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  "Don't be an imbecile, William. Even you must understand that the new situation requires us to set aside your plans for reforming the church. Plans which, I might add, were the single most prominent cause of the revolution which took place"—his hand groped in midair—"in that other history."

  He matched the bishop's glare with one of his own. "Damn all zealots, anyway! You and your meddling with the Scots once you became archbishop—ruin, that's what it brought. Would have brought, but not now. And I so told the king, and told him firmly."

  He stalked over to a chair and threw himself into it. "And His Majesty agrees, so there's an end to it. There will be no meddling with the Scots and their Presbyterian obsessions. Leave them alone, William. Leave those thick-headed half-barbarous clansmen to their own quarrels and feuds. Stir them up—as you did, in another time—and they'll become the hammer to the Puritan anvil."

  May as well get all of it over with, he told himself firmly. He was expecting a complete rupture with Laud. That would sadden him, personally, but—so what? It had saddened him to see such a man as Oliver Cromwell rotting in a dungeon also. The needs of the state remained.

  "And the same for Ireland. Leave the Old English there in peace with their papist idolatries, and Ireland will be a bastion for royalism. Stir them up, and we'll have another rebellion to contend with."

  Laud was starting to splutter, but Strafford's strong voice overrode his protests.

  "Damnation, William! Is it impossible for you to see your hand in front of your face? Did you read the books?"

  "And why should we trust them?" shrilled Laud. "For all we know, those books were created by the Satanists themselves—or they're French forgeries." The bishop's eyes narrowed. "You met the witch yourself, earlier this day. Surely you could smell the stench of abomination."

  Strafford burst out laughing. "The 'witch?' Which one, William? The one by the name of Melissa—who, I must tell you, is as fine looking an older woman as any duchess in Europe? Or the young one by the name of Rita? Who is as obviously a prince's young sister, uncertain of her role but determined to carry it out, as any infanta of Spain?"

  He sat up straight, shaking his head. "There was no stench, William. Put that aside, man. You don't even believe it yourself—the whole notion smacks of village superstition. Is Satan so powerful he can create a new universe? Nonsense. Wherever these people came from, it was not the Pit. On that issue, if nothing else, I am inclined to agree with Richelieu. They are not personally evil. Indeed, it is that very lack of personal wickedness which drives home all the more strongly God's warning to us: let this madness unfold, and even the best will be encompassed in the ruin."

  As always, theological questions were able to distract Laud as nothing else could. The bishop's scowl remained, but it became more one of thought than simple outrage. "You cannot trust a papist cardinal to reason properly, Thomas, never think it. Ours, here in England, is the only true catholic church. Still . . ."

  He resumed his pacing. "I will admit that Richelieu's reasoning—in this instance—has substance to it. Still . . ."

  He stopped his pacing, spun around, and extended a beseeching hand. "Can't you see what you're doing? For all intents and purposes, you are adopting the policies of—of—them." His lips pursed, as if he'd eaten a lemon. "Religious toleration. Let every fool in the land set himself up as if he were a bishop."

  Strafford laughed again. " 'Them?' The colonial Satanists, you mean?"

  Laud seemed to have calmed down enough for Strafford to have hopes of preventing a complete rupture. He arose, went over to his old friend, and put an arm around the smaller man's shoulder.

  "I did not say we must forever abandon our plans for reform of the church, William. Nor, I can assure you, do I share the foolish belief of these 'Americans' that religious toleration is some kind of principle."

  Not, he added sourly to himself, that a heavy dose of it wouldn't be of benefit to the world's statesmen. Idiots!

  "But even the Son of God required three days to return from the dead, after all. We can't do everything at once, William. Without a king to serve as the anchor, an established church is impossible—you know that as well as I do. So will you allow me the freedom to do as I must to ensure the survival of the throne? Or—"

  His tone hardened, as did the grip of the large hand on the bishop's shoulder. "Or will you enroll yourself in the ranks of my enemies? Choose, William. Choose now. His Majesty has seen fit to bestow the task upon me, and I will not shirk from the duty. Not for anything, including friendship or personal sentiment."

  Laud's shoulder stiffened. Then, slumped.

  "Oh, not that, Thomas. An 'enemy'? Never that."

  "Good." Strafford used the hand on the shoulder to steer Laud into a nearby chair. "That settled, old friend, I could use your advice and guidance. The Lord knows I could use your energy and discipline."

  After both men were settled, Strafford pushed the advantage. "Besides, look at all the bright spots. With the money the French are showering on us, I can afford to hire some real soldiers. For once, the king of England will be able to bare some real teeth."

  "Not French soldiers," hissed Laud. "Let those swine onto the island . . ."

  Strafford laughed. "Was I born yesterday? The cardinal's envoy made the offer, of course—indeed, he even raised the possibility of Spanish troops, if you can believe it."

  Laud's face turned bright red. "Spanish troops!" he screeched.

  Strafford, still chuckling, waved his hand. "Rest easy, William. There's this much good came out of the madness on the Continent. After fifteen years of warfare, there are thousands—tens of thousands—of experienced English mercenaries, any of whom would be delighted to return to England and serve under their own king's colors."

  Laud was not quite done with his glowering. "A scandalous lot. Soldiers-for-hire. Sinners."

  Wentworth shrugged. "Frankly, all the better. They'll hardly care about the fine sentiments of Parliament, now will they?"

  He rose and went to a window, overlooking the great city. Then, completed his conversion of the bishop.

  "They'll certainly not be given to tenderness dealing with the Trained Bands of London."

  Mention of the militia of England's capital, that body of artisans and apprentices who had caused so much grief and disturbance over the years to England's monarchs and bishops, brought Laud to his own feet.

  "Crush the rabble!"

  Strafford clasped his hands behind his back, and straightened his shoulders. Then, gazing serenely down at the dark streets of London:

  "Oh, I intend to. Be sure of it, William."

  Some time later, over a much more convivial meal, Laud inquired as to the fate of the new prisoner in the Tower.

  Strafford's face darkened a bit. "Tomorrow, I shall try again to convince the king to have Cromwell beheaded. Pym, too, once the soldiers bring him to the Tower. And Hampden, if we can catch him. But . . ."

  "He's an indecisive man by nature, Thomas."

  The king's new prime-minister-in-all-but-name shook his head glumly, thinking about the king he served. "Worse than that, really. Indecisive in big things, stubborn in small ones. I think he has vague notions—probably put there by his wife—of having some sort of grand spectacle of a trial at a later date. When he can haul all of his enemies out of the Tower and put them up for display."

  "In front of whom?" demanded Laud. "Not Parliament, surely!"

  Strafford shrugged. "That will be up to us, I suppose. Create some suitable body to replace Parliament, I mean. On that, it occurs to me—please take no offense!—there's something to be said for the French system—"

  The argument which erupted thereafter was fierce enough, in its own way. But it was the ferocity of an argument between friends, enjoying the dispute, not that of a quarrel between enemies.

  And so Thomas Wentworth, the earl of Strafford, was able to end the day on a better note than it began. And was able to carry with him to his bed the memory of
a friendship retained, to blunt the sorrow of seeing a man he much admired fester in a dungeon, grieving a murdered wife and son.

  Duty, of course, remained.

  First thing tomorrow—I'll do my best to convince Charles to remove his head. Oliver is dangerous. If he ever gets out . . .

  He drifted off to sleep, comforted by thoughts of the thick walls of the Tower. True, men had escaped from the Tower, in times past. But never men immured in the dungeons.

  Strafford would have been less relaxed—considerably less—had he witnessed what a young man named Darryl McCarthy was doing at the very moment he fell asleep. For all his brilliance, the earl of Strafford—like Richelieu—had not fully grasped the nature of the new American technology. He could accept, readily enough, guns which fired across half a mile with uncanny accuracy. But still, he—like Richelieu—had the ingrained habits of men born and bred in the 17th century. An impressive machine or device, they could accept, yes. But, without even thinking about it, they assumed that such a machine or device would look impressive.

  A cannon which can destroy a stone wall does, after all. A great, big, brute of a thing.

  "That's it," said Darryl softly, turning his head and smiling up at Melissa. "You just give the word, ma'am, that fancy wall is so much rubble and we're outa here. Assuming you can scrounge us up some transportation, of course." He gave a skeptical glance out the window at the moat and the Thames beyond. He couldn't see the water, in the darkness of the night, but he could smell it. "Can't say I much want to swim in that stinking river, much less the moat, even if I could make it across in the first place."

  Melissa winced. "I can't quite believe I might destroy . . . I mean, the Tower of London, for God's sake. It's a world historical monument."

  "Not here, it isn't," said Tom Simpson. "Here, it's just another damn prison."

  Melissa nodded. She eyed the little hole in the wall which Darryl was now disguising with mud smeared over bits of stone. Once the mud dried and a little dust was spread over it, there would be nothing to indicate an explosive charge except a thin wire leading off. The wire would be disguised behind furniture—a heavy couch that Darryl and Tom said would help direct the blast—and, in any event, wasn't something that a 17th-century guard would recognize anyway.

  "Doesn't look like much, does it?" chuckled Tom.

  "That's what I'm counting on." Melissa turned away firmly. If nothing else, over the past two years, she'd learned to discipline her own "finer sentiments." World historical monument or not, if the time came she would have that wall destroyed. Let the middle ages and its architecture take care of itself. She had living people to answer for.

  "How's the radio coming?" she asked.

  Gayle looked up from where she was squatting on the floor. "I've got the generator assembled, Friedrich's screwing the pedals down next to the loveseat, and Nelly's stringing the antenna. It's a good thing the guards can't see us or they'd think we're insane."

  Melissa made a face. "I'm not sure they wouldn't be right."

  Chapter 9

  On his way home, moved by a sudden impulse, Mike swung away from his normal route and walked past the complex of trailers where, the year before, Gretchen's somewhat peculiar extended family had lived. "Officially"—which really meant whatever the rather fearsome Gramma Richter said—it had been known as the "Higgins residence." Jeff had married Gretchen Richter, very shortly after the Ring of Fire, and her grandmother Veronica had insisted on the proper marital protocol. Proper, at least, by American standards if not her own. The fact that Gramma herself thought Jeff was much too young to be a husband had been neither here nor there.

  Privately, Mike—like most people in Grantville—had thought of it otherwise. Depending on the circumstances, either as "the boys' place," since Jeff's friend Larry Wild owned one of the trailers and his other two best friends Eddie Cantrell and Jimmy Andersen lived there also; or "the Richter place," since Gretchen and Gramma Richter's huge collection of relatives and unofficially adopted orphans had moved in after the wedding. Since Jeff and Gretchen's wedding, the confusion had deepened. To native-born Americans, Gretchen was now "Gretchen Higgins" and that made it the "Higgins' place." But 17th-century Germans did not follow the custom of a woman assuming her husband's last name, so for them it was still "Richter."

  Mike couldn't help but chuckle. There had been plenty of time he'd thought of the place simply as "Gretchen's Lair." If ever Mike had met a tigress in human form, it was that young woman.

  He stopped for a moment, and stared at the trailer complex. Everything had changed since then, and Mike wasn't entirely sure how he felt about it. Granted, the changes had all been positive ones—the inevitable transformations brought into peoples' lives by marriages, childbirths, and other duties and obligations. Still, he found himself missing the rambunctious energy the place had had in the days immediately after the Ring of Fire. Perhaps more than any other place in Grantville, he'd always thought that trailer complex was the brightest symbol of a hopeful future.

  But . . . things change.

  Call them the Higginses or the Richters, they were all gone now. The trailers themselves were still full of people, but these were tenants. Several related German families, as Mike understood what Gramma Richter told him. He didn't know them personally.

  Again, he chuckled. Gramma now managed the complex for Jeff and Larry, in their absence. Knowing Veronica, Mike was quite sure the new tenants paid the rent promptly, and in full. It would be unfair to label the woman a "scrooge," but . . . she had a proper and thoroughly Teutonic notion of the value of property.

  He glanced at his watch and saw that he was coming home a bit earlier than usual. So, moved by another impulse, he walked across the street and turned down another. He was heading in the opposite direction from his own house, now, but he didn't have far to go.

  Less than a minute later, he was standing in front of the very large two-story house owned by Grantville's mayor, Henry Dreeson. The house was on a corner, and the new gas lamp situated there had already been fired up.

  Mike studied the lamp for a moment. He had mixed feelings about that also. On the one hand, he understood and agreed with the logic of moving away from Grantville's profligate use of electric lighting. The problem wasn't the power supply, as such, which would last indefinitely. The problem was much simpler, and somewhat maddening—as most of Mike's problems were. Sure, there was plenty of power. But power doesn't do you any good once you run out of lightbulbs—and those, like so many "small" things 21st-century Americans had taken for granted, were now in very short supply and very difficult to replace.

  On the other hand . . . it also seemed stupid to have to fall back on 19th-century technology when they knew everything they really needed to know in order to make such things as lightbulbs and other types of lighting fixtures. But, that was the reality. It was the old, well-known if not always accepted, distinction between science and engineering. The simple fact that you understand the scientific principles involved doesn't necessarily mean that you have the technology or the economic resources to do anything about it.

  So the decision had been made to start switching over to gas lighting; and Henry Dreeson, being the mayor of the town, had taken the lead in having the first new gas lamp installed in front of his own house.

  Mike heard the door open and swung his eyes toward it. Henry Dreeson himself was emerging and coming down the stairs toward him.

  "Hi, Mike!" The elderly man saw what Mike had been examining, and smiled. "Oh, stop fretting. The next thing you know, you'll be wallowing in the classic problem—toilet paper."

  Mike grimaced. "Don't remind me."

  Henry was still smiling, but there was a trace of apprehension in the thing. "Is there any news? I mean—"

  Mike shook his head. "Nothing bad, Henry. So far as I know, Gretchen and the boys—and Becky and Rita and Melissa and everybody else—are fine. That's not why I came over. I just . . . I don't know. I guess I wanted to see you, a
nd Ronnie, and the kids. It's nothing pressing, if you're busy."

  But before he'd even finished, Dreeson had him by the elbow and was marching him up the stairs.

  "No, no! Come in! Ronnie'll be glad to see you. Of course, you won't know it, from the way she'll fuss at you about letting those 'innocent babes' wander around loose all over war-torn Europe, but—"

  The old man grinned. "Hey, what can I say? I'm crazy about the lady, but I'll be the first one to admit my new wife's something of a harridan."

  "Oh hell, Henry, I wouldn't call her a harridan, exactly, just—"

  But now Veronica Dreeson was standing in the doorway herself, hands planted firmly on her hips, and glaring down at the two men coming up the stairs.

  "So! They are all dead, yes? I warned you!"

  "Not exactly a harridan," muttered Mike. "Just . . . close."

  Henry grinned up at his wife. "Now, sweetheart—everybody's fine. Mike just told me so."

  Veronica Dreeson was not to be mollified so easily. She sniffed, imparting to the sound a lifetime's worth of bitter experience. Men and their lies.

  "And how does he know what's happened to the children?" Somewhat grudgingly, she stepped aside and waved Mike into the house. As he passed by her, she continued to scold. "They are probably lying in a ditch somewhere. Tot—alle! All dead. Maybe the girls are still alive. Ravished, of course, and turned into camp women."

  Mike winced. He was tempted to argue with the old woman, but . . .

  The fact was that the horrors she was depicting were all too real. Veronica Dreeson, in the years since the Thirty Years War erupted, had seen all of them happen—and to her own family.

  Fortunately, someone else came to the rescue. Gretchen's younger brother Hans was sitting on the couch in the living room, next to James Nichols' daughter Sharon. The young man sprang up with his usual energy and extended a hand of greeting.