1632

She looked like a Teutonic goddess, thought Melissa. Bathrobe be damned. Clean, her hair was blond. Dark blond, but definitely blond. The long tresses framed a face that fell just outside of beauty simply because the features were so strong. The finger was shaken by the large hand of a shapely but powerful arm, attached to a shapely and powerful shoulder. Everything about her was cut from that cloth. Her breasts, as large as they so obviously were under the thin bathrobe, looked as if they were held up by armor. Melissa, remembering Gretchen's naked body, knew that the rest of her matched what was visible.

"Who is that?" asked Rebecca. Her eyes widened. "Is that the woman-?"

Happily, Melissa nodded. "Yeah, that's her. You heard the story, I take it?"

Rebecca nodded. "Michael told me. The woman who hid her sisters in a cesspool-and then stood there, straight up, waiting for-" She shuddered. "I can hardly imagine such courage."

Mike stared at Gretchen through the window for a moment longer, before adding: "Jesus, what a Valkyrie."

Melissa shook her head. "No, Mike. You're very wrong." She scowled. "Valkyries!" The word was almost a curse. "Leave it to the sick and twisted mind of Richard Wagner to glorify a Valkyrie."

Again, she took her companions by the arm and began walking toward the door. "A Valkyrie is just a vulture. A death-worshipper. 'Choosers of the slain,' they were called, as if that were something to be proud of."

She stopped abruptly, almost yanking them up short. Her finger, extended, pointed to Gretchen.

"That young woman, on the other hand, is something truly grand and glorious. That woman is a chooser of the living."

She sighed. "I know what I can do, and what I can't. I know what we need, and what I can give. I can help. I can teach. I can guide, hopefully. But I can't do it." A little shrug lifted her slender shoulders. "Even if I wasn't too old, I couldn't do it. I don't come from that world, and even if I did-"

She twisted her head, looking to the north. Beyond the hills was a battlefield. Her next words came in a whisper. "I never would have been tough enough, or had the courage. I'm not a coward, but-not a chance. I would have died myself, much less been able to save anyone else."

Melissa smiled. The expression was one of unalloyed satisfaction-the smile of a person at peace with themselves. "What this new world of ours needs is not a superannuated sixties radical. Except, maybe, as an adviser. We're back at the beginning, where it all started. The days of the abolitionists and the Underground Railroad. Seneca Falls and the pioneer women."

Her smile became a grin. "Melissa Mailey will sure as hell lend a hand, but she's not what we really need. What we really need is a new Harriet Tubman."

She beamed at the woman in the window. "And I do believe I may have found her."

Gretchen was glancing at Jeff again. He was no longer shying away from those glances. Oh no. He was staring back at her like a lamb. Begging to be slaughtered. "Of course, first I've got to stop her from selling herself to another soldier in order to keep her kids alive. That'll hurt her image, starting off her new life as a camp whore. Again."

Now Melissa was marching them to the door. Her bare feet struck the pavement like boots.

Mike chuckled. "I can't wait to find out how you're planning to do that."

"What is Seneca Falls?" asked Rebecca. "And who was Harriet Tubman?"

By the time they reached the door, Melissa had begun her explanation. She only had time to broach the topic, before the meeting started. But her words were enough to get Mike chewing on the problem, and Rebecca. And that was enough. The two finest political minds of the day-which they were, though they did not realize it yet-would take that germ and transform it into something mighty and powerful.

***

So, in the time to come, Melissa Mailey would take great comfort in the memory of a pool of vomit. Out of that nausea would come something precious to her soul-and just as precious to the souls of thousands of others.

The Inquisition, of course, would feel otherwise. So would a multitude of barons and bishops, and every witch-hunter in Europe.

Chapter 24

Melissa's concerns for Gretchen's image proved to be moot. In the end, the solution to that quandary was provided by another.

It was only a partial solution, of course, as solutions usually are, and addressed only one specific problem, as solutions usually do. But, as was often also true, it opened the door-if only a crack-for the multitude of solutions to follow.