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The Anaconda Project, Episode Three

Written by Eric Flint

Chapter 3

Fortunately, they were hungry—or James might have spent half an hour instead of three minutes making wisecracks about Lord and Lady Roth and the way they bid fair to make pikers out of any European aristocrats barring maybe the odd emperor here and there. He didn’t even make one wisecrack about the food being kosher.

Of course, he might not have noticed anyway. But Melissa did, and after the meal was over she gave Morris a little smile.

“I see even you can bend a little. Smart move, if you ask me.”

Morris was back to being defensive. “I didn’t eat pork in the old days, even if I never had any use for most of those silly kashrut rules. Here . . .”

His wife gave him a mildly exasperated look. “To start with,” she said, “we didn’t really have any choice. Things are changing in Prague, but there’s still no chance of Jews, even very rich ones, getting Christian servants. And even if you could, you couldn’t trust them not to be spies working for somebody else. So all the servants in the house, including the cooks, are Jewish—and the only way they know how to cook is kosher.”

She shrugged. “So, I persuaded Morris that it just made sense to make a virtue out of the business. You know how Jews are, Melissa, even if”—she gave Nichols a skeptical glance—“James is probably awash in goofy notions. Most of Prague’s Jews, and certainly all of the rabbis, know that Morris’ theological opinions are radically different from theirs. But Jews don’t care much about theology, the way Christians do. They care a lot more about whether people maintain Jewish customs and traditions and rituals. And since we now do—”

“Not all of the customs,” said Morris, half-snarling. “I was born Reform, raised Reform, and I’ll damn well die Reform. No way I’ll ever start every day with a prayer thanking God for not making me a woman. Not to mention—”

“Husband, quit it,” snapped Judith. “We follow most of them, and you know it perfectly well. And you also know that between that and the fact that all of Bohemia’s Jews depend on you to keep them in Wallenstein’s good graces, everybody is being friendly to us. Even the rabbis, most of them.”

She gave Morris an accusing glare. “And don’t pretend otherwise! You even like some of those rabbis.”

“Well . . .”

“Admit it!”

“Fine. Yes, I like Mordecai and Isaac. But they’re—they’re—”

He made a vague motion with his hand. “Not exactly just orthodox rabbis. It’s more complicated. More . . .”

“Many-sided?” asked Melissa. “Full of potential, not just limits?”

Seeing her triumphant look, he scowled. Then, transferred the scowl to the servant Rifka when she entered the dining room.

Timidly, seeing her employer’s expression, she drew back a pace.

“Oh, stop it, Morris!” snapped Judith. “He’s not glaring at you, Rifka. He’s just glaring the way he always does when one of his pet prejudices develops legs and starts walking around on its own instead of obeying his orders.”

She added a winning smile to settle the young woman’s nerves. “What do you need?”

“Ah . . . nothing, Lady Judith. It’s just that some people have arrived and insist on speaking to you immediately.”

“And that’s another thing I miss,” muttered Morris. “Doorbells, so you’d know when somebody was at the blasted door.”

“House this size,” James muttered back, “you’d need a foghorn.”

Judith ignored both of them. “Please, show the visitors in. We’ve finished eating anyway.”

****

When the newcomers entered the room, Morris’ expression darkened still further. Melissa’s, on the other hand, was full of good cheer.

“Well, I do declare. Red Sybolt, in the flesh. We were just talking about you, as it happens. Or rather, I was. Morris was trying to evade the subject.”

“What subject?” asked Red. “But, first, some introductions.” He gestured to the four men who’d come in behind him.

“You know this big fellow, of course.” Pleasantly, the very large man standing just behind him nodded at the people at the table. That was Jan Billek, one of the central figures of the Unity of Brethren, the theologically-radical church led by Bishop Comenius which, in another universe, would be driven into exile and eventually become the Moravian church in America.

Red’s hand indicated the two men standing to his left. “And these are Krzysztof Opalinski and Jakub Zaborowsky. My kind of guys, even if they’re both Polish szlachta. Finally—”

He clasped the shoulder of the last man, a burly fellow wearing a rather exotic-looking costume, and pulled him forward. “And this here’s Dmytro Fedorovych.”

Sybolt grinned cheerfully. “He’s a Cossack, of all things. Well, sorta. They’re not exactly Cossacks yet, you know. He tracked me down while I was in Lublin with Jan here, doing nothing we need to discuss at the moment. He heard I was connected to the Prince of the Jews in Prague, and insisted I take him there and make the introductions. That’s you, Morris, if you didn’t know.”

Morris was practically ogling Fedorovych. The fact was, for all his belligerent talk on the subject, the Jewish jeweler had been born and raised in America. Melissa didn’t think he’d ever actually met a Cossack in his life.

“Oh, my,” said Judith. She indicated the many empty chairs surrounding the huge table in the dining room. “Please, gentlemen, have a seat.”

Morris keep staring at Fedorovych. Wondering, apparently, if the savage Cossack even knew what a chair was in the first place. Melissa almost laughed.

As it happened, despite the rather outlandish outfit—she thought it was probably derived from Tatar or Mongol apparel—Fedorovych took his seat quite gracefully.

“And to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit?” Melissa asked them.

“What do you think?” said Red. “Word’s out that Wallenstein appointed Morris to grab half of eastern Europe for him—”

“Already?” demanded Morris. “Dammit, who blabbed?”

“Could have been Wallenstein himself,” said Red. “It’s a tossup whether he’s shrewder than he is vainglorious. Relax, willya? When I said ‘the word was out,’ I only meant in selected circles. Mostly Jewish circles. The most likely culprit for the leak is you, actually. Or rather, the servants who overheard you talking about it. They’d have passed the word into the Prague ghetto and from there . . .”

He smiled. “In case you hadn’t figured it out already, what with you being the Prince of the Jews, all the Jewish settlements in the towns of eastern Europe are connected to each other. The point being, the word’s out, and these gents want to dicker with you.”

He turned toward the very handsome young Pole named Krzysztof Opalinski. “You can start the dickering with these two. The reason they know about it is because I’d already gotten to know them while engaged in that business we don’t need to discuss, and I told them myself.”

“We don’t care about Wallenstein’s aims on the Ruthenian lands,” said Opalinski. He gestured to his partner. “Jakub even less than I do, being as he is from the area himself.”

Jakub Zaborowsky had a twisted smile on his face. “My family’s szlachta like Krzysztof’s, true enough. But his family is prominent and well-off and we are dirt-poor, as Red would put it.” The term “dirt-poor” came in English, easily blended into the German they were all speaking. “I think we’d do better off back in Poland, if the situation was changed. The only ones who do well in Lesser Poland are the magnates, even if most of the szlachta there try to console themselves with the sure knowledge that they are of noble blood while they spend their days dealing with hogs and money-lenders like any peasant does. Mind you, I have no great belief you could ever get those ignorant Ruthenians to do anything but drink themselves into a stupor, but so be it. They’d be Bohemia’s problem, not ours.”

Opalinski spoke again. “So we will not contest that issue with you. Indeed, you will have our blessing, even to a degree our active support. Strip away their Ruthenian estates, and half the magnates who have Poland and Lithuania under their yoke will lose most of their wealth and influence.”

For the first time, he came into focus in Melissa’s mind. The easy and effortless way he said “under their yoke” was the tip-off. In Melissa’s experience—which had been quite extensive in her youth—the only people who could whip out phrases like that as naturally as most people talked of the weather, were dyed-in-the-wool radicals.

“And who, exactly, is ‘you’?” she asked.

The handsome young Pole sat erect, looking stiffly proud. “We are members of the newly-formed Spartacus ...