1632

Ice cream, yes. Willie Ray had shown him the large stock of flavorings still available in the markets. And we can tap the maple trees for sugar. The refined sugar's almost gone.

So was the grain, and the vegetables, and the meat, and the eggs. Even with rigorous rationing, the food stocked in the town's supermarkets had not lasted more than two months, just as their owners and managers had predicted. The small number of American farms which had come through the Ring of Fire could not possibly make up the difference. That had been true even before Grantville's population doubled, after the battle.

Lennox's mind veered aside, for a moment, snagged on another American eccentricity. They insisted on naming their battles.

That much Lennox could understand, even if the practice had fallen out of custom in his day. Most battles in the seventeenth century were sodden affairs. Bruising clashes between armies which collided almost accidentally as they marched across a ravaged landscape looking for food and shelter. No more worth naming than a dogfight in an alley.

But why call it the Battle o' the Crapper? He understood the reference, but not the reasoning. They were a quirky folk, the Americans. Lennox could think of no other nationality which would have found logic in naming a battle in honor of four girls in a shithouse.

He didn't understand the logic, quite. The edges of it, perhaps, and the grim humor which lurked somewhere inside. But not the heart of the thing. It was too contradictory, too American. Only a nation of commoners, he decided, each of whom thought like a nobleman, could find logic there. An ice-cream nation, confident that the grain and meat would be found.

Lennox didn't understand it, no. But he had already made his decision, so the incomprehension was moot. He had never encountered such confident people in his life, and confidence is the most contagious of all diseases.

The APC ahead of him lurched into gear.

"T'parade's startin', lad," he announced. Sourly: "It'd be ae fine thing if t'Scots commander c'd finish his ice cream 'fore he makes fools o' us all."

Mackay mumbled hasty agreement. But he did not relinquish the ice-cream cone until it had vanished, in the only suitable method known to the sidereal universe.

***

Ahead, somewhere in the middle of the parade, Mike and Rebecca walked hand in hand. They were more or less at the head of the UMWA contingent.

A flash of light drew his eye.

Rebecca smiled, and raised their clasped hands. "It's so beautiful, Michael. Where did you get it?"

Michael returned her smile with one of his own. "It's a secret," he replied. And it'll stay one, too, if Morris keeps his mouth shut.

Mike had intended to give Rebecca his mother's engagement ring. But it had been a paltry thing, in all truth, sentiment aside. When he brought it to Morris' shop for sizing, the town's jeweler had been aghast.

"For Rebecca? No way!"

Morris immediately made a beeline for the jewelry case which contained the finest rings in his collection. That case, as it happened, was the only one which still contained any jewelry. The Roths had turned over most of their stock to the town treasury weeks earlier. Roth Jewelry's gold and silver had provided the Americans with their first hard currency.

Morris opened the case and reached in. "I've got just the thing over here. Don't even think I need to size it."

Mike followed, scowling. "If it was good enough for my mother, I don't see why-"

Morris frowned. "Your mother was a fine woman, Mike Stearns. But-but-"

"Nothing but a coal miner's wife? Well, so what? I'm a coal miner."

"Yeah, but-" Still frowning, Morris shook his head. "Yeah, but."

Mike's irritation had vanished, then. He understood full well the meaning of that yeah, but. Understood it, and took pride in the knowing.

Yeah, but-she's also the closest thing this town's ever had to a princess.

There was something amusing in the thought. Rebecca's growing status in the town had precious little to do with heritage and "bloodline." True, the Abrabanels were ranked by Sephardim among their finest families. Finest of all, perhaps. But that meant little or nothing to Grantville's West Virginians. What they knew of the history of the Spanish Jews could have been inscribed on a pin.

Didn't matter. There was the romance of the thing!