Eric Flint - [Grantville 04] - 1634 The Ram Rebellion

PART I:

RECIPES FOR REVOLUTION

The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me

down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very

many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I

answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.”

Ezekiel 37:1-3

Cook Books

Eric Flint

June, 1631

After Melissa Mailey ushered Mike Stearns into her living room and took a seat on an armchair facing

him, she lifted her eyebrows. The expression on her face was one that Mike still remembered from years

earlier, when he’d been a high school student and Melissa had been the most notorious teacher in the

high school.

Which she still was, for that matter.

For the adult population of Grantville, Melissa’s notoriety stemmed from her radical political opinions.

For her students, however, that notoriety had an entirely different basis. Whatever flamboyantly

egalitarian views Ms. Mailey entertained regarding society as a whole, there was not a shred of evidence

for them in her classrooms.

The students who thought she was basically okay—Mike himself had been one of them—called her

eitherThe Schoolmarm from Hell orMelissa the Hun. Behind her back, of course. The terms used by

other students went downhill from there. Very rapidly downhill, in many cases.

Granted, all of her students would admit that she was fair. Butfair is not actually a virtue admired in a

schoolteacher, by her students, especially when it was almost impossible to slide anything by her.

Merciful, yes;easy-going , yes;absent-minded , best of all.

Fair, no.

As one of Mike’s schoolmates had grumbled to him at the time, “Who cares if she’s ‘fair’?” The boy

pointed an accusing finger at the book open before him on the cafeteria table. “So she’s making all of us

read this crap, equally and with no favoritism. Gee, ain’t that great?”

Mike grimaced. The volume in question was Dante’sInferno, a book he had soon come to detest

himself. Ms. Mailey’s notions of “suitable reading” for teenagers bore no relationship at all to what

teenagers thought themselves.

“’Fair,’” his friend continued remorselessly, the accusing finger still rigid. “Sure she is. Just like Satan

himself, in this miserable book.”

The expression on Melissa’s face today was the same one Mike remembered from years before. The

aloof, questioning eyebrow-lift with which she greeted a student who approached her with a problem

after class. A facial gesture which, somehow, managed to combine three different propositions:

One. You wish?

Two. Yes, I will be glad to help you.

Three. You will almost certainly wish I hadn’t.

“You’ve got the oddest look on your face, Mike,” Melissa said, bringing him back to the moment.

“What’s up?”

He smiled, a bit sheepishly. “Just remembering . . . Ah, never mind. I need your advice.”

“Yes?”

That was point one. Fearlessly, Mike plowed on.

“It’s fine and dandy for me to give a fancy public speech about launching the American revolution ahead

of schedule, now that our town is stranded in seventeenth century Europe. I even got elected head of the

emergency committee, because of it, thanks to you. But now, ah . . .”

“You’ve got to put your money where your mouth is. And you don’t really know where to start, other

than with some fine generalities – very vague, very politician-like – about freedom and equality.” She

leaned forward in her chair, lacing her long fingers together. “Yes, I understand. I’ll be glad to give you

whatever advice I can.”

Point two, coming like the tides. Paralyzed for a moment, Mike studied her fingers. Very elegant and

aristocratic fingers, they were. Absurdly so, really, for a woman with her political attitudes.

“Ah. Yes. I was thinking maybe . . .”

But Melissa was already shaking her head. Another characteristic Mike remembered. Melissa Mailey

was no more likely to let a student frame their own question than she was to provide them with an answer

they wanted.

“Start with the land problem,” she said firmly. “It stands right at the center of any revolution that shatters

the old regime and ushers in democracy and the industrial revolution. That was true even in our own

American revolution, though most people don’t realize it.”

He couldn’t think of anything better to say than he had as a teenager.

“Huh?”

She smiled. Very coolly, as he remembered her doing. “Mike, it’s complicated. Land tenure is always

complicated, especially in societies with a feudal background—and there’s nothing dumber than trying to

carry through a revolution based on misconceptions. For instance, you’re probably assuming that

seventeenth century German farmers are a bunch of serfs toiling on land owned by the aristocracy. So the

simplest way to solve their problem is to expropriate the land from the great nobles and turn it over to the

peasants.”

He emitted the familiar response he remembered from high school. “Uh. Well. Yeah.”

That firm, detestable headshake.

“Not in the least. That’s true in eastern Europe, if I remember correctly, but it’s not true here. Mind you,

my memory of the details of German social history in the early modern period is a little vague, now. I

haven’t studied the subject since college, because it’s not something we teach in this high school. Or any

high school in America, so far as I know. But I remember enough to tell you that land relations in

Germany in this day and age are a tangled mare’s nest. If we approach it the wrong way, we’re just as

likely to infuriate the farmers as the nobility, which is the last thing we want to do.”

She rose, moved over to one of the bookcases in the living room, and deftly plucked out two of the

volumes there. “I’ve still got some of the relevant books, fortunately, and I’ve been refreshing my

memory these past few days.”

Then, as Mike feared she would, she came over and handed one of them to him.

Blessedly, the more slender volume.

“Start with this one. It’s Barraclough’sThe Origins of Modern Germany and it’s still—for my money,

anyway—the best general history on the subject, even though it was written half a century ago.”

Quickly, and as surreptitiously as possible, he flipped to the end of the book.

Not surreptitiously enough, of course.

“Oh, grow up,” she said. “It’s not even five hundred pages long. You can read it in a few days. What’s

so funny?”

Despite himself, Mike had started chuckling.

“Dante’sInferno was shorter than this, and you gave us a month to read that one.”

“You were a callow youth, then. Besides, it was interza rima and this is simple prose. So stop whining.

Now . . .”

A moment later, the other book—the great, fat, monstrous tome—was deposited firmly in his lap. It was

all he could do not to groan.

“Then read this one.”

The size of the thing would have been bad enough. The title—Economic History of Europe, for the

love of God—made it even worse.

“For Pete’s sake, Mike, it’s just a book. Stop hefting it as if I were asking you to lift weights.”

“Be easier,” he muttered. “What’d they print it on? Depleted uranium?”

She returned to her seat. “Make fancy speeches, get elected the big shot, pay the price. No pain, no

gain. And if you think that book looks like a bitch, wait’ll you—we, I should say—run into the real

world.”

And that, too, he remembered. Such an oddly contradictory woman.

“Isn’t that word politically incorrect?”

“Sure is. Ain’t life a bitch?”

She was grinning, now, nothing cool about it.

* * *

Walking back to his house—listing, some, from the weight of the books tucked under his arm—Mike

started muttering to himself.

“Point three. I almost certainly wish I hadn’t.”

* * *

The worst of it, of course, was that it wasn’t true, and Mike knew it. In the times coming, the books

would look like a piece of cake, compared to the real world.

It’s complicated. . . coming from Melissa Mailey . . .

“Damn,” he muttered. “Can’t we just dump some tea leaves in a harbor somewhere, storm a famous

prison or two, and be done with it?”

Birdie’s Farm

Gorg Huff and Paula Goodlett

Part I:

June 1631

Birdie Newhouse stood on his back porch and looked over his farm. Looked over, in fact, what was left

of his farm. The farm was a little chunk of Appalachian valley, which was abruptly cut off by a German

granite wall. The farm had been about half again as big before the Ring of Fire, but even then it hadn’t

been big enough to make a real living.

Birdie had everything a man needed to make a real farm. There was a tractor, a plow, the works. He

even had some livestock, chickens and a couple of hogs. The only thing he didn’t have was the land.

Out to one side of the remainder of the farm, there was a little bit of field that you could plow, if you

were real careful about the contouring. Most of his farm, though, consisted of skinny trees holding on to

the hillside for dear life. A dry creek ran through the middle of the property. The creek was going to stay

dry, unfortunately. The German land on the other side of the cliff tilted the wrong way to feed the creek.

Birdie’s eyes lost some of their worry as he again noticed the wellhead for the natural gas well on his

land. He was more thankful every day that he had gone ahead and converted his equipment to work on

natural gas. Willie Ray Hudson had made that suggestion several years ago. Birdie was glad he had

listened.

Much to his disgust, Birdie simply didn’t have enough land. Even worse, the little bit of land that the Ring

of Fire had left him was mortgaged to the Grantville Bank. There was plenty of land on the other side of

the cliff created by the Ring of Fire, including a village about a mile beyond it. It wasn’t much of a village,

according to Birdie’s sons Haskell and Trent, who’d been patrolling the area with the UMWA guys. But

they said the land was good.

“Birdie,” his wife called, interrupting his thoughts, “staring at that wall won’t undo the Ring of Fire. Come

inside. It’s time for dinner.”

“Be right in, Mary Lee,” Birdie answered, all the while thinking,There’s land on the other side of the

Ring Wall, if only I can get it.

“What do you think Mr. Walker will say?” Mary Lee asked as he was sitting down to dinner. When she

was worried about something she couldn’t just leave it alone, she had to talk about whatever it was.

“Don’t know. Coleman’s a decent enough sort but he’s still a banker. The Ring of Fire took a third of

our land. From where he’s sitting, that means we have two-thirds the collateral for our loan. On the other

hand, there’s a fair bit of property that the bank is gonna get, chunks of land where the owners were

outside the ring. Anyway, I think he’d rather extend the loan if he can see his way clear to do it. Maybe

he’ll give us six months to work something out.”

“And what will we have in six months that we don’t have now?”

“Well, I’ve been giving that some thought while I was staring at that damn wall. Maybe, just maybe, I

have a solution.” He then refused to say another word on the matter, much to Mary Lee’s dismay. Birdie

loved teasing her like that. It still worked, even after almost thirty years.

* * *

Birdie had an appointment with Coleman Walker, but didn’t get to talk to him. Coleman was busy trying

to set up some kind of money changing business for the Emergency Committee. Instead, Edgar came out

to meet him, and escorted him to an office, chattering all the way.

“You know, Mr. Newhouse,” Edgar said, “here at the bank, we know that the farmers are going to be

really important to the success of Grantville. There’s been a lot of talk about that. The Emergency

Committee got involved and asked, well, demanded, to tell the truth about it, that the Bank put a hiatus

on calling in any farm loans for at least a year. Mr. Walker agreed to it, right smartly, too.”

Birdie thought that was something of a miracle, all by itself. Getting Coleman Walker to agree to anything

“right smartly” hadn’t ever happened in Birdie’s experience.

“Don’t get me wrong, Edgar,” Birdie responded, “Coleman’s always been a good sort. But, there’s got

to be a catch in there, somewhere. Spit it out.”

“I don’t know all the details, Mr. Newhouse. Mr. Walker talked to Mike and Willie Ray, as well as J.

D. Richards and some other teachers from the Tech School. It seems that the problem, well, one of the

problems, is the stock of seeds we have here. We don’t have enough improved crop seeds. And there’s

something about hybrid seeds not breeding true. And even if they did, there still isn’t enough.”

Edgar’s explanation wasn’t any too clear, but Birdie got the gist of it. Willie Ray might have to ask the

farmers to do things that weren’t that profitable in the short run. Things like building up seed stock.

Birdie, like many farmers, bought seed every year, instead of saving his own. Saving your own seed

hadn’t made much sense up-time.

“What it boils down to, is the bank is going to cut all the farmers some slack. Considering the

circumstances, what with the Ring of Fire and all, we’re giving you a year to get caught up.”

Birdie was pretty sure that Edgar wasn’t telling him everything. Bankers always acted like it was their

own money you were asking them for.

“Suppose I need some more money? Bank gonna be good for that? There’s a lot that needs doing, and

it ain’t getting done for nothing.”

“We might loan you more money, Mr. Newhouse. If Willie Ray agrees that what you need it for is

important to the town, it’s more than likely that you’ll get what you need.”

All this support came as a bit of a surprise to Birdie. Grantville had never been farming country. The hills

were just too steep and the valleys too narrow. The focus had always been on industry of some sort,

natural gas, coal mines, even the toilet factory. Just before the Ring of Fire, a fiber optics plant was being

built. Farmers had never been a big part of the local economy.

* * *

“Poor bastards,” Willie Ray remarked when he and Birdie reached Birdie’s tractor. Willie Ray had been

introducing Birdie to the local farmers. The introduction had been accomplished with gestures, for the

most part, with a few badly accented words of German thrown in here and there.

“What happened to them?” Birdie asked.

“From what I gather, Sundremda, that’s this little village here, used to have fifteen farming families plus a

few folks who had houses and gardens in the village but weren’t farmers. There was a blacksmith, a

carpenter, and the like. This last year has been rough though. Now there are six farming families and four

of those families are part time farmers.Halbbauer the Germans call ‘em. ‘Half farmers,’ that would be in

English.”

Birdie knew what that was like. He regularly had to work odd jobs to keep the farm going.

“They also lost a bunch of their livestock,” Willie Ray continued, “which made getting in this year’s crop

just about impossible. Some of it was lost to the mercenaries that hit the place a few months back, and

some to Remda, a little town that way, a ways, where they ran when the village got hit.

“Ernst, that fella you shook hands with, called it theft when I was out here before with Miss Abrabanel

to translate. From what I understand the folk in Remda are saying they took the stock for rent and fines.

Then, some bug came up about the same time, and quite a few folks died. So everyone’s blaming

everyone else and there are law suits goin’ both ways. Meanwhile, the folks in Remda seem to figure

possession is nine points of the law, so they’re holdin’ the stock till everything’s settled. I’m guessing

they’re also holdin’ the oxen to force the Sundremda villagers to settle their way.

“You clear on what’s needed?” Willie Ray asked when he had finished his explanation.

Birdie nodded. He and Willie Ray had walked the fields with Ernst and defined what was needed where.

Willie Ray headed back to town and Birdie got to work harvesting and thinking. His farm was just over

the Ring Wall, less than a mile away. If he could cut some sort of gap in the Ring Wall this would be the

perfect farm for him. He didn’t want to put anyone out of their homes but it looked like they needed him

as much as he needed the land. Maybe he could buy this place or most of it anyway. Once he got done

here he’d go see if Willie Ray would support him with the bank.

July 1631

Willie Ray had agreed that buying a farm outside the Ring of Fire and near Birdie’s place, what was left

of it, was a good idea. However; he didn’t know much of anything about how Birdie would go about

buying a farm here. Birdie had talked to MacKay, who had recommended one of his troops who spoke

English and German and knew a bit about farming.

Danny McTavish was willing enough to act as translator and guide, for a fair payment. Fair payment, in

McTavish’s eyes, was five one-liter plastic soda bottles, complete with their lids, and a gutting knife.

Birdie threw dinner into the deal, so they could eat while they talked over the plan. Birdie liked

McTavish, anyway. The scruffy Scot sure could use some dental work, but he spoke German and knew

the area fairly well.

“Won’t work, what you’re saying,” McTavish said. “You won’t be able to buy a farm for the working.

Farmers around here are mostly tenants. They don’t own their farms the way you up-timers do.”

“I didn’t really expect them to,” Birdie answered. “I was just glad to find out that things aren’t as bad as

I thought they would be. I never paid much attention to history, back in school. I figured that just because

they didn’t own their farms, there was no reason I couldn’t buy one though.”

“You understand, I’m no expert.” Danny tugged his goatee, apparently to help organize his thoughts.

“You don’t exactly buy land here, at least not to use it yourself. What you do is rent a piece of a farming

village. Along with the rent you pay, you get some specific rights, all of them written down proper, in the

contract. You get a house, or the right to build a house. You get the right to gather or cut a given amount

of firewood, and to pasture so many head of cattle or sheep or whatever. It’s all specified in the contract.

Finally, you get a strip of field to plant.

“Mostly you lease a piece of land for ninety-nine years or three generations, whichever comes first.

Now, you don’t always go to the laird for this. The laird might have sold off some part, or all of the rents.

When that’s happened, and I’m told it happens most of the time, there might be a whole bunch of

different people, and each one of them owns a part of the rent.”

“What does the lord own after he’s sold the rents?” Birdie asked “Mining rights?”

“Mining rights belong to the ruler. The laird never had those. Timber rights, probably. Maybe hunting

rights. It could be. It depends on how he sold the rents. Sometimes, a laird would even give the rents to

someone, like as a dowry or for the support of a relative. Sometimes, all that’s left to the laird is the right

to control who cuts down how much of the forest. Or, other times, he might have nothing much. It could

just be a leftover from when the ‘von Somewheres’ really were lairds with rights and duties to the folk

under them. Back when only a ‘von Somewhere’ could own land and owning land meant you were a

noble. Maybe back then you couldn’t sell your land and still have ‘von’ in front of your name.” Danny

shrugged. “The truth is I don’t know why it’s that way. But, I’ve talked to a lot of farmers since I came

here with Captain MacKay, and that seems to be the way it is.”

“Do we have to track down everyone that owns a part of the rent if we want to rent a farm in one of the

villages around here?”

“If lots of people own a piece of the rent, they generally hire someone to handle the rental. You have to

deal with who ever that is, and it’s usually a lawyer. The Germanies are a lawyer’s paradise.”

“What about just going to the guy that owns the land and buying it?” Mary Lee asked.

Danny was shaking his head. “Even if he hasn’t sold the rents, the village is probably rented. If you

bought the land, you would be the new laird, but the rent contracts would still be there. You couldn’t use

the land yourself. All you could do is collect the rents. If he’s sold the rents, I don’t think you’d be buying

more than a piece of paper, or maybe hunting rights. If you want to farm, you pretty much have to rent a

farm in a village. Then, after you got the rent worked out with the landlord, you have to be approved by

theGemeinde .”

“The Ge... Gem..., the what?” Birdie asked.

“TheGemeinde ,” Danny explained, pronouncing the word carefully. “All the people who rent land in a

village get together to decide what to do and when to do it. I’ve heard Mr. Hudson say it’s sort of a

village co-op. Everyone plows, plants, and reaps together, and your ‘strip’ is your share of the profits.

They’re usually a bit careful, theGemeinde , about who they let rent the farms. Can’t really blame them

for it, I suppose. You wouldn’t want to share the load with someone who wouldn’t pull their share, now

would you?

“TheGemeinde has a right to refuse someone if they can find a reason for it. Usually, they use ‘moral

turpitude’ of some sort. Mostly, the only people they allow to buy in to a village are someone they know,

relatives or friends of people that already lived there. What with the war, and all that sort of thing, people

are being a bit less particular about who they take on, lately. You’d have to have the animals to plow

your fields, and you’d have to have the start up money.”

Come to think of it, the farmers around here are a bit more independent than I would have

guessed, Birdie thought.Kind of interdependent, too. He sat quietly and considered all this new

information for a while and tried to apply it to what he already knew. The farmers in the area had turned

out to be different from what he would have expected from his vague memories of high school history

classes. They were a lot more like American farmers than the downtrodden serfs he’d thought they’d be,

in most ways. The one big difference, which McTavish had just explained, was that seventeenth century

German farmers worked and thought in collective terms, where up-time American farmers were used to

operating as individuals.

That meant . . .

Sundremda had about two thousand acres of land but only about three hundred and fifty or so acres

were crop land. The rest of the land was forest for firewood and building needs, a carp pond and more

grazing land than the village really needed.

The important thing, though, was that Sundremda was missing most of its tenant farmers. So, maybe he

could buy the place, or at least buy that part of it that wasn’t rented to anyone. Maybe he could buy the

rents, and pay himself. He might even be able to get some of the fallow fields as cropland. If he could

arrange it, he would have over two hundred acres, maybe even three hundred acres. He would also have

grazing rights, rights to a big share of the wood in the forest, as well as rights to the fish in the little pond

the village had set up.

Birdie didn’t want to just rent his tractor, or his services, he wanted to buy into the village. By

preference, he wanted to own his own land. If he couldn’t do that, he’d try to buy the rents. At a

minimum, he wanted to have a fair say in what got planted where and when. He wanted a vote in how

things went down. Now, if he could just figure a way to do it.

* * *

“Mary Lee!” Birdie yelled. “Where are you, woman?”

A muffled “Down here” led Birdie to the basement steps, where he heard Mary Lee clattering around.

He descended, carefully. The light never had been that great down here.

“What are you doing?” he asked, when he saw Mary Lee was counting things, then writing something on

a tablet of paper.

“Taking an inventory.”

“Taking an inventory of what? And why? This stuff has been around for years. It’s mostly junk.”

Mary Lee looked up from her counting with an annoyed expression on her face. “Junk like that old

tractor of yours? Junk like those plastic bottles that are bringing about fifteen dollars each? There’s no

such thing as junk anymore, Birdie, in case you haven’t noticed. Even rusty nails are better than no nails

at all. There’s no telling what we’ve got in this basement, not to mention what’s in the attic. If stuff like

plastic soda bottles can bring in that much money, we might get rich from this room. If you don’t want to

help me here, go do your own inventory.”

Mary Lee had been a bit testy lately, to Birdie’s way of thinking. Still, she might have a point. He left her

to her business and went to do his own inventory.

* * *

Birdie came up with a fair amount of stuff with his inventory. He had more than some of his fellow

up-time farmers, but not as much as others. There was quite a lot of junk that simply hadn’t been worth

the cost of repairing up-time, but turned out to be irreplaceable down-time.

With the help of Willie Ray and Danny McTavish, Birdie was able to gauge the down-time value of his

stuff pretty well. It was a little frightening, in a way, the number of things that had a value ten or even a

hundred times what it had been before. It really gave Birdie an appreciation of mass production. Mary

Lee was right about the plastic coke bottles he had given Danny. They were selling for five to fifteen

bucks apiece and the knife would sell for about a hundred bucks.

The real money was in the machinery, though. Birdie had two tractors, one that worked, and one that

didn’t. The one that didn’t work wouldn’t have been worth repairing up-time. It was over fifty years old

and had been sitting in one of his sheds for the last twenty of those years. Now, though, if the engine

could be repaired, it was worth the cost of repair and more. Each of his tractors was worth as much as

his truncated farm.

There was also the family car, which used gasoline, the farm truck that used natural gas from his well,

and two junk cars. Birdie still didn’t know exactly what Mary Lee had found in the house. They had lived

in this house for over twenty years, raised two children here, and rarely threw anything away. That was

about standard, for a West Virginia farm.

* * *

Ernst Bachmeier looked at the men before him. The two up-timers he recognized. One was Willie Ray,

who had bought the village’s crops while the crops were still in the field, and the other was Birdie, who

had come out with his tractor and harvested those crops. The Scottish mercenary who was doing the

translating made Ernst nervous.

Nervous or not, Ernst dragged his mind back to what the Scot was saying. “HerrNewhouse is a farmer,

but a part of his farm was left up-time by the Ring of Fire. He has the tools and equipment to support a

farm much larger than he has now, and the skills of an up-time farmer. What he doesn’t have is the land

to farm, or the knowledge of local conditions.”

“With his tractor he would be a great help, and the village needs more people, but we don’t have the

houses rebuilt,” Ernst replied.

“His house is less than two miles from here. He says he can cut a way through the Ring Wall that will let

him bring the tractor and other equipment back and forth.” There was a short discussion between the

Scot and the up-timers, and then the Scot continued. “He does want to build a house in the village, and

he wants to make something called a ‘septic system,’ so that he can have indoor plumbing, but that need

not be done this year.”

“In that case, it would be very good if he leased a farm in the village. I just wish we could find four more

farmers to do the same.” Ernst was a bit concerned about getting all the land rented.

“Well, actually, what he would like to do if he can is buy the land rather than rent it. Who owns the

village?”

“Until January, the owner was Ludwig von Gleichen-Tonna, the count of Gleichen, but he died without

issue and the ownership is in question.Herr Junker is running things because he holds theLehen on the

village. He got theLehen from his mother. She was the illegitimate daughter of an uncle of Anna Agnes of

Hohenlohe-Weikersheim, who was married to the brother of the count of Gleichen. Anna Agnes of

Hohenlohe-Weikersheim is also the niece of William the Silent.”

Birdie wondered who William the Silent was. Someone important, obviously.

Ernst was tempted by gossip and yielded to temptation. “They say Lady Anna Agnes bought her cousin

a marriage using the leases on Sundremda and some other villages.Herr Junker’s mama, she was high

strung.”

Ernst wasn’t really sure about these people from the future buying his village. True, the up-timers had

been fair, so far, but how would they treat the villagers if they owned the village? Would they have any

need for tenants?

Eric Flint - [Grantville 04] - 1634 The Ram Rebellion

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