1632

Frank scowled. "Common fucking sense, is what it is. I learned this trick from a sergeant in Nam. I think he learned it from the NVA. So who the hell is Wellington?"

Jeff and Larry goggled at him for a moment. Then, in a small voice, Jeff said: "He's the guy they named your favorite boots after."

Now, Frank was impressed. "Oh," he said. "Him. Good man! Whoever he was."

***

And, at that very moment, Gretchen struck the first blow against a different enemy. A much less concrete foe, in her case-and a much harder one to vanquish.

"All right," said Mathilde, one of the women in the shack. Her voice was hesitant, uncertain. She glanced quickly at the four other women huddled on pallets against the walls. Two of them were Mathilde's sisters; the other two, cousins. Both her cousins and one of her sisters were nursing babies.

Mathilde's own fears and doubts were mirrored in their faces.

"I do not ask you to take great risks," Gretchen said immediately. "Nothing you are too scared to do. But I think you will find everything much easier by tomorrow. After the battle is won, Jena's high and mighty notables will not be so quick to accuse anyone of witchcraft."

The women in the shack stared at her. They were still frightened, Gretchen saw. They had been frightened and nervous since the moment Gretchen approach Mathilde and one of her cousins. The two young women had been part of the crowd watching the American army march past. Gretchen had singled them out within a minute of Jeff's flamboyant departure. She had been guided less by instinct than by her own hard experience. She knew how to recognize desperate women-and, what was more important, women who still retained their backbones.

Frightened, yes; nervous, yes. But Gretchen knew her choice had been well-aimed. The women had still listened, as she spoke, with neither protest nor any attempt to drive her out of their miserable dwelling in Jena's worst slum.

Mathilde and her extended family were part of the great mass of poor women whom the war had driven into dire straits. All of them were refugees from the Palatinate, who had found a sanctuary in Jena. The adult men in the family were all dead or gone, except for Mathilde's crippled uncle. He was sleeping quietly in the next-door shack.

Mathilde and the prettiest of her cousins supported the family by prostitution. Jena was a good town for the trade, what with its large population of young male students, most of whom were from Germany's nobility and prosperous burgher class. But if Jena was a sanctuary, it was a precarious one. Women of their kind were only tolerated so long as they kept their place. For almost a century, since the witch-hunting craze began, it was wretched creatures such as they who were the first to be accused of witchcraft. The accusation was almost impossible to disprove, even if the area's notables were willing to listen to protestations of innocence-which, more often than not, they weren't in the least.

"Trust me," Gretchen stated. "After today, the notables will be much less full of themselves."

"You are so sure?" asked one of the cousins. Her voice, for all the meekness of its tone, held a trace of hope.

Gretchen gave no answer beyond a level gaze. But that was enough. For all their fears, the women in the shack were quite dazzled by her. They could tell she was one of their own kind. Yet the woman seemed so-so Sure. Confident. Poised.

Powerful. They had never seen a woman like that. Not once. Not from their own class…

"All right," said Mathilde again. This time, the words were spoken firmly. "We will do as you say, Gretchen. We will start here, with us. There are some others we can talk to, also." Mathilde glanced at her sisters and cousins. "Hannelore, I think. And Maria."

One of her sisters nodded. Mathilde's cousin Inga, the other prostitute, smiled. As if a dam had burst, she began to speak quickly and eagerly:

"And the students will be easy. There are at least three I can think of at once! Joachim, Fritz and Kurt-especially Joachim. He's very nice, and always wants to talk to me afterward. He thinks a lot about politics, I know that, even if I can't follow half of what he says. I wish he wasn't so short of money all the time so he could come more often."

Mathilde laughed, a bit coarsely. "He comes often enough, girl! What kind of idiot whore lets her customer owe her money?"

Inga flushed. "I like him," she replied stubbornly. "So what if he can't always pay at the time? He never cheats me. He always gives me what he owes whenever his parents send him money."

Mathilde didn't press it. She rather liked Joachim herself, actually. But mention of his name brought up another concern.

"For the students it will be easy, this-what did you call it?"

"Committees of Correspondence," said Gretchen.

"Yes. For them, easy. But for us? Inga is the only one who can even sign her name."

Gretchen scanned the women in the room. "You are all illiterate?" Five nods came in reply.