“I’d be very careful of expressing that view at the Higgins,” Brandy said, enjoying the moment. “You wouldn’t be the first great lady to be told that there’s no room for you there, even if the hotel was empty. Delia Higgins does what she wants.”
That sniff again. A big sniff this time.
“And you, Madam Streshnyova? Where would you like to stay? The Residentz is pretty full.”
Madam Streshnyova was Brandy’s favorite so far. It didn’t seem to matter to her that her niece was the czarina. And Brandy could tell that Madam Streshnyova was sick to death of Madam Sheremetev.
“Oh, anywhere is fine for me,” Madam Streshnyova said. “I don’t need the Higgins. Perhaps there’s another hotel? Or a room at the Residentz, if that’s possible.”
Brandy decided to make it possible, one way or another.
Since Brandy had gone and fallen in love with the dashing Russian prince, she buckled in and the Barbies helped. Well, the Barbies helped some, as they had time. They were still going to school, they had their business interests, but they did manage to pop up and save the day more than once.
The wedding had a tentative date sometime in the summer of this year. Meanwhile, the dragon ladies were going over Brandy’s pedigree and tut-tutting all the while because they couldn’t find any nobility at all in Brandy’s recorded ancestry. They were discovering for themselves what any number of western European down-timers had already learned-that Americans just didn’t fit neatly into established lines, pedigrees and social estates. Technically, all up-timers were commoners. In the real world…
It wasn’t that simple. Any number of down-time prominent families had already tacitly decided that for all social purposes up to and including marriage Americans could be considered equivalent to the aristocracy. “Honorary noblemen,” as it were. But the Russian delegation was made of sterner stuff and not yet ready to call it quits.
By May, Brandy was ready to pull a Saint George on all three of the dragon ladies. But letters were still flowing back and forth between her and her Russian pen pals. The czarina was enthusiastic about the dirigible they were building in Bor on the Volga, though it was expected to take over a year to complete. Natasha was enthusiastic about the new industries that were starting up in Russia, especially in Moscow and Natasha’s family seat, a town called Murom on the Oka River. The Oka, Brandy learned, was the river route from Moscow to the Volga and Nizhny Novgorodi. The Volga was developing into the Russian industrial corridor. And, in some ways, it was doing it faster than it was happening in Germany. Russia had farther to go and fewer people to take it there, but it was an autocratic state. If the government decided there would be a dirigible, there darn well will be a dirigible. If Princess Natasha decided that they would build steam engines in Murom, they will darn well build steam engines in Murom.
An open society whose economy was based mostly on free enterprise might be great for innovation and dynamic in the long run. But over the fall of 1633 Brandy had been forced to the realization that when it came to putting innovations into production… well, the expression “shoot the engineer and put it into production” took on a whole new urgency when the authority really could shoot the engineer. It wasn’t nice and it didn’t fit with her image of either Natasha or the czarina, but it did get results. It got results even when neither Natasha or the czarina had any intention of shooting anyone. Just the fact that they could brought results.
Brandy paid attention to these things in part because it was increasingly her job as Vladimir’s primary up- timer consultant, but also because it gave her something to distract her from worrying about what the dragon ladies from the Russian steppes were sending home and whether they would be able to scuttle the wedding.
“That… that… raving bitch!”
“What’s the matter now, my darling?” Vladimir asked. “Which of our dragon ladies has made you angry?
“Madam Sheremetev.”
“Because…”
“She said that if she sends a bad report about me, the czar would change his mind about letting you marry me. And you told me he said yes already. So which is it, dammit?”
“Yes, the czar gave his consent,” Vladimir said, suddenly even more worried. “But a bad report-if it is bad enough- might cause him to reconsider. That is, I agree, what Madam Sheremetev strongly implies at every opportunity.”
“Does the old bat actually have that kind of power over us?”
“Probably not. But she does want you to believe that.”
“What can we do?”
“It’s the way they are, the Sheremetevs. Obviously, she wants something else. Some kind of procedure, some kind of machine, something her family can make money and power off of.”
“Well, do we bribe her? Or just blow her off? We better decide something quick. She said, not quite in so many words, that she’s going to send her report pretty soon.”
Vladimir knew this was pretty standard procedure for the Sheremetev family and confirmed that she was likely to write such a letter. He wasn’t all that worried about it actually convincing the czar to cancel the wedding. After all, Brandy was friends with the czarina, which equated to having a pretty good friend at court. “If there is something you can think of to give her, go ahead.”
After some consideration, Brandy decided to try giving the old bat photography, or at least to point her in that direction. Brandy had a talk with Father Gavril, the Orthodox priest sent to Grantville, and they determined that photographs didn’t count as prohibited drawings any more than icons did, but for a different reason. Photographs were in effect drawn by God-His light painting the image rather than the corrupt hand of man. Brandy put together a packet and gave it to Madam Sheremetev who sent it off to Moscow and was almost nice to Brandy for a week or so before she started asking for something else.
By the time the ice would start forming on the Oka River in the fall of 1634, the Sheremetev family would be making photographs on their estates and arguing that they didn’t owe any duties on them because they had gotten them directly from Grantville not from the Dacha.
By that same time, of course, Natasha already had a steam engine factory, a celluloid/cellophane/rayon factory, a wood pulp-based paper mill, a shop making capacitors and half a dozen other projects up and running. Each managed by a member of the Streltzi class who was becoming effectively a deti boyar of the Gorchakov family.
Brandy would never be more glad to see the back of anyone as she would be to see the backs of the dragon ladies when they headed back to Russia.
Brandy was plenty busy with her correspondence and her work with Vladimir.
As the wedding approached, Brandy got a letter from Natasha describing the Sheremetev’s machinations with the photography.
Having established that because the Sheremetev clan got the photographic process directly from Grantville instead of from us, Natasha wrote, they are now claiming that they got everything from the Fresno scrapers to steam engines directly from Grantville and not from the Dacha.
Cass Lowry is still working in the gun shop, Natasha’s letter continued, and has made friends among Sheremetev’s supporters. I find myself wishing that he was either a little less useful or a lot less obnoxious. He seems to think that he was literally adopted into the clan, not just that he’s become one of their supporters. The idiot. The Sheremetevs are just using him. Apparently, Cass was given a harem and quite a bit of money and lands. For which Sheremetev gets his own Bernie, though not one who seems to work as well as the real Bernie does with us down-timers.
Chapter 49
May 1634
“Princess?” Anya said. “What are these?” Anya held up some sheets of paper and Natasha looked at them.
