1636: The Cardinal Virtues Read Online Free PDF

better. In any case writing back to Grantville had lightened her mood.
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    Even before the radio team arrived, the Castello del Valentino had been regularly under construction since 1630. It had been the private home of the duchess of Savoy—Christina Maria, the sister of King Louis of France—and she kept carpenters, stonemasons and other craftsmen continually occupied with renovations. The Castello was an impressive building: square and roughly horseshoe-shaped, with four towers along the central edge and two each on each of the legs; an interior courtyard ended in a rounded arch with a gate tower in the center, taller than all the rest. Tree-lined avenues framed gardens beyond, leading off into the countryside, while the long side of the building faced the Po River. A river-gate in the middle of a palisaded wall led down a few steps to a dock.
    Despite the noise, Her Grace seemed very comfortable there. Whenever she was with child—which, as far as Terrye Jo could tell, was just about always—she had left Turin and come out into the country. A Grantville-trained doctor—really a down-timer with a few months’ education in up-time nursing techniques—had been hired out by the duke to attend her, and he had a permanent apartment in the north wing. His expertise was the first up-time knowledge that Duke Victor Amadeus had imported into his lands, and it was better than a chirurgeon who knew nothing other than bleeding and purging.
    Late in 1634, the duke had decided that Savoy needed a radio transmission facility, and had paid handsomely to have it built, along with the spiderwork of antenna wires that now draped it, stretching between the many parapets and towers of the Castello. Naturally, that meant more renovation and construction. It also meant that the duke himself spent more time in residence.
    The duchess might have resented it, except that she considered Terrye Jo herself a project . Her Grace had one daughter, Luisa Christina, six years old but already court-wise and self-assured, but hardly someone who could be dressed and groomed quite yet. Terrye Jo was twenty-one, and gave no indication of interest in marrying or child-rearing. It was a challenge for both noblewoman and country girl, but it was a nice interruption from the workshop.
    This morning, with her letter sent off, Terrye Jo made her way from her apartment in an upper floor of the south wing to the workshop, located in one of the towers that overlooked the Po. It was a big, airy place, originally designed for something else—a ballroom, maybe—but had been cleared out for work. The framework of the radio tower had been built above, and the hardware installed in the room. Long tables of planed timber had been placed there to hold equipment and parts and tools.
    “Ah, Donna Teresa.” Artemisio Logiani, a local Torino who had graduated from castle handyman to junior radio tech, looked up from his work and offered her a bow she didn’t deserve. “You brighten up the morning.”
    It would have been all too serious but for the wink and the grin.
    “I doubt it.”
    “Forgive me, Donna,” he answered. “I cannot help myself.” He smiled, showing not enough teeth. “I can scarcely focus my eyes in your presence.”
    She ignored the compliment. It was a little dance she did with the down-timer every morning. She knew what he had in mind—there was really no question—but of the crew of radio operators she’d trained, he was the best. He could send almost as fast as she could. “How are you doing with the long-range antenna adjustment?”
    “It goes slowly,” he said. “The materials are poor, especially now that there is war.” He gestured to a stretch of wire on the table behind him, painstakingly hand-twisted and mounted on an antenna strut. “I try to follow the book, but it is difficult.” He tapped the open book, a manuscript copy of a radio operator’s manual from the 1930s that the team had brought with them.
    “I’m