1635_ The Eastern Front - Eric Flint [38]
It hadn't taken the story more than two weeks to spread all across the USE. So was born the legend of the Good Duke—or, often, the Three Good Dukes, giving credit to Eberhard's younger brothers who had also died in the struggle. So too was born the legend of the young tavern-keeper's daughter whom the duke had loved, that selfsame love presumably being the motive for his righteous deed.
The fact that the girl's father happened to be the head of the Mainz CoC didn't hurt, of course.
The story was mostly nonsense. So much was obvious to Gretchen just from listening to Tata's version. The relationship the girl had had with the duke had fallen quite a ways short of the legend. There was nothing tawdry about it, if you had reasonable standards concerning such things. It was hardly the first time a charming young nobleman and an attractive town girl had had an affair, after all. Tata had been genuinely fond of Eberhard, and he of her. But most likely they'd have drifted apart, had he lived.
As for the duke's motives, Tata insisted that they had nothing to do with her.
"He was just pissed off, the way the Swedes kept jerking him back and forth. You know how they get with their German subordinates, if they're noblemen. So he got even by dumping a mess in their laps."
A mess it was, too. The prime minister's bureaucrats and emperor's lawyers were already trying to get the duke's will invalidated. The lawyers working for the Fourth of July Party were pushing back just as hard. And no matter which way the legal tussles went, the CoCs in Württemberg were having a field day. For once, they could claim to be the party of legitimacy. Their popular support in the southwestern province was growing rapidly.
Here, though, Gretchen thought Tata was actually being too modest. She didn't doubt that the driving force behind Duke Eberhard's decision had been his irritation with the often high-handed methods of Gustav Adolf and his officials. Many German noblemen allied to the Swedish king chafed under his rule.
But, without Tata and the CoC to which she belonged, would his deathbed revenge have taken the form that it did?
Gretchen thought not. For all her hostility toward the aristocracy in general, she thought that the dying Eberhard had been moved, at the end, by a genuinely noble impulse. One that Tata could at least claim to have watered, if not seeded.
If even Gretchen was that well-disposed toward the memory of the young duke, she knew full well how the masses of the Germanies would react. Tata could say whatever she wanted. The CoC legend would roll right over it.
Maybe Esther had acne, too. Who cared?
So. Gretchen had a legend on her hands. The question was, what to do with her?
The answer was obvious. The best way to solve a problem is to apply it to another proiblem.
She waggled her hand in a rising motion. "Come, Tata. I want to introduce you to someone."
Obediently, the girl rose.
Once they left the building, a contingent of CoC activists closed in around them. Others stayed in place, guarding the building.
Looked at from one angle, the level of protection being provided to Gretchen was excessive. Here in the heart of Magdeburg's working class district, no large group of enemies would dare to move in force. Not unless an army had already taken the city, in which case a relative handful of security guards would be a moot point.
But conflict had a psychological as well as a physical component, which Gretchen had come to respect as the struggle continued. Spartacus understood that also, and Gunther Achterhof practically worshipped at the shrine of what he like to call "psyops." He was addicted to such Americanisms.
Partly, Gretchen had come to that understanding on her own. Mostly, though, she'd come to it from years of watching Mike