Ein feste Burg, Episode 14
Chapter 21: From the Government
Mayor's office, Brotterode, West Thuringia County
May 1635
"Isch bin von der Regierung, und isch bin hier zu helfen." Bryant Burke didn't even try to hide his outlandish accent. He was completely unable to pronounce the German word "ich" correctly.
Born and raised in the twentieth century in America, he'd never had an interest in foreign languages. Since the Ring of Fire had transplanted him together with the whole town to the seventeenth century in Germany, he had noticed that his accent brought him a certain reputation in the villages of the Thuringian Forest underlining his "coming from the government to help" stance.
But it seemed in this village nobody was even going to listen to him. The mayor was not interested in any "help from that lousy government." In fact, "lousy" was not the term he had used when Bryant made his appearance in the "mayor's office" above the town's Gasthaus.
The fact that they called the inn "The Inn" said, in Bryant's opinion, much about their creativity and intellect. So without any further comment, he pulled out the sealed parchment which ordered "all official personnel of West Thuringia County" to support his mission.
"And that, dear Mayor, means you, too."
****
When founding the USE, the local princes and democratic counties and states had been more or less forced to clean up the mess that centuries of splitting properties had brought on, giving whole Ämter as pawns for loans and not being able to redeem them after the agreed period.
So the Herrschaft of Schmalkalden in Thuringia, inherited by the Hessian landgrave after the last count's death in 1584 and completely surrounded by Wettin properties, had been integrated into the new State of Thuringia-Franconia, together with several other enclaves, in exchange for properties on the other side of the Werra. Bureaucrats had drawn new country borders for a more logical organization, regardless of historical relationships, and so the small forest village of Brotterode as the only Lutheran parish in the Calvinist principality had been assigned to West Thuringia County, while the Rest of Schmalkalden went to Suhl County.
****
Bryant had to go from house to house to collect the information he needed. In the other villages, the mayors had always been eager to call the men of the village together in the town's largest meeting room.
He had no idea why the people of Brotterode, of all villages he had yet visited, hadn't the slightest interest in helping him. They were finally part of a Lutheran community, had the right to vote, freedom of speech, and all the other advantages of a modern society. So why did they come across so massively unfriendly?
Bryant Burke was annoyed. Again. Even after half a year in this new job.
House of the Burke family, Grantville
November 1634
Bryant Burke was annoyed. Again. In fact, he really felt pissed off. Linda Colburn, his boss a the Biogas and Methane Company, might be enthusiastic about collecting feces—human and animal alike—to provide "green energy" for Grantville. Bryant was definitely not. He sniffed at his clothes. They should be clean, but somehow he always had the feeling that he stank.
His fields of interest in middle school had been chess, mathematics, and physics in that order. When he attended high school, he added one. Computers. More than anything, he was interested in computer games of all types.
As soon as he had his driver's license, he went to work in his father's company, hauling mobile homes through West Virginia. With the money earned, he could buy his first computer, and start to program computer games himself.
In his senior year, he switched to a summer job in Morgantown. Peter Jones, one of his father's friends, had owned a small software development company there. And the middle-aged man quickly understood that this youngster had a knack for the most complex problems.
Immediately after graduation from North Marion High, Bryant started working for Peter in earnest. After two years, he became a partner, and in 1998, they had, thanks to Peter's economic skills and the skillful horde of geeks Bryant had gathered around himself, a flourishing enterprise.
That was when Bryant suddenly noticed that the fat girl from the neighborhood, with whom he had unavoidably spent years in elementary and middle school, had dropped all her fat and grown up into a charming young lady.
It took only three months for Sonia Hill and Bryant Burke to decide that they would live together. He built a house in Grantville next to his parents' house. Sonia quit her job in Fairmont, and Bryant moved all his computers into the basement and worked from there.
The birth of their long-awaited daughter Kaylee Joy in late March 2000 was, in hindsight, the absolute prime of their life. From there on their life went south. Steeply.
One week later they were no longer in shiny West Virginia but in—ugh!—the Dark Ages in a foreign land called Thuringia. Suddenly his life was in the crapper. What could a computer programmer do for a living in the seventeenth century?
Nobody during the Thirty Years' War needed the modern kind of software he specialized in. Helping others with macro programming in Word or Excel was something he detested wholeheartedly.
Taking jobs further away from his core competence had been even less satisfying, but a real necessity while Sonia stayed at home caring for the now two children . . . Darn missing contraception. And then Kaylee Joy had died from rubella—for Heaven's sake, one of the most harmless child diseases back up-time—in 1634 and Sonia had immediately decided to become a pediatric nurse to be better able to help the next time. And the next time would certainly come.
Bryant had earned a living for his family by working for the Stinkers since the company had been founded in 1631. With each and every working day, he hated the job more and more. For the last two years he had tried to find a better one. But without college or professional training—no chance. He wasn't the kind of guy to spontaneously jump into the dark muddy water of founding an enterprise of his own without any startup capital.
But when he opened the front door of his home this evening—only one beer in the American Ash this time—he heard a strange male voice in his living room.
Entering, he saw one of these Turkish Jews who lived in Grantville and managed the money flows.
Hey, will they introduce online banking now? But that thought was too good to be true.
"Hi, everybody."
"Hi, Bryant," Sonia said. Then she pointed to the Turk. "Ruben Nasi here has a business proposal for both of us. Perhaps that will bring you out of your depression."
"Good evening, Mr. Burke." The portly man rose and extended a hand.
"Good evening, Mr. Nasi." Bryant took the hand. No, this wasn't one of the bank guys. "To what do we owe the honor?"
"Mostly to the fact that your wife has successfully finished her nurse training."
Bryant frowned. Shit! I really hoped he was here for me.
"And," Nasi continued, "because some people have told me that you have the natural talent to explain complex things in readily understandable terms.
"My employer, the Hereditary Governor of West Thuringia County, is looking for several specific talents, and finding two of them in one family hits, as you Americans say it, two birds with one stone."
"He wants me," Sonia said, "as a nanny for his children, and to set up a kindergarten for the town. And he wants you to organize his county."
"What?" Bryant looked puzzled from his wife to the Turk and back.
"Preparing a census," Nasi said. "Providing a database application with search function and briefing the interviewers."
And he doesn't even stumble over all these modern words.
Das Gasthaus, Brotterode
May 1635
"Yes-sh, I'm from the gov-vernment. And yes-sh I'm here to help me—you. Believe it or not." Bryant's voice was a little too loud and a little uncertain. "Rosh-shi, bring me another beer. And for all my friendsh-sh here around. At least that’s something the government can do for y'all."
He slapped the shoulder of the sturdy man next to him. All men in the inn seemed to be sturdy. Lumberjacks. Charcoal makers. Blacksmiths. Everything in this village in the boondocks of the county seemed to turn around the forest. Perhaps they even ate the wood. He hadn't seen any fields when he arrived here.
"Sh-sho you tell me: How can I help you?"
A voice from farther away shouted: "We need more beer!"
Everybody laughed. But then another man shouted: "Michael is right. Every time the weather is bad, we don't have enough beer."
What? Bryant tried to get his wits together. He turned around and faced that man. "And what's the reason for this?"
"The road. It's the road." Several men now chimed in. Then all talked across each other.
Bryant knocked on the table. "Please, meine Herren, please.
"Choose one of you to tell me the story."
A burly man stood up. "I'm Sebastian Ackermann. I'm the brewer master. We can't grow any barley here. The weather is too bad. So I must buy barley and hops. We've got only one road. It leads to Kleinschmalkalden. But they haven't much crop themselves. And so everything is too expensive.
"When the weather is good, we can use the path north over the Inselsberg to Tabarz, but that takes too much time, and there are no merchants using the path. We need a real road to Tabarz. But we're no road builders. We don't have the tools or one of these newfangled machines."
"Okay," Bryant said and tried to fend off the clouds around his brain. This might be a chance. "Rosi, please make me a coffee from my stash." Then he reached into his rucksack and seized his laptop. Fortunately the battery was still working. Drafting one of the natives to pedal duty wouldn't be a very good idea at the moment. He opened it, and switched it on.
The people around him were staring at the screen in front of him, which changed from black to light blue, showing clouds and a colored flag. Then they jumped back when suddenly "the Windows Sound" announced the system's availability.
Accustomed to this behavior, he always wondered how they would have reacted to the fanfares of the NT 5.0 Beta he had tried out in 1999. Anyway! He started to search through the data he and his assistants had gathered during the last months.
Jagdschloss of the Duke of Saxe-Eisenach, Marksuhl
Late November 1634
Sonia Burke looked around. The salon in the Jagdschloss looked old-fashioned, with small windows, chairs and tables made from dark wood, and walls draped with cloth. In contrast, electric lights brightened up the dark corners, trying to supplement the little light coming in from a grey and foggy morning outside.
"It's clean here," she said to Bryant.
"It smells clean," he answered. "It smells like . . ." He sniffed.
"Honey?" a voice asked from behind their backs.
Bryant and Sonia turned around. An elderly man approached from a side door.
"I must work on my manners," he said smiling. "I'm not accustomed to doors that open so silently."
Bryant and Sonia rose. That had to be their employer-to-be, Johann Ernst. He spoke rather good English.
"Excellency," Bryant bowed. He wasn't a raging redneck, so he had no problem following the down-time rules of politeness when meeting a member of the high nobility.
Sonia tried a curtsy and stumbled.
"For Heaven's sake," Johann Ernst exclaimed. "Don't break your neck, Ms. Burke." He quickly approached Sonia and extended both hands. "The parquet is freshly polished."
Sonia seized the hands with a sigh and straightened.
"Thank you, Excellency," she said. "That's not easy."
"Yes, indeed," the governor answered grinning. "Our girls learn curtsies very early. It's second nature to them. And you don't need to do it again in my house. We are accustomed to people who are less formal."
He shook hands with Sonia and Bryant, and they all sat again.
"Please tell me," the governor started the talk. "Why do you want to leave Grantville?"
Sonia looked pointedly to Bryant. The governor followed her gaze.
Bryant blushed. "Okay, it's more or less my fault. See, I've got a very esoteric job . . ." He stopped, searching for words.
"Programming computers," Johann Ernst said. "I've heard that."
"Yes. . . . No. . . . Not really. Not the computers you can see in Grantville. Up-time, we had other computers. As powerful as ten thousand of those in Grantville. Calculating the weather forecast or simulating explosions." He looked quizzically at Johann Ernst. Did that hit home?
Johann Ernst smiled and painted quotes into the air. " 'Highly parallel,' they told me. But I didn't really understand that."
"It's like the difference between a man with a gun trying to shoot an enemy and the combined attack of ten thousand guns trying to kill ten thousand enemies with a single volley."
Johann Ernst beamed. "Oh, they must avoid shooting the same enemy a hundred times and leaving ninety-nine unharmed. That I can understand."
"Yes, exactly. How would you formulate the order to each of the shooters, if their enemies were constantly changing places? That's the kind of problems I was solving up-time."
"And Grantville doesn't give you the same challenge?"
Bryant snorted. "Not in the least. My neighbors call me whenever their computers go down. Mostly because some piece of electronic equipment finally went kaput. And we no longer have a spare part that fits."
Johann Ernst frowned. "Will all computers 'go kaput'?"
Bryant shrugged. "The government tries to get a hold on as many computers as possible. Preserving them, even the broken ones, for the time when replacement parts can be made. Capacitors and resistors will come soon, transistors perhaps in one decade.
"The worst are crashed hard disks. It will take many years before they can be replaced. And each one that fails takes its data with it. It's like burning books when you have no other copy. And a hard disk has the memory of a million books or more.
"Yes. I fear there will be a time—ten or twenty years from now—when all computers are dead."
"Hmmm." Johann Ernst leaned back. "And what will you do then?"
"To be honest: I have no idea. But I heard you have a job for me to fill the time until then."
Das Gasthaus, Brotterode
May 1635
Bryant felt the gazes of at least ten of the men at his back while he was browsing through the database. Not long ago he would have panicked with all these kibitzers.
"Okay," he said and straightened. "I haven't got a complete solution, but enough to send out some letters.
"It happens that the smiths in Ruhla have started to build scrapers and other construction tools. And as I can see on the wish list of Tabarz, they want to have this road, too. But after the last sweep of the plague, they have just enough men to cultivate their fields. Now in spring, they can't spare any of them to build a road.
"But they've got enough money in their coffers to pay for two-thirds of the tools. This would leave Brotterode to provide the last third and the manpower.
"How does that sound?"
The men he addressed looked unhappily to one another. Then another man rose. It was Thomas Meier, the mayor who had been so not helpful a couple of days ago. He was also the innkeeper, and Rosi was his wife.
"We don't have much money in our coffers. We're a lumberjack village. We cut down the trees in winter, and the last winter was not exactly fitting for this task. With the switch in allegiance we also lost our clients in Hesse downstream at the Werra."
"But do you have any seasoned beams?" Bryant asked.
"Oh yes, we had cut them for the new castle of the von Gleichen family, but then the last heir died, and nobody wanted to pay for the wood. That's a lot of money if they can be sold."
"So what do you need?" Bryant now addressed everybody.
After some minutes of murmur and whisper, another voice from the back came through. "Someone who will buy our wood and pay at once."
"And I think I know someone."
Chapter 22: From Magdeburg to Eisenach
Weimar, Home of the Rudolph family
April 1633
"No, no, no," Anna Hackenbergin emphatically told her husband. "I don't want to return to Magdeburg. It doesn't matter how wonderful Otto's offer is and how generous the payment will be. I lost my parents in the sack. You lost your parents, and we lost our Margarethe. I don't want to see that town again. Ever!"
Andreas Rudolph's forehead showed deep furrows. He should have foreseen this. They had fled their hometown in 1631 and, after a kind of odyssey, ended in Weimar. Anna was so happy to have a home again. She had refused all the offers that Andreas' old friend Otto Gericke, the Swedish-supported mayor of Magdeburg, had sent to ask Andreas to return and help him rebuild the city.
Andreas had taken some short assignments there, but then the new "atmosphere" of the rapidly growing—rampantly sprawling—metropolis had repelled him, too. Otto's newest offer was more than generous, but Andreas wanted to stay with his family. And when his family refused to move, he had no choice.
For some time he had earned a living working on the plans for a new fortress in Erfurt, but after the founding of the CPE, which brought southern Thuringia into the center of a peaceful area, Gustavus Adolphus had ordered the stop of all fortification activities to save the money for more important things. For his new capital for example.
"I can stay here, but how can I earn the money we need to live? Anna will turn six next year, and then she should attend a good Gymnasium. I'm not sure my connections are enough to get her a scholarship for the stay."
Now his wife frowned. "Isn't there any job you can take and stay in the vicinity? Andreas has nearly forgotten what his papa looks like."
"I heard the city council of Gotha is looking for a librarian to organize the 'county library.' They don't pay much, but it includes free stay for all of the family. And if Anna can attend the Gymnasium in Gotha, we don't need to pay for her lodging."
"And what speaks against it?" Anna asked.
Andreas shrugged. "Basically nothing. I just don't want to wither in a library."
Anna rose, approached her husband, hugged him, and kissed his cheek. "You will do something else again, I'm certain. If—no, when—the opportunity arises, you will build the most wonderful palace in Germany."
Library of West Thuringia County, Gotha
March 1635
Andreas Rudolph looked up from the books he was classifying. Some weeks in Grantville's National Library had given him a kind of love of the Dewey Decimal System. He was sure that the amount of time that could be saved later was worth the one-time task of bringing all the books of his library into that system.
Now he was distracted by two young women entering his library. The first one was a tall, muscular blonde, clothed completely in black leather. She looked like the illustrations of Valkyries in the Germanic sagas. And her face was as threatening as they were. She looked to the right and left, moving fast between the shelves, her hand on a large up-time "revolver" in a waist holster.
A middle-sized woman with dark curls, wearing one of the new-fashioned padded jackets called "parkas" and a long skort, followed on her heels. Her smile was somewhere between amused and apologetic. While her companion—obviously a bodyguard—continued scanning all the aisles between the shelves, she approached Andreas' desk.
Andreas rose and bowed. "Guten Tag, meine Dame. I am Andreas Rudolph, the librarian."
"Guten Tag, mein Herr," she said and extended a hand. Hesitantly Andreas took and shook it. "I am Maximiliane von Pasqualini," she continued.
"How can I help you, Your Grace?" Andreas asked. "What are you looking for?"
Frau von Pasqualini frowned. "Ideas, Herr Rudolph."
"What ideas?" Andreas felt a little confused.
"If I had an idea, I wouldn't be here."
Hmmm, a little snippy. Well, nobles are like that. Smile and bear it!
"So what exactly do you want to see, Your Grace?"
"I heard the library owns a large collection of architectural plans and drawings of castles and palaces in Thuringia. Is that true?"
"That is correct, Your Grace." He pointed to a shelf full of large paper rolls. "Do you want me to get some for you?"
"No, thank you. I think I prefer to browse them on my own." The woman turned her back to Andreas and started in the direction of the shelf.
"Please return them to the same shelf afterward," Andreas said to her back, but got no response. So he shrugged and continued with his work.
****
Whenever he looked up from his work, the picture was the same. The large blonde leaning against a shelf; her eyes moving between the exit, the librarian, and the other woman. The dark-haired one moving paper rolls from the shelves onto a large table near a window, leaning over the plans and drafts, constantly murmuring to herself, taking notes in a kind of notebook with metal rings.
Until finally Anna entered the room, carrying Andreas' afternoon coffee. The blonde straightened first, scrutinizing the newcomer, and then relaxing.
Anna's face showed concern when she saw the armed woman, but Andreas waved her to his table. She put down the tray and lifted her eyebrow questioningly.
"Some noble wants to get 'ideas' for her new palace," Andreas told his wife softly and nodded in the direction of the dark-haired woman.
Anna turned, hesitated, but then she started into the same direction. She approached the woman, and then curtsied. "Guten Tag, Frau von Pasqualini," she said.
Now Andreas was completely confused. How does Anna know that woman? And why does that woman blush?
The woman looked up from the plan she was studying, and then straightened. "Oh please," she said. "Don't be so formal. And, by the way, have we met before?"
Andreas saw Anna smiling shyly. What? Since when does Anna smile shyly?
"No, Frau von Pasqualini, but I saw your photo in the Grantville Times last month. May I congratulate you on your children? They are so cute."
Children? Photo? Grantville Times? Somehow, Andreas felt left out. Sure, he hadn't the time to read these modern "newspapers" thoroughly, which entered the library to be archived, but . . .
Then he slapped his forehead. "The duke's mistress." Oh shit, did I say that out loud? His jaw dropped, and heat shot through his veins.
Anna and von Pasqualini looked in his direction, looked at each other, then laughed. All three women laughed. The noble's bodyguard had come closer, too.
"Yes," Frau von Pasqualini said. "The duke's mistress—and damned proud of it. No need to worry, Herr Rudolph. Thank you. By the way . . ." She sniffed. "Can I have a cup of coffee, too?"
****
"See, Anna," Max said, leaning back. "I had a kind of apprenticeship on my papa's and my uncle's construction sites. I've studied architecture in Bologna. I've designed concrete buildings in Grantville."
She took a deep breath. "I have no problems with calculating the amount of materials or manpower we need to build the New Wartburg. But when it comes to 'beauty,' I'm kind of lost."
Anna smiled knowingly. "I understand." She took a sip of her coffee.
"The library of Gotha is known for its richness of architectural drawings," Max continued. "So I thought I'd browse through them for some ideas."
Anna smiled again. "I understand." She exchanged glances with her husband.
"But . . ." Max frowned. "I think, what I really need, is someone who has already built—" she painted quotes into the air "—'down-time' buildings. Half-timber. Clay. Bri— Can you please tell me why you both are grinning so broadly?"
Anna broke into laughter. "What you need sits exactly before you."
"Before me? You?"
"Not me," Anna said, still grinning. "But my dear husband. Magister of the Arts Andreas Rudolph. Studied mathematics and architecture in Leiden. Did his Grand Tour with Otto Gericke. Visited all important towns and buildings in Europe. Helped his father to design and build the unfortunate fortifications of Magdeburg." Then she smiled lovingly at Andreas. "And rejected an offer from the same Otto Gericke for building the new opera house in Magdeburg to stay with his family in Thuringia.
"I think he's exactly whom you need."
New Wartburg construction site
Some days later
"What is this?" Andreas Rudolph asked, scowling. The monstrosity before him didn't look like a castle. It didn't look like anything he had ever seen before. The skeleton of a giant bridge perhaps, leading to nowhere, consisting only of some pillars and connections between them.
Wooden scaffolds offered the possibility of climbing onto this skeleton. Yes, it looked like the skeleton of a monstrous leviathan, lifting its skull threateningly into the sky over Eisenach.
Max laughed, steadying her horse. "That's always the first reaction, when somebody arrives here for the first time."
Then she turned her horse toward the village to their right. "Let me show you the plans; perhaps that will change your mind."
Change my mind! Andreas shook his head. Forcefully he averted his gaze from the—thing. That's certainly necessary.
****
"That surely looks better than the reality," Andreas said, looking up from the drawings to the monster's skeleton. "But what exactly do you want to build, Max? It's not a fortress, it's not a church, and it's not a palace. So, what is it?"
"A cultural center," she said. "A place for events. Balls, conferences, concerts, and so on."
"So the whole building is centered on a single large room?"
"More or less." Max shrugged. "There will be smaller rooms, a kitchen, and toilets—"
"But a single large room in the center?" Andreas asked impatiently and tapped with his finger on the plan. "And where are the windows for this large room? Do you want to light it with candles? That will become expensive."
"Um, well . . ."
Andreas turned the sheet, took a pencil. "I've been to Grantville, too," he said. "They've got these gleaming panels at the ceilings in their high school, but we won't have them."
He started to sketch. "When you have the 'large room' in this area, what about putting windows all along this wall? We could build a wooden framework, but instead of straw and bricks, we fill the space with glass. Double glass to be exact; that will keep the heating costs under control."
"Oh my goodness," Max gasped, staring at the sketch. "Glass?"
Her gaze went into the distance to the skeleton, then back to the paper.
"But yes, I think it's possible. We would need sheets with . . ." She tugged her pocket computer out of its sheath and started to calculate.
Andreas smiled. From the moment he first saw the large sheets of glass covering several buildings in Grantville, he wanted to try this out. Now was the opportunity. What did Anna say two years ago? "The most wonderful palace in Germany." Perhaps she had really inherited her great-grandaunt's second sight.
June 1635
Ruben Nasi had an imaginative mind. It was necessary for someone who constantly worked on unclear hints and orders. Being the duke of Sachsen-Eisenach's factor in Grantville for several years had taught him to take all surprises with a stoic mindset. And the stories he had been told about the building progress had prepared him for the view he encountered here.
More or less.
So his thoughts didn't show on his face when he visited the construction site for the first time. Much. Lifting his eyebrow was all he allowed himself before he steered his horse to the "architect's office."
The two younger men and an older one who followed him didn't try to hide their astonishment. They were discussing what they saw with loud voices and sweeping gestures.
"Ruben," he suddenly heard a familiar voice. Max had left the office, a middle-aged man and her Swedish bodyguard in tow.
Ruben dismounted. "Guten Tag, Frau von Pasqualini," he said and bowed deeply.
Now it was Max's turn to lift her eyebrows. Ruben hoped that his short side-glance to the men accompanying him was sending the right signals.
"I didn't expect you to come here," Max said, nodding slightly. Then turned to the man. "Andreas, this is Ruben Nasi, the governor's eyes, ears, and hands in Grantville. Ruben, this is Andreas Rudolph, architect from Magdeburg, my . . . um . . . right hand."
The men shook hands. "Frau von Pasqualini," Ruben said, pointing at his companions, "these are Nicolaus Greiner from Sonneberg, his nephew Hans Adam Greiner from Grumbach, and Stephan Müller the Younger from Schmalenbuche. They are all master glass makers. Nicolaus' father and Stephan's grandfather founded the famous glass works of Lauscha.
"Meine Herren, this is Freifrau Maximiliane von Pasqualini, the chief architect of this whole project."
Ruben could see that the formality of the introduction and the deep bows with which the men greeted her were embarrassing Max. But this time it's necessary. They should get the impression that we do them a favor, not vice versa.
In the meantime, a small cart drawn by another horse had stopped; a teenage boy climbed from the coach box and fastened the horse.
"So, Ruben, meine Herren, what are you bringing me?" Max asked.
"Some assorted samples from our glassworks," the older man Nicolaus answered, bowing again. "You might consider entrusting our company with the task to provide the window glasses you need for the New Wartburg.
"But first, Conrad," he told the boy, who had taken a package from the cart, wrapped in gift paper with an obvious up-time origin. "Please accept this gift as a sign of our devotion."
"Please be careful, meine Dame," Conrad said to Max. "It's heavier than it looks." Then he grinned impishly. " 'Handle with care,' " he continued in English.
A large goblet made from deep blue glass emerged from the package. Five heads were artfully engraved. Ruben could identify Max, Johann Ernst and Christine. Below he could see the heads of two children. Suddenly tears appeared in Max's eyes. "It's wonderful," she whispered. "Many, many thanks."
She cleared her throat and wiped her tears away. "Yes, I will 'handle with care'!" she said softly and smiled at the men surrounding her.
****
"This," Nicolaus explained the first sample, "is a standard window pane made from 'Butzenglas.' " The crown glass was light green; it had a circular bulge in the center that prevented looking through.
Ruben knew this kind of glass from the churches and patrician houses he had visited in his life. And, of course, from the 'outhouse' in Marksuhl, where a whole wall was constructed from a framework of these panes, each roughly a square foot in size.
"We have brought it with us," Stephan commented, "as a reference."
"Yes," Hans Adam continued. "This was the best we could do before the arrival of the up-timers. But then my father, may God rest his soul, decided to send me to Grantville. Stephan's father did the same for him. We were shocked by the giant windows they have there. And our families paid a lot of money to get all the available information on up-time glass making from the libraries."
"Which finally resulted," Nicolaus said with a deprecating stare to the youngsters and a whiff of elation in his voice, "in this."
"This" was another pane lying on a bed of straw in a wooden box that Conrad had unwrapped carefully. It was thinner than the crown glass, completely flat and shiny. Max took it carefully in both hands, held it against the sky, and Ruben could see that it was nearly perfect, only a slight grey haze tarnished the impression of perfection.
"It's very good," Max said slowly. Ruben could see a hint of disappointment in her eyes. He knew that the quality was not comparable to up-time glass.
"We built a new foundry in Lauscha with large tables made of bricks," Nicolaus explained proudly. "We cover them with sand and cast the molten glass on them. When it's cold, we grind it in six passes and polish each surface twice. It's the same process, which in the other world produced the mirrors of Versailles. I think," now his breast visibly swelled, "no, I'm sure it's the best window glass available in this world."
"But—" Ruben had silently listened the whole time, but now interjected softly, "the most expensive glass, too. Perhaps apart from wine goblets from Venice." He could see Max and Andreas flinch. The new castle—cultural center—had already devoured an enormous amount of money. And making one complete wall of the ballroom—over forty feet long, and fifteen feet high—from glass, would certainly tear another large hole in the project's coffers. Although the money from the collections all over Germany, big contributions from nobles and cities and many smaller contributions from people everywhere, had stuffed those coffers a little.
Max cleared her throat. "How large can you make this and what would it cost?"
"Three feet long, and three feet across at the moment," Nicolaus said. "And the price depends on the amount you buy. Normally we sell these plates for fifty guilders each."
Ruben could see panic appear in Max's eyes. Over three, no—remember the double glass—over six and a half thousand guilders just for the glass of one wall. That was a year's income of a small principality. A very small principality perhaps, but nevertheless a big sum of money. Plus all the other windows which were planned for the building.
And he also knew that the leeway for bargaining was small. The Greiners and Müllers had a near monopoly on the process. Not because of legal means—the up-timers were strictly against such business methods—but from their vicinity to Grantville and the time they had been working on it. Other glassmakers in the Thüringer Wald hadn't yet decided to try the new process and the ones in the Spessart or the Weserbergland, the other centers of glass making in Germany, most likely didn't even know about its existence.
The "nouveau riche" in Magdeburg were already lining up to buy the nearly perfect panes. So the price might go up in the near future.
Into the silence that followed Nicolaus' last sentence, Ruben spoke again. "There is another possibility." He could see Nicolaus frown.
"Yes," Hans Adam interjected eagerly. "Float glass. We started to make it."
Conrad unwrapped another package. The content was of similar size as the first one, but no way as impressive as the plate glass had been before. It also was nearly uncolored, but showed metallic stains, air bubbles and even a small black object embedded. One surface showed a slew of tiny ripples.
"You're joking," Andreas said. "Why should that be an alternative?"
"That's what I said," Nicolaus commented. "Pack it away."
"No, wait," Max said and took the piece of glass in her hands. "Is that really float glass?" She looked at the edge of the sheet, and then she gave it to Andreas. "That's the way all the up-time panes are made. I heard they needed seven years in the twentieth century to perfect the process."
Hans Adam nodded eagerly.
"And seven," Stephan said, "seven million up-time dollars, the encyclopedia says. We've been working on it for two years now and used about two thousand guilders from our family and two thousand from Herr Reuß. We've built the furnace, and we've built a tin bath, one foot wide, twenty feet long. We've not yet managed to seal the bath completely and fill it with protective gases. We are working on that problem at the moment." He took a deep breath. "But we already made a batch of nearly one hundred feet of glass." He pointed to the sheet in Andreas' hands. "In that quality."
"I think," Max said, "it would be good enough for most Germans who have had to live with oiled paper until now. It's already better than crown glass. Look, Andreas, it's completely even."
"One quarter of an inch thick," Hans Adam said contently. "The whole batch. And we can sell it for half a guilder per square foot and still have a profit.
"A very small profit," he added smirking in Max's direction. "No grinding, no polishing," he explained to Andreas. "We can cut it in every necessary length."
"But it's ugly and bad," Nicolaus said. "My glass is much better."
"Sure," Max answered soothingly. "And the rich people in Magdeburg and the nobles around will tear it out of your hands, even for ten guilders a square foot. It's a fine piece of craftsmanship, even a masterpiece."
Now she took a deep breath. "But believe me—that," she pointed to the stained sheet in Andreas' hands, "will be the future.
"Perhaps in ten years from now it will be as perfect as yours."
"So you will buy my glass for the castle?" Nicolaus insisted.
Max hesitated, looking helplessly from Andreas to Ruben and back again.
"There is a third possibility," Ruben finally said. "I've talked to an old couple in Grantville. They own a house with what they call an 'enclosed porch.' In fact it's a large balcony completely covered with large sheets of up-time glass. They are willing to sell it." He shrugged. "They certainly know what it's worth, but I personally think it's more suitable for a high window than Nicolaus' delicate plates.
"They told me about the measures they needed to take when a storm had been announced up-time. These large glass sheets tend to swing back and forth with strong winds, and I suspect—no offense intended, Nicolaus—that your glass might be too thin to survive that."
"Perhaps," Andreas interjected eagerly, "we can combine all these ideas."
He looked at Nicolaus. "A number of large mirrors in the ball room like in Versailles to enlarge the room optically. They have to be impressive. For these we can use the thinner glass. Using up-time measures for mirroring will make them even better than those they would have had in France.
"I envision them six feet high and two feet wide with gilt frames. Can you do this? Not now, we'll need them in spring next year earliest."
Ruben had noticed Nicolaus' face becoming very thoughtful on the mention how fragile his glass certainly was. Now his eyes lightened again and the glassmaker nodded firmly.
Then Andreas turned to Ruben. "The main window made from up-time glass, and—" to the younger men, "—we can take the float glass for the smaller windows. Believe me, there will be a lot of them."
Hans Adam and Stephan looked at each other, grinned, and then gave each other a very American high-five.
"A very good idea," Max said. "But we can go one step further. I'll talk to the duke and suggest that he invest in your float glass factory. That should give you," she looked into Hans Adam's and Stephan's grinning faces, "the freedom to build a wider facility with better results until next year. And we get the preemptive right for as much glass as we need to complete all the buildings here."
Ruben lifted an eyebrow. He hadn't met the young woman very often. He had heard from his cousin Samuel how forward she was, and now he had experienced it himself. Yes, that was an interesting business idea. If the young guys could get that project of theirs going, it might become a good, an extraordinarily good, source of income.
As far as he had learned from the enthusiastic stories Hans Adam had told him during the two days' way from Grantville, there were still a slew of technical problems; seals, purity of materials and so on. But no basic problems. Nothing that seemed insurmountable.
On the other hand, once the young men had solved these problems, they would have a head start of two or three years before anybody else could copy them. A monopoly in all but name. And Ruben's employers getting a perhaps substantial part of the profit.
Which in turn would bring Ruben a hefty commission. Not too bad for a week’s journey.
Chapter 23: Topping out, scoring high
Wartburg Construction Site
July 9, 1635
"Andy, Andy!"
Andreas Rudolph looked in the direction the voice came from. Only one person he knew called him "Andy." Bryant Burke, the up-timer.
The men had met several times during the last months. The up-timer was living in Marksuhl with his family, had been traveling through the duchy—um, county—while Andreas spent four days of each week on the construction site, and three days with his family in Gotha.
So from time to time, they had had the opportunity to sit over a stein of beer and exchange stories. Andreas still didn't yet understand completely what the younger man—who called himself a "software developer"—had been doing apart from traveling, and drinking beer with the "natives," as he called the inhabitants of West Thuringia, but the results were clearly visible.
New roads had been built in the county due to collaboration between towns, villages and companies. Dams and pipes providing fresh, clean water or electrical energy. Schools had been built by citizens, and then staffed and outfitted by the government.
Many small steps to "bring the society forward," as Bryant called it.
But the most important achievement was that the New Wartburg no longer looked like a skeleton of a leviathan, but had a wooden framework at its front and back. Of course, none of the glass they planned to use had arrived yet. The up-timers' sheets were resting in a warehouse in Grantville for now, and the others were not needed for at least a year.
Andreas looked up to the large beams holding the roof. He still wondered where in the county all these seasoned trunks had suddenly come from.
But with these beams in place now, the construction had made enough progress to justify celebrating Richtfest combined with Constitution Day and the duke's seventieth birthday.
The construction site was already populated with people, the craftsmen, their families, and a small number of dignitaries from Eisenach. Andreas was happy that Bryant had reserved places at a table for Andreas' family.
"Hi, Bryant," he greeted the up-timer. "You don't know my family yet. This is my wife Anna, my oldest daughter, also Anna, my son Andreas, and this our Elisabeth. You're playing babysitter today?"
"Yeah," Bryant said, while exchanging handshakes. "Sonia is on duty." He waved in the direction of a table, where the duke's family had taken place, a large twin carriage was standing, and Bryant's wife was apparently caring for the twins. "So I need to entertain our son." He pointed. "Come on, Cory, say hi to Mr. and Ms. Rudolph."
The boy stood and offered his hand, smiling shyly.
"Papa," Andreas junior said in that moment. "Can we please ride the cable car again? Please?"
"Oh, yes, Daddy," Cory chimed in. "Me too."
"Not yet," Anna told her son. "We'll use it later when the party is over. Come on, sit at the table; I'll get you something to drink."
"Don't want to sit." The three-year-old boy stamped with his foot. "Want to see the machines."
Andreas sighed. If the afternoon went on like that, the boy's mood would certainly deteriorate farther. On the other hand . . .
"Anna," he said to his daughter. "Would you like to prove that you're a big girl, and take your brother and Cory on a trip around the site?"
He could see how the girl was torn between two thoughts. On one hand, they had just discussed the evening before that Anna was now a big girl and would soon go to school. On the other hand, she didn't like to be responsible for her little siblings.
But then her gaze fell on Bryant's son who looked at her with pleading eyes. The girl visibly straightened. "Sure," she said.
"You can go to the grill first," Bryant said, and took a ten-dollar bill from his pocket. "Buy some bratwurst and something to drink for y'all."
"Yesss," Andreas junior yelled.
Anna took the money after her father nodded, and carefully put the bill in her purse.
With one smaller child holding each of her hands, she then disappeared between the people. Andreas sat down. The crowd wasn't thick enough to obstruct his view completely, and so he could see Anna and the others. They stopped at the grill, and he could see how his daughter discussed their wishes.
He grinned. Yes, this was a good test run for his oldest.
****
During the next hour Andreas got completely occupied in explaining the ceremony, which was about to take place, to Bryant. The governor and the master carpenter appeared on the highest point of the roof. Then a small tree decorated with ribbons in different colors was hoisted up, fixed there, and the master carpenter was shouting something. Everybody clapped their hands.
"I've seen that several times up to now," Bryant shouted through the turmoil. "Why the heck do they put a tree on the roof instead of a flag?"
Andreas had to shout as well. "It's a symbol of life and good luck. It's nearly the same with a Christmas tree. Would you replace that with a flag?
"If the building owner, in this case the governor, is not willing to buy the beer for the celebration, the carpenters hoist a broom instead."
Bryant laughed. "And what about these colored ribbons?"
"All the traveling carpenters own colored scarfs, where they carry their supplies during their journey. Most of them leave the construction site to travel on once the roof frame is up. So they fix their scarfs to the tree and hope that their employer fills it with food for their journey."
Then the governor took a hammer and hammered a large nail into the topmost beam.
The master carpenter shouted again, a cup in his hand; the rhythm suggested that it was a kind of poem, but due to the height of the roof, nobody could understand.
"They're in dire need of a good PA," Bryant commented.
"What?" Andreas asked.
"Never mind," Bryant said grinning. "Y'all know the text anyway, I suppose."
Finally, the master threw the cup down into the yard where it broke into shards, accompanied by frenetic cheering.
"It would be considered a bad omen," Andreas explained, "if the cup didn't break. It didn't break when we built the bastion to the east of Magdeburg, and you know how that ended."
Bryant shook his head. "You've got a lot of rituals and traditions."
"Sure," Andreas concurred. "All the people involved in such a project are proud to—what's the English term—show off."
Bryant chuckled.
"Andreas," Anna interrupted the men. "Have you seen the children recently?"
Andreas started. He had followed their movements for some time, but in the last ten minutes, he hadn't seen them. Better make it an hour, he thought after a look at the large clock at the unfinished tower.
"No," he said and stood. "I'll go looking for them."
Bryant rose, too. "Let's go."
They walked from the future courtyard on the plateau of the Wartenberg down to the craftsmen's village, then to the top station of the cable car. But the children were nowhere to be seen.
The people operating the big steam engine had seen them—an hour ago.
Slowly Andreas felt some worry arising. "We need to go up again and look between the material piles," he said to Bryant, pointing back to where they had been sitting.
"Don't you think we'd have seen them if they had come back?" Bryant asked.
Andreas shrugged. "They have to be here somewhere. Anna wouldn't voluntarily walk that steep road down to Eisenach."
Just as the two men crossed the bridge, where the old drawbridge had been, a childish shriek erupted just below their feet.
Two hours earlier
"Come on," Anna said to the two little boys. "I know where we'll get the best bratwurst."
She had to make the best out of it. Caring for two little children was not how she wanted to spend the afternoon—not with all those interesting machines on display. On the other hand, if she did well now, her parents might be willing to give her more freedom back home.
So with a filled bun in one hand and a cup of clean water in the other, the three kids first settled on the rampart around the large steam engine, which huffed and puffed all day.
"You must know," Anna started to explain. "There's a little demon in the water. His name is Dampfo. And as soon as you heat the water, he gets more and more unpleasant. And then he tries to escape, pushing against these steel rods."
"Pistons," Cory said. "They're called pistons."
Anna felt a little embarrassed. The three-year-old boy knew more words—at least English words—than her. On the other hand, he was an up-timer. Or at least born in Grantville to up-timer parents.
The boy lived among all those modern thingies, while Anna had to take all her wisdom from circulating comics dedicated to partially illiterate adults. "Der kleine Dampfo" told them about the dangers of steam engines. The little demon—called Steamo in the English version—got too angry if he was cooped up for too long a time or at a too high tem-pe-ra-ture.
And as soon as he got too angry, he was about to rip apart all of the engine, shooting the parts into everybody around.
Sure, Anna knew that there wasn't a real demon—Pastor Walther had explained that this was only a picture, and this kind of demons didn't exist. But for many people the devilishly grinning round face with the horns and fangs made the danger more apparent. And so it quickly became the sign for danger.
Many people had started painting the demon's face on modern things, which were dangerous without obviously showing that. Even if there was no steam involved. The poles at Gotha's market place, for example, holding copper wires, which connected the city's "hy-dro-e-lec-tric ge-ne-ra-tor" at the Leinakanal to the town hall, showed Dampfos in yellow.
Even at a bridge in Gotha, which a spring flood had nearly washed away, signs with Dampfo's face in blue had appeared the next day.
Anna knew that there had been another time not long ago, when no steam engines, generators, and electrical wires had existed. She had been born in 1629. Her memories of the siege and sack of Magdeburg consisted mostly of sitting in a cellar, where Opa had stored all his drawings. Mama had told her that she had lost a little sister then, but Anna couldn't remember.
She could remember the long odyssey through all the principalities between Magdeburg, Hamburg, Dresden, and many other towns and villages she didn't know the names of. Papa had shown her on a large map where they had been during the two years until they settled in Weimar, and then finally in Gotha, where Papa became a librarian.
That was when little Anna realized for the first time that something had happened—according to Papa just a couple of days after Magdeburg—which slowly but surely changed the world. She had lived with books all her life—apart from the two years on the trek—but the new ones that showed up in Papa's library were something completely different.
And whenever she asked where these wonderful books, newspapers, or comics came from, the answer was always "Grantville." The famous town that had somehow been somewhere else before and dropped out of the sky like a bird, filled with people who could do magic. Oh, they always denied it, but compared to the rest of the world the girl had encountered before, it was magic.
It only needed this black contraption in front of her to prove that. Before Grantville there had been no steam in Anna's world, no machines made of steel, no pistons and turning wheels, and steel cable, and, and, and . . .
"I'm bored," Cory said.
"I'm bored, too," Andreas said.
Anna was far from being bored. She could have sat here for a much longer time, looking at the moving parts of the steam engine, dreaming of one day building one herself.
But she had promised to take care of the boys, so she shook her head and stood. "What else do you want to do?" she asked. "Look at the big tools?"
"Naaa," Cory said. "That's even more boring."
"More boring," Andreas echoed.
"Okay," Anna said. "Let's go back to the table."
"Naaa," Cory insisted. "That's boring, too. I've got something better."
****
Just as the two men crossed the bridge, where the old drawbridge had been, a childish shriek erupted just below their feet. Another one joined in immediately.
Andreas' heart skipped a beat. What was happening there? Images of blood and gore flashed through his mind. Two steps brought him to the handrail. He leaned over. Now he could see the three children in the shadow below the bridge.
A scene of utter peacefulness greeted his eyes.
Anna was sitting in the grass, some kind of book—of course, what else—in both her hands, and the two little ones were dancing around her, jumping up and down, waving their hands and squealing.
At least it didn't look as if there was any imminent danger. But why had they shrieked?
Cory was shouting the same words over and over, which sounded like "Hai Skor," and little Andreas was trying to repeat them.
"What does he shout? Something about a shark? There's no water down there."
By now, Bryant was at the rail beside him. "Oh no, I told him to leave that damned thing at home."
"What 'damned thing'? The book Anna is holding?"
"That's not a book, my friend." Bryant straightened, frowning. "It's my old Gameboy."
"What? A boy for games?"
Bryant chuckled. "More of a 'game for boys.' But it seems your daughter does well enough with it. Judging by Cory's hollering, Anna just beat my ten-year-old high score in Tetris."
****
Author's notes:
Brotterode was the only Lutheran village in the Schmalkalden principality, which was ruled by the landgraves of Hesse.
Andreas Rudolph's story about becoming a librarian (and body servant) in Gotha for the sake of his family after a career of fortress architect in Magdeburg, forced work for Tilly after the sack, flight to Hamburg and then to Thuringia is historical.
He later designed the new castle Friedenstein in Gotha for Duke Ernst of Sachsen-Gotha-Eisenach. He also started to build the castle, but then Ernst decided for another design by Caspar Vogel, which resulted in some style breaks in the finished castle.
The Greiner (Gryner, Greyner) family, led by the first generation Hans, immigrated to Thuringia from Swabia in 1525; they first settled near Schleusingen (Henneberger Land). The fourth generation Hans, called 'Schwabenhans,' born in 1550, moved to Sonneberg and founded a new glass factory together with his friend Christoph Müller in 1575. His factory still exists today, directed by Michael Greiner, generation XIII.
Hans IV's oldest son Peter moved into the Reuß Herrschaft southeast of Rudolstadt and together with Christoph Müller's son Christoph the Younger founded a new glass factory, or better a whole new village named Grumbach, in 1616. Peter's five sons Hans Adam, Hans Georg, Hans, Hans the Younger, and Conrad all became glassmakers. All three daughters married husbands with the last name Müller, at least one of them another glassmaker.
Hans IV's younger son Nicolaus, called 'Schwabenklaus,' inherited the original glass factory, which later became the town of Lauscha. One of his descendants, Elias Greiner Vetters Sohn, invented the glass marble in 1849.
Hans IV's youngest son Hans V moved to Bischofsgrün near Bayreuth in Franconia. And yes, he founded another glass factory in 1616.
Christoph Müller's two older sons Stephan and Hans moved to Schmalenbuche, 15 miles south of Schwarzburg, in 1607. Their glass factory reportedly produced windows and mirrors.
All the glassmakers in Germany massively married in the craft at that time; since many of them lived in houses deep in the forest (making the so-called forest glass) they had no social contacts to the towns near them.
The whole genealogy of these families can be found here and here.
****