1633

Outside, as they walked side by side down the corridor of the palace, Fernando glanced at Miguel. "Your job, that. Keep them on a leash, Miguel. Muzzle them, if you have to. I will support you in every particular."

"Be my pleasure." De Manrique's growl was that of a man in middle age, not a youth. Different in timbre; different, even more, in the depth of the gravel. "Damn them, anyway. The grief they caused us, everywhere we went. Ha!" His rough, scarred face broke into a narrow grin. "I'll say this for those cursed Americans. When the Inquisitors in the Wartburg tried to drive the soldiers back to the walls, their sharpshooters singled them out for the killing."

But the grin faded, within three steps. De Manrique had been the commander of the Spanish army shattered outside Eisenach and then trapped in the Wartburg. One of the worst defeats in Spanish history, that had been. Precious few times in history had an entire Spanish army surrendered, especially to a smaller force. De Manrique had been lucky, afterward, to have been simply disgraced instead of imprisoned. As it was, he had spent several weeks in the tender graces of the Inquisition, being tested to see if his failure reflected a deeper evil.

The cardinal-infante had saved him, then-just as Don Fernando had been the man who insisted on adding Miguel to his staff for the expedition to the Netherlands. In the months since, the veteran general had come to have a great deal of respect for the young prince of Spain. Headstrong he might be-and no "might be" about it. Rash, reckless, given to taking chances… yes, yes, certainly. But he listened. And, if nothing else, did not share the automatic assumption of most Spanish hidalgos that they already knew all the secrets of the ancient art of war.

The corridors of the palace were a bit chilly, despite the season. But it was not the chill of the evening which caused a momentary shiver in Miguel's shoulders. He-not self-satisfied hidalgos on their estates in Castile-had been the one who saw the inferno which the Americans had unleashed on the Wartburg. Some kind of hideous flame-weapon worse than any legends of Greek fire. And he-not them-had seen the brains of his soldiers splashed out of their skulls by muskets fired at an impossible range.

The shiver came, and went. Miguel de Manrique was a soldier, after all. And he did have the pleasant memory of seeing the brains of arrogant Inquisitors being splashed as well.

"On a leash," he repeated. "Leashed, and muzzled."

Chapter 17

Halfway across Europe, another middle-aged face was creased by a scowl.

"Goddammit, Mike, there are laws."

Mike Stearns returned the glare of Grantville's former police chief with an expression which did not even strive for innocence. Just… mild-mannered.

"I'm aware of that, Dan. I'm also aware that I can't slide around you the way I used to do-now and then-by arguing it was out of your jurisdiction."

"Not hardly!" snapped Dan Frost. Frost was now head of the national police force of the entire United States-which, for all that its powers were constrained, had much greater authority than the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the U.S. of another universe. Mike Stearns had insisted on that, just as he had insisted on Dan's appointment to the post. With the crazy quilt of legal jurisdictions that still made up the newly formed United States, he wanted no chance of allowing some arrogant little German princeling to flaunt new laws on the grounds that his domain of a few hundred acres was "beyond national jurisdiction."

Still, the U.S. Police Force was hardly unrestrained by legal limits. The Constitution of the new U.S. had the same Bill of Rights as that of the old one. And-what was more to the point, in the current discussion-was based on the same fundamental legal principles.

One of which-very basic-was that if a man breaks the law he gets arrested and charged in a court. He does not get subjected to the secret and essentially private justice of the executive branch of government.

"Dammit, there are laws," repeated Frost. The police chief cast a sour glance at one of the other occupants of the greenhouse where this little impromptu meeting was being held. Harry Lefferts, that was, lounging casually against a nearby planter. The young soldier, formerly a coal miner, had a rather peculiar position in the hierarchy of the new U.S. Army. Officially, he was "Captain Lefferts." In practice, he amounted to Mike Stearns' personal little one-man combination of the old OSS-in its woolliest World War II days-and what militant trade unions like the UMWA sometimes euphemized as the "education committee."

"Especially with him around," gruffed Dan, jerking his thumb at Harry. "Or are you going to tell me you brought him to 'reason' with Freddie?"