Mike nodded. “I’d say there won’t be more than a hundred rejects left, in the end. Gretchen’s being one hell of lot more charitable than I probably would have been.”
“Are any of
their
women and children likely to complain?” asked Dan.
Mike and James sneered simultaneously. “Not hardly!” snorted Mike. He nodded toward the small crowd of miserable people squatting outside the processing center. “Those people are weeping for the dead, Dan. The ones who”—angrily—“ ’belonged’ to the
scum
still inside have already left. Practically dancing, once they got the news.”
Nichols ran his fingers through his hair. “I saw one woman come up to Gretchen and ask her something. The whereabouts of her so-called ’man,’ I’m pretty sure. The name Diego was mentioned. When she heard what Gretchen had to say, she just collapsed. Crying like a baby. She kept repeating two words, over and over.”
His face was grim. “I don’t know much German, but I know that much.
Thank God, thank God.
”
There was silence for a moment. Then the police chief cleared his throat.
“All right, guys. We’ve got to come to a decision here. I saw the body myself, before we buried it. Doc Adams was right. The man probably would have died anyway, but the fatal wounds weren’t caused by gunfire. He was knifed. As neat a butchering job as you could ask for, too.”
Mike glanced at him. “You know what my opinion is, Dan. Are you comfortable with it?”
Frost scowled. “Hell no!
Comfortable?
I’m a law-enforcement officer, for Christ’s sake. I’ve got evidence suggesting first-degree murder and several witnesses placing two known people at the scene of the crime. And you wanna know if I’m
comfortable
?”
Mike said nothing. James, after looking away for a moment, asked: “Have you spoken with Jeff about it?”
The police chief was still scowling. “No,” he said forcefully. “And I’ve got no intention of speaking to him, either. Not unless we decide to press charges.”
Mike said nothing. James looked away again. Then, turning back: “Melissa told me that Gretchen had her younger sister all wrapped up in cloths. Keeping her figure hidden.”
Dan spit on the ground. “Dammit, James, that’s not the point! I don’t have any doubt at all about what happened. Or why.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s just the principle of the thing, that’s all.”
A little humor crept into his voice. “Truth is, any jury in this town would return a ’justifiable homicide’ verdict in a heartbeat. Especially after I described the so-called victim. I swear, the guy looked so much like a devil I almost shot him two or three times myself, just to be sure he was dead.”
Dan sighed. “But who needs a trial, when you get right down to it? Be great, wouldn’t it? Do I arrest them right after the wedding tomorrow, or do I wait a day so the kids can get laid?”
Mike said nothing. James looked away. Silence.
The police chief’s decision was inevitable. “The hell with it. If the principle bothers me too much, I can always remind myself that it happened out of my jurisdiction.”
Mike nodded.
“Okay,” said James. “There’ll be rumors, of course. Adams is a very good doctor, but he’s on the talkative side. By now, must be at least a half dozen people besides us who know the story.”
Mike and Dan grinned simultaneously.
“Hell, yes, there’ll be stories!” chortled the police chief. His eyes surveyed the surrounding hills admiringly. “We’re mountain people, Doc. Always had stories. The more grisly the better. Ain’t a man or woman around here who can’t trot out their brag about some desperado in the family tree.”
“My great-grandfather was a bank robber,” bragged Mike. “They say he killed two guards in one holdup.”
Dan sneered. “Oh, bullshit! The way I heard it he was just a petty horsethief.” He drove over Mike’s splutter of protest. “Now, if you want a
genu-ine
criminal, you gotta go to my great-great-aunt Bonnie’s first husband, Leroy. Cut four men, they say, in a knife fight on a riverboat. That was just the gambling side of it. He’s also supposed—”
“Pikers,” sneered Nichols. “Hillbilly sissies. You want some
real
stories?” He rubbed his hands. “Welcome to the ghetto! Let’s start with my second cousin, Anthony. A beast in human flesh, everybody says so. Started off at the age of thirteen—” He drove relentlessly over Appalachian outrage. “
Then,
no sooner did he get out of prison—”
By the evening of the third day, Gretchen’s task was done. The town of Grantville found itself, almost overnight, doubled in population. Some of the soldiers, like Heinrich and his men, enrolled in the American army. But most of them seized the opportunity to take up new trades—or, often enough, return to long-familiar ones: farmer, miner, carpenter, craftsman.
Over the next few weeks, the crowds packed into the refugee centers would start thinning. One by one, hesitantly, tentatively, American families would start taking in German boarders. The process was initiated by men at work, usually. Discovering that the man next to them, for all that he spoke an unfamiliar tongue and was possessed of odd notions and whims, swung a pretty good hammer or dug more than his share of coal. Or, simply, was polite and had a nice smile.
The rest? The ones to whom Gretchen would not give the nod?
They expected to be executed, of course. Their actual fate was far more bizarre—and, truth be told, much more unsettling.
None of those men had ever seen a photograph before. Seeing one—seeing their own faces on it—was bad enough. The writing on the posters was worse. Many of those men could read. Most of them, actually, since Gretchen had a low opinion of officers. The ones who couldn’t got a translation from their literate fellows.
The posters were identical, except for the photograph and the name.
wanted—dead
this man is declared outlaw
if he is found anywhere in american territory
after july 5, 1631
kill him
no questions will be asked
Heinrich acted as interpreter.
“You’ve got two days,” he growled. “Better move fast. You’re on foot with nothing but the clothes on your backs.”
The former commander of the tercio cleared his throat. “This is unclear,” he whined. “Just how far does this—this ’American territory’ extend?”
Heinrich turned to Mike for the answer. Mike said nothing. He just gave the commanding officer a stare.
A few months later, the officer found himself another employer. The Tsar. Russia, he thought, would be far enough.
Chapter 29
It may or may not have been July Fourth, depending on whom you asked. The division ran essentially along religious lines, but not entirely. The modern Gregorian calendar had been decreed by a papal bull in 1582, and was immediately adopted by Spain, Portugal, France and Italy. Within two years, most of the Catholic states of the Holy Roman Empire had followed suit, along with those portions of the Low Countries still under Spanish control. The Swiss started the process in 1583, but stalled immediately—the new calendar would not be accepted in the entire country until 1812. And the Hungarians took it for their own in 1587.
Then . . . Nothing, for a century. The Protestant and Orthodox nations dug in their heels and stayed with the Julian calendar.
So, what day was it? Well, according to the Scots cavalrymen and the Protestants from Badenburg who had come for the celebration, it most certainly was
not
the Fourth of July. Preposterous! It was—
No matter. Grantville was an American town, and the Americans said it was the Fourth of July. And besides—
Everybody loves a parade!
As official parades go, it was utterly disorganized. Henry Dreeson had tried desperately to bring rhyme and reason to the marching order, but the mayor had been overwhelmed by events and enthusiasm. Events, in that everyone was too preoccupied with integrating the former Catholic prisoners into their new world. Enthusiasm, in that the high-school students had their own opinion on the proper order of things. Especially Julie Sims, who led the rebellion with verve and élan.
The town’s mayor was one man, in his sixties. He lost.
Cheerleaders first.
When they heard the news, the Scotsmen were delighted. They were less delighted—downright disgruntled—when they discovered their own assigned place in the parade.
Tha’ far back? We’ll nae see nothin’ o’ those high-steppin’ knees! Ridic’lous!
So, the first little fray in the marching order began. Calvinists all, the Scots cavalrymen knew that man was born in sin and they were bound and determined to prove it. A full third of them had left their place in the parade before it even started. The parade route being jammed full of people, the Scots rebels cheerfully trotted their mounts down the side streets and alleys until they found the proper vantage points from which to
observe
the parade. And why not? It wasn’t as if their horses needed the exercise.
Despite his own avid desire to admire Julie’s knees, Mackay tried to stop them. But Lennox bade him still.
“Be a’ ease, laddie,” he said serenely. “Parades are a silly business anyway, an’ t’Americans dinna seem to care. Besides—” He gave Mackay a sarcastic flourish of the mustachioes. “Ye look downright silly, wavin’ tha’ thing around as if t’were a saber on ae battlefield. ’Tis drippin’ on y’buff coat, by th’by.”
Flushing, Mackay rescued his ice-cream cone in the only manner known to the sidereal universe. He went back to eating it. Perched on his warhorse, a ferocious brace of wheel-lock pistols at his side, the Scot commander made as unmartial a figure as possible.
“Marvelous stuff,” he mumbled. “How do they—
mumble—
it?”
Lennox took that as a rhetorical question, so he didn’t bother with a reply. He knew the answer, as it happened, because Willie Ray Hudson had shown him. Simple, really, as long as you could make the ice.
Lennox studied the marching order ahead of them, trying to gauge when the parade would lurch into motion. He couldn’t see much of it, however. The huge coal-hauling vehicle ahead of him—the Americans called it an APC, with their peculiar obsession with acronyms—blocked most of his vision.
Armored personnel carrier! Wha’ ae laugh!
Lennox didn’t bother to restrain his grin. The rear of the vehicle was open, and American soldiers were hauling German children aboard for the ride. A few of the bolder German adults followed, curiosity and parental concern overriding their apprehension.
Lennox’s grin faded. A glance at his commander, still happily chewing on his ice cream, brought back worry. Lennox had spent many hours in Willie Ray’s company, over the past few weeks. The dour middle-aged Scotsman and the cheerful old American farmer had taken a liking for each other.
Ice cream, yes.
Willie Ray had shown him the large stock of flavorings still available in the markets.
And we can tap the maple trees for sugar. The refined sugar’s almost gone.
So was the grain, and the vegetables, and the meat, and the eggs. Even with rigorous rationing, the food stocked in the town’s supermarkets had not lasted more than two months, just as their owners and managers had predicted. The small number of American farms which had come through the Ring of Fire could not possibly make up the difference. That had been true even before Grantville’s population doubled, after the battle.
Lennox’s mind veered aside, for a moment, snagged on another American eccentricity. They
insisted
on naming their battles.
That much Lennox could understand, even if the practice had fallen out of custom in his day. Most battles in the seventeenth century were sodden affairs. Bruising clashes between armies which collided almost accidentally as they marched across a ravaged landscape looking for food and shelter. No more worth naming than a dogfight in an alley.
But why call it the Battle o’ the Crapper?
He understood the reference, but not the reasoning. They were a quirky folk, the Americans. Lennox could think of no other nationality which would have found logic in naming a battle in honor of four girls in a shithouse.
He didn’t understand the logic, quite. The edges of it, perhaps, and the grim humor which lurked somewhere inside. But not the heart of the thing. It was too contradictory, too—
American.
Only a nation of commoners, he decided, each of whom thought like a nobleman, could find logic there. An ice-cream nation, confident that the grain and meat would be found.
Lennox didn’t understand it, no. But he had already made his decision, so the incomprehension was moot. He had never encountered such confident people in his life, and confidence is the most contagious of all diseases.
The APC ahead of him lurched into gear.
“T’parade’s startin’, lad,” he announced. Sourly: “It’d be ae fine thing if t’Scots commander c’d finish his ice cream ’fore he makes fools o’ us all.”
Mackay mumbled hasty agreement. But he did not relinquish the ice-cream cone until it had vanished, in the only suitable method known to the sidereal universe.
Ahead, somewhere in the middle of the parade, Mike and Rebecca walked hand in hand. They were more or less at the head of the UMWA contingent.
A flash of light drew his eye.
Rebecca smiled, and raised their clasped hands. “It’s so beautiful, Michael. Where did you get it?”
Michael returned her smile with one of his own. “It’s a secret,” he replied.
And it’ll stay one, too, if Morris keeps his mouth shut.
Mike had intended to give Rebecca his mother’s engagement ring. But it had been a paltry thing, in all truth, sentiment aside. When he brought it to Morris’ shop for sizing, the town’s jeweler had been aghast.
