1636: The Viennese Waltz

CHAPTER 6

August 1634

Liechtenstein House, outside the Ring of Fire

“You have another letter, Prince Karl,” Josef Gandelmo told him when Karl got back from his latest trip to Magdeburg.

“Is it from Gundaker again?” There had been several letters from Gundaker, each ordering Karl to stop seeing Sarah Wendell and reminding him of his obligations under the 1606 treaty between his father and uncles.

“No, it’s from King Albrecht.”

Karl paused at Josef’s tone. “Seriously?”

“He wishes to see you and will not approve the railroad until he does.”

“Oh.” Karl had known this was coming, but had hoped it would wait a while. “I knew him, you know, when I was a boy. He and my father were friends then.”

“Kipper and Wipper?” Joseph asked.

“Yes. The emperor needed money for the war. My father and the others tried to create it by mixing more copper into the silver coins. It didn’t work, and a lot of people got stuck. After that, Wallenstein and my father had a falling out. I honestly don’t think they disagreed about Kipper and Wipper, but about Wallenstein’s ambition. The breach was more between Uncle Gundaker and Wallenstein, because an adherent of Wallenstein’s pushed Uncle Gundaker out of an important post in the Empire. But it brought in the whole family, and Father was one of the ones pushing for the execution of Wallenstein for treason a few years back.”

“Well, you have to admit, Your Serene Highness, your father called that one pretty accurately.”

“Maybe. Even probably. But there was more than a little self-fulfilling prophecy in it. Would Wallenstein have gone for the crown if Ferdinand II hadn’t tried to have him killed?”

“We’ll never know, Your Serene Highness. And it’s rather beside the point. The question is, what are you going to do?”

“There isn’t any choice. I am going to go see King Albrecht of Bohemia and bend my knee to him. Then try to convince him that a railroad will benefit him and not be a knifepoint at his kidneys, held by the Holy Roman Emperor. But can we put it off?” Karl asked.

“Yes, Your Serene Highness, but not forever. And it’s a safe bet that approval for the railroad will not be forthcoming until you visit Prague.”

“That’s not all that urgent, Josef. I don’t think Sanderlin-Fortney party has even reached the Danube yet.”

Regensburg

Hayley Fortney looked at the Danube much as the Israelites must have looked at the River Jordan. Well, she guessed. She really wasn’t all that up on what the River Jordan represented in Judaism. Or Christianity, for that matter. She didn’t really pay that much attention, except for a couple of weeks right after the Ring of Fire. But the trip from Grantville to the town of Regensburg on the Danube had been long, hard, irritating and maddening. Floating on a river had to be better than that.

But there it was. At last. The Danube, and just across it, Regensburg. They could pick up some barges here.

“What do you think, Dad? Will you be able to set up a steam engine on one of the barges?”

“I don’t know, hon. Let’s see what they have. It’s going to be hard enough to carry the cars.”

“Maybe not, Dad. They ship a lot, but I am not sure how big the barges on the river are.”

As it happened, that wasn’t the trouble. The Ulm boxes-flat-bottomed boats capable of carrying large loads-were plying the river. Sonny Fortney had a steam engine. It was a small one that he had mostly built up-time. After the Ring of Fire, he had finished it and then not known what to do with it but couldn’t being himself to sell it. So they had packed it and his boilers along. After a bit of negotiation, they worked out how to hook his engine up to a propeller and use that barge to pull the others. They wouldn’t go fast, but they would go fast enough to have control. Not that the bargemen needed their help.

It took a week and more to get everything loaded on the Ulm boxes. Then they stopped and waited.

* * *

“We will be staying here for a while,” Istvan Janoszi said quietly to Ron Sanderlin, as they sat in the inn yard looking out at the Danube.

“What for?”

“For word of the emperor. He is in failing health and the prince doesn’t want his father taxed in these, his last days.”

Sonny Fortney held his peace.

Liechtenstein House, outside the Ring of Fire

“I’ll need to go to Magdeburg,” Karl said, reading through the latest letter from King Albrecht von Wallenstein. It was still polite, but he was definitely pushing.

Josef winced. He knew that the reason Karl wanted to go to Magdeburg was to talk to Sarah Wendell. And he had received letters from Gundaker, and even one from Maximillian, all insisting that he keep Karl away from the up-time gold-digger. Not that they had used that expression. “A telegram perhaps?” he offered.

“No. This is not the sort of news that a telegram will handle. There will be questions and Sarah will, I do not doubt, have insights.” Then he grinned at Josef. “It won’t be so bad. I won’t be gone long.”

“Yes, Your Serene Highness,” Josef said dutifully. And truthfully he wasn’t concerned about the difficulties of the trip. Travel between here and Magdeburg was getting easier and cheaper all the time. What concerned Josef was the why, not the what.

Josef had nothing against Sarah Wendell. He liked her and her parents, even her younger sister. But up-timer or not, she wasn’t Catholic and she wasn’t of the upper nobility. Josef didn’t think she would accept the role of concubine, no matter how well loved, and she was utterly unsuitable as wife.

He was tempted to say so again, but he had already had that conversation with the prince and it wasn’t an experience he wanted to repeat. Instead he simply nodded and went off to get ready for the trip. There would be briefings and discussions of ongoing projects for both the prince’s business interests here in the USE and the family’s properties in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Austria, and Hungary.

Magdeburg

This time Karl checked into his hotel and sent a note to Sarah asking when she could see him. Then he cooled his heels for a while and occupied himself with paper work.

It was the next day at noon when he met Sarah at the American Cafe. “So what’s so important?” Sarah asked, before they had even ordered.

“Let’s put in our orders first,” Karl said. It wasn’t like they were going to wait long for service. He was Prince Karl Eusebius von Liechtenstein and she was the daughter of the Secretary of the Treasury. Their waitress was there before they sat down. And they knew the menu.

“Burger and fries,” Karl said. “What about Sprite?”

The waitress gave him a sad look and shook her head.

“Doctor Pepper then.”

“I’ll have the same, but make mine a wine cooler,” Sarah said.

The waitress went off to inform the chef, a German who had spent two years in Grantville learning to make hamburgers and other “fast” foods.

“Well, we’ve ordered. What’s so important?”

“The latest note from King Albrecht. I’m not going to be able to put it off much longer.”

“This is so unfair,” Sarah said. “Everyone gets to go off and have adventures in the world and I am stuck in an office, calculating the mean income distribution for the USE. And developing a standard market basket when the stuff that goes into it is changing faster than it did up-time.”

Karl looked at her in surprise that turned rapidly into shock. Sarah meant it. She was really angry and he didn’t have a clue why. Not knowing what to say, he opened his mouth and blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Come with me, then.”

It was the right thing to say. Or, at the very least, it wasn’t a totally wrong thing to say. Sarah had stopped her litany of complaint and her mouth was hanging open. Then it snapped shut. “I can’t!”

Never one to lose an advantage, Karl shot back, “Why not? It’s not like you actually need the job at the Fed.” Then, seeing her expression, he backpedaled fast. “I’m sure we can come up with a good reason for you to go. Certainly good enough so they won’t fire you for it. You can go to study economic trends in Bohemia. They have a market basket, too, and they probably have even less of a clue what goes in it than you do here.”

Sarah’s expression had gone thoughtful and Karl heaved a very well-hidden sigh of relief. A mine field had been crossed, and he hadn’t even known it was there.

“I’ll think about it,” she said as their order arrived. “In the meantime, why does King Al want you to sign on the dotted line now?” Sarah asked, then dipped a cottage fry into something that claimed to be ketchup, but wasn’t. They had discussed the very polite and vague letters that Karl and the king of Bohemia had exchanged before.

Karl’s relations with King Al, as Judy the Younger had christened him, had been by mail. Before Wallenstein had become King Albrecht, Karl had made a whirlwind trip to take the oaths of his people. That gave Karl quite a lot of legitimacy and made it difficult for King Al to go all Capone on him unless Karl did something serious.

In spite of the fact that several people thought he had bent the knee, Karl hadn’t quite done so. He paid his taxes on time, while his uncles were paying the same taxes to Ferdinand II. “I don’t know. It may be that the railroad makes him nervous.”

“Why?”

“Your American Civil War probably,” Karl told her. “They were used quite extensively to move troops and supplies.”

Sarah nodded. She wasn’t, Karl knew, all that conversant in military history.

“Well, the railroad will help your lands a lot,” Sarah said. “How bad is it going to be?”

“I don’t know.” Karl shook his head. “I know that the up-timers, and the USE in general, don’t have any great affection for the Holy Roman Empire, but it’s Christianity’s shield against Islam and has been for centuries. It’s my country. My father and my uncles fought and bled for it and I expected to do the same when my time came. Now it’s disappearing before my eyes. There is no way that Prince Ferdinand will get the votes to become emperor, and less chance that someone else would get those votes.”

“I know,” Sarah said. “I wonder how I would feel if I had to watch the up-time United States slowly disintegrating before my eyes.”

Karl looked at her, and felt himself starting to smile. As he’d said, Sarah Wendell wasn’t overly fond of the HRE. Nor did she have a lot of reason to be. But it was very. . encouraging. . the way she was trying to see things from his point of view. Even if the situations weren’t quite parallel.

His smile died as he thought about the reality of the situation. The HRE had indeed been the shield of Christianity for over eight hundred years. Protecting Christian ideals from Islam while Europe grew strong and wealthy. . was that enough to justify the Edict of Restitution? Well, maybe, at least in that other time-line. But the shield was coming apart, whatever he thought about it, and there was nothing-nothing at all-that he could do to prevent it.

Besides, Karl wanted that railroad. It was necessary to the improvement of his lands. That had to be his first priority.

“So how long is it going to take?” Sarah asked.

“A small troop with good horses, but bad roads,” Karl thought aloud. “Avoiding Saxony. I don’t want to be John George’s ransom to bring the HRE in on his side. Figure twenty-five miles a day on average. A week to Prague. And while I’m at it, I should visit Aunt Beth. So that’s another week. Plus whatever time. .” Karl paused not at all sure whether to say “I spend” or “we spend” and settled on “. . it takes to negotiate with King Al and my aunt. So at least a month, probably a month and a half.”

Now Sarah was looking distressed. “I’ll have to talk to my boss. That’s a long time to be gone.”

Wendell House, Magdeburg

“Are you nuts!” Fletcher Wendell didn’t quite bellow. Not quite. “Karl, you at least, ought to know better. Two hundred plus miles over rough country, with either one of you a bandit’s dream come true. What’s your ransom value, Karl? Half of Silesia? And you, Sarah? Half a million shares of OPM? You would have to take a flipping army with you just to fight off the bandits.”

“I’m not insensitive to the situation, and the newspapers make it much harder to get where you’re going before the bandits know about the trip,” Karl agreed. “On the other hand, King Albrecht is insistent that I go.”

“And my daughter? Is King Albrecht insisting that Sarah go with you?”

“No. But I’d rather tell King Albrecht no than tell Sarah that. If you don’t want her to go, then you get to try to convince her she can’t.” Karl couldn’t keep just a touch of smugness out of his voice as he said that and it clearly didn’t please Herr Wendell.