"And now she's to be married to a peasant! I had hoped-we'd found any of several suitable matches-that a proper husband might ameliorate the situation."
As if Caroline would have been impressed by a string of young counts trotted before her. But Emelie left that unspoken. She also left unspoken the fact that her own marriage to a much older nobleman-her husband Ludwig Guenther, count of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, would be celebrating his fifty-third birthday in less than two months-had not particularly "ameliorated" her own attitudes, had they?
Fortunately, there had been no clashes between her and her husband, over the subject of Emelie's growing attachment to the up-timers and her subtly-expressed but growing political radicalization. It might be better to say, cultural radicalization. Like Caroline Platzer herself, Emelie was not particularly interested in politics, in the narrow sense of the term. But she too, like the princess, had found herself powerfully influenced by the attitudes toward people and social relations that, in many ways, were more deeply rooted in Caroline and-especially-Maureen Grady than they were in the most flamboyant CoC agitator.
Emelie and Ludwig Guenther might have clashed, had circumstances been different. But her husband, much to his surprise, had found himself at the center of the growing storm in Lutheran theological circles, ever since he'd sponsored the now-famous Rudolstadt Colloquy, the year before. The continuing controversies over that colloquy and the decisions the count had made at it had become so contentious for the continent's Lutheran clergy that an exasperated emperor Gustav Adolf had ordered another colloquy be held to adjudicate all the issues under dispute-and had appointed Emelie's husband to oversee it. That, because whatever their other quarrels, all theologians involved had expressed no animosity toward Ludwig Guenther as a person. Indeed, they'd all agreed that he'd been quite even-handed and judicious-even if, to many of them, astonishingly wrong-headed.
So, Emelie and Ludwig Guenther had come to Magdeburg a few months earlier. Since her husband spent practically every waking hour attending to the Lutheran dispute, she'd found herself with a great deal of time on her hands. At her sister-in-law's invitation, she'd spent those many free hours at the settlement house. And, as the months passed, felt a subtle but sweeping transformation come over her, in terms of attitudes that she'd inherited unthinkingly from her background and upbringing.
Maureen Grady had been more influential in that respect-at least, for Emelie if not a seven-year-old princess-than Caroline Platzer. Maureen was in her late forties, in the prime of her life, with both an extensive education and an administrative practice "under her belt," as the Americans put it. The fact that she was married to an up-time policeman, with the usual conservative views of such men-conservative, at least, by American standards-gave Maureen's own attitudes that much more impact. This was no flighty girl whose opinions could be easily dismissed. This was an extremely capable and very level-headed woman, able to retain the affections of a tough-minded cop, whose views on most important social questions placed her in opposition to the standards of seventeenth-century society. Noble society, certainly.
You could start with Maureen's feminism, so deeply ingrained that she didn't even consider it "feminism" to begin with. Just… self-evident.
It would be interesting to see where it all wound up, in the end. And since Emelie was still only nineteen years old-and given the impact that the up-timers were starting to have on medicine and life expectancy-she had good reason to believe she'd see a great deal of whatever transformations happened to Europe, in her lifetime.
She was looking forward to it, even if-
"And now the princess seems to be developing an attachment to the peasant. What are we going to do?" demanded Anna Sophia, almost wailing the words.
– some others were not.
Fortunately, Kristina did not put up a fuss about attending the concert that night. She might have, except that the concert was supposed to include ballads from the Brillo saga, for which she'd become a devoted enthusiast and afficionado.
"Praise be," the princess' governess and official lady-in-waiting, Lady Ulrike, murmured to Caroline as they set off for the royal palace.
Unlike most of the German establishment-and most of the Swedish, for that matter-Lady Ulrike had few if any reservations about Caroline's relationship with Kristina. It might be better to say that whatever reservations the Swedish noblewoman had were simply overwhelmed by her relief at having someone who was far better suited than she was to keeping the princess under control. And if the young American's methods of "control" upset the established order, so much the worse for the establishment. They could cluck their tongues all they wanted. They didn't have the responsibility of keeping a girl who might be the world's smartest seven-year-old and was certainly its most self-confident and willful one-not to mention a truly superb horse rider-from running wild at every turn.
To make the situation still better for Lady Ulrike, Mary Simpson was at the concert also. She was surprised, since she'd thought Mary had left already on her trip to the Upper Palatinate.
"No, I'm not leaving for two more days," Mary explained. "Ronnie had some last minute things she needed to attend to."
That was a reference to Veronica Richter-or Veronica Dreeson, now, if you went by American custom, since she'd married Grantville's mayor. To just about everyone's surprise, including theirs, she and Mary Simpson had become quite good friends since the Ring of Fire. Veronica was determined to return to the Upper Palatinate and see what she could recover of the family's property that had been left behind when she and the survivors of her family had been forced to become camp followers of Tilly's army.
Lady Ulrike smiled. "Two more days for the rumors to keep mounting."
Mary rolled her eyes. "Tell me about it. Why are so many people convinced that there's some Machiavellian political scheme involved in this? It's a purely personal matter for Veronica, and I agreed to accompany her simply because she's a friend of mine, she asked me to come-and I won't be seeing my husband until the war's over, anyway."
If I ever see him again at all, she could have added, but didn't. The ironclads had passed through Hamburg, according to the radio reports, with not much in the way of casualties. The admiral hadn't been one of them, or that would certainly have been reported also. Still, there were months of fighting ahead, and Mary's husband would be in the thick of it. She might very well not hear from him again until the summer, even if he survived.
Lady Ulrike was sure that was the underlying reason behind Mary's willingness to go to the Upper Palatinate with Veronica Dreeson. It was either that or spend the next few weeks in Magdeburg, fretting with worry.
She shrugged. "Don't be naive, Mary. You are John Simpson's wife and Veronica is Gretchen Richter's grandmother. No competent spymaster in Europe would presume that a joint trip you take-now of all times-would simply be an innocent personal matter. Especially not going to the Oberpfalz, where General Baner is locking horns with the Bavarians."
She used the German term for the Upper Palatinate, slipping it effortlessly into the English they'd been speaking. Lady Ulrike used every possible opportunity to improve her English-or her American, as she thought of it. Regardless of what happened, she was likely to continue being Princess Kristina's official lady-in-waiting. That meant she'd be dealing with the girl's new American friends and mentors for a long time to come. Understanding their language would be a help in the task. Lady Ulrike had started with a good grasp of the English of her day, but she'd soon come to appreciate the quip someone had once made about the relationship between Americans and Britons: Divided by a common language.
The princess came up that very moment. "Barreled up," to use American idiom. With her usual heedlessness, she flung herself into an embrace with Mary Simpson.