Stew shuffled through the pile of books the duchess had sent. "And he's absolutely convinced that premarital chastity and post-marital fidelity prevent VD and thus produce healthier children. Which a person has got to admit is perfectly true in a world that doesn't have much in the way of antibiotics. Hey, here's his manual of advice for Christian married couples. The Joy of Sex for the here and now. Right down your alley, Janie." He slid it down the table.
"I took a look at it. It's more on the order of a pre-Cana manual."
"Ah. Well, too bad."
Vince got the meeting back on track. Or tried, at least. "What makes the duchess think that Kronach will let them in? Can we head them off?"
Cliff Priest shook his head. "Telling Duchess Claudia not to send them isn't an option. They're already on their way."
"Right through the middle of a peasant revolt?" Wade Jackson sounded skeptical.
"Well, it hasn't started yet, really. We're just expecting it. They'll probably get here before April."
"They've probably all been through peasant revolts before, anyhow," Stewart Hawker said mildly.
"Yeah. I sort of keep forgetting that they're all over the place."
"The doctors?"
"Naw. Peasant revolts."
Vince could hardly wait for Matt Trelli to arrive. He'd been to Grantville for his first R amp;R in over a year. They'd sent Tom O'Brien up to Kronach to sub for him. When he came through, he would escort the doctors up to Kronach so Tom could come back and contribute his bit to handling the peasant revolt. However a munitions specialist chose to do that.
Vince could hardly wait for the day that the three doctors departed hence into another place. Ever since they set foot in town, Dr. Guarinoni had treated the entire Bamberg administration, up-time and down-time, to large free helpings of his health advice. Bennett Norris would have called it "patented health advice" if they had patents.
He never stopped. Stacey O'Brien told Janie that if the man had been born up-time, he would have found his calling as a motivational speaker holding success seminars at the Holiday Inn for twenty-five dollars a head.
From Stacey, this didn't count as a compliment. She'd said it after Guarinoni gave a critique of her child-rearing methods.
He didn't limit his efforts to the administration, either. He got out and around in the streets of the city. He even-since he turned out to be really and truly pretty famous in this time and place-got an invitation to address the city council.
According to Else Kronacher, the Bamberg Committee of Correspondence had no particular objection to the health component of his message, but wasn't reacting well to the intransigence with which he wrapped it up in Catholic dogma.
As long as they avoided theology, though, he got along great with Willard and Emma Thornton. Most of his practical policies-applied health practices, Vince supposed-fit right in with Mormon ideas about what was good for you.
Weinhart and Gatterer spent their time following Matewski around, observing both his military medicine and his volunteer efforts at the orphanages and city hospital. He didn't seem to mind them. He might have minded Guarinoni, he said honestly to Wade Jackson, but that guy was too busy blowharding to hassle a man who had work to do.
Matt made pretty good time coming up from Wurzburg. Vince sent him and the doctors on their way on a really fast turnaround. In spite of the tension, nobody bothered them, neither the peasants nor the imperial knights. That might be, Matt thought, because there were a lot more peasants than knights, and Vince had a kind of… understanding… with the Ram.
On the Road to Kronach, Franconia
April 1634
Gatterer turned out to be a chatterer. Matt was just as pleased. Kronach was more than a little out of the loop, so he hadn't seen anywhere near as much data on these guys as Vince's inner circle had gotten.
"Dr. Weinhart was a student of Mercurialis, you know."
"Of who? I mean, of whom?"
"A professor at Padua. He is dead, now, for a quarter century, but he was very famous for what up-time you call 'sports medicine.' He wrote De arte gymnastica which isn't about what you call gymnastics, though. It's about caring for the body during exercising it. Mostly, though, Dr. Weinhart writes about diseases of the eyes. He is mostly here because he is, as you say, committed to fighting the plague. And, of course, because he has enough influence with the duchess to get the project approved."
Matt wondered vaguely just how Gatterer had come to hear of sports medicine. Then he thought of various reports about the number of down-time researchers combing through Grantville's books and encyclopedias and pushed it off into the category of not a problem. Of course there was stuff about sports medicine in the high school library and even if there hadn't been, Dr. Daoud, the chiropractor, loved to give classes and seminars.
"Please try to be tactful with Dr. Guarinoni," Gatterer said.
"Why?"
"You must understand. His father, the late Dr. Bartolomeo Guarinoni, was the emperor's personal physician. Logically, one would assume, our Dr. Guarinoni would have started life in a position of advantage. Unfortunately, ah, his parents were not married to one another. Although his father acknowledged him and provided him with an excellent education…"
"Narrow-minded folks talk."
"Precisely. He accompanied his father to the imperial courts-that of Maximilian II and Vienna and that of Rudolf II in Prague. He studied at the University of Padua. Still, every now and then, there is a certain… condescension… that he must cope with. Therefore, if, sometimes, he seems a bit… excessive…"
"Excessive? How?"
"Not everyone appreciates the comedy skits with which he attempted to enliven his book on practical health. Many of them are taken from stage routines. Directly adapted from them, even. But when he tries to get people who have come to him for advice to stand up and act them out…"
"I always hated that when my teachers made us do it. Both when I had to do it myself and when I had to watch other kids."
"But it is a good technique for embedding a concept in the memory. Excellent." Gatterer nodded sagely.
Near the Walls of Kronach
May 1634
Matt pointed down at the figure on the walls of the Rosenberg. The three doctors were taking fascinated turns with his up-time binoculars. "That's de Melon. Actually, he's expecting you. Inside the city, I mean."
"How do you know?"
"Well, we've set up the drop point. We keep the quarantine hard. No meetings with their people. No letting parties outside the walls to bury the dead. But… I'll show you. Over there-see? We've got that table in the middle of this field outside the walls. It's where their militia drills in normal times. We leave things on it and back off about the length of a football field. They come out and pick them up. They leave things on it and go inside again. We come down and pick them up."
"Things?"
"Information, mostly. Negotiations over this and that. So they know you're coming. We gave them a copy of the letters that came from your Duchess Claudia. And both of your books, Dr. Guarinoni and Dr. Weinhart."
"De Melon will receive us?"
"That's not the problem."
Matt smiled at Dr. Weinhart, who shuddered.
"There are two sides to this, you know. Not just 'will he receive you' but 'will good old Matt here let you go.' "
"How can you make conditions? People's lives are at stake."
"They've been at stake here ever since we came down to Franconia. If I don't finally get some kind of cooperation out of these stiff-assed…"
"What conditions are you imposing on them?"
"That if the three of you come into the city, I come too."