Grantville Gazette, Volume 66 Read online

  The two men exchanged an unfriendly look but said nothing.

  "I have called you here today for quite another purpose," Johanna continued. "Burgmann Schenk, please describe the disturbances in the castle."

  Schenk did so at some length and with considerable emotion. Friedland and Weintraub listened with widening eyes and sagging jaws. If this wasn't news to them they were both in the running for the seventeenth-century equivalent of the Oscars.

  Once again Johanna found it necessary to cut Schenk short. "Thank you, Burgmann Schenk. Friedland, Weintraub, has either of you any light to cast upon these happenings?"

  "No, Your Grace!" Friedland said emphatically. "Why should we do such a thing? What purpose would it serve?"

  "That was not an accusation, Friedland, just a request for information," Johanna assured him. "Weintraub?"

  "I know nothing, Your Grace," the Union man said, but very, very unconvincingly.

  Johanna had to have noticed but she didn't press the issue. "Thank you. You may go."

  They went.

  "Wow," Sherri breathed from the end of the bench. "Now that's what I call Girl Power!"

  All seven girls—and Burgmann Schenk, too, for that matter—agreed Weintraub had been lying.

  "He knows something, or thinks he may know something," Lies said expressing their unanimous thought. "Something he is not willing to admit in a public hall."

  "But might be willing to tell privately," Johanna finished and stood up. "I'll talk to him. Schenk, Miss Barnes and I will need an escort."

  Mikayla brightened. "Me, too?"

  "Yes," said Johanna. "You're an up-timer and you know all about unions. If he won't trust me, his princess, he might trust you." She stood up, shaking out her wide satin skirt. "But first I must change. You probably want to, too, Mikayla."

  Mikayla looked down at her ‘best' dress and agreed.

  ****

  A short time later, the two girls were on the road into Plötzkau with two castle guards, minus their big halberds, at their heels. Johanna asked the first person they met where they could find Union Master Weintraub and was given complicated directions that she seemed to understand perfectly, though Mikayla couldn't follow them at all.

  She noticed that nobody seemed surprised—and certainly not awed—by the sight of their princess calmly walking the streets. A good number of them greeted her with a polite "Good morning, Your Grace." and got an equally polite "Good morning" in return. Johanna seemed to know an astonishing number of the citizenry by name. Or maybe it wasn't all that astonishing. Plötzkau was a small town, smaller even than Grantville, and Johanna and her family had lived up at the castle for years and years.

  Weintraub's usual home was the workers' village across the river but when in Plötzkau he stayed with cousins at a small, well-kept house on a winding back lane. Only he wasn't there now.

  "He didn't come back here, Your Grace." Josepha Meltzer said. She acted like she had princesses sitting in her parlor every day of the week. In fact, she seemed a lot more interested and impressed by Mikayla—a genuine up-timer.

  So it was Mikayla who asked, "Do you have any idea where he went? This isn't about the union troubles. It's about something up at the castle that he might be able to help us with."

  Frau Meltzer seemed to believe her. "He has probably gone down to the Old Stork Inn—that's where the union holds its meetings."

  Of course Johanna knew where the Old Stork Inn was. So did the guards, and they were less than happy about going there. "It's a disreputable place," Sergeant Schieffer reminded Johanna.

  "That's what you are here for, Sergeant," she answered calmly.

  ****

  The main room at the Old Stork didn't just look seventeenth century; it looked medieval. The rafters of the roof were so low Mikayla found herself ducking though they cleared her head by half a foot at least. There was a strong smell of beer, smoke, and less salubrious things. The customers, barely visible in the gloom, did look like a rough crowd, but they also looked kind of shocked and pretty dismayed at the sight of Johanna—or maybe it was the bristling, protective guards.

  Johanna marched right up to the long, sagging bar and asked for Union Master Weintraub in her crisp, unfriendly ‘talking to servants' voice. Mikayla couldn't understand the host's mumble but his pointing finger stabbing the air in the direction of a low door needed no translation.

  Sergeant Schieffer opened the door warily, one hand on his sidearm, while Johanna and Mikayla stood well back protected by Corporal Heine. Schieffer's eyes went wide, and he gasped.

  The girls pushed forward to see what the problem was. Mikayla found herself looking into a long room whose only furniture was an equally long table and assorted benches. Union Master Weintraub was lying bent uncomfortably back over one of those benches, eyes and mouth wide open with a small black hole between those eyes and blood dripping from the large exit wound in the back of his head into the red puddle spreading slowly over the floor.

  Mikayla backed away from the sight and kept backing up until her legs intersected with a bench. She collapsed onto it. But she didn't scream; she was proud of herself for that.

  Johanna looked about the way Mikayla felt—paper-white and green around the gills—but that didn't keep her from spitting out orders like a machine gun. "Don't touch the body, Schieffer, but see if there are any other doors or a weapon. If you find one don't touch that either. Heine, go for the watch."

  "Yes, Your Grace," said Heine, "but first I think you should sit down, Your Grace." He steered the princess respectfully to Mikayla's bench, and she collapsed next to her friend. "Shall I get you something to drink, Your Grace?"

  Johanna swallowed hard. "Yes, please, and bring the owner over here. I have some questions for him."

  The Inn's owner claimed to know nothing, nothing at all, and said so repeatedly and emphatically. Johanna shot a look at Mikayla over her mug of small beer and got a nod of agreement. Either the man was telling the truth or he was another Anhaltiner in line for a down-time Oscar.

  Mikayla took a sip from her own mug. The beer tasted awful but it settled her stomach. Too bad the alcohol content was too low to do anything else.

  Sergeant Schieffer emerged from the murder room, closing the door carefully behind him. "There's a door leading to the cellars, your Grace," he reported, "I bolted it. No sign of a weapon."

  Mikayla had been subliminally aware of the bar emptying like it was on fire and was more than a little surprised when a patron approached them rather than making for the exit. He was young and dressed in the t-shirt and jeans that seemed regulation for the UMWA demonstrators, and he looked pale and distraught. "Your Grace, I'm Heinrich Farber of UMWA." He swallowed hard. "I—I know some things that might help."

  "Excellent," said Johanna. "Please continue, Farber."

  He swallowed again. "We had a meeting scheduled. Stefan sent word for us to start without him, and we did. Then he came storming in, very upset, and threw the rest of us out so he could talk to Berners alone."

  "And this Berners is?" Johanna prompted.

  Farber clearly didn't want to answer that but; "An undercover man from the CoC."

  "What?" Mikayla and Johanna said in unison.

  "He came down from Bernburg to help us organize the workers here in Plötzkau," Farber explained, ‘undercover so the capitalists wouldn't stop him—"

  "No," Mikayla interrupted firmly. "Just no. That is not how the COC operates, not in the USE, anyway. They march into town with banners flying and a brass band if they've got one, set up a Freedom Arches, and start pumping out pamphlets. They don't hide, and let me tell you they would have cleaned up this place first off!"

  Johanna was nodding agreement. "That is certainly how they operate in Dessau and our other cities."

  "I don't know who this Berners guy is," Mikayla told Farber earnestly, "but I'll bet money he isn't CoC."

  "But… but then who is he?" Farber faltered in dismay.

  "A suspect," sai
d Johanna with visible satisfaction.

  ****

  Returning to the castle, Johanna and Mikayla were welcomed by a girl avalanche from the hall door. Sherri and Anna Sophia both excitedly shouted; "We found clues! We found clues!"

  Anna Sophia grabbed Mikayla's hand and Sherri Johanna's, and they practically hauled them inside, through the hall and into an adjoining room where Lies, Julia, Jessie, and Burgmann Schenk were sitting around a table spread with assorted exhibits.

  "We didn't feel like writing," said Anna Sophia.

  "Why should you have all the fun?" Sherri added. "So we decided to split up and look for clues!"

  Mikayla gave a snort of laughter. Johanna looked questioningly at her cousin. Lies shrugged and mouthed, "I'll explain later."

  "Anna Sophia, Sherri, and Lies decided to be Fred and Daphne and check out the ground floor—" Jessie said taking over the story.

  "Taking a couple of guards with us just in case," put in Lies with a smile.

  "First we found marks on the floor like somebody had been dragging something heavy—" Sherri chimed in.

  "Then we found a barred door that wasn't—" added Anna Sophia.

  "The bar had been cut through," Lies explained, "so it looked like it was still sealed but it opened easily enough—"

  "Too easily—the hinges were oiled!" said Sherri.

  "Somebody was using it regularly," added Anna Sophia.

  "So we started prying around under the furniture covers and found crates that didn't belong and look what was in them!" Sherri finished with a dramatic gesture.

  Johanna looked, and suddenly felt much more serious. A new-style military rifle lay on the table still in its packing. "You found that in my castle?"

  "Crates and crates of them," said Lies.

  Johanna exchanged glances with Mikayla. "Something worth killing over." Her friend nodded.

  Jessie took up the story. "Meanwhile Julia and I were making like Velma in the archives and we found the plans for Prince Bernhard's remodeling."

  A large paper was unrolled on the table next to the gun, its corners held down by pieces of silver plate from the sideboard. The ink had faded but the plan could still be made out. "Look at those spaces between the old walls and the new ones," Jessie said, using a pencil as a pointer. "Just enough room for a man or men to move around and make noise."

  Burgmann Schenk spoke for the first time. "We still haven't found how they're getting into the between spaces, Your Grace, but I had the wall of the corridor flanking the Prince's Hall broken open and found this." A length of heavy rusty chain lay coiled beside the parchment completing the exhibits. "What did Weintraub have to say, Your Grace?"

  "Not much," Johanna said, "We found him dead, murdered." She saw the excitement drain out of the other girls. Their mystery had just stopped being fun.

  "He knew about this," Mikayla said slowly, thinking it out. "He knew who was doing it and why, and they killed him before he could tell."

  "Let me tell you what Weintraub's UMWA friend had to say." Johanna repeated Farber's story about the fake CoC man.

  "Sounds like this Berner is the murderer," Lies said when her cousin had finished.

  "If this were a book it would be more complicated than that," Sherri observed, "but being reality you're probably right."

  "And Berner is smuggling up-time style guns to somebody, and we are right on the border with Brandenburg and Saxony," Lies continued thoughtfully.

  "Five gets you ten the UMWA guys think they're for the Saxon rebels," said Mikayla.

  "What do you want to bet that they are dead wrong?" Johanna asked her grimly.

  "Nothing," Mikayla answered.

  "The real question is what does this Berners do now?" said Julia. "If he's smart he'll cut and run—"

  "But that would mean leaving all these guns behind," said Jessie, "so maybe he won't do the smart thing."

  "So we set a Scooby trap," said Sherri. "Just in case."

  "A what?" asked a bewildered Burgmann Schenk.

  All three up-time girls started talking at once, stepping on each other's sentences and creating more confusion than clarity, but finally Schenk nodded.

  "Yes, I see, an ambush," his fingers drummed the table as he thought. "Yes," he said again, "they might come again and we should be ready." He turned to Johanna. "Your Grace, this castle is no longer secure. You and your guests should remove to Bernburg at once. How soon can you be ready?"

  For an instant all seven girls just gaped at him, then Johanna recovered enough to answer, "Don't you think you're overreacting a little, Herr Schenk?"

  He set his jaw. "Armed men are running through this castle at will, Your Grace. Security breach doesn't even begin to describe our current status. I cannot guarantee the safety of Your Grace and your guests."

  "Be reasonable, Herr Schenk," Johanna argued. "Either they won't come back at all or you'll catch them tonight. Either way the situation is resolved, and we'll have made the trip for nothing."

  His expression showed he was wavering.

  "You are right to be concerned," Lies said persuasively, "but surely we'll be safe enough in our quarters." She pointed to the plan. "See, there are no false walls in the private wing."

  Schenk turned the paper around and studied it carefully. The girls held their breath. "Very well," he said at long last. "I take Your Grace's point. If you ladies will be so good as to retire to your quarters, I will make the necessary dispositions to secure your safety."

  ****

  "There are guards on the downstairs door, too," Sherri reported.

  "Schenk is nothing if not thorough," Johanna said ruefully.

  Sherri dropped into an empty chair. The girls had gathered in their writing room but nobody was in the mood to work. Anke's mystery held no appeal compared to the real one they'd found. The girls lay draped over assorted pieces of furniture; Johanna and Mikayla sharing one couch, Jessie and Julia another, Lies and Anna Sophia curled up in two of the armchairs.

  "We should try to get some work done," Lies said after a long moment. Nobody moved.

  Jessie got up and went to the window. "I don't see any guards outside," she reported.

  "Of course not," Julia said reasonably, "Schenk doesn't want to risk scaring Berners off if he does come."

  Mikayla sat up in sudden excitement. "That means we can get outside through the garden door!"

  Lies sat up, too. "No! Absolutely not. It would be much too dangerous!"

  Mikayla opened her mouth to argue but a knock at the door made her close it, words unsaid.

  "You may come in," Johanna called, and Schenk entered rubbing his hands and looking quite pleased for a change.

  "Your Grace and Miss Barnes were quite right about where the guns are going," he said. "I've just heard from the ABI office in Zerbst. They've stopped one or two shipments of SRGs on the Brandenburg border and have been trying to find out where they came from ever since."

  "The what office?" Mikayla said blankly.

  "The Anhalt Bureau of Investigation," Johanna answered. "It's a county level police agency using up-time methods. Papa got the idea from—"

  "We know what he got the idea from," Mikayla assured her.

  "The Bernburg office is sending a team of agents to investigate this Berners' operation," Schenk continued quite happily. "If we are fortunate tonight we will have prisoners for them to question."

  "I certainly hope so," Johanna said politely.

  Schenk left the room in an excellent mood, which would have ended abruptly if he'd heard the first words out Anna Sophia's mouth:

  "That settles it—we can't miss this."

  ****

  "This is wrong. It is dangerous. What if something happens? Poor Schenk will be blamed!" Lies pleaded, practically wringing her hands.

  The other six girls turned almost identical impatient expressions on her. They were gathered in the Princess's state bedroom all ready to go, the up-timers in their jeans and and the down-timers in short, dark-co
lored petticoats.

  "Nothing is going to happen, Lies. Don't be hysterical." Johanna sounded annoyed.

  "All the danger will be inside the castle," Julia explained yet again. "We'll be as safe outside as in our rooms. And we'll see Berners arrive."

  "If he arrives," Jessie added, also repeating herself. "There's a very good chance nothing will happen at all."

  "Don't say that," Mikayla pleaded.

  "Don't be such a killjoy, Lies," Sherri said.

  Johanna handed her cousin one of the two dark lanterns, "Here, you bring up the rear." Dark lanterns were the seventeenth-century's version of a flashlight—sort of. They consisted a candle in a tin box with a handle and a shutter that allowed the light to be cast or shut off at will without blowing out the candle.

  Lies threw up her hands in despair, but she took the lantern.

  The girls passed through connecting doors from the bedroom through a maid's room to the sitting room adjacent to the walled garden terrace built against the castle under the Princess's windows.

  They moved as quietly as possible so as not to alert the men patrolling the passage. Fortunately, Schenk's precautions were aimed at keeping Berners' people out rather than the girls in. Apparently it had never occurred to him that they might try to get out, which showed a certain lack of imagination on his part.

  "This is a really, really bad idea," Lies said from her place at the end of the line as Johanna slid back the bolts on the garden door.

  "We know, we know, now be quiet," her cousin answered. "All right, everybody follow me, watch your step and no talking."

  Johanna slipped through the barely-opened door followed by Mikayla and the other girls, one by one. Lies brought up the rear, carefully closing the door behind them. They flitted single file, hugging the castle wall. Suddenly Johanna came to a full stop and Mikayla almost walked into her. Anna Sophia did bump into her and she could hear muffled ouches as the reaction moved down the line.

  Johanna opened the shutter of her lantern a little more sending the square of yellow light rippling down a flight of moss-covered steps descending into a hole. "Be very careful here," she breathed, "the stairs are slippery and quite steep."