1636: The Cardinal Virtues Read Online Free PDF Page A

she knew it was time to leave. The invitation from the duke of Savoy came at just the right time.
    Just a year or two, she’d thought. Then she’d come home with enough to live well. But she didn’t go home.

    I’m living in the Castello del Valentino, which is the ducal palace. I have a room about the size of our old house and a workshop downstairs. The duke and duchess have been very kind to me. Duke Victor Amadeus is about your age and very handsome—he’s got one of those pointed beards and turned-up moustaches, and has a huge wardrobe. Every day I see him wearing something new.
    His wife Christine—the duchess—is much younger. She’s the sister of the king of France, and has a temper worse than Gramma Dorothy. She mostly uses it on the servants—I think the duke told her not to scare the up-timer away. She did come to me before a ball and told me that my jeans and flannel shirts were quite unsuitable, and had her dressmaker fit me for a beautiful pale blue gown. The court artist did sketches of all the ladies. You wouldn’t be able to tell I was an infantry grunt in disguise.
    A few weeks ago the court took a trip to a monastery, Hautemont Abbey, which is on a tall hill overlooking a lake. It’s a gorgeous place, like something out of a fairytale movie. A few dozen of the duke’s ancestors are buried there, and he and his wife expect that they’ll go there too, but hopefully not any time soon. They took all of their children along. They have three and the duchess is pregnant with another. She’s already lost two others—one stillborn, another when he was just six. They want to bring in an up-time doctor, and they hoped I was trained for that too. Even with nothing more than field medic training they’re glad to have me nearby.

    She almost threw this sheet out the window too. Nice going. Focus on death—the place where the dukes of Savoy get buried and the number of kids the duchess has lost .
    She set that thought aside and plowed ahead.

    I want you to know that this is a great situation for me, even though it’s far from home. I miss you, and Uncle Frank and Aunt Lana and Uncle Jim and my grandmothers and Grampa Fogle too. But I can’t come home now, even though you want me to. I need—

    She stopped and scratched out I need . She didn’t need anything. It was her Dad who needed what she was going to ask. She was almost to the bottom of a page, so she set the current one aside and started with a new sheet.

    When Aunt Gloria died, you cursed the Ring of Fire, and you cursed fate, and a whole lot of other things. There was no medicine, no up-time clinic, nothing to help her get better. I’m pretty sure you did the same when Mom died. It’s all true, but even up-time neither of them were getting better—they were mostly staying the same, and not a lot of that. You can blame God and curse fate all you want, but not the Ring of Fire. They didn’t die because we’re back here. They died because there was something that killed them. In the Guard we lost people—up-timers—who survived coming back to this time only to be killed. It didn’t make sense, it wasn’t fair, but it happened all the same. I don’t know why we’re here in this time, but we’re here and we’re not going back.
    Because of that, I need to ask you something important. I need to ask you to move on: from Mom, from the Ring of Fire, from wanting me to be in reach to lean on. Even Uncle Frank told me that I have to find my own way in this world and that I’ll be a better daughter because of it.
    I hope you will love me anyway and that you’ll write back
    With love, your daughter
    Terrye Jo

    She set the last sheet aside, making a neat stack, and laid the quill next to it. The window was still there, and she could throw it all away and start again. Or not.
    After some dithering she sealed the letter, with no further corrections, and passed it to a courier. Dad would have it in a few weeks, and maybe it would make him feel