There were still two hours until his appointment at the city hall. Istvan Janoszi was walking around Grantville at a rapid pace, watching it wake up on a Saturday morning. He had been thoroughly briefed before he came, so he knew that the pace of a Saturday should be somewhat different than the pace of Monday through Friday. Still, to some extent, the place bemused him. How could a city function without a marketplace? But it seemed to be that the market just spread throughout the town. Instead of gathering in one convenient, designated, and duly licensed spot, women were setting up their tables on the grassy spots around the houses—just on some of them, but not on all of them—and putting out their wares. Other women were gathering around them, prepared to bargain.
How did they find out who is selling what and where the vendor will set up? he wondered. From near one of the tables, a young child ran toward the paved street. A woman, heavy with late pregnancy, turned from the piles of secondhand clothing and said a few sharp words, calling her back. Istvan thought, almost, that he recognized the words. But no woman from his home village was likely to be here, among these Americans. It had been nearly twenty years since he'd been there himself.
He had never wanted to go back to that village in Slovakia. He walked on, deciding to take in the Saturday sermon at the Calvinist church before his meeting.
* * *
Two men came into the Leahy Medical Center. The receptionist knew the first man. He taught physical education at the grade school her two sons attended. Since she knew he was a Scot, she said, "Good morning" instead of "Guten Morgen." Then she asked, "May I help you?" And she beamed with pride.
"Wonderful, Maria, wonderful!" Guy Russell said with approval. "Your English is very good now. Just keep coming to the adult-education classes." From the confusion on her face, he concluded that this was not one of the answers that she had been taught to expect when she memorized her dialogues.
She repeated her question. "May I help you?" Then she tried the rest of her repertoire. "What do you want? Is someone sick? Is someone hurt? Do you have an appointment?" To her obviously great relief, the last question was the correct one.
"We have an appointment. We are here to talk to Nurse DeVries."
Several simple declarative sentences later, they were sitting in a small office that Guy Russell was sure was a cubbyhole, but which he had learned that the up-timers called a "cubicle," waiting until the nurse came in. Mrs. DeVries was not, he thought, perhaps the right specialist for his companion's problem, but she had an inestimable advantage over any other of the nurses in the hospital. The man accompanying him was originally from Cleves, and Nurse DeVries spoke Dutch. Indeed, she was Dutch. There might be some hope of mutual understanding.
The man with Guy was named Endres Elstener. Or maybe Andreas Aelstener. Or possibly Anders van Aelsten. It had depended on the mood of the company clerk: all three appeared on the records of the mercenary unit to which he had formerly belonged and he answered to them all, although he preferred the last one. The Grantville Bureau of Vital Statistics found this very annoying. One apprentice clerk sat there all day and did little else than cut pieces of paper into rectangular slips, all the same size to go in drawers, and write down the different ways to spell the same person's name on them. Guy didn't know how what official or bureaucratic alchemy they used to decide which one was the "right" way. It would be too complicated to ask.
Anders knew the teacher because his son, also, attended the school. Nurse DeVries came in. Anders explained. At first, his problem seemed simple enough. His woman was within a month, he was sure, of delivering a baby. He wanted to have an up-time midwife when the time came. This would be the last baby, he expected. His Barbara wasn't young anymore. They had been together a dozen years, and she was no young girl a dozen years ago. Between the ten-year-old in school and this day there had been four babies, born in camps and along roadsides. Only one still lived—a three-year-old girl.
"Just bring her to the hospital when labor starts" was Henny DeVries's first answer. "We always have a nurse midwife on call. Even better, bring her in for one or two prenatal checkups, first."
That was when things got complicated. "There can't be four walls," Anders said. "Barbara screams a lot when there are four walls around her." He looked at the nurse's expression and said defensively, "I didn't do it. I don't beat my woman. She doesn't need beating. Walls made her scream when I found her."
Up-time, Henny DeVries had been a psychiatric nurse. She didn't really want to contemplate the events in the unknown Barbara's past that might have brought her to the point of screaming if there were four walls around her and a roof over her head. "Where did you, ah, 'find her'?'
"In Bohemia. When I was fighting in the Crazy Halberstadter's men. She was by a roadside, with a shovel, trying to bury an old man. She wasn't strong enough to dig. I took the shovel and buried the man. Then I took her back to camp with me. She is my only woman. I am her only man."
"Full name?"
"Barbara Hartzi. Or Barbola Harczy? Maybe Harssy? Near that. I can't spell Bohemian. Anyway, I don't think she was born in Bohemia. Farther east. Maybe—Ungarn?"
"Hungary."
"Or maybe Transylvania. Perhaps Croatia. She knows what the village name was, but she doesn't know where it was. But she was not very small when her family fled into Bohemia. She was almost grown to a young woman."
Henny sighed, then asked, "Does she speak any German?" It was far too much to hope that she would speak English.
"She has learned some of mine—the Platt from Cleves. But she does not speak the German from around here," Anders replied.
Henny contemplated the problem of delivering a baby, outside of the hospital, to a possibly Hungarian woman who had, over the past ten years, learned to speak a little Low German, but would almost certainly forget it in the stress of hard labor. We do not have problems, she reminded herself. We have challenges and opportunities. Although, most of the time, she admitted that the Mormon women who volunteered at the hospital were worth their weight in gold, there were times that she wanted to strangle them. Those times were mostly when they recited that "challenges and opportunities" jargon!
Then something occurred to her. "If she can't stand walls, then your family can't be in the refugee housing. Where do you live?"
"In a camp. Up in one of the 'hollows.' " Anders smiled proudly. "I made it myself. I invite you to come and see. We have made a good home, my woman and I."
Henny looked at Guy. Guy looked at Henny. She asked, "Your woman? Or your wife?"
Anders frowned. "My woman. Who would authorize a marriage for such as us?"
Guy looked at Henny. Henny looked at Guy. "It's Saturday morning," he said. "I'm not doing this because I work for the school. I'm on my own time." Thinking, he added, "Cleves is Calvinist."
"Let's go, then." Henny stood up, the men following her. As she led them through the entrance, she stopped. "Maria. I am on call. I am not on duty. Clock me out for two hours, please." She looked at her wristwatch. "It is nine o'clock. I will come back in two hours." She checked as Maria recorded this on the chalkboard; then said, "Thanks."
Henny had been at the hospital, if not on duty, for three hours already. When she stepped outside, she said, "I do not believe this." The sun was shining. The sky was blue. The only clouds were tiny, white, and puffy. The breeze was warm. It was May. It might not last for long, but for this one day, it was spring. She whirled around in her white sneakers, clapping her hands. Then she remembered to go back inside, take off the sneakers, and replace them with heavy walking shoes. She cast a wistful glance at the bicycle rack, but there was no point in outdistancing the others. They walked.
Earlier that morning, the driver of the freight wagon that stopped in front of St. Mary Magdalene's Catholic Church had also been happy for the good weather. It was not fun to unload wagons in the rain. The crates that he brought were very heavy. It took four men to unload each one of them. Father Augustus Heinzerling, who signed for the delivery, had run back to the rectory for a crowbar and pried one of them open, right there on the sidewalk. His prayers had been answered: Auserlesene, Catholische, Geistliche Kirchengesaeng (Cologne, 1623). They had arrived safely, even though the press was outside the borders of the CPE, in enemy territory. Now he had enough copies of the most modern, up-to-date, and popular hymnal that the German Catholic church published to supply every member of the choir and scatter them out among the congregation as well. He could have danced for joy. He did jump around a little and give a few shouts. After all, it was spring.
Once the crates were all open, the freight wagon was long gone. Father Heinzerling didn't have four men to carry them the rest of the way, so he intended to leave the containers outdoors and carry the books a few at a time with the help of his sons. Unfortunately, Heinzerling discovered that while he was going for the crowbar, the teamsters had become too efficient. Two of the crates did not have hymnals for St. Mary's but books that clearly belonged to someone else and had been removed from the wagon by mistake. He thought about what to do with the others. The crates were very heavy. He called four men who were just walking past and had them lift them onto the pushcart that the parish used for moving tables and chairs. He pushed the cart down the street and out onto the highway. The Presbyterian church was on the outskirts of town.
Everybody arrived at their goal at once. Since the entrance was temporarily blocked by Father Heinzerling and his pushcart, Guy paused to take a good look.
The scene was very strange. The old church, covered with tar-paper shingles and with a peeling tar-paper roof, still stood where it had been for years, unchanged. Around it and over it, a new brick church was being built. Guy remembered that last Sunday, the outer shell of walls had been about as high as a man's waist. This morning, they were twice as high as a man's head and the bricklayers were up on scaffolds. The window openings had been carefully measured to match those in the existing church. Eventually, the windows with their precious up-time glass would be moved to the new walls and inserted, with the remaining openings in the larger building simply shuttered until the congregation could afford the elaborate finishing touches. After the roof was put on, the men in the congregation would carefully dismantle the existing church building, piece by piece, so that as much of the woodwork and flooring as possible could be reused in finishing the interior of the new one. The unusable bits would be carried out the front door, beam by beam, and made available to other people who needed building material.
Instead of a dying congregation of mostly quite elderly Free Independent Presbyterians, the Reverend Enoch Wiley now ministered to an extraordinarily mixed collection of parishioners that included nearly every variety of Calvinist in Europe. Henny DeVries, although she had lived in the United States for many years before the Ring of Fire, was Dutch by birth and Dutch Reformed. The Scots in Mackay's company had almost all been Church of Scotland and most of them did attend church when there was one available. There was an occasional German Calvinist, who, like Anders van Aelsten, came from one of the former mercenary companies. Occasionally, there were Swiss Reformed, of both the Zwinglian and Calvinist varieties (although Guy was not sure what most of them were doing in town, he had his suspicions). Now and then there was a French Huguenot, or a passing Calvinist exile from the Spanish Netherlands, or someone from the Calvinist churches of Bohemia or farther to the southeast in Europe. There were even, of all wonders, a few of the snobbish PCUSA-type American Presbyterians, although those mostly held themselves back or, worse, in the Reverend Wiley's opinion, went to the prayer services that had been organized by the Episcopalians.
After the Ring of Fire, the Presbyterians and their miscellaneous Calvinist adjuncts had outgrown the "yahoo shack" of Tom and Rita Simpson's wedding very fast. The Reverend Enoch found it glorious, at first. First, he had added a Sunday afternoon service that catered to those with ingrained objections to instrumental music and hymns not found in the psalter. Then a Sunday evening service. He had added a Wednesday evening service. He had added a Thursday morning service, with an after-school catechism class for the children. As the 24/7 industries got up and running, he had added the Saturday morning service, aimed at shift workers who could not both earn a living and keep the Sunday version of the sabbath holy, as well, which was followed by an afternoon catechism class. He was now, in May 1633, preaching or teaching eight times a week. At the age of sixty-two. And he wasn't getting any younger.
By January of 1632, the deacons and elders had approached the bank. By the spring of 1632, they had located an architect. By the fall of 1632, they had found a building contractor, although he had said that he had so many jobs that he could not start until the next spring. They had started digging for the new foundations in March. There was to be a new, much finer church. There was to be a separate wing with classrooms and church offices. There was to be a "fellowship hall" that would lessen the temptation of Presbyterians to have wedding receptions and other functions in places that permitted the serving of liquor.
Guy Russell found that last provision very, very odd. The temperance movement was not something that had influenced seventeenth-century Scots Presbyterians. But he donated to the project, nevertheless.
Guy had also suffered through fund-raisers. Yard sales. Bake sales. White elephant sales. Needlework sales. Ham and beans suppers. Pancake breakfasts. Guy did not care for this aspect of the separation of church and state. Overall, he thought, it ought to be done by a system of church finance. Certainly the Swiss and Germans who were serving on the Board of Presbyters insisted that it was much simpler just to let the tax collectors gather the tithes as part of their job and turn the proper portion over to the kirk. But the Americans didn't do it that way. Nor did the Scots.
And they needed the money. As Deacon Silas McIntire had said, in a rousing and inspirational speech to the congregation, "Folks, we've got two choices here. We can put our noses to the grindstone and do it all now in one fell swoop. Or we can track construction mud into church on our shoes for ten years while we work on it one little niggling bit after another. It's 'root, hog, or die' time folks, and I hereby officially move that we root." Even Guy had voted to root after that harangue. Well . . . He had to admit that in an uncommon burst of enthusiasm, he had seconded the motion.
Gus Heinzerling was just as uncommonly happy to find that the Reverend Wiley was busy getting ready for the morning service, so that he only had to deal with Mrs. Wiley. He found her much more approachable. Much friendlier. Far less likely, in general, to start denouncing the pope as the Antichrist in the middle of a conversation about where to put two crates of metrical psalters that had come FOB from Edinburgh via Amsterdam. Completing the delivery, he waved cheerfully at the others and headed back to St. Mary's with his pushcart, looking like a man who had been delivered from dire peril.
Guy had been present at a few of the dialogues between Wiley and Heinzerling, so could make a good guess about why the priest looked so relieved. Guy actually rather enjoyed Reverend Wiley's denunciations of papistry. Some of them were so familiar that they actually made him homesick. Though not for long. Why go back to Killecrankie to listen to the minister denounce popery when there was a minister who could and did denounce popery quite adequately right here in Grantville, where Guy himself had a secure, well-paid, job?
For the first time, Guy realized that he was not a resident alien—he was an immigrant. I should see about those citizenship papers, he thought.
Inez Wiley turned her attention to the other visitors. "In plenty of time, I see, Guy," she said cheerfully. "The reverend should be right here any minute and we'll get the service started." Reaching into her tote bag, she pulled out a large, old-fashioned, brass school bell and rang it loudly. The church lacked a steeple and the down-time parishioners expected church bells. "The family hasn't come yet."
Henny raised one eyebrow.
"Ah, weel," Guy said. "I have another little task at the service here this morning. But," he said, turning to Mrs. Wiley, "first things first. This is Anders van Aelsten. He was brought up Calvinist. He works at the mine. He has a woman named Barbara. They have two children. They are expecting a third very soon. Henny and I think it's time for the reverend maybe to say a few words over them?" He smiled hopefully.
"If I had ten dollars for every time I've played 'Restore Thy Brother' since we landed in this century," Inez exclaimed, slapping the back of her hand to her forehead like a silent movie star, "I could pay for all the interior refurbishing of the church by myself."
"Aren't you happy to see them restored?" Henny asked. She was prepared to continue exploring this philosophical line of thought, being noted among everyone who knew her for extraordinary thoroughness, but first an extended family appeared from the left and then the Reverend Wiley appeared from the right. From the left, three exuberant children charged Guy, yelling "Hi, Mr. Russell! Good morning, Mr. Russell! Thanks for coming, Mr. Russell!" From the right, the Reverend Wiley solemnly shook hands and said, "God's blessings upon you, Deacon Russell."
They all proceeded into the church, where, within the next hour, amid a congregation of Guy, Henny, and Anders, a few up-timer church ladies, miscellaneous miners and steelworkers with their families, a few catechism students whose parents had sent them early on the presumption that an extra sermon never hurt anyone, and one man whom nobody else recognized, the latest addition to the family of Heinrich Eichelberger and his wife, Catharina geb. Kraemerin, emerged from the baptismal font with the improbable name of Guy Angus Eichelberger. Improbable, of course, if the hearer didn't know that his godfather was Guy Angus Russell.
Occasionally, Enoch Wiley made an effort to be jovial. "Well, Deacon," he asked after he had shaken hands all around, gotten the stranger, whose name was Istvan Janoszi, to sign the guest register, and seen the Eichelberger family on its way in possession of a neatly filled-out certificate, "how many godchildren does that make this year? A round dozen? The kindergarten teachers should have plenty of little Guys to go around in five years or so."
"Ah," Guy muttered, seriously embarrassed. "Since January, it can't be more than four. The rest were last year. It's the school, ye know. The children come to know me, so I come to know the parents. With the refugees' lives being so overset, no aunts and uncles or old neighbors to stand as sponsor, they look to choose someone who has found a place in the town."
"Enoch," his wife interrupted. "Guy's friend is Anders van Aelsten. We have another family to regularize and restore to fellowship. Two children, with a baby due."
"There's a wee problem," said Guy. "His woman screams if she's made to come within four walls."
"Then," replied the reverend, "things are perfect. God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform, Deacon Russell. Bring them tomorrow. The weather should be fine again. We shall dedicate the new building at the early service, even though it won't be—" He paused and looked at the partially completed walls and uncovered roof rafters. "—quite finished. Once the dedication has been completed, I'll perform the wedding right here, in between the old church and the new walls." When it came to restorations to fellowship, Reverend Wiley's philosophy was strike while the iron is hot.
"We'd better," said Nurse DeVries to Anders, "stop at the Bureau of Vital Statistics and get you a marriage license on the way out to your camp." The Bureau of Vital Statistics was open on Saturday in Grantville. For that matter, it was open on Sunday. The inhabitants of the town kept its staff very busy. "Inez, do me a favor, will you? Phone the hospital and tell them that the appointment that I scheduled for this on-call shift is going to keep me out all day and not where I can be called."
"Enoch can call them," the minister's wife answered. "I'm going with you."
Anders van Aelsten was rather confused. His English was still limited, but it was good enough for him to realize that a man who had come looking for a midwife was about to be handed a marriage license. Instead? Also? He was far from sure.
One thing, he knew. "First. I find Barbara. She is at the shopping. Miklos and Ilona are with her. Then we go."
They walked out of town on the highway, to a gravelled road. They followed the gravelled road up through the hills to a dirt road. They followed the dirt road to a path. They followed the path for quite some time. It took them forty-five minutes, but the others were catering to Guy's gimpy leg. The rest of them could have done it in a half hour.
Anders displayed his home proudly. At some point, early in its construction, it had begun with a wagon bed. "To think," he said to Nurse DeVries, "someone had just gone off and left it that way, hanging off the edge of the road. Just because it had almost splintered in half when a wheel came off and it fell. I was so lucky. Nobody had taken it for firewood yet when I came by."
He had hauled each half of the wagon bed up to his camp by fastening sledge boards to the underside, and carefully fitted the two pieces back together, splicing them and putting piles of stones underneath to hold it some distance off the ground to keep the wood from rotting. For the first few weeks, in the summer of 1631, the whole family had slept in that, with a canvas draped over the top on two stakes when it rained. They had already had the canvas.
But time had passed, and as Anders counted out paydays, additions had arrived. The wagon bed itself now had three walls about eight feet high. Two of the walls had been topped by wedges, so the extra-large overhanging roof slanted and the water that fell on it, when rain came, went into gutters and then into a barrel.
Barbara glowed with pride as she showed off the barrel. It was wonderful to have a man who made a roof and a barrel to collect water, instead of making a yoke with buckets so his woman could carry water from the creek. It really was. In rather broken Platt, she told her visitors so.
Anders continued the tour. As an annex to the wagon bed, which now contained three well-stuffed straw pallets, not to mention, on the little girl's mattress, a neatly folded bright yellow acrylic blanket, he had built another three-walled shelter, placed at right angles, also with a slanted roof and a barrel beneath the low edge. For that, he had bought a—well, a something—that he had seen in an open shed in someone's backyard. Neither Guy nor Henny had the slightest idea what it might be. Inez knew: the grain bin and spout from a late 1940's Case combine. In any case, the grain bin, with one of the metal sides cut off and placed across the top, was now set into a base of rough fieldstones and had become a cooking stove, with the spout serving as the flue. It was, Barbara said, quite the finest arrangement she had ever had. It was wonderful.
The four walls problem? The fourth wall of the wagon bed shelter was a loose flap, made of the canvas, now folded three layers thick. Yes, it could be warmer in winter. But cold was better than having the demons seize upon his woman and cause her to scream so. Anders was firm about that. He had fenced a kind of courtyard, on the other two sides, so the wind did not blow the flap too badly. One fence, as high as the walls of the sheds and with an overhanging roof, protected their woodpile; the other was waist-high.
Switching to High German, Anders told Guy that he had told Barbara that the courtyard was for the safety of the little girl. And that, too, was true. But it was open to the sky and one side of it was low enough that Barbara could easily jump over it if ever even three walls became more walls than she could bear. Even though it had a nice gate, still, gates could be locked. Locked gates were frightening. His woman could jump the fence if she needed to. She was not locked in. Ever.
Guy was favorably impressed.
Henny DeVries was inclined to denounce the whole thing as scandalous. Before she could open her mouth, though—
"I," said Inez Wiley, "have seen worse. Far worse. In West Virginia. In the twentieth century."
Nurse DeVries kept her mouth shut.
"We can't possibly take responsibility for delivering a child under those circumstances. It's unsanitary. It's hopeless. There's no lighting. There's no backup. What if something went wrong during the delivery?" Henny DeVries was in full oration as they hiked back to town.
"If it comes to a pinch," Inez Wiley said, "I'll deliver the baby up there in the camp myself."
Henny stared at her, aghast.
"You don't know me, Henny. You and your husband haven't been here in Grantville all that long. I was born Inez McDow. I'm the youngest of eight—Ma was forty-three when I was born. She was born in 1900, she lived until 1987, and she was still delivering some babies up in these hollows when she was eighty. She started helping her own ma when she was just a girl. Her ma was born just a few years after the Civil War. I started helping her when I was fifteen. That was 1958 or thereabouts. I kept on helping her till she quit—or was put out by the licensing requirements. Ask any of the older people in this town how many of them were delivered by Millie McDow. Just ask them. When you get to the younger ones who were born out in the country, after 1965 or so, ask how many were delivered by Inez, really, with Millie just sitting there giving directions. You'll be surprised."
Inez stopped in the middle of the road and took a deep breath. "You don't know us, Henny. I don't want to hurt your feelings, but, honestly, you don't. You and your husband had lived in Grantville for ten years before the Ring of Fire, but you'd never been to our church. The first Sunday you came, you were still 'Mr. and Mrs. DeVries' to everyone else there." She paused. "I don't want you to think that we're ungrateful for what you're doing—you, or Dr. Nichols, or any of the people who just got caught up in this by accident. But it's not the same as if you were from here."
"How long does it take to 'be from here'?" Henny asked.
She was feeling a little embarrassed. It's true, she thought to herself. We—Arie and I—hadn't become part of this town. Although there were no Dutch Reformed churches at all in this part of West Virginia, we didn't go to the Grantville church. We attended a different Presbyterian church in Fairmont—one that was more, well, I don't even want to think "upscale." A little more cosmopolitan. A little more in line with our tastes and interests. A lot less, I guess I have to admit, hillbilly.
"Well." Inez had continued talking while Henny was thinking. "Well—probably about eighty years. That is, your grandparents were here, or came here. Your parents grew up going to the schools and churches around here, and making friends. You did, too. And your children did, or are doing, the same."
"Oh."
"And you know how it all fits together. Do you have a picture of the town in your mind? A map? Not how it's laid out on the ground and how the buildings look, but how it really works?"
Henny shook her head.
Inez picked up a stick. Drawing in the dirt, she started with what, for her, was the center of the world. "Here's us, the old members at the Presbyterian church." She drew a circle. "And here are all the other old-timers, no matter what—Church of Christ, Methodist, Baptist, and such." These circles all overlapped the first one. "Then there are the Catholics." This circle overlapped the others a little bit, but most of it was outside the remainder of Inez's drawing, which was starting to look like the production of a child who had gone wild with Etch-a-Sketch. She stared at it and muttered, "What I wouldn't give for a nice, new box of sixty-four different colors of crayons."
She drew a couple more small circles, out on the edge, unconnected. "We've always had some people who came and went, who weren't part of it. Don't think that I'm just talking about Tom Simpson's parents. There's that guy Mike Stearns brought in about computers. The people who were working on the new company that was going to start up. Those kind of people come and they go. At least, before the Ring of Fire, they used to go. Now they're stuck here. And even though I try to think charitable thoughts about them—they look at us the way the noblemen around here look at their peasants. Ignorant, unwashed, chickens to be plucked."
Inez looked down at her shoes. "But we need those guys. We need every single person in this town. No matter how much some of them despise the rest of us. Even if they don't think we're real people. Even if we have to put up with being humiliated to get what they can do. We've hired the construction firm guy to do the remodeling on the church. Because he can do it. He's put a business together. He has the know-how and he has the people."
"Humiliated?"
"I'm not saying that you would say these things, Henny. Or a lot of the other outsiders. But nothing happens in a small town that doesn't get back to other people. After Silas, and Guy here, and the other deacons went to Bob Kelly's office and signed the contract for the remodeling deal—after they left, he griped that he'd been reduced to taking a job from a 'committee of fundamentalist rednecks.' Shelby Carpenter was working there. She heard him, and don't think that she didn't enjoy repeating it. Big joke on the bluenoses, and all that. He's not," Inez continued, "nice." This was possibly the harshest criticism she could formulate.
Then, suddenly, she smiled. Standing in the spring afternoon's sun, she looked ten years younger. "Deacons!" she exclaimed. "I just knew that I'd forgotten something! Guy, I know that you had to miss the meeting yesterday afternoon and you were already gone when Enoch tried to call you today. We have the most marvelous news!"
"It did occur to me," Guy said, "that the minister seemed a wee bit perky this morning. Did the church inherit a fortune?"
"Gordon Partow came back from Jena with the man from Geneva." Inez looked at Henny. "Gordon is Andy and Grace's boy. You did know that Gordon had gone to Jena with Mallory Parker to teach English, didn't you?"
Henny shook her head.
"Well, Gordon's always been a good boy. But Andy's so ambitious and it's practically driven him mad that Gordon was sort of aimless, but he'll be fine now that he's aimed. During this colloquy thing the Lutherans had, Gordon met this Mr. Cavriani and told him how worried he was about our church not having anyone to take Enoch's place when—well, when the time comes, as God has ordained that it will come to all of us in due season. Mr. Cavriani said that Gordon should go to Geneva. Just think: the city where John Calvin himself lived and taught! To study. To be prepared, ordained, and sent back. He's going. Mr. Cavriani says he can work part time in his company's office to pay his way. He's sending him with a letter of introduction to his partner. If Andy decides that Gordon's just been sort of, well, incubating a divine calling without realizing what it was, they should get along fine from now on."
Inez drew a deep breath. "They came to the joint meeting of the elders and deacons to tell us about it. We were just sitting there with our mouths open. Then Charlie—Deacon Vandine—you do know him?"
Henny agreed that although she did not know Gordon Partow, she had met Deacon Vandine several times.
"Belva was there, sitting in the back of the room, waiting for Charlie so she didn't have to walk home by herself after work. Charlie looked at her. She just gave a sort of half-smile and nodded. And Charlie said, 'We'll go, too. I'm fifty, but that's younger than Enoch here. The church is growing fast. I'll just stay long enough to get what I absolutely need. A minimum. Then we'll come back and help Enoch and Inez. That way, Gordon can stay long enough to get the whole kit and kaboodle."
Inez had turned her attention back to the overlapping circles. "Now, here you've got all the college kids who were at Rita Stearns's wedding." She drew another circle on the outside. "They're working hard, but they aren't really mixing, mostly. If you look at them, the only one who's matched himself up with a local girl is the Totman boy—he's engaged to Pris Berry." She drew a narrow loop, connecting this outlying circle with the main set. "Some might say that Laforrest up at the high school married a local girl, too, but he married Kristen Elias, and Dr. Elias isn't really quite from here." Next to the loop, she drew a small circle, overlapping both the main one and the college students. "Dr. Elias came from out of town, but he practices with Dr. Sims, who is from here. Kristen and her sister grew up here. You might say that they're on their way to being from here." She thought. "And the Curry girl married Laban Trumble." She drew another narrow loop. "But he died." She drew an X across that loop. "Aside from that, they're pretty much marrying one another. I talked to Mr. Cavriani about it. He says that it's like the Italian families from Lucca in Geneva. They've been there for seventy-five years, but they're pretty much still marrying each other."
Inez looked hopefully at Henny. "Do you see, sort of?"
Henny nodded. To herself, she was thinking that she'd only seen Inez as a frumpy woman who took minutes at church meetings and plunked out hymns on a tinny piano, Sunday after Sunday. She hadn't realized, not at all, that if Inez had been born to an affluent family in a midsize city in Michigan, instead of to a dirt-poor family in a dying town in Appalachia, she could have, maybe would have, ended up as a chief intelligence analyst at the CIA. Not the kind who listened to chatter from satellites. The kind who put it all together and briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Anders van Aelsten and Barbola Harczy, the "right" spellings having been determined by the Bureau of Vital Statistics, were married the following morning—as Andrew Alston and Barbara Hershey, since when the clerk asked, "Do you want those names in German or American?" as flatly as pre-RoF she would have asked, "Do you want fries with that?" Anders had expressed a preference for American. The deacons had hauled the piano out the front door of the old church building and onto the stoop, so there was music for the ceremony. Inez chose "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah" to start the ceremony and "O, That the Lord Would Guide My Ways" to end it. She didn't want the guidance for them: she wanted it for herself. In between, she played "Restore Thy Brother" once more.
Since the first agonized cry from a subscriber—"Ouy you not write ouat I ouear? You write ouat ozzer brides ouear?"—Beryl Lawler had developed a completely standardized form for the reporting of weddings in the society column of the Grantville Times. She had a flying squad of young women and high school girls in each congregation who took notes. When Susan Logsden turned these in to the newspaper office, Beryl rested her forehead on her palms and moaned.
The groom wore olive green cargo pants and a red-and-brown plaid shirt. The bride wore a pair of orange maternity slacks topped by a long, full, boat-necked, black-and-white striped T-shirt with three-quarter-length sleeves. They exchanged halves of a coin. Official witnesses were Deacon Guy Russell and Mrs. Henny DeVries. The couple was also attended by their children, Miklos and Ilona. The groom, formerly with the count of Mansfeld's military unit, is employed at the mine. The bride is at home.
After church was over, Inez sat with Barbara and Henny on a bench outside the Bureau of Vital Statistics while the minister and Anders filed the record. She found out, in a conversation mediated by Henny and by Miklos, who was otherwise chasing his little sister around the parking lot, that Barbara was really a rather sociable woman. She found the isolated camp, although it was far preferable to being seized by her demons, rather lonesome—and a little frightening when she was there alone all day with the little girl. She had preferred her years of living in the train of a mercenary army, where there were other women to talk to, and other children about. Weather permitting, she walked into town with the little girl at least one day a week in order to see friends she had made there. If "the zoning" would permit it, she would much rather have a place to live in the town. But it wouldn't, so she was prepared to make the best of things.
She had also, it turned out, picked up a small amount of English. "Yard sale," at least. "Bargain." And "cute." She delivered herself of "cute" quite emphatically as she admired her daughter, all dressed up for the wedding in a little pair of chartreuse capri pants and a chartreuse-and-white checked gingham top with a machine-appliquéd daisy on the front, her hair held out of her face by two plastic barrettes. Barbara called Ilona over and demonstrated what she hoped to find at a "yard sale" most of all. Her current heart's desire. She pulled Ilona's hair back. "Ponytail maker."
Inez made a deal. She had ponytail makers at home. All but one of her granddaughters had been left up-time, but the ponytail makers that accompanied their passage through life, strewn around their grandparents' house, she had just gathered up two years before, tossed in a drawer, and forgotten. If Barbara would come to her for a prenatal checkup each week from now on, when she was in town, a ponytail maker would be her reward.
* * *
"You can do it, or someone else can do it," Inez said firmly to Henny, "in our garage. With the door up. Stop fussing about privacy. Anyone who stares in at a woman having a prenatal just has a dirty mind. I'll clean the garage."
Seventeen teenagers cleaned the Wileys' garage Monday afternoon. They scrubbed it with lye soap and sand, then hosed it down. It hadn't been so clean since the day it was built. It had a dirt floor, but that couldn't be helped. It was packed down hard. They swept it and threw a layer of sand on the top.
Nonetheless, Inez was glad that none of the fancy nurses came to do the prenatal the next day. Darla Bowers, the retired practical nurse who "helped out" in Dr. Adams's office, was "from here." She understood about garages with dirt floors and cabins in the hills. She had been born in one of those herself, a few years before Inez. She and Inez had gone to the same one-room country school together: Darla had been the "big girl" assigned to see that the first-grader Inez managed to walk safely back and forth. They were, in fact, cousins. Moreover, she had been born Darla Wild, and was a sister-in-law of Edith Wild who was going off to Prague to take care of Wallenstein.
Of course, it wasn't reasonable to expect people like Henny DeVries who weren't "from here" to know any of that—any more than they knew the other connections that kept Grantville's people in touch.
Darla suspected that Barbara was closer to delivery than Anders had thought. The first week, though, she agreed that she could go back to the camp.
"No, I definitely do not think that it would be a good idea for you to try to do a psychiatric evaluation." Inez was staring at Henny with horror. "Yes, I know that she gets seized by demons and starts screaming if she's closed in. But she can live with that. Her family can live with that. What good would it do if you stirred them up?"
Henny sputtered.
"She doesn't speak much of any language that you speak. You don't speak any language that maybe she can talk just fine. Do you know Bohemian? No. Do you know Hungarian? No. Anders isn't even sure that what she spoke as a child was Hungarian. I remember when our boys were over in that Kosovo place. It seemed like every time we listened to the news, there was some other language in Eastern Europe. Serbian? Albanian? Chinese? Who knows what she speaks?" Inez knew Grantville very well. Past the borders of her native county, much less her native country, her grasp of geography became considerably shakier.
"We ought to try to do something," Henny protested. "At least fix her up to the point that her family can live in a decent, heated house. What are they going to do with that poor baby, next winter?"
"Whatever they did with Miklos and Ilona," Inez responded pragmatically. "What do you want to do? Parade her in front of everyone who shows up in town speaking some language that we don't know, asking if they recognize the words that she says? If someone does, keep him here for a three-way conversation about psychology? You don't have any medicine to give her. Let sleeping dogs lie."
Inez suspected, however, that Henny wasn't inclined to let those napping pooches alone. She talked to Darla. Darla talked to somebody else whom Edith had met while nursing Wallenstein after his surgery. That somebody asked around among various political and business agents, the "men in Grantville" who represented potential allies and enemies, trading partners and rivals, and found one who was fluent in Hungarian. He agreed to talk to Barbola Harczy, later Barbara Hartzi, and now Barbara Hershey, to find out whether Magyar was, in fact, her native tongue.
"Oh," Inez said happily. "I've met him. He's come to church a couple of times."
After the second checkup, Darla didn't want Barbara to go back. If only she would stay in the Wileys' garage until after she had the baby, Darla begged, then if the baby should need assistance, they could take the little one right to the hospital. They couldn't do that if she was up at the camp. They promised to leave the garage door open. They called Anders at work at the mine. They called Guy Russell at the school. They even called Henny DeVries at the hospital. Barbara insisted on going back home. School was out. Miklos would be there. He could run to call Inez if anything happened before the next week.
"At least," Inez said, "stay here long enough to talk to the man who speaks Hungarian. You and Ilona can walk back up with Anders when he gets off."
"Hungarian? Why?"
"Anders said that you were Hungarian, he thought. Wouldn't you want a chance to use your own language again?"
"Not send me back?" Barbara started to panic.
"No, no, of course not. You are a citizen here now." Inez wasn't getting through. Miklos had run off to play. Guide me, she prayed. She didn't get guidance. But Barbara's water broke. Darla and Inez got very busy for a couple of hours. And Barbara stayed put, in the Wileys' garage.
Guy Russell brought the man who spoke Hungarian. He was middle-aged. He looked very inconspicuous. Not at all intimidating. He spoke to the woman on the pallet in the garage very softly, for quite some time. After the first few words, however, in his native, homely, Slovak dialect rather than Magyar. Then he offered to stand godfather to her fine new son.
That would be lovely, Barbara replied. It would be nice to have an old neighbor as sponsor. But they should ask Anders. She thought that Anders would agree. Istvan was a fine name, very fine. But if he did not mind, they owed much to Deacon Russell. Perhaps there could be two godfathers. Istvan Guy? Or Guy Istvan?
The man who spoke Hungarian and Slovakian was not hypersensitive. Two godfathers would be quite acceptable, he assured her. He left her to her rest and went to talk to her waiting patrons.
Most of what he had to say was aimed at Henny DeVries, even though there was quite a group gathered in the Wiley's living room.
"You asked if she had 'buried her memories,' " he said. "No, she remembers. She knows where her demons come from. She just cannot make them go away. So she lives with them."
Istvan Janoszi shrugged. "Her family belonged on the estates of Count Ferencz Nadasdy and his wife. Nadasdy died in 1604. There had been—tortures—before his death. After it, however, there was no control at all. There were complaints to the authorities. From the ministers at the local church. From the guardian of the heir. To the Hungarian Parliament. Directly to Emperor Mathias. But nothing was done until Palatine Thurzo intervened at the end of 1610 and confined the countess Erzsebet. Ah, immured her actually. Walled her up. Her accomplices were tried and executed, but she was not."
"The countess Erzsebet?" Henny asked.
"Elisabeth Bathory. The Blood Countess. Barbola was on her estate at Castle Csejthe—at her mercy—until then. Two of her own sisters from Catiche village were . . ." He paused, seeking the right words. "Among those chosen as sacrifices. Among the frozen corpses found outside the castle after the countess and her accomplices had taken them. Indeed, Barbola was chosen also. She was already caged. She had already been tortured and bled for several weeks. Bled to make the countess her cosmetics to keep her beautiful and youthful. If Thurzo had not intervened on the day that he did, she would soon have been as dead as they."
"I thought," Henny said, "that Elisabeth Bathory was a figment of the imagination of the people who write B-movie scripts."
Istvan had no idea what a B movie might be, but he did know about plays, scripts, and imagination. "The countess died," he said, "on August 21, 1614. Less than four years before this war broke out. The Defenestration of Prague was May 23, 1618. There are minutes of the investigation into the case. She left a will. She was very real."
Istvan paused a moment, wondering how to explain. "In the confusion after the arrests of the countess' accomplices, Barbola and her father fled to Bohemia—quite illegally, of course. They were serfs. They belonged to Nadasdy's estates." He waved a hand. "No, do not worry. I will make no attempt to remove one of your citizens. She has been gone a long time. Perhaps the Nadasdys have forgotten her. She must have been in Bohemia for several years before she met van Aelsten."
He looked at them. "The countess is dead. Her former servant girl now has another fine son to join the older children. Let the demons sleep—for both women."
Istvan shrugged his cloak over his shoulder as he went out into the cooling night air. He was quite, quite sure that the Nadasdy family would cause Barbola Harczy no trouble. Among those who had brought the—problems—in Csejthe to the attentions of the authorities had been a young peasant in Catiche village who had found the courage to walk all the way to Bratislava and petition the young count's guardian to investigate the disappearance of his fiancée. The guardian had investigated; the young peasant had been taken into the count's direct service. A great magnate of Hungary had immense business interests to manage. It would have been a dereliction of duty on the guardian's part not to add a subject with intelligence and courage to his staff.
For all the years since Bethlen Gabor betrayed the Protestant revolt in Hungary in 1626, Istvan had been Pal Nadasdy's man in Prague. Temporarily, he was Pal Nadasdy's man in Grantville. The count, he knew, was far more anxious to rehabilitate his family's good name than to find one escaped serf. It was not easy to be the son of the Blood Countess: he would not take actions that reminded people. In any case, Istvan had no intention of telling him where she was. The count's staff included lawyers and tax collectors who were frequently overofficious in attempting to enforce his rights.
He looked back. Through the windows of the Reverend Wiley's house, he could see lights. The garage, where he knew that Barbola Harczy rested with her child, was darkened. He was Nadasdy's man. And his family, too, came from Catiche.
It is time, he thought, for all of us to let our demons sleep. If they will.