Kitty Chaffin looked across the desk. The personnel office of the State of Thuringia-Franconia would be hard up without Tina Marie. Her oldest son, Ray Lafferty, had married a German girl, Christina Zuehlke, up at Wismar last year. It had turned out that Christina had two unemployed older brothers with Latin school educations who would be willing to work for SoTF personnel in recruiting down-timers.

Brothers from up north on the Baltic coast. Brothers who didn't have cousins, G.o.dsons, sons of G.o.dfathers, or in-laws of cousins all over central Thuringia. All of whom needed government jobs. Or wanted them, at least. If Kitty could have hired subordinates from Madagascar, she would have considered it a good deal.

Even so, sometimes the sheer raucousness of the other woman got on Kitty's nerves. Not that she was that much older than Tina Marie. Maybe twelve years. No more than fifteen. Tina Marie would be fiftyish to Kitty's sixtyish. Maybe not quite fifty. She could look it up in the files here in the office if it was ever important.

Right now, the younger of the two Zuehlke men was looking at Tina Marie a little dubiously. They hadn't objected when Christina had married Ray Lafferty. At that point, up in Pomerania and Mecklenburg, the devastation had been so bad that they'd been happy enough that their sister had just found a husband who could afford to house and feed her.

Of course, that was in Wismar. Before they met Ray's mother.But now, with regular jobs, their middle-cla.s.sness was coming through. Kitty thought that it was hard to get much middle-cla.s.sier than Johann Friedrich and Dietrich Zuehlke.

It was hard to get less middle-cla.s.s than Tina Marie. She hadn't explained just what a demolition derby was, but Dietrich Zuehlke clearly realized that it wasn't a sedate music recital. He suspected that it was closer to a bear-baiting.

"It is not easy, Pastor Kastenmayer." Dietrich Zuehlke sat uneasily in the minister's study in the rectory of St. Martin in the Fields Lutheran church.

The church itself sat, almost as uneasily, just outside the borders of the Ring of Fire. While wanting to provide religious services to the many refugees of his own faith, Count Ludwig Guenther of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt had concluded that they were capable of walking far enough to attend sermons delivered on land that was clearly still his own.

"All of us are living in her house," Zuehlke continued. "Frau Hollister's house. Given the situation with s.p.a.ce and rents in Grantville, this is unavoidable."

"All?" Kastenmayer had seen Zuehlke with a group of other people at services, but there hadn't seemed to be so many of them.

"The house has three sleeping rooms. If, as Frau Hollister points out, you count the one that she made out of a side porch when her sons got to be noisy, rambunctious, teenagers."

"How many people?"

"Frau Hollister and her youngest daughter Carly Baumgardner in one room. Her daughter April Lafferty and my half-sister, Anna Sartorius, in the other. And on the 'porch' there are three sets of beds.

My brother and I have one set. Frau Hollister's younger sons Vance Lafferty and Garrett Baumgardner have the second. The third-that depends on who is in town. Sometimes her son Ronnie Baumgardner.

Sometimes my half-brother, Jacob Sartorius, when he is not in cla.s.ses at the university in Jena.

Sometimes my stepfather, Lucas Sartorius, since he is in Erfurt on business and comes down to visit us.

The only family members who do not live there are Frau Hollister's oldest son Ray Lafferty who married my sister. Her name is Christina. They are up north still, in Wismar."

Pastor Kastenmayer thought. "These 'bunks' are two-level beds, set upon posts?"

Zuehlke nodded. "Frau Hollister sold off her up-time beds with box springs and mattresses, replacing them with down-time made bunks with rope slats and horsehair mattresses. She says that she gained, thereby, spare funds to pay for April's apprenticeship. That is another issue, apprenticing a girl to an artisan's craft. Plus, she has a couple of canvas cots that can be set up if they are needed."

"Where?"

"There is s.p.a.ce for them in the two rooms used by the women. The rest of the house isn't all that big, either. A living room, an eat-in kitchen, and a bathroom. Which is a luxury, certainly. As is the natural gas heating system. Anna says that if we return to Wismar after this summer's campaign is over, presuming that the Swedes win the war, of course, she will greatly miss the natural gas 'range' in the kitchen."

Kastenmayer smiled. "And the refrigerator?"

"Refrigeration isn't a big worry up on the Baltic and North Sea coasts." Zuehlke's expression was quite serious.

Dietrich Zuehlke was always quite serious. At the age of thirty, he was a responsible sort of person.

Responsible in a way for his older brother Johann Friedrich, who tended to lapse into frivolity and facetiousness if someone didn't keep an eye on him. Responsible for his younger half-sister and half-brother.

Jacob, who was just eighteen, was at the university in Jena most of the time, so that was a minor problem. But, Dietrich explained, he worried about the influence of Frau Hollister on his sister Anna, who was just twenty-three. Even more, he worried about the influence of nineteen-year-old April, nowChristina's sister-in-law, on Anna.

Above all, he felt responsible because, under his influence and because of his urging, his stepfather, Lucas Sartorius, had come to Grantville for several visits.

"It is my fault," Dietrich said. "I practically dragged him down to Grantville so that he could see where his stepsons were working now. To show him that, given a reasonably stable interval in this eternal war, we are not wasting the money he spent on our education."

To Grantville, where he had fallen under the spell of this Jezebel.

Frau Hollister, in whose house Dietrich was necessarily living.

Erfurt, Summer 1634

"When can we expect the shipment to arrive?" Dennis Stull, Grantville's civilian head of procurement at the USE's main supply depot for Thuringia and the rest of the central Germanies, had been impatient for two weeks. He hated evasions. He expected a lot of them this morning.

"Never." The tall man seated opposite him-Lucas Sartorius was his name-reached across the desk and handed Stull a letter. "This came in yesterday evening from our firm's factor in Luebeck."

"Never?"

"At the direct orders of Emperor Gustavus Adolphus, all of the grain shipments we are managing to bring out of the Baltic are being diverted to supplying the armies in the north."

"Just how does he propose to feed the armies in the south? At Ingolstadt? In Swabia?"

Sartorius leaned back. "May I suggest that the king, ah, the emperor, is in the north himself and sees the need there directly."

"Is this some version of 'out of sight, out of mind'?"

"A universal proverb, more or less. In the same category as, 'there's no use in crying over spilt milk.'"

"I don't intend to have Baner foraging in Franconia. We have enough problems going in Franconia with the Ram Rebellion. And while I have no doubts at all that Horn has been foraging through Swabia just as ruthlessly as Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar has been foraging through Swabia, I'd really like to try to keep it within reasonable limits."

"So that, if he prevails, there will be something left in the region for you to govern?"

"Or for Gustavus Adolphus's allies to govern. Parts of the region, such as Wuerttemberg, are Lutheran."

Sartorius turned from political speculation to business. "You do realize that no firm has a great deal to offer right now. This year's crop of Polish grain is still in the field. It will be months before it can be harvested and transported to the Baltic ports. During my career, I have traveled as far as Koenigsburg regularly. Sometimes farther, up to Finland. Arranging exports and imports, contracts and sales. Every year, my main stop was Gdansk. Danzig, the Germans call it. I am not giving you an excuse. It is a fact.

The only thing any factor can hope to find for the rest of this summer is grain that someone has, as you say, 'stashed' because he was hoping for a higher price. 'h.o.a.rding' is what we call it."

"Well, then." Dennis steepled his fingers together, his elbows on the desk. "Found any good h.o.a.rds lately?"

Grantville, Summer 1634 ". . . absolutely outrageous," Dietrich Zuehlke finished.

Lucas Sartorius looked at him rather mildly. "Tina Marie and I merely went out for a pleasant evening at the Thuringian Gardens. Had a few beers with friends."

"And finished it off in her bed."

"It's not a bad bed," Sartorius said judiciously. "A little narrow and involving some hazards with the upper bunk. Overall, though, quite comfortable, and the absence of bedbugs is particularly delightful. I plan to take several containers of this DDT with me when I return north."

"You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself. My mother. . . ."

"I was faithful to your mother," Sartorius said. Well, reasonably. She never knew anything to the contrary. Finland was a long way from Wismar, after all. "But she has been dead for two years."

"The horrible example she is setting for Anna and April and Carly. . . ."

"None of whom were home. April and Anna were still at the Thuringian Gardens, with their own friends, when Tina Marie and I decided to leave. There is no reason for either of them to come into Tina Marie's bedroom in the middle of the night. Carly was having a 'sleepover,' which should-should-have guaranteed us a quite adequate level of privacy. If you had not chosen to follow us home."

"I am not here voluntarily."

Ludwig Kastenmayer looked at Lucas Sartorius. He'd seen a lot of men like this during his pastoral career. Not bad men, in the sense of being evil. But not precisely well-behaved, either. Men whose commitment to the Ten Commandments left something to be desired and who, although they appeared for church on Sunday, tended to leave for the tavern before the sermon started. "I guessed as much."

"I'm not, either." That was the older stepson.

"You do realize, Hans-Fritz," Sartorius said, "that you may be excused."

"No you may not." Dietrich glared at his brother.

Jonas Justus Muselius would probably have smiled if he hadn't been more concerned about certain looming communications problems.

Sartorius, who had apparently decided to be difficult just for the sake of being difficult, or possibly mischievous just for the sake of being mischievous, was speaking Low German-the Plattdeutsch of the northern flatlands and coastal regions.

Neither Jonas nor Pastor Kastenmayer spoke the Platt. They spoke the Hochdeutsch of the Saxon uplands and the southern mountains.

This wasn't a matter of the dozens of variant dialects of the central Germanies. These were, really, two different languages.

Jonas felt certain that Sartorius could speak High German just as well as his stepsons could. After all, he was doing business in Erfurt. The man was just being contrary. Still . . . He got up and wandered over to Kastenmayer's book case.

"What are you looking for, Jonas?"

"The Bugenhagen translation of the Bible." Jonas pulled a volume out of the cabinet, tucking it under the elbow of his bad arm. "If Herr Sartorius prefers to speak Platt, perhaps we can deal with unfamiliar words by comparing pa.s.sages in Luther's translation to the same verses as rendered by the good Doktor Pommer for our northern colleagues."

Kastenmayer nodded, his eyes glinting with amus.e.m.e.nt. He looked at Sartorius again. "Since the topic of this meeting is your a.s.sociation with Frau Hollister, who certainly does not speak Platt, how do you, ah, communicate with her?"

Sartorius twitched his nose. "Verbally?"

"Yes." Kastenmayer's tone was firm. "In which language?""English. Or High German. Or a mixture of both. Usually a mixture of both."

"Great," Jonas said. "I'll call Gary Lambert."

"If I'm going to be hauled up before the Inquisition, Kitty, I want you to come along."

Kitty fiddled with the paper clip container on her desk. "They're Lutherans. I'm pretty sure that Lutherans don't have an Inquisition."

"They have something called a marriage court. An Ehegericht."

"How are you getting involved in a marriage court?"

"If. Just if, mind you, Lucas Sartorius thought he might possibly want to marry again . . ."

"You have to be a witness to his good behavior or something?"

"They're sort of wondering if I'd make a suitable bride for a respectable businessman."

"You understand," Sartorius said to Tina Marie. "I didn't want anyone saying that I hadn't done right by my wife's sons from her first marriage. So I sent them to Latin School and in a lot of ways I don't regret it. They are Beamter now, with government jobs. Working in the office with you and Frau Chaffin. It's a lot less risky than being in business for yourself. They probably won't get rich, but they probably won't go bankrupt, either. Or be jailed by an angry Swedish commissary here because the king of Sweden's aides up north diverted a grain shipment from Erfurt to Oldenburg. In other ways, though . .

." His voice trailed off.

She made a small, encouraging noise, designed to keep him talking. Overall, she found it easier listening to German rather than thinking up sentences to say in it.

"It's all those pastors and would-be pastors they have teaching in secondary schools," he said. "That's the problem. The boys turned into prudes. Especially Dietrich." He patted her shoulder. "No need to worry that Christina will be like that when you come up north to Ray's and meet her. She didn't go to Latin school. She's a jolly girl and likes a dirty joke as well as the next person."

"That's good," Tina Marie said into her beer. "Sehr gut."

Actually, it was very good. It certainly changed the slant she'd been getting on her daughter-in-law from the Zuehlke boys.

"She's likely to want to stay in Wismar. Not come here to Grantville to live. Christina is very attached to Wismar. She won't leave it unless she is forced to. I made her go away in order to complete her education. After she finished the munic.i.p.al school for girls, I sent her to my sister in Koenigsberg when she was fourteen. My brother-in-law was a grain factor, too, with headquarters there. She stayed for four years and then another two years in the household of a friend, a factor in Danzig, before she came back to Wismar to nurse her mother in her last illness. Didn't like being away."

"She probably wouldn't have liked staying home, either. After all, she was a teenager. Think of how April and Carly gripe at me."

"Entirely possible. In any case, she's a good bookkeeper and well-trained to be the wife of a merchant. I'm glad that Ray is a brick mason when he is not serving in the military. There's no stone up on the coast, but a big market for brick. I've made it my business to investigate the new brick making techniques being used here in Thuringia. Once this year's campaign is over, perhaps your army will discharge him. There's a fortune to be made in brick, all the rebuilding that will have to be done."

Tina Marie nodded and finished her beer.

"Would you like another? Or would you rather . . .?"

She grinned at him. "Get lucky? I'd rather. Let's go?"

"The year I met John Lafferty and married him was one of the best years of my life." Tina Marielooked at Pastor Kastenmayer and stretched her arms over her head, pulling the tight tank top so high that it showed a couple of inches of belly. "I was what he liked, back then. I'm from Texas, originally. I'd finished high school in Brownsville-well, I'd just barely sc.r.a.ped through-and come to San Antonio looking for a job. Got on a commercial landscaping crew-office complexes, malls, things like that. John was the foreman. I was nineteen. Skinny as a rail. Thin face, narrow shoulders, narrow rib cage, flat as a pancake in front, not much hips and what I did have low, widest at the thighs. Every girl John ever dated looked like that. He just went for the type."

"So I got pregnant with Ray, and pretty soon I didn't look like that no more. Instead, think of a pear on stilts. Then I had him-Ray was born, I mean. That was down in San Antonio. The doctor said I ought to breast feed him, which made me soft and squishy on top as well as soft and squishy in the belly from being pregnant. Which sure didn't impress John. So he brought me here to Grantville, dumped me off to keep house for his dad. Dave Lafferty, that was. Vance's middle name is after him. Dave was crippled up with emphysema. He and Linda Lou, John's mom, had been divorced since 1953 and she stayed out in California. John just dropped me here and went to Toledo. Got a job in Toledo and didn't show his face again for five years."

Kitty took a deep breath, thinking of Tina Marie when she came to Grantville. Thin, scrawny, tanned, rough-spoken, and boyish. About as far from soft and squishy as a woman could get. Even when she'd been pregnant with her sixth kid, Tina Marie had looked like a goal post with the football fastened onto its middle with duct tape.

Pastor Kastenmayer gave Tina Marie one of those "keep going" nods.