Tilesius. I'm sure of it?"

"For, uh, whom?"

"Melchior Tilesius, of course. The superintendent in Langensalza. He was born in Mühlhausen—the imperial city up in the northern part of the SoTF, not the one in Alsace."

"What makes you think so?"

"Well, for one thing, Holz was born in Silesia, which is where the Tilesius family came from, originally. He's about forty-five years old, I think. He left Silesia for Saxony in 1617, already. I remember that very well, because he was already in Saxony for the centennial of the Ninety-Five Theses. I met him at one of the celebrations." She paused. "That was quite a party—it went on for three days."

"Punctuated by sermons, I presume?"

"Oh, of course. Sermons were the 'feature attraction' as they write on the board at the Higgins Hotel for the Friday evening movies. Ludwig and I had only been married four years then. I had never, except for a couple of visits to Erfurt, been out of the county of Gleichen. Hardly ever out of Ohrdruf since we got married. He took me to Wittenberg and I had the most wonderful time. I got to see the actual church door where Luther posted the Theses. It was a real thrill. And I was introduced to the reformer's grandson, Johann Ernst Luther. He's still alive, you know—he was born right down the road in Weimar and lives over in Saxony, at Zeitz. He's an old man now—he must be about seventy-five. I hope he doesn't get hurt, or killed, or turned out of his home this coming spring."

Her face clouded. "In fact, I hope that the soldiers don't ruin Wittenberg when Gustavus Adolphus invades Saxony. Everyone says that he's going to, and we have to remember what happened to the Wartburg."

"I'm sure that the emperor will protect the town," Carol said. "He's very pious."

"I know. Things happen in wartime, though, whether the commanders want them to or not. But in regard to Holz. They threw him out of Silesia after he entered into a series of controversial pamphlet exchanges in which he accused the Lutheran district superintendent of laxness in supervising the theological orthodoxy of the clergy."

"That happens," Carol said. "It still happened, up-time."

"He wasn't any easier to get along with while he was in Saxony. The year before the Ring of Fire, he was deprived of his living there, by the Dresden consistory. Leipzig wouldn't accept him, so he came into Thuringia and went over to Langensalza, where he's been ever since as one of Tilesius' hangers-on."

"Errand boy." Carol nodded.

"Leipzig," Salome said absentmindedly. "On that trip, in 1617, we stopped in Leipzig, too. Ludwig introduced me to all of his first wife's relatives. There were a lot."

"As a treat?"

"I think . . ." Salome paused. "I think he meant it to be. But Holz. The 'errand boy.' Tilesius sent him to the Rudolstadt Colloquy two years ago, as an observer. By last spring, he was professing to be horrified by Ludwig's views and actions. Pamphlets again. Not, I think, connected with the pamphlets that you found on the steps of Saint Martin's on Christmas Eve, when Jonas and Ronella got betrothed. They're quite different, but still they are pamphlets.

"So he took advantage of the way the Grantville authorities do not control religion . . ."

"I suppose that it does seem a rather laissez-faire approach to you."

Salome shook her head. "I don't speak French, Carol. I never had a chance to learn it."

"Oh, sorry. We use that phrase almost as if it had become English." They digressed for a few minutes.

"Fine," Salome said. "Yes. Laissez-faire does describe it well. So he came into this town, with no official sanction from the consistory at all, and established a little 'ultra-orthodox Lutheran' movement, to gather together, before the opening of Saint Thomas the Apostle, as many as he could of those who are not happy at Saint Martin's. He's not married, so he doesn't have the burden of a family to support. He's managed to finance this by taking on some part-time jobs, such as tutoring. In my heart, I am sure that when the new pastor arrives at Saint Thomas, Holz will be sitting on his doorstep with a list of grievances against Ludwig. If he isn't over in Rudolstadt, waving them around right now."

"Tilesius' 'gofer.'"

Which led to another digression on vocabulary, until Carol said she had to go. "I get tired of these internal squabbles." She picked up her coat. "I got tired of them up-time. Do you know what they remind me of? The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat."

"Which is?"

"A child's poem, by Eugene Field. We have an illustrated copy of it at home, I'm sure, in a box of old children's books that Ronella and Jake had when they were little. I'll drop it off for you to look at, the next time I come over."

Salome stood up, too. "Do you suppose it would do any good to talk to Aegidius Hunnius down in Altenburg?"

"About what? And why him?"

"About protecting old Herr Luther. And Wittenberg. Things like that. He's the superintendent there. Maybe he could get Duke Johann Philipp to talk to the emperor. He's probably the closest I come to knowing anybody influential. And he was born in Wittenberg, so he ought to care. Maybe. I hope. It's not a very good chance."

February 1635

"It's pronounced 'greep.'" Ronella Koch thumped her coffee mug down on the table.

"Are you sure? Seems like it should be 'gripe.'" Anne Penzey, who was waitressing this frosty Saturday morning, was totally unashamed about eavesdropping. Especially, of course, since her mother helped run the Geology Survey and anything that involved Saxony tended to impact mining.

So Ronella grinned instead of glaring.

"At least, I hear an awful lot of people are griping about the appointment." Anne grinned back.

"According to Orrine Sterling, who's teaching English over in Rudolstadt, that griping includes most of the members of Count Ludwig Guenther's consistory." Natalie Bellamy, being the wife of Arnold in the Department of International Affairs, had a definite "in" when it came to collecting regional political gossip.

"It's still pronounced 'greep.' The name is Oswald Griep." Ronella nodded firmly. "That's Oswald with a 'v' sound: 'Ossvald. I've met him already. Georgie Hardegg is rhyming it with 'creep' as a mnemonic device. Mary Kat Riddle thought that up."

Her friend Maria Blandina Kastenmayer, generally called Dina, blinked at the thought of anyone being on close enough terms with the rather pompous young attorney Johann Georg Hardegg to address him as "Georgie."

Ronella kept going. "Georgie's sister Christiana is married to a printer in Leipzig. He's another Krapp. There are dozens of them and not all of them are lawyers, no matter how it seems sometimes. He says that Elector John George's Saxon officials have been pulling all sorts of political strings to get this guy appointed to the second Lutheran church right outside the Ring of Fire. They think that Pastor Kastenmayer is subversive."

"Ja," Dina contributed with a sigh. "Papa is a Philippist. Pastor Griep is a Flacian."

Natalie Bellamy started to stand up, but then sat down again. "Of course, the man's related to a bunch of people connected with Waffler, Wiesel, and Finck, too. Mrs. Griep is Rahel Waffler. Her younger brother Friedrich is a junior partner in the Weimar office. Her even-younger-than-that brother David is an associate in the Jena office. They're the main competition with Hardegg, Selfisch, and Krapp for down-timer legal business inside the Ring of Fire, so no one could expect Herr Hardegg to be enthusiastic."

"You do all know that Mama was Blandina Selfisch, don't you?" Dina's expression radiated the thought that is a given—everybody knows that.

Nobody at the table knew it. Speculation about the maiden name of Pastor Kastenmayer's first wife just wasn't a staple of dinner-table conversation among Grantville's up-timers. Most of them didn't even realize that he had been married twice.

Her next contribution brought the conversation to a temporary halt. "Herr Selfisch in Hardegg, Selfisch, and Krapp is Mama's younger half-brother."

"Y'know, Mrs. Bellamy." Anne, who was supposed to be refilling coffee cups, butted happily into the conversation. "You'd better ask Dina to go over and talk to your husband. This could be complicated."

Ronella chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip. "Dina and her mom have enough to do getting ready for her wedding, on top of everything else. Isn't there someone else Mr. Bellamy could ask?"

Natalie Bellamy started to fish around in the bottom of her purse, looking for change for a tip. "What about your own wedding? Have you set a date, yet?"

"We've narrowed it down to 'after Easter and before school gets out.' So, some time in May, I guess. Mom and Salome are still negotiating. It has to be after the huge group wedding that Pastor Kastenmayer has scheduled for April. And at least a week before Dina's, so she can be my bridesmaid, because she and Phillip are moving to Jena right after theirs, but Jonas and I will be in town until after graduation, so she can't be my maid of honor after her wedding but I can be her matron of honor after mine."

The audience, being female, had no trouble at all following this convoluted explanation.

Ronella went back to thinking about the preceding question. "Especially with those scurrilous pamphlets about Pastor Kastenmayer and his wife coming out of Saxony."

"My sister," Dina said. "Ask Andrea. She started everything by eloping with Tony Chabert. They're in Erfurt and he works for the government. A person could almost say that it's part of her job to tell Mr. Bellamy about it. She's not helping with my wedding, because Papa hasn't forgiven her for marrying a Catholic. Yet."

"Yet?" Natalie raised an eyebrow.

"She's expecting a baby in July. Papa's snit doesn't have any hope of surviving the arrival of his first grandchild."

"Pastor Kastenmayer's going to be a grandpa? That's cool." Anne was prepared to join in this discussion for the indefinite future, but Cora Ennis looked over the counter and yelled, "Table Ten," so she had to go. Not without a regretful glance over her shoulder. Table Ten wasn't offering any good prospects for current and future news.

****

"It came to me in a dream," Salome said. "Just like to people in biblical times."

"I have to quote my son Jake. 'Awesome, man. Truly awesome.'"

"We don't know any influential men. But we do know the Countess Emelie. And her sister-in-law. Who is the president of the Tugendhafte Gesellschaft. Who founded it, way before the Ring of Fire happened. Almost all of the influential Lutheran ladies in the upper nobility are members."

Carol's mind was spinning. "I know Ronnie Dreeson. Not well, but I know her. She knows the abbess of Quedlinburg, who knows everyone in every Lutheran Stift in northern Germany. Ronnie's Catholic now, but she was a Lutheran once upon a time. Before she was a Calvinist, I think, but maybe after."

"And Bitty Matowski has met William Wettin's wife . . ." Salome added. "She is Catholic, too, I know—Bitty, not Duchess Eleonore, who’s Lutheran, of course. However. . . ."

"What about the League of Women Voters?" Carol frowned. "I know it's a church door, but it's a worthy cause. Up-time, I read something in the paper once. The government wanted to give a historic preservation grant to a church—in Boston or Philadelphia, maybe, someplace important because of the American Revolution—but the ACLU objected because it still held religious services. But maybe . . . I can talk to Veleda Riddle, at least."

Magdeburg

"Before you go, Lennart," Colonel Nils Ekstrom said, "I have something I want to show you."

General Lennart Torstensson obligingly followed him down the corridor of the imperial palace.

The colonel opened a door. Upon a harried secretary surrounded by overflowing bins of paper.

"Colonel, sir. We received three hundred two more letters just this morning. That makes a total of nine thousand five hundred twenty-six. If you can possibly spare me a couple more clerks . . . Just to send the acknowledgments."

"What on earth?"

"Just tell me, Lennart. Have you been planning to attack the door of the city church in Wittenberg? The one that Martin Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses on?"

"It hadn't featured in my strategic options, no."

"I'm delighted to hear it. Let's just say—don't."

****

"It's important, Caroline," Bitty said. "I really need to talk to the princess. I have a great big favor to ask her."

"A lot of people would like favors from the princess." Caroline Platzer smiled. "Very few of them come out and say it quite that forthrightly."

"It's not a huge gigantic one," Bitty said. "And it won't cost any money. I just have a couple of letters that need to go to the emperor and King Christian of Denmark. She's in a better position to see that they actually read them than anyone else, I guess. I thought, seeing how much she likes the Brillo ballet . . ."

****

Kristina put a slightly grubby hand into the pocket under her skirt. "Papi Christian, I have a letter for you. It's important. About not shooting cannon at the door of the castle church in Wittenberg when the USE attacks Saxony because John George has been so awful to Papa."

Christian IV read it solemnly. "It's good to know that so many people are concerned."

Kristina nodded. "What Martin Luther did was important."

The king of Denmark regarded his future daughter-in-law. Lessons should not be limited to stuffy classrooms. Take advantage of all opportunities. What would the lovely Caroline Platzer with the superb teeth call this? Ah, yes. A "teachable moment."

He shuddered at what he had learned of that other world, in which this child, grown to a woman, never married, converted to Catholicism and abdicated her throne. Abdicated and converted, in reverse order, but that was the gist of it.

In this world, a disaster waited for them all if anything of the sort should happen.

"Yes," he said. "Very important. You were very right to bring this letter straight to me. In the politics of the Union of Kalmar, even more than the USE, it's going to be very important to protect the position of Lutheranism. No matter what we think, personally."

He looked at the pilot in the front seat. "Let the plane circle the city a couple more times."

The plane began to circle again.

Then he looked at his future daughter-in-law. "Now even though, personally, I may think that many of the doctrinal positions of the Calvinists make more sense, I would never be so imprudent as to leave the Lutheran church, the way your uncle, the elector of Brandenburg, has done."

A half-hour later, he was certain she understood why. Her mind was superb.

"And as for the door of the castle church in Wittenberg . . . I will speak to your papa myself. You should come with me. We will speak to him together."

Kristina nodded.

He looked ahead at the pilot again. "Let the plane come to a landing."

Dresden

Hans Georg von Arnim, commander of the forces of John George of Saxony and, in his own mind, the probable upcoming scapegoat in an inevitable, unavoidable, disaster, looked out the window, his hands crossed behind his back.

Holk, again. When everything needed to be focused on the west, he once more would have to send a regiment at least to the southeast to control Holk's depredations among their own people. Which would probably make things worse, since that regiment, too, would need to forage.

He moved back to the table, picked up the latest intelligence report from the USE, and moved back to the window.

At the moment, the best option for the army of Saxony would appear to be to remove the door of the castle church in Wittenberg from its hinges and carry it along with them into battle, as the ancient Israelites had done with the Ark of the Covenant. At a minimum, that tactic should make Gustav's artillery non-functional in Saxony. Maybe he'd send those regiments against Brandenburg.

And as for the elector's safety? The safety of his family in Dresden? In the southeast, where Holk’s depredations had brought much of the population to the point of fury?

Arnim smiled, as whimsically as he ever did.

His personal preference at the moment would be to send John George to Zeitz, to move in as roommate with an elderly clergyman named Johann Ernst Luther.

Back to serious options. He returned to the table.

Grantville

"Ronella really does want the wedding march from Lohengrin," Carol said.

Jonas Justinus Muselius opened his mouth to say something about the limited performance capabilities of the limited number of musicians who provided the accompaniment at Saint Martin's services with the limited array of instruments at their disposal.

Carol thought she knew what he was going to say. "Oh, yes. I know. Even up-time, a lot of Lutheran pastors didn't approve its use for weddings. Because it's from Wagner's Ring Cycle."

He opened his mouth again.

"Pagan. Norse gods and all that. Thor, Odin. So if you don't think that Pastor Kastenmayer will let her have it, then we could always go with Beethoven's Ode to Joy. That would probably be the best option, if . . ."

Jonas eventually got a word in edgewise. "Let me investigate a little, please, Carol. Perhaps something can be arranged."

****

"Yeah, I've heard it," Errol Mercer said. Now one of Saint Martin's musicians, he was also one of the pack of seven up-time fiancés whom Pastor Kastenmayer would confirm and marry off to their chosen, and Lutheran, brides in April, just before Easter.

"I've heard it, and I expect one of the organists has the music, not that Saint Martin's has an organ yet, but I don't know the words. Or, at least, the only words I ever heard weren't the real ones. A sort of—joke, supposed to be funny."

"A parody." Justus nodded his head. "A well-known literary form."

"If you say so. Whatever you say. But Ronella won't want to march down the aisle to somebody singing

Here comes the bride,

Fair, fat and wide."

"You're going to have to do something about the words," Errol said. "Something different. Not pagan."

Muselius nodded.

Somewhere . . . There was that sermon Martin Luther had given at his niece's wedding, in praise of the sanctity of Christian marriage.

Someone in Jena was bound to have it. He'd go up and see Dean Gerhard. Turn it into verses that fit the meter of this "Wedding March."

As appalling as the music was, from what Errol had hummed to him.

If Ronella wanted it, she should have it. Anything for his bride. The bride he had, so contrary to all rational expectations, attained.

If, in the process, he could Christianize some pagan paean, so much the better. Luther himself said there was no reason that the devil should have all the good tunes. Or, given the musical quality of this wedding march, all people's favorite tunes, at least. He couldn't call it "good."

****

Pastor Ludwig Kastenmayer, in a downtown storefront, specifically in the Laughing Laundress, owned by Vesta Rawls and currently with Mitch Hobbs, another of Saint Martin's current up-timer fiancés, confirmands-in-the-making, and would-be grooms, baptized Viana Beasley, daughter of Jarvis Beasley and Hedwig Altschulerin.

In a storefront, because Hedy, the focus of a major jurisdictional controversy between the State of Thuringia-Franconia and Saxony over the validity and status of her marriage, had been strongly advised by Judge Maurice Tito not to leave the boundaries of West Virginia County, formerly known as the Ring of Fire, for the time being.

Saint Martin's in the Fields was just outside the ring, still in the SoTF, but in the County of Schwarzburg Rudolstadt. This part of the County of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt. There was another fragment of it up north of Erfurt.

Just as Count Ludwig Guenther's cousin, who was the head of the County of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, had a piece of it down here, over west of the Schwarzburg castle.

The newspaper published a notice of the baptism.

Pankratz Holz, who was running his own storefront church Lutheran operation in Grantville, published a series of outraged pamphlets.

****

"Cappuccino?" Anne Penzey asked on Saturday morning. "I've figured out a way to froth milk."

"Honestly?" Ronella grinned.

"As frothy as the mouth of a rabid dog." Anne stopped. Her mother was a science teacher, after all. "Maybe that's not the best comparison, here in a restaurant. It involves attaching a wire hand whisk to my curling iron. As frothy as the mouth of Pastor Holz when he gets going about something. Not that there's a lot to choose from, between him and a mad dog."

"I'll try one," Dina said. "You?"

"Me, too. Where's the best man? We've got strategy to coordinate."

"Oversleeping, probably. He got back from Jena really late, last night. But he got off the trolley and stopped at the rectory to say that he officially asked Herr Hortleder for Anna Catharina's hand and was accepted."

"Your dad's going to be presiding over a wedding epidemic."

"Not this one. They'll get married in Jena. That's where she lives. In August, he said. It's too soon to get it in before this summer's war, considering that she's an only child and her mother wants to make a big fuss over it. Wedding banquets and things. The campaign should have quieted down by then." She paused. "Topic change. Jonas is coming, too. He went up to Jena with Gary and he's gotten your music worked out. So that's one thing you can check off the list that your mom doesn't have to worry about any more."

When Jonas came, it was to report that he had achieved acceptable words for the desired wedding march. "That's marvelous," Carol said. "That means we can use Ode to Joy for the recessional, then. You'd better have someone arrange it for the instruments we have, so the musicians can start learning it.

"If I'd known," Ronella said, "If I'd really known what planning a wedding involves, before we got started, I think I'd have gone to city hall and let Mayor Dreeson do it."

"At least it will be in May. You won't need to make artificial flowers."

Carol looked at Dina with dawning horror and pulled out The List. "Flowers!"

"Flowers," Dina said. "And scheduling weddings around the king of Sweden's wars."

****

"Another spate of pamphlets." Salome picked them up. "Some are from Holz. I recognize his style by now. But some of them aren't."

"Griep?" Carol asked.

"No. Ludwig has known Oswald Griep for years. They don't agree about anything, which means that I've read a lot of incoming correspondence and annotated it for Ludwig, to make it easier for him to draw up his replies. These are nothing like his writing style, which is pretty pompous. The new ones—" She waved several of them, as if she were fanning herself. "—aren't quite like the ones that showed up on Christmas Eve, either. It's the same typeface and I think the same artist did the woodcuts. But they're more aimed against the up-time Lutherans in Grantville than they are against Ludwig and me. Against you and Ron. And Gary. Especially Gary."

"I know," Carol said. "Poor Gary. Even if he is Missouri Synod and as stubborn as an ox about it, he doesn't deserve this kind of filth."

Grantville, March 1635

Oswald Griep stood looking at the Church of Saint Thomas the Apostle.

A New Testament saint, of course. Those were perfectly all right with Lutherans, unlike the jumped-up modern saints with which the papists indulged themselves.

Some people referred to Martin Luther as a saint, of course. But that was doctrinally incorrect. The need to pursue and extirpate superstition wherever it raised itself among the ignorant was unceasing. Which was one reason that he had his doubts about what might be going on over at Saint Martin's in the Fields. Martin, even the original one, was not a New Testament saint. He had shown up as a bishop somewhere during the media aeva, giving his cloak to a beggar, and become the object of a cult.

Cults were also to be extirpated. That was as much an article of faith with Griep as Carthago delenda est had been for Cato the elder. Not that he had as much practical experience with cults and sects as Tilesius had accumulated. In theory, though, sowing them with salt would be a splendid solution, if only it could be managed in these parlous modern times.

Saint Thomas the Apostle. Otherwise known as Doubting Thomas.

Count Ludwig Guenther, somewhat frivolously, told him that he had chosen the name because, originally, he had harbored some doubts as how to best deal with Grantville and its people when it appeared within his lands.

There was a lot still to be accomplished. Interior finishing. Construction on the school was behind schedule. The war would draw day laborers away, probably. They were generally an unruly lot and prone to become soldiers. The skilled craftsmen would stay, though. Count Ludwig Guenther paid generously for competent work.

But the bricks . . . He wandered across the site to inspect the piles of bricks, neatly laid out on pallets. The bricks were magnificent.

The school before the rectory. Rahel and the children were comfortable enough with her brothers in Jena.

They needed the school by fall. The rectory could wait until next year, if it had to.

Rudolstadt

"We'll postpone the dedication for six months," Count Ludwig Guenther said firmly. "As a matter of respect to Mayor Dreeson and Reverend Wiley. We should not be sponsoring a festivity so soon after their deaths."

"I was hoping to start services much sooner than September," Oswald Griep said. At his most stiff-necked.

Which, the count had learned through trial and error, meant that the man's feelings were hurt. He sat silently for a few minutes. "Go ahead and do that. There's no regulation that requires the dedication to take place first. Just keep it . . . low key."

****

Griep knew that the consistory in Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt harbored suspicions over why Saxony had been so active in pushing his appointment, until they had no graceful way to avoid it. But there was more to theological life than worrying about the aberrations of Ludwig Kastenmayer, aberrant though they might be. Aberrant though they certainly were.

Holz had been with Tilesius for several years, now. The consistory in Dresden considered it much more important to keep tabs on an influential ecclesiastical politician such as Tilesius than on Kastenmayer, who was, when one came down to it, just an ordinary parish minister. Even if Tilesius, too, was a Flacian. Especially though Tilesius, too, was a Flacian. The bible itself provided the warning. "For the son dishonoureth the father, the daughter riseth up against her mother, the daughter in law against her mother in law; a man's enemies are the men of his own house." Micah 7:6. Once a town had decided to call a Flacian minister, then—which one would it call. A former student of Jena, or of Leipzig? A former junior minister in Erfurt or in Leipzig? The Philippists were merely opposition. Tilesius, even at his age, was . . . competition. So.

Griep looked at ...