Grantville Gazette Part 31

Let us labor for the Master from the dawn till set of sun,

Let us talk of all His wondrous love and care.

Then when all of life is over and our work on earth is done,

And the roll is called up yonder, I'll be there.

Even "Work, for the Night is Coming" hadn't caused any catastrophe.

Alas! Joachim had just given him a quickly translated German version of "Toiling On." Joachim hadn't stopped to think about the theological implications-it had just struck him as a rousing call to action, usable as a song for the Committees of Correspondence meetings with only minor modifications.

He had, unfortunately, left out the line about Salvation is free.

As the formal procession to the state dinner rounded the corner and the heralds in front entered the marketplace, Minnie sang:

Schaffe nun, schaffe nun!

Es gibt noch viel zu tun!

The town was tense enough, as it was. One of the apprentices, more than half-drunk, and obviously not having been present during the rendition of "The Romish Lady," suddenly yelled:

"Work Righteousness! The Americans are secretly teaching Popery! Right here in Jena!"

Minnie reacted fast when she saw the first cobblestone coming. "Save the fiddle!" she shrieked, pus.h.i.+ng Benny to the ground and s.n.a.t.c.hing up the herring keg, which she proceeded to wield as a three dimensional s.h.i.+eld above his body.

Benny saw nothing wrong with her priorities. He scrabbled around the ground with his right hand until he located the violin case, pulled it over, tucked in the instrument and bow, and covered them both with his body.

Minnie's past life experiences had not been such as to give her much confidence in the civil authorities. However, Benny had firmly told her that if there was trouble, she should call, "Help! Police!" Minnie's voice really did have carrying quality. On general principles, she switched to, "Hilfe! Polizei!" Under the hail of cobblestones, the keg was coming apart in her hands. She started throwing the staves.

Tanya and Jamie Lee were back at the inn with the radio, which was never left unattended, but the other four kids who had come to Jena with Ed were at one of the picnic tables behind the brewery booth. Pete, Joel, and Zack headed over toward Benny Pierce at a dead run. Staci grabbed a tub of very dirty dishwater from the back of the booth and dumped it over the head of the guy who had started it.

The police had been positioned to guard the procession of notables. To get to the scene of the fight, they had to go through the crowd on the south side of the parade route, toward the booths lining the edge-since these weren't in the way of the procession, they were the last ones that would be taken down.

It was slow going. The crowd was starting to turn to see what was going on. Parents with children were trying to go at a perpendicular angle to the police movement, to get them out to safety.

Somebody yelled, "What's going on?"

At the edge of the crowd, the reply came. "Papist spies! Somebody found a nest of Papist spies!"

Several dozen day laborers who had been working on dismantling the booths on the west side didn't have the obstacle that faced the movement of the police. They came around the edge of the crowd, not sure what was happening but anxious not to miss it, whatever it might be. One of them took a look and added another cry. "That girl's a thief! She stole money from my uncle in Dieskau. I recognize her. Thief! Thief! Thief!"

Then, to add to the general confusion, he shouted: "Hilfe! Polizei!"

Loudly.

Somehow, "Papist spies" had become "Imperial spies." The cry was spreading through the crowd, rapidly mutating into, "Imperial a.s.sa.s.sins! There are a.s.sa.s.sins here!"

The Tuebingen students, however, kept the original focus: "Work righteousness! Popery!" They threw themselves into the melee, swinging canvas tote bags that, by now, were weighted down not only with the Concordia Triglotta but with two treatises by C.F.W. Walther and any other miscellaneous books and merchandise they had bought in the marketplace. The Wittenberg students regarded this as an omen: they followed.

The two counts and the "personal observers" from the other princ.i.p.alities all had military experience. So did most of their invited guests. Who were, of course, wearing their dress swords. Which they drew, coming to the a.s.sistance of law and order by following the path that the police had blazed through the crowd and yelling for the spectators to get out of their way.

Most of the august and dignified theologians had partic.i.p.ated in at least one riot during their student days. Additionally, they felt a certain responsibility for their current students who appeared to be, given the number of academic gowns being worn by those involved in the fracas, right in the middle of things. They plunged through the crowd after the swordsmen.

All in all, it took Count Ludwig Guenther's steward quite a while to get the procession re-formed. Dinner was delayed by three hours.

"Well, Mike, that's the way things ended up." Ed was finis.h.i.+ng his debriefing. "The colloquy was about the dangers that orthodox Lutherans perceive coming at them from creeping Calvinism. That's what this 'crypto-Calvinism' is, when you get right down to it-Calvinist ideas sneaking into Lutheranism. The riot-well, it wasn't. So don't haul Erika and the others who are in Jena to train their police over the coals. We'd warned them, German and American alike, to be on the alert for anti-Calvinist slogans that might precede an outbreak of violence. There just wasn't any logical reason for them to have their ears open for, 'No Popery.' Not even though it's a good, all-purpose call to an urban riot in most Protestant cities in the here and now. If anything did break out that evening, we expected it to be aimed at someone in the procession, so they were all sort of looking that way, over toward the far side, where they could hear the trumpets. It was just a perfectly ordinary riot, as far as anyone can tell. Conspiracy theories to the contrary."

"Give me the body count again." Mike sighed.

"Not as bad as it might have been. All things considered. Quite a few bruises and broken bones, but those heal. The bad thing is that most of them are little kids who just got trampled. It would have been worse in a closed area, but that market square is pretty open, with lots of exits. My boys got Benny off the scene and behind one of the buildings. He was a bit shaken up, but not hurt. The fiddle's okay. Minnie has a concussion-we think she got that from a cobblestone. At best, she'll have a scar from her hairline down into her left eyebrow. At worst, she may lose that left eye-Doc Adams says that it's too soon to tell. Those things make mean weapons-it sort of makes you realize why city fathers in this day and age aren't fully convinced of the merits of street paving."

"Tell me," said Mike, "just how Minnie became a citizen of Grantville. As far as I know, she'd never set foot in this town."

"Oh, that." Ed looked a little abashed. "I didn't think of it myself, I'm sorry to say. It was a great idea, though."

"What idea?"

"Benny adopted her. Right there in the alley. Things had quieted down a bit, but the 'Thief! Thief!' guy was standing over her and the Jena police were going to arrest her and send her back to Saxony to be tried. Cavriani suggested it-he thinks fast. He asked whether, since Americans had so many other Roman laws, like public offices with terms, they also had the Roman ability to do adoptions that put the adopted child on the same footing as a natural one. Carol Koch looked at him and said, 'Sure.' He's a notary-apparently it comes in handy for a guy who does a lot of procurement. He wrote out the papers then and there. Then the boys witnessed it."

"And how did the, umm, 'Thief! Thief! guy' take this development?"

"Not very well. The Jena police seemed more or less inclined to take his side. That was when Carol bent over, took a running start, and rammed him in the b.a.l.l.s with the top of her head. It distracted him-and them-long enough that we were able to toss Benny and Minnie into the government truck that had brought you and your guests up to Jena to attend the state dinner. Sorry about that, by the way. But we figured that those two needed fast transportation more than you did. Right then and there, anyway. You'll probably be hearing from the guy's uncle. I bailed Carol out. She's feeling rather smug that she finally got to use one of the techniques she learned in the self-defense for women cla.s.s that Ron sort of made her take. Not that I'd really cla.s.sify the way that she used it as 'defensive,' but she says that she was defending Minnie, 'so it counts.'"

Ed stretched. "How was the dinner, by the way?" The exigencies of his post-riot diplomatic activity had caused him to miss it.

"Pretty stiff. The seating was according to protocol, which meant that half of those who were seated next to one another weren't on speaking terms. Since I was the only head of state there besides the two counts, I got to talk to the Oldenburg guy. He seemed pretty pleased with the outcome."

"He ought to be pleased," Ed said. "He engineered it."

"You know," Mike commented, "this isn't the way that the story is supposed to turn out."

"What do you mean?"

"It's backwards from what we expect. It's the liberals and the progressives who are supposed to revolt against the forces of princely tyranny, ally with enlightened ideas, and forge onward toward future progress. Melissa calls it 'the Whig interpretation of history.'"

He leaned back, smiling slyly. "I wish that Melissa was here, actually. I'd really love to see her face when she gets the news that the theological liberals are still happily in bed with the established-church guys and the ultra-orthodox are showing every sign of running with 'separation of church and state.'"

Ed frowned. "That's not quite right, Mike."

"What's not quite right?"

"Theological liberals." Ed thought a few second; then said: "The word 'liberals' is wrong. Really, the Philippists-the 'crypto-Calvinists' that the orthodox Lutherans are so opposed to-or at least a lot of them-aren't any more 'liberal' than the orthodox. They don't believe their doctrines any less. They just think that fewer of them are essential. They'll be just as stubborn about the ones that they do consider essential."

"Oh, grief!" said Mike. "Well, 'it's a great life, if you don't weaken.' Let's get back to work."

Ed went back to his office. Sitting on a bench outside the door was Leopold Cavriani, who smiled pleasantly and asked, "Would you be interested in talking about Naples, now?"

Ed studied him for a moment. Cavriani Freres de Geneve-facilitators.

"I'd ask who you were working for, at the moment," he said dryly, "but I'm sure the answer would confuse me even more than the fine points of theological doctrine argued at the colloquy."