1633

***

Predestination was on Rebecca's mind also, that day. In her case, spoken with a curse.

***

'They will not listen to me,' snapped Rebecca, the moment she came through the front door of the house they'd rented in The Hague. 'There is no point in trying any longer. Is the radio working?'

She stormed across the room, heading for the staircase leading to the upper floor. Behind her, Jeff gingerly closed the door, as if he were afraid the sound itself would send Rebecca's temper soaring higher still. He and Gretchen exchanged a glance. His wife shrugged and rose from the couch she'd been sitting on.

Gretchen had never entertained any great hopes that Holland's complacent oligarchs would listen to warnings brought to them by a young woman, the wife of the 'President of the United States' or not-especially one who was a Jewess to boot, and whose father had even managed to fall afoul of Amsterdam's Jewish community. Three days after they'd arrived in The Hague, Holland's capital city, the normally even-tempered Rebecca was like a cat spitting fury. The treatment she'd received from Holland's powers-that-be had ranged from bureaucratic indifference to paternalistic condescension to-often enough-barely veiled outright hostility.

Gretchen, on the other hand, had the complacence of someone who could at least take comfort in the fact that the bad news was something she had firmly predicted. Fat burghers. Pigs in a trough-and you're trying to warn them the slop is about to run out. They don't want to hear it, simple as that.

As Gretchen headed for the stairs, she could hear Rebecca's voice coming from the landing above.

'Stupid!' That was almost a shout. Gretchen tried to remember if she'd ever heard Rebecca shouting.

No, she couldn't. Not once.

'Stupid!' That was a shout. The words which followed declined some in sheer volume, as Rebecca continued stamping up the stairs, but the tone remained furious.

' 'The French have always been our allies,' ' she added in a singsong. ' 'It is in their own interests to oppose the Spanish. Why would they change that long-standing policy?' '

When Gretchen reached the landing on the third floor, she saw that Rebecca was talking with Heinrich. More precisely, was using Heinrich as a sounding board for her snarls.

Rebecca, hearing Gretchen's footsteps, glanced back. 'It is just as Gretchen said it would be. Fat stupid burghers! Pigs in a trough. Except not even pigs are that stupid.'

'Quite intelligent animals, actually,' said Heinrich mildly. 'But it's true that a pig in a trough usually can't think of anything beyond his slops.'

Rebecca was starting to simmer down. From the experience of the past few days, Gretchen knew that the young Sephardic woman would be her normal calm self within a few minutes. Rebecca could not hold a grudge for very long. Unlike Gretchen herself, who could hold one for eternity.

Heinrich's next words helped. 'As it happens, Jimmy finally got the radio working tonight. Not more than an hour ago, in fact.' He smiled sweetly. 'There's a message to you from your husband. He and the baby are fine. He sends you-'

But Rebecca was not listening. She was already through the door leading to the radio room. Heinrich transferred the smile to Gretchen.

'So impatient. It's this 'true love' nonsense the Americans talk about.'

Gretchen returned his smile with one that was even sweeter. 'Be careful, Heinrich. Annalise reads at least two American romance novels a week. One a day, I bet, now that summer's here and she's out of school. I think she's already gone through half the stock in the libraries.'

That wiped the smile from his face. Gretchen couldn't resist the impulse to rub it in. She slid from the 'Germanized English' which had become the lingua franca of the United States into the colloquial Oberpfalz-accented German which was the tongue she and Heinrich had both grown up with. 'And there won't be any let-up once she does, either. Just before we left, she paid the two dollars to join the romance readers' club.'

Heinrich rolled his eyes. ' 'Letup,' ' he muttered. 'Even our good stout Oberpfalz German is getting corrupted by these newfangled terms and notions. Whatever happened to the idea that reading begins and ends with the Bible? Not even the damn Protestants tried to claim you needed more than that. Now-romance readers' clubs!' '

Gretchen grinned at him. 'You should see what my husband belongs to. Something called a 'science fiction readers' club.' '

She and Heinrich had been born and raised in nearby towns in that part of the Palatinate known as the Oberpfalz. Although both of them were usually considered 'Catholics' by most Americans in Grantville, the reality was far more complex. In the year 1555, in the so-called 'Peace of Augsburg,' the German princes had established the principle known as cuius regio, eius religio, according to which the religion of a territory was determined by the faith of the prince who ruled it. In some areas of Germany-the Palatinate being one of the most flagrant examples-what followed were decades of constant changes in official religious affiliation. In their short lives, Gretchen and Heinrich had gone from Lutheran to Calvinist to Catholic-and Gretchen's grandmother Veronica had gone through three more such switches before they'd even been born.

By the time they'd actually met, he as a mercenary and she as another mercenary's camp woman in Tilly's army, neither of them had much left in the way of practicing faith. In their day and age, before the Americans arrived and started turning everything upside down, 'agnosticism' was a meaningless word. But now, it was an accurate enough description of both of them-Gretchen openly, Heinrich less so.

Still, both of them tended to retain a number of German attitudes on many questions. Neither of them, for instance, had any use for the silly namby-pamby American notions about the 'evil of corporal punishment applied to children.' One exception, however, was the subject of 'romantic love.' On that question, Gretchen had been thoroughly converted. Not by books or theory, but by the simple fact of her young American husband's own love for her. Beginning with their wedding night, Jeff's uncomplicated passion had washed her level-headed German practicality aside.

Not so Heinrich. He regarded Gretchen's younger sister's infatuation with him exactly the way Annalise's grandmother did: silliness; unpractical; Heinrich was still too young to be married, much less a sixteen-year-old girl with no property.

Gretchen patted him on the cheek and passed by him into the radio room. 'Poor Heinrich,' she murmured. 'Like a piglet being led to slaughter.'

Inside the room, she found Rebecca sitting on a chair, holding a piece of paper in her hands and reading it by the light of an oil lamp. Seeing the slump in her shoulders, Gretchen was alarmed for an instant. Then, as Rebecca raised a smiling face toward her, she realized that the slump had been simply one of relief.

'All is well,' Rebecca announced. 'Although I so miss them. Bad enough to be absent from Michael. Not being able to see my little daughter every day is even worse.'

Gretchen came over to her and laid a reassuring hand on Rebecca's shoulder. 'Sephie will be fine. I raised little Willi in an army camp, and he did well enough. Children are much tougher than you think, as long as they don't become ill.'

Rebecca stared up at her. Gretchen knew that Rebecca found her own calm attitude about leaving her and Jeff's children behind somewhat puzzling. But it was probably impossible to explain. Though she was a 17 th -century woman herself, Rebecca had been born and raised in a rather sheltered environment. Gretchen's had been also, in truth, until she was sixteen. Then… Tilly's soldiers arrived in their town, plundered their house, murdered their father, subjected her to gang rape-Annalise, thank God, had still been too young for that-and took what was left of the family to become camp followers. In the two years that followed, Gretchen had given birth to a son of her own and become the unofficial mother of a number of others. The experience, when it came to the subject of child-rearing, had left her with a very 'stripped down' attitude on the subject. Feed them; care for them; above all, make sure they don't get sick. They'll survive anything else, well enough.

Suddenly, Rebecca's face looked a bit guilty and she glanced back at the paper in her hands. 'Oh, I forgot. Michael asked me to tell you and Jeff that Willi and Joseph are doing well also. So is your grandmother. And Annalise.'

Gretchen nodded. 'Any other news?'

'Not really. Michael senses that something is-'in the air,' as he puts it. But neither he nor Gustav Adolf can quite determine what Richelieu is up to. He does say-this came from Axel Oxenstierna-that the Danes have been acting especially hostile lately. There have been some minor clashes in the Baltic.'

By the time she finished, Rebecca was tense again. Gretchen turned her head and stared out the window. That window, as it happened, looked to the north. Denmark was somewhere beyond that horizon, and…

Increasing Danish hostility.

In the two years since she and her family had been rescued by the Americans, Gretchen's own political sophistication and knowledge of the world had grown rapidly. So she was almost as quick as Rebecca in making the connection.

'Oh, God,' she hissed. 'If Richelieu's managed-'

'I think he has,' said Rebecca firmly. 'It all makes sense, Gretchen. Everything fits together now. Except… I wonder why he didn't want us to see what sort of preparations the French ports are making?'

'But everyone knows the French and Dutch are preparing to fight the Spanish,' Gretchen protested, less because she thought Rebecca was wrong than because she so badly wanted her to be. 'Why should he try to hide that from us?'

'Of course everyone knows about the Dutch alliance,' Rebecca agreed grimly. 'And he's gone to some lengths to see to it that they do. But there had to be something he wanted to hide from us. Something besides the fact that he's impressing merchantmen.'

'Everyone's impressing them, Becky.'

'Yes,' said Rebecca, nodding. In the 17 th century, during time of war, 'navies' were mainly made up of armed merchantmen. Naval mobilization consisted largely of impressing the ships into military service and adding them to a core of vessels which had been specifically designed as warships. 'But to what end?' She smiled with absolutely no humor. 'I know we all thought we knew the answer to that question, but now…'

Gretchen went over to the window and pressed her nose against the pane. The glass, as was usually the case except in the richest homes, was not as clear as the glass she'd become accustomed to in Grantville. Leaving aside minor imperfections, the 'flat' panes were almost always wavy, producing a certain distortion in the view. But it wouldn't have mattered, even if the glass had been perfect and it had still been daylight. There would have been nothing to see beyond the houses of The Hague, anyway, except Holland's flat terrain to the north. And then, beyond that, the Frisian islands and the North Sea and, eventually, Denmark.

'If the Danes have secretly allied with the French,' she said softly, 'which would make sense from their viewpoint, of course-'

She heard Rebecca's little murmur of agreement. For all that Denmark and Sweden were both Lutheran nations, they had been enemies for decades. As was usually