Marcie Abruzzo laughed. “Talk about an exercise in resume inflation. The archduchess certainly has the routine down pat.”
She paused. “She is an archduchess, isn’t she?”
“Her late husband,” de Melon said, “was an archduke. Her father, however, was Grand Duke of Tuscany, so by birth she is a grand duchess. Her first husband was merely a duke.”
“How do those stack up against each other-an Austrian archduke and an Italian grand duke? Is one higher than the other?”
“I am a soldier, not a diplomat. However, I think they would be about equivalent, since the families intermarry and the spouses are considered to be of equal birth.”
“How come she didn’t run through your resume, de Melon?” Matt asked. “The one I got for you when I asked Grantville to send me something was pretty impressive.”
“I am very sorry,” Francesco de Melon said with impeccable courtesy, “but I sincerely believe that your researchers in Grantville were mistaken.” The former imperial/Bavarian military commander of the fortress of Kronach assumed an expression that indicated he felt mildly apologetic.
“Umm,” Matt Trelli, formerly de Melon’s opposite number on behalf of the State of Thuringia-Franconia during the siege of Kronach, asked, “how?”
“Part of this information they sent you…” De Melon picked up a piece of paper. “Part of this is me, I, myself, the person who is sitting here in your presence.”
Matt nodded.
“I believe, though, that most of it belongs to another person with the same name, or a similar name. More precisely, it appears to belong to two or more other persons with the same name, or similar names. One of them was a poet. The other was a count. I am flattered, of course, to have so suddenly acquired both outstanding literary abilities and a rank of high nobility. However…”
De Melon sat there, across the table from Matt. Young. Straight black hair, dark eyes. Not overweight, but a little jowly. Heavy eyebrows, prominent nose, mustache.
“Well,” Matt said. “I guess we at least have to give the folks at the National Research Center credit for trying. It’s not as if anybody in Grantville could speak or read Portuguese before the Ring of Fire. Well, Ms. DiCastro was in Grantville as an exchange teacher. She’s from South America, so maybe she could. She didn’t work for the Research Center, though, so it probably doesn’t make any difference whether she could or not. She was teaching Spanish at the high school.”
Marcie Abruzzo, so recently married to Matt that they still counted as honeymooners, asked, “Why did you ’fess up? When you realized about the mix-up, I mean?”
De Melon smiled. “Not from any outstanding amount of abstract virtue, I assure you. I just felt sure that if I kept that resume after I accepted the regent of Tyrol’s invitation to enter her service, at some time, unavoidably, I would meet someone acquainted with one of the other men.”
“A letter from the emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,” Chancellor Bienner’s clerk said. “It just arrived.”
Claudia snatched it.
She read.
She frowned. “Ferdinand says they are considering the possibility that Vienna might offer the Archduchess Cecelia Renata as a wife for Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, as a means of maintaining the Habsburg interests in Swabia.”
“But he’s Protestant,” Bienner protested.
“It appears,” Claudia answered, “that Leopold’s young cousins in Vienna are-how would Marcie put it? — thinking outside of the box. How would such a move affect the position of my sons? The historically Habsburg lands in Swabia do not belong to Vienna. They belong to Tyrol. Perhaps I should think outside of the box as well, before Ferdinand steals a march on me.”
“If a leak occurs before I am ready for this initiative to become public,” the regent said, “heads will roll.”
No one at the table doubted that she meant this statement in its most literal sense.
“After study of the situation and consultation with Dr. Bienner, taking into account some proposed actions on the part of Our cousins in Vienna, having within the fairly recent past taken advantage of Our commercial connections with the manufacturers of the ‘Monster’ to visit both Venice and Magdeburg, We have concluded…”
Claudia de Medici paused and stood up. She had called this meeting for the specific time in the morning when the sun would come through the windows of the conference room and shine on her titian hair. She had a talent for the dramatic.
“No, no.” She waved as all the others scrambled to push their chairs back. “Retain your seats.”
She had frequently thought that although proper protocol required that the highest-ranking person in a room sit, while all others stood respectfully unless given permission to sit, this was counterintuitive. She was tall, true, but when seated, she could not tower over anyone else. If they sat and she stood, however, she could achieve a more intimidating effect. A truly satisfactory intimidating effect.
It was definitely time for some changes in Tyrol.
“It is Our intention to extend exploratory feelers to the United States of Europe as to what terms We could obtain if We were willing to bring Tyrol, voluntarily, into it.”
“As one of its provinces?” someone asked.
She shook her head decisively. “No. As a ‘state.’ They may say that the status of the State of Thuringia- Franconia, legally, is no different from that of the other provinces, but, still, ‘state’ is a distinguishing term. There are nuances to be considered. The word has connotations tied to its history. A ‘state’ in the English language, I have learned, was not only one of the component units of the ‘United States of America,’ but also could be and was often utilized as synonymous with ‘nation.’ ”
She suddenly grinned impishly, looking a decade younger than her thirty years. “See how useful it is to have up-time advisers. Marcie had a friend at the university who majored in ‘marketing.’ First impressions are always important. ‘State’ is much better than ‘province.’ ”
“ ‘Marketing,’ ” one of her council asked dubiously. “The up-timers went to a university to learn to sell things?”
“I have been talking to young Matthaus,” someone answered. “Their merchants no longer offered traditional apprenticeships. They appear to have paid money, called endowments, to schools of higher education, where would-be young merchants were trained by academics, many of whom had never been traders themselves. The result was called an MBA. A ‘Master of Business Administration.’ ”
The sheer horror of this concept caused a gloomy silence to descend on the conference room.
“You now have heard the essence of what I am proposing. Dr. Bienner has prepared a ‘position paper’ that I want each of you to read. We will reconvene tomorrow. Keep the desirability of a direct connection between your heads and your necks firmly in mind.”
Wilhelm Bienner had discovered bullet points and the Joy of the Executive Summary.
• Both the USE and Venice are seriously interested, for good sound economic and commercial reasons, in having a land bridge between them; while air transport is a boon, it will not dominate the exchange of goods and people for some decades. Tyrol’s entrance into the USE would meet this need (see projections, Appendices I– IV);
• Maximilian of Bavaria isn’t the most stable of next door neighbors to have just at this moment (see retrospective from mid-summer 1634 to the present, Appendix V);
• At a time when Tyrol could really use a strong archbishop in Salzburg, the Holy Spirit in its wisdom has chosen to give Us Paris von Lodron. Even if his publicists represent him as being “as cautious and wise as Pericles,” what that means for Us is that he’s huddling like a turtle in its shell; he may be expected to defend the territories of the archdiocese as strongly as he can, but it is not probable that he will assist Us if Maximilian gives Tyrol problems (see further analysis, Appendix VI);
• Our cousins in Vienna are preoccupied with setting up a new administrative structure for the Austro-
