The weather was nice: that is, it wasn't actively raining. Yet. Ed and Cavriani took their beers to an outdoor table behind the restaurant. "Ahh," Ed said, as he sat down.

"Do you prefer 'Signor' Cavriani?" The Italian that Ed had learned from his grandparents was rusty, but serviceable.

"Not for a long time," Cavriani replied in German. "My first language is French. Seventy years or so ago, my grandfather was a university student, thinking modern thoughts. Seventy years ago, those thoughts were about Protestantism, naturally, but he was in Naples. So he found it prudent to leave. Of course, it's much easier to leave Naples than to leave a lot of these inland places-he just took a boat to Ma.r.s.eilles and from there went over to Geneva. He wrote home, telling his family that if they would send him enough money to buy citizenship, he would open up a branch of the firm. They did, he did, and we're still there-Cavriani Freres de Geneve. Neapolitan politics are fun, of course. I still keep my hand in, a bit.

Just as a hobby, you know."

"AndCavriani Freres deals in...?"

Cavriani waved his hand. "Oh, a little of this, a little of that. You could think of us as brokers, I suppose.

I rather like your up-time word-facilitators. Smoothers of paths. Those who make the rougher places plain."

Ed's mouth quirked. "You're in road construction?"

"We can ensure that a road is constructed. Or that a boat is built and crewed. That an enterprise is financed. Or even, sometimes, that an idea is spread. As the fiddler whom you watched is ensuring that an idea is spread."

Ed c.o.c.ked his head. "Would it be indiscreet to ask just whom, or what, you have been facilitating in or near Grantville?"

"Ah," said Cavriani. "Not at all. My meetings with Count August von Sommersburg, if not public as to their specific content, have not been concealed. Nor has their general purpose, which is financing the expansion of his slate quarries southwest of Grantville. I a.s.sure you that my presence is known to your Saale Development Authority. I paid Mr. Bolender at the Department of Economic Resources a courtesy call as well."

Ed thought privately that if Count August was slick, his backer was likely to be even slicker.

Nonetheless, Cavriani was a pleasant man to have as a new acquaintance. But "facilitators" usually were pleasant. Amiable. Courteous and easy to talk to. It was part of their stock in trade.

Cavriani was continuing. "If we could meet for dinner, I would be happy to explain the proposals we will be presenting."

But Ed had an out, at least temporarily. "Unfortunately, Monsieur Cavriani, I have a prior commitment."

Ed dangled a tidbit of information to gauge Cavriani's reaction. "Margrave George of Baden-Durlach-who, as you know, is here as King Gustavus Adolphus' personal observer-has invited several gentlemen to a private supper this evening."

Ed was gratified to see Cavriani's eyes brighten, ever so slightly. He thought that, undoubtedly, the man would make it his business to find out just which among the "several gentlemen" in attendance at the colloquy would be meeting with the margrave, and equally undoubtedly would know the answer before the dinner even took place. And why not? Information would certainly be one of the major trade items purveyed by Cavriani Brothers of Geneva (not to mention by Cavriani cousins, current Cavriani in-laws, and potential husbands of Cavriani daughters, sisters, and nieces, wherever they might be found). It would be very surprising if the firm didn't have permanent correspondents at every major Imperial and CPE post office, picking up the news as fast as it came in.

Ed glanced down at his watch. "But our break is over. Back to the discussions."

They returned their beer mugs to the vendor. Ed noticed that, under the stern eye of Jena's new Public Health Security Force, the booth actually had a couple of pans of dishwater in the rear, and a boy who was washing the mugs before the owner re-used them. He refrained from commenting that the practice would be even more helpful if they occasionally changed the dishwater. One step at a time. Apparently the sanitation squad hadn't gotten to Chapter Two.

Knowing I'm on the street where you live...

Ed Piazza's attendance at the Rudolstadt Colloquy had not been uncontroversial within the Grantville administration. To quote Mike Stearns' explosion of the previous December: "d.a.m.n it, Ed. We've got six to a dozen major projects going and all of them need you more than we need to have you sitting in on an academic debate and listening to a bunch of guys argue about who's going to be the minister of one single Lutheran church."

Ed hadn't kept on top of every turn of the kaleidoscope for the past twenty years, watching Grantville High School's cliques and allegiances shift on the basis of both current interests and longstanding family feuds, for nothing. If any occupation could have prepared a resident of Grantville to conduct early modern diplomacy, it was experience as a social studies teacher and high school princ.i.p.al.

"Look, Mike," he said patiently, "we can't just do things according to our own priorities. We have to factor in the priorities of our allies. Yes, they're arguing about who's going to be minister at St. Martin's.

Okay. Point One. Specifically, they're talking about whether the minister, whoever Count Ludwig Guenther's appointee turns out to be, will be a Matthaeus Flacius Illyricus-style Lutheran or a Philip Melanchthon-style Lutheran. Point Two. Even more important for us, they're arguing about whether, if he's a Flacian, he can exclude all of the followers of Philippist-style teachings who are now living in Grantville from taking communion. And, I suppose,vice versa . I'm still not sure on that one."

"That still doesn't mean that you can afford to spend a week listening to them. Much less two weeks. Or three. Or a month!"

Ed continued unperturbed. "Point Three. More generally, the result of this specific decision about this church just outside of Grantville is going to be a weather vane about the overall direction that the Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt consistory is going to take. If theydo make an exception from strict Flacian orthodoxy for the church serving Grantville-or the churches, since Count Ludwig Guenther is building another one on the other side of town to take up some of the overflow-then he'll be getting requests for exemption from other congregations in the county, and he knows it. If the theology faculty at Jena swallows hard and accepts an exemption in this county, they know that similar requests will be coming in from every other little city, county, and dukedom in Thuringia. What's more..."

Mike groaned. "There can't be more."

"Yes, there can be more. There is more. Point Four. Every Lutheran ruler in the CPE is sending a 'personal observer.' Which means that they're sending their chancellors. Gustavus Adolphus is sending a 'personal observer,' for Chrissakes! He's sending Margrave George of Baden-Durlach, and even if the man is old and getting very, very, tired, he's still been one of the most consistent defenders of the Protestant cause from the very beginning of this war. Don't count him out just because he lost a battle in 1622. He's never given up and he's taken exile rather than compromise with the Imperials."

Ed paused, then started again. "Listen, Mike. This colloquy is abig deal . Colloquies are academic debates, in a way, but they're academic debates on steroids. They're academic debates that affect the real world. If this war wasn't on, they wouldn't be sending 'personal observers.' They would be coming themselves: John George of Saxony, Wilhelm of Hessen-Ka.s.sel-even though he's a Calvinist himself-George of Hessen-Darmstadt, the Anhalt mini-princes, all of the Saxe-Whatever dukes. Reuss.

Probably Brandenburg, even though the elector himself has turned Calvinist like Hessen-Ka.s.sel, because he's taken the unusual measure of not imposing his faith on anyone but the court personnel. Most of his subjects are Lutheran. Maybe even Prussia. The Prussian duke will be sending an observer if he has someone suitable on retainer who can get here in time. Count Anton Guenther of Oldenburgis coming in person, but there has to be something else behind that. If it weren't for the war, Gustavus Adolphus himself might have come. When the Reformation got started, the Holy Roman Emperor sat in on some of the religious debates."

Mike looked sour. "It didn't do the Holy Roman Emperor a lot of good, either. They've been having religious wars ever since."

Ed sighed. "Sometimes, a smaller scale can be more effective. The theologians will debate and discuss.

The 'personal observers' will listen and report back. And, Point Five. At some point, while the public debate goes on and on, the 'personal observers' will get together and pool the collective wisdom of the 'patrons' of German Lutheranism about the way to go. If the 'way to go' turns out to be maintaining orthodox exclusionism, the different Lutheran parties will be back at each other's throats and the CPE will fall apart. If it turns out to be enforced mutual coexistence, no matter how much the theologians argue, we've maybe got the lever in place with which we can move the rest of Germany when it comes to religious tolerance. Capisce?"

"So the Lutheran princes will tell the Lutheran churches what to do." Mike pulled a sour face. He knew that he would have to live with the "established church" phenomenon, but he didn't have to like it.

"For the time being." Ed leaned back, touching his fingertips to one another in a reflective manner. "There really have been quite a lot of changes in the past century. Lay patrons still appoint ministers to the Lutheran churches-that's true enough. Connections still help in getting an appointment-that's true, too.

But they can't appoint just any ne'er-do-well cousin who needs a sinecure. Not anymore. They pick off a list of church-approved candidates who've finished a theological course, sometimes at a university and sometimes at a seminary, and who have been examined and approved by their own church board for the princ.i.p.ality-the consistory, it's called, mainly, or sometimes the general synod. There's no rule about what it's called. It works pretty much the same in the Calvinist princ.i.p.alities. Actually, a lot of it has rubbed off on us Catholics, as well. Compared to the middle ages, one thing that Europe has now is a clergy that's a lot more literate, a lot more educated, and a lot more committed to the job."

Ed grinned. "Of course, all of those things mean that as a general rule they spend a lot more time reading and arguing about fine theological points than back in the days when quite a few rural priests could barely stumble their way through the liturgy. Not to mention that the fashion for long sermons means that the parishioners hear a lot more about points of theological controversy, too. A fair number of homilies seem to encapsulate the major points that the local pastor intends to make in his next letter to a neighboring minister with whom he disagrees about the nature of the Real Presence or the significance of Christ's Descent into h.e.l.l."

Mike's eyebrows were still raised-high.

Ed persisted. "Shall I go over it again? We can't just do things according to our own priorities. We have to factor in the priorities of our allies. Mike, we're living on their street. They're our neighbors. Theycare about this. They really, really, do. Therefore,we care about this. Whether you want us to or not. And we will send a delegate of equal status to the chancellors of all those allied territories. That's me."

"So everything else gets dropped for a month?"

"No. I'll just make Arnold Bellamy 'acting.' He's perfectly capable of keeping everything else on track. If I die of the plague or get thrown off a d.a.m.ned horse and break my neck, he will be doing the job. That's why there's a Deputy Secretary of State."

Mike frowned a little, thinking that almost a year ago, when Grantville's delegates first met with Gustavus Adolphus, Ed hadn't been anything like this a.s.sertive. He had stood there looking very behind-the-scenes, very advice-but-not-policy, very subordinate-in-a-clear-hierarchy-of-authority. He'd had a lot of on-the-job experience as Secretary of State since then, of course, but still, how had he changed so much?

Then Mike reconsidered, and decided that it was last April that was the aberration. Ed's whole career track had been aimed at being a princ.i.p.al: not a vice-princ.i.p.al or a deputy princ.i.p.al. He'd run the high school with a fair amount of input-there was a faculty senate and a student council. He'd run it with good cheer, common sense, and an even temperament. But somehow no one, neither teachers nor kids nor even the county superintendent of schools, had doubted that the hand that directed Grantville High School belonged to Ed Piazza. Before the RoF, after the mine had closed, Ed had managed the single largest enterprise in Grantville, from the standpoint of budget and personnel, and he'd never been afraid to make a decision once he had the data on which to base it.

"What if I directly order you not to go?" he asked.

"If you directly order me not to go, I will stay here. But I will continue to think that you are wrong." Ed leaned forward in his chair. "Don't just take it from me. Ask the rest of the cabinet, if you want to. Bring it up for debate. But Ishould go. From beginning to end. That's where I stand."

They also serve who only sit and sit.

Ed had only brought the essentials for this stay in Jena. In his view, the essentials included an old aluminum Drip-o-lator and a thermos bottle with the kind of top that nested six different sizes of plastic cup. He could remind himself a thousand times that this was not a quaint Renaissance Faire staffed by costumed reenactors but rather the modern world-insofar as there was a modern world. Nonetheless, the thought of beer for breakfast turned his stomach. His wife Annabelle had concocted some reusable filters out of an ancient roll of gauze she had turned up somewhere. Turkish coffee arrived in beans rather than pre-ground, but he'd managed to modify a peppermill to deal with that problem. He stood in the public room of the Black Bear Inn the next morning, brewing coffee with a dramatic flourish for the benefit of his entourage.

Since the secretary of state's support staff in Jena consisted entirely of kids who had gone to high school since he joined the staff, they expected the flourish-even early in the morning. They would have been disappointed not to have it. Before he became princ.i.p.al, Mr. P.'s "extracurricular" had been directing all the school plays-usually teaching by doing. Ed could drop into any role. His students never quite understood how, when a demonstration was called for, a burly man of about five and a half feet, wearing a yellow polo shirt, could turn into an imaginary six-foot-tall rabbit (Harvey), a psychopathic killer ( Night Must Fall), a Russian empress (Anastasia), or a ditzy spinster (a.r.s.enic and Old Lace)-without even putting on a costume. When he became princ.i.p.al, his first addition to the staff had been Amber Higham as a full-time drama teacher, but he had still dropped in on the rehearsals whenever he could find a minute.

But they all knew his favorite role. "Hey, Mr. Piazza," said Tanya the radio operator, as Ed poured boiling water into the Drip-o-lator, "Give us the serenade."

The serenade was Ed's glory. Six times, during his life, he had been called to this acme of thespian desires-in high school already; in college; while he was in the army, during an R&R in Guam; three times for community theaters. He had met Annabelle during the first community theater version. It was never enough. There couldn't be too many productions. So as Leopold Cavriani came in, hoping to extract data about the previous evening's conclave of chancellors, he found the odor of coffee, six apprentice diplomats (only one of whom officially worked for the Department of International Affairs) sitting around their breakfast table wearing borrowed St. Mary's second-best choir robes that they tried to pretend were seventeenth century academic gowns, enthusiastic applause, and the secretary of state, garbed in a matching choir robe, throwing himself into a glorious ba.s.so rendition of "Some Enchanted Evening" as the sun rose.

That was another thing that Ed had learned about colloquies. They started early. The partic.i.p.ants were not inclined to waste daylight.

"Ah, M'sieu Cavriani, good morning. Do join us. My staff-Tanya Newcomb, our tech. She's based in Grantville, in my department. I've borrowed two of them from our administrative delegations a.s.signed to the cities of the U.S., just for the conference, to broaden their perspective a bit. Peter Chehab, Suhl; Joel Matowski, Fulda. Zack Carroll-he's in the army and will be sent to Erfurt in the fall. By the way, his sister Sara just graduated from our high school this spring and joined the army, too. Jamie Lee Swisher-she's been working as a page at our National Library, but she did such a good job getting stuff together for this conference that I've borrowed her-and if I can, I'll steal her for my permanent staff.

Staci Matowski-she's taking teacher training and we hope to have her in the social studies department at the high school in a few more years. Right now, her folks said that she could come along because she's Joel's sister and he could keep an eye on her."

Cavriani recognized them-not the individual young people, but the type. He had been one, at their age.

His son had recently become one. Trainees: the pool from which the designated successors would someday emerge. The only really, ah,interesting thing about the American staff was that half of them were girls. He stashed this in his mental file, for future consideration. Obviously, he couldn't put his daughters-four girls to one boy! What had Potentiana been thinking of as she conceived?-as a.s.sistant factors in most of their branch offices. It just wasn't feasible in the environment of European business. But, in a couple of years-maybe in this Grantville... If daughters could become contributing members of the firm, it would far more than double their personnel. In this generation, the Cavriani Freres were very short on Cavriani Fils. He would think about it. Idelette was 15 now...

As soon as they were sufficiently fortified with coffee and hard rolls, Ed collected his tote bag and joined Cavriani for the walk over to the medical school. Cavriani was clearly pumping for information, but at least Ed had something to offer that was both news and would shortly be public anyway. He said solemnly, "No, Margrave George's guests found that the situation is not yet opportune to move the colloquy toward a conclusion. Late yesterday afternoon, the delegation from the University of Tuebingen theological school arrived. Nothing will be decided until they have had their chance to speak. Anything else would be gravely discourteous."

Cavriani nodded with equal gravity. Both men knew what this meant in terms of hard-bench-days.

The delegation from the University of Tuebingen theological school included all of the faculty and most of the students. Down toward the southwest, in Swabia, Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar (theoretically on behalf of the French component of the League of Ostend, but mainly for himself) and Gustav Horn (for Gustavus Adolphus and the CPE) had spent the past six months campaigning with a lot more energy than generals usually brought to the late autumn, winter, and spring seasons. Both of them were young men-Horn just turned forty and Bernhard a good decade younger. Both were energetic; both were ambitious; both had funds. They both regarded war as a combination of job and sport.

The results had been rather hard on the civilian population of the Duchy of Wuerttemberg. Among other consequences, the University of Tuebingen had closed down for the spring semester. Since staying in Tuebingen did not appear to be the best of options, any theologian who could get out of town had prudently withdrawn to Darmstadt. With a colloquy on the spring schedule, the Tuebingen Ensemble had just relocated again. After three months of exile from their cla.s.srooms, they would certainly be prepared to speak. At length.

Andreas Osiander had been a rather heterodox theologian-the Flacians had hated him. His grandson, Professor Lukas Osiander Jr., was one of the most vociferous spokesmen in favor of strict orthodoxy.

He was a controversialist. He was a polemicist. He was willing to take on the Catholics and he did. He was willing to take on the Calvinists and he did. It was to be antic.i.p.ated that he would relish a chance to confront not just the concept of open communion among different schools of Lutheranism, which was technically the subject of the colloquy, but more generally the dangerous underlying ideas of religious tolerance and separation of church and state. Professor Lukas Osiander Jr. was able to recognize the thin edge of a wedge when he saw one.

Cavriani winced-at the prospect of another two weeks of non-stop quotations, Ed presumed. "And, I suppose, the Jena faculty has welcomed these reinforcements with open arms?"

Ed shook his head. "Not so entirely as one might think. They're orthodox here, of course, very orthodox. But, generally, their approach isn't as confrontational as the Tuebingen style. Additionally, along the way, Osiander has attacked the works of Johann Arndt. He's proclaimed that Arndt's 'True Christianity' is contrary to the proper Lutheran doctrine of justification. Arndt was the pastor who inspired the dean of the Jena faculty to enter the ministry..."

"Ah." Cavriani's hand circ.u.mscribed a spiral in front of him. "Indeed, so much of life is like that. It's not what you know, but whom you know."

The colloquy came to order.

There could be no doubt about it: the theologians of Tuebingen knew really a lot about the doctrine of ubiquity. They appeared to know even more about the supposed or alleged errors that Philip Melanchthon had made in regard to the doctrine of ubiquity. They were prepared to pursue every detail of how these errors had been maintained by Melanchthon's successors and followers since 1560.

It was not as if the communion question that was now plaguing St. Martin's in the Fields in the County of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt was new. The Tuebingen delegation was prepared. As far as its members were concerned, they already had the answers, fully worked out. Wuerttemberg's consistory in Stuttgart, which was basically the Tuebingen theological faculty wearing different hats, had been through this only a few years ago before-with a lot of publicity-in the case of that irritating, arrogant, hard-headed, and (G.o.d be praised) recently deceased native son of the duchy, the astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler.

Professor Osiander was loaded for bear, Ed thought.

"No minister of the church, who wants to be a true caretaker of G.o.d's secrets, may admit a person in communion who outwardly boasts of the true evangelical religion, but in the articles of faith is not exact in all things."

Ed looked for Gary Lambert, who was in his place on the bench, far enough around the curve of the anatomy theater from Ed to be visible. He was nodding solemnly, as if to say, "Of course!" Gary was the sole representative in Grantville of the Missouri Synod, the conservative American up-time branch of the Lutheran church.

"No one who maintains a formal membership in the Lutheran church, but who privately deviates from sound doctrine, obscuring it with dubious meanings and absurd speculations, both being confused and confusing others, may be admitted to communion."

Ed frowned and penned a note to Cavriani.How do they know whether or not he's deviating, if he does it privately?

Cavriani c.o.c.ked his head, then scribbled.I suppose when they go to the pastor to make confession and pre-register for communion, he asks them.

Ed frowned again, grateful for the comparatively large blank s.p.a.ces in theConcordia Triglotta that had resulted when the three different languages used more or fewer words to say the same thing.Catholics go to confession. Protestants don't go to confession.

Cavriani scribbled another response:Lutherans do. Maybe not where you came from. Or when you came from. But they do here. Or now. Whatever.

Cavriani flipped over to a largely empty page.It's the old "laudable custom" maneuver. Luther threw out five of the seven Catholic sacraments in the sense that he defined them as "not sacraments."

But since the people were attached to them, they turned into "laudable customs" and kept hanging around. That's why we proper Calvinists think they're still half Catholic. Confession is a laudable custom; marriage ceremonies are a laudable custom; ordination of ministers is a laudable custom; confirmation is a laudable custom. I think some of them still perform last rites.

Professor Osiander, at the podium, was not showing any sign of winding down. "Anyone who does not wish to commit to the definite form of pure doctrine, and shrinks from subscribing to the Formula of Concord as the symbol of the orthodox Lutheran church founded in the Holy Scriptures, may not be admitted to holy communion. Unless such a person drops his erroneous opinion and harmonizes his beliefs with those of the church, he must and shall be excluded. A minister who so excludes a person who denies the omnipresence of the Body of Christ-as the Calvinists do and as these crypto-Calvinists who are a malignant growth within Lutheranism do-acts in a manner that is clearly pleasing to G.o.d."

Dramatically, Ed thought, this would be a fine conclusion, and a really good place for Professor Osiander to stop and let everybody else get some lunch.

Professor Osiander, however, was drawing another breath. He clearly did not approve of people who thought for themselves in matters of religious doctrine, "being carried away according to their own judgment in matters of faith."

Ed thought that this was a distinctly peculiar opinion on the part of someone who claimed to be a successor of the man who started the Protestant Reformation by insisting that he had to rely on the conclusions of his own conscience and not on what someone else told him. Evidently, for Professor Osiander, the "priesthood of all believers" didn't have room for all of "all."

Gary Lambert, again, was nodding solemnly. His up-time opponent Carol Koch, Grantville's ELCA representative to the colloquy, on the other hand, was scribbling madly, trying to keep notes.

Ed thought for a moment. He didn't think that Grantville's ELCA Lutherans had deliberately chosen Carol as their delegate in order to "make a statement" about the role of women in the church. There just weren't many up-time Lutherans in Grantville. None of them were natives of the town. It hadn't been a Lutheran kind of place before the Ring of Fire. Gary was the only one who had belonged to the Missouri Synod except for his wife, who had been at work at the hospital in Morgantown when it happened. The ELCA-Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, to use the full t.i.tle-had had a grand total of ten members. Ten adults, anyway, and three teenagers who had to be pretty close to eighteen by now, if the Kochs' two weren't already older than that.

According to the story Ed had heard, the ELCA bunch, however many, had met at the Sutters' house.

Billy Nelson and Melvin Sutter had declined the honor of presenting their case-before the Ring of Fire, Billy had been a truck driver and Melvin had run a filling station. Ron Koch, the only mining safety engineer in town, clearly couldn't be spared for a week or a month-he didn't have a deputy. Those three were the ELCA's sum total of adult men. There really was only one person who could take the time. Ron's wife.

"You'll just have to do it," Roberta Sutter had said. The victim-umm, nominee for the honor-had been looking appalled. Roberta had reached into the armory that was available to her in her secondary role as president of Grantville's genealogy club. "Your mother's father was a minister. Your mom was an organist. You're bound to have inherited some kind of a knack for it. You'll have to do it, Carol."

When the colloquy finally-finally!-broke for lunch, Ed saw that Benny Pierce was once more established on his herring keg in the market square. The girl who had been selling the sheet music yesterday was singing. She had a high soprano, a little reedy, but with good carrying quality-a mountain kind of voice. Ed waved Cavriani to go on to the beer stand and wandered over. She was singing "Lorena"-not the soupy Civil War ballad, but Mother Maybelle's "The Sun Shines No More on Lorena," in which a slave, taken to Kentucky when his master moved, hears many years later that his wife has died back in Virginia. She was singing it in German:"Und man sagt mir, Lorena, Du bist tot."

The more sentimental members of the audience had tears dripping from their eyes. Ed never ceased to be astonished at how smoothly a lot of English verse, such as, "And they tell me, Lorena, you are dead,"

went into German, and vice versa.

Benny stopped playing, leaned back, and stretched his arms. "Hi'ya, Ed. Meet Minnie Hugelmair.

Minnie, this guy here is Ed Piazza. If anything happens to me, head for Grantville and ask for him. Play something-keep 'em entertained." He handed his fiddle over to the girl.