1635_ The Eastern Front - Eric Flint [106]
That meant fish, of course. Salted fish. Smoked fish. Salted smoked fish. Spicy salted smoked fish.
Caroline's father had done the same thing—with hamburgers and steaks, though, not this godawful stuff—in outdoor summer barbecues. She could remember her mother saying on those occasions, "Men. They're still in the caves, you know."
She'd been wiser than she knew. Caroline felt a pang of loss.
"May I have some more dumplings, please?" asked Kristina.
"Just one." Caroline spooned the dumpling into the princess' outstretched bowl, then spooned two more into a bowl of her own and sat down. "Or you'll get fat."
"Ha!" jeered Kristina. With some reason. The eight-year-old girl seemed to have the metabolism of a furnace.
Leaving the food aside, and the unpleasantness of dealing with Kristina's mother, Caroline thought this trip had had a couple of positive effects on the princess. For one thing, without her usual down-time ladies in waiting to keep disorienting the kid and reinforcing her bad habits, Kristina was starting to develop some social graces.
Courtesy, first and foremost. Neither Caroline nor Ulrik—nor Baldur, certainly—treated the girl like she was the sunrise and the morning dew. Once Kristina had started absorbing the initial lessons, she'd quickly figured out that if she was polite to the servants of the palace they would in turn do favors for her. Like helping her hide from her mother and her mother's many obnoxious toadies.
More important, though, Caroline thought, was that the trip had produced a subtle but profound shift in Kristina's relationship with Ulrik. She'd grown closer to the Danish prince and had begun to rely upon him.
Trust was not something that came easily or readily to the Swedish princess. That had become apparent to Caroline early on in her relationship with the girl. At the time, she'd ascribed it simply to Kristina's innate character, but the experience of this trip had modified that assessment. Caroline could now easily understand how the girl's upbringing would have shaped her in that direction.
If her father had been around more often, things might have been different. In the presence of Gustav Adolf, Kristina was a much happier and less difficult person than she was at most other times. But the king of Sweden, while he was obviously very fond of his daughter, was a man with many ambitions and preoccupations. He simply hadn't been around that often as she grew up.
Ulrik didn't have as much in the way of sheer raw intelligence as Kristina did. The girl was almost frighteningly precocious. But he was still a very smart man in his own right. What was more important, in Caroline's opinion, was that the Danish prince was also a wise man. Amazingly so, in fact, for someone who was only twenty-four years old. Ulrik had an ability to deliberate that you'd expect in a man twice his age—assuming the man in question was a wise man himself. He was prudent without being unduly cautious; temperate without being indecisive; and his automatic first impulse in the face of any problem or challenge was to reason rather than emote.
Caroline Platzer thought very highly of Ulrik, just as she did of Kristina. And, as she ate her dumplings at the same table with them, never thought twice of her presumption in analyzing and guiding the future rulers of much of Europe.
Why should she? She was a social worker, just doing her job, in a time and place that really needed the job done.
A field outside Dresden
"This will do nicely," announced Eddie Junker. Hands on hips, he surveyed the pasture again. "Very nicely."
Noelle Stull turned to the farmer and handed him a pouch full of coins. "Remember, you have to put up a good fence. There's enough in there to cover the cost."
Eddie nodded. "Very important. Or you might have a dead cow and—worse still—I might have a dead me."
The farmer didn't argue the point, once he finished counting the coins. "Not a problem. Keep my sons busy after they finish man-ma"